HN user

perfTerm

179 karma
Posts0
Comments82
View on HN
No posts found.

On the day to day level I'd say certain subjects might be more applicable to this sentiment than others. For instance, sexual education where the results can be life changing.

But as for computer science, like regular science, it will inspire a few kids who go on to learn their follies and produce work in the field and everyone else will either trudge through it or drop it and never have it affect their daily life in any manner so it doesn't particularly matter and is probably better to have those extra inspired children in society.

That being said, a course on the things that will actually effect most every childs life such as what are those TOS things you click away near constantly, where are the privacy settings in facebook and what are the different levels of privacy and what can you do in abusive or threatening situations, how often does personal data get stolen, how to store confidential material in a way minimize potential vectors for attack, etc. That'd be an absolutely useful course and would be best if taught well (as opposed to abstinence only education to continue my thought streams from above).

Hmm, well I absolutely agree with the hoop jumping, and while yes no one has ever shared an iPhone executable with me (although they could and I could run it without any sort of license without jailbreaking), I've really been pretty content with Apple's walled gardens (hardware and software). Every app runs pretty smooth since there are so few models and screen sizes to accomodate and I never have to worry when I download from the app store, at all! That's a pleasure.

Setting up a development environment is an absolute pain in the ass, for a professional developer. But when I was in middle school on my pops pre G3 apple computer (or maybe it was the G3 at that point I'm not sure) I pretty easily figured out how to use a text editor and a preinstalled language to solve project euler problems. Boy those were fun.

I'd imagine access to the computer is a big issue, and only god knows where I found projecteuler for the first time but those sparks are really whats needed. If it ends up getting taught in some stale way as proofs in highschool were taught with lots of rote memorization and none of the art it'll probably end up producing a similar amount of interest.

Also, I presume, as people get older they're less likely in many cases to spend the time to learn a skill which doesn't offer anywhere near the tangible benefit of speaking and writing. Speaking and writing are practiced near constantly just because they're generally the best tools (along with drawing, gesturing, touch) for a job (communication) which must be performed everyday. I can't imagine the future where programming ever hits that level and see it more like the internals of a car with its standard bellcurve distribution of understanding across society.

Hmm, I don't really think its off by much, especially in Westernized nations where practically every thing is governed by contracts, regulations and legalese. And especially at a management level. You allocate resources to accomplish tasks. If you have a C++ developer, that's a resource. Resource X costs Y and produces Z could be applied to JetBrains licenses or people. Maintence for licenses is quite simple requiring updated payment information, maintence for people is a lot less clear cut and requires communication, and lots of ambiguous judgement calls. It's stale but I'm not sure there's a better word to fit in its place.

Yea I was working for a company for a very short period which was focused on autonomy. The texts, emails, and slack messages as early as 7, as late as midnight, on saturday, on sunday. It drove me crazy to say the least as someone who, ironicly enough, valued his own autonomy very greatly.

That didn't last long.

Hmm, I learned a bit about something I didn't know I didn't know much about. And then through the comments I learned a bit more. I'd say that's exactly why I come here :)

I think parent meant the Italian system of goverment and their society. It wouldn't make sense to imbide the intrinsic qualities of something as large as the Italian nation as a whole into their citizens at birth.

So he might expect Linus to listen to his opinions on the end user experience, but maybe not to his opinions on how it should be implemented technically? Would that be fair.

I'm pretty sure giving people the time of day is an admirable trait and can teach you many things regardless of their expertise. It's after the fact that you disregard the cruft.

It's like the Republican debates for me, I can't seem to find any common ground with these candidates but then I find a few nuggets that I do like (such as Jeb Bush's funding of crisis birth centers and increasing the adoption rates in Florida through better funding and education for adoption centers. Even if I'm pro choice I think those are good ideas). Of course, the Republican debates are two to three hours long so it's very thankful they're not very often and you need to find the balance so that you're not just wasting your time.

I think it's fair to say that there is no black and white answer to this issue and you really have to go on a case by case basis to maximise your use of the information contained in the people around you.

I really wanted to read this but for some reason it doesn't resize for mobile unfortunately. I'll have to bookmark it. It may also possibly be my phone which is not on its best legs.

If Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA, is any sort of indicator (and it is as a factual history of the CIA), the CIA has been (and probably still is) an absolutely inept institution with a tremendous amount of incompetance. I'm not quite this far but I'm getting there. I'm sure it will talk about this guy.

As a layman reading about this plane for years and years and years it almost seems like the military would have had better results stacking the 400 billion dollars up in 5inch stacks and strapping it to the soldiers as body armour at this point.

They're doing some cool stuff though, the military. The new railguns and laser systems the Navys building are pretty neat and will probably end up having some civilian benefits in the future.

This unfortunately feels like a huge sinkhole which won't produce any tangible benefit for the military or civilians.

Possibly not if they're solar or hybrid powered, fuel efficient, and have large enough fuel stores. A plane recently flew around the entirety of the earth without stopping so it's certainly conceivable to fly half way around the planet and back again.

This is totally true, but in a world where there are tens of thousands of products in our supermarkets alone, sometimes I prefer an easy subconcious choice. If Old Spice deodorant works, and I got there because of an advertisement that played on subconcious desires, eh. I don't really have the desire to conciously evaluate my deodorant purchase (even though I avoid anti persperants at all cost cause there are weird metals and it just doesn't seem natural to not perspire).

If I choose Pepsi over Coke because of some subconciously altered motive, eh. Whatever.

I'm not sure it'll be a popular opinion, but to be honest, I don't particularly mind not having to conciously evaluate my soda choice.

Yea I'm working for a company focused on "autonomy" at the moment. What this has resulted in is calls at all different times of day and night, and an in inability to get questions answered during normal working hours.

The calls themselves I don't mind so much, it's the stress of looking at your phone on a Saturday morning and seeing five messages "Hey are you awake?", "How about now? Time for a call?". Or messages at 9:30 at night, 2:00 in the morning, 8:00 AM. Instead of autonomy it's more a constant feeling of stress about work. Instead of freedom it ends up being prison.

I've let them know I'm moving on in two weeks to greener pastures. I'll have an office instead of working from home, and a schedule. The heirarchy won't be flat thus reducing the number of people I have to communicate with. Everyone will be based in my hometown meaning I won't be communicating over google hangouts which I am so looking forward to. And as an engineer I sort of really dislike meeting with clients and I'm glad I won't have to anymore. I can explain things to people, and I will willingly, but to have to explain technical concepts to the nontechnical frequently and over hours of hangouts is tiring, uninteresting, and frustrating.

Essentially, it's not for everyone. And that went a bit off topic, but beware the virtuous intention which paves your path to hell.

Hmm, I went to a festival and stayed up at least two nights in a row plus the three days. On the third day we got on this little tiny plane to get back to the main airport and everyone and I just conked out. Same thing in the taxi on the way there. People shaking me said I wasn't waking up. Landing, taking off, nothing. Although I'm a very comfortable flyer anyways and never really have any of the anxieties some people have with flying.

I'm not sure which is preferable, without friends I may have missed all my flights, but that sleep was desperately needed.

Well that's obvious but literally breaking every law in every country would be literally impossible.

It's like this guy at work who always says "verbage". It just grinds certain peoples gears when people use words incorectly and shamelessly or ignorantly.

I could care less, irregardless... Oy vey!

How Big is Space? 11 years ago

It's super interesting that the speed of light is exactly 282,xyz (can't remember) miles per second. What're the chances? I'm just unable to comprehend the idea that a fundamental universal constant could be an exact whole number amount of an arbitrary measurement unit like that. You'd think there'd be a few decimal points or something.

A solution for identity doesn't necessarily imply a lack of anonymity on the entire internet.

It sure would be nice to not have to update so many payment details after a card number gets stoken though.

Last time my card was stolen I had to update a tremendous number of services. Usually I just wait until I get some sort of notice or my account stops working somewhere but it's a pain in the butt.

Yea I'm pretty conflicted about my opinion of that remote

On the one hand it's simple, it's sleek, and it works.

On the other hand it's so small it gets lost all the time, typing is awful, and for a while when I was getting used to it I'd hit the arrows when I was trying to click the center button.

You can though. When someone says raising tobacco taxes will increase government coffers by X, they're effectively levying that tax primarily on lower and lower middle class families since those communities are more likely to smoke cigarettes.

And even if I have nothing to hide why can't I fear for potential whistle blowers, journalists, or activists?

It's a shame that we love to boil incredibly complex issues down into simple platitudes. You find it on facebook, on the news, on twitter (although short and sweet does work well there), and every where else you look and people you talk to.

It's a shallow way to talk about things.

Is the medical community allowed to embrace something for which we as a society don't really know any of the long term consequences?

Will these candy flavored vaporizers get more kids addicted to nicotine?

Do people consume more nicotine with these vaporizers than if they had continued smoking cigarettes?

Is long term nicotine vapor inhalation harmful?

Rich people are far less likely to smoke, and when they do they don't smoke enough to make up for the imbalance so this is by its very definition a regressive tax policy that affects lower class communities the hardest.

And I'm just not sure I can get down with your intolerance. Smokers are people too. I know a tremendous number of them having made friends with my working class neighborhood in Brooklyn as well as my father. Passive smoking sucks but shaming people who smoke isn't really the answer just like shaming people who are overweight is also a tremendously shitty thing to do.