brightlancer

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61.
by brightlancer 3y ago
> Even amazon seems to do a lot to err on the side of "automatically make the customer happy" I can't find the article now, but I read a piece about the volume of returns and what happens to them ("reverse logistics&q
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by brightlancer 3y ago
China has proven that no one needs to "watch" CCTV, because the system will automatically identify everyone in the camera frame. That still requires more resources than mobile app tracking, and it's easier for people to disgu
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> Again, the monks believe they live rich lives without being "useful" by North American standards, that's certainly a cultural thing. That's begging the question. Historically, nearly all societies valued work becaus
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by brightlancer 3y ago
I suspect almost everyone on HN isn't legally bound to their employer, so I also reject the "exploitation" bit. But I do want to challenge the compensation argument: > For example, it's common to see HN posts describi
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by brightlancer 3y ago
I've kept journals before and found them to be really beneficial. But first, a caveat: A bit ago, someone else on HN wrote that he had kept lab style notebooks for work projects. All was fine until someone sued the company and his note
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> Humans themselves are black boxes too, and yet almost everyone grows to have a good handle on limitation of individuals, both in general and specific to contexts and individuals one encounters. IME, this is completely false. "Very
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by brightlancer 3y ago
Commercial UNIX was built to run on expensive RISC hardware; Linux was built to run on cheap x86 hardware. Commercial UNIX was certified to run Big Corporate applications; Linux ran FLOSS LAMP stacks. When x86 hardware became cheap AND reli
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> You can improve the outcomes of the non-low-performers, but it's hard to say it's a "net societal improvement" because the low performers are also part of society. That depends on the improvement vs loss -- IME, it
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> Good luck convincing the families of the 5%! I'm not arguing this approach wouldn't improve outcomes - just that it's not considered an acceptable solution to "the problem of education." So it doesn't seem
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by brightlancer 3y ago
IME, government teachers have at most 2 weeks of required work days during the summers: one right after school ends, one right before school begins. Depending on the state/ district, that leaves 6-8 weeks of summer break. They also get
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by brightlancer 3y ago
It does, though it's almost in passing: "For instance, Asian people tend to be at a greater risk of conditions such as heart disease at lower BMIs than are white people, probably owing to differences in body-fat percentage and dis
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by brightlancer 3y ago
1/3 of Americans are "obese". Not "overweight", _obese_. Sure, there are and will be variations among populations (and individuals), but that variation is less meaningful when 99.999% of obese people are at unhealth
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> but it just makes no sense to me that as a society we have said "yeah, color our food so it looks more appealing, even though chemically it's probably not great for us". Just sort of odd, honestly. How is this meaningful
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> this would be considered a huge intrusion into people's privacy. It _would be_ a huge intrusion into people's privacy.
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by brightlancer 3y ago
If someone puked on a train in Paris, what would happen? If someone got on the train and started smoking drugs off tinfoil, what would happen? In many cities in the US, the answer is _nothing_. I've ridden commuter buses in the US that
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> If you're planning to call someone far away, picking a time "during work hours" becomes very difficult without time zones. Does everyone in your office work the same hours? We _already_ have the problem of "What are
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> The alternative is that we have a DNS-style lookup of every city on earth which contains what each city has chosen for their daylight hours. We already have to do that: every business and government office (including schools) has their
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> The sun is still at its high point at the same time of the day in both countries No. Helsinki's solar noon is about 35 minutes later than Cape Town's and 100 minutes later than Pretoria's. This is normal, because time zo
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> Let’s say we do that, use UTC everywhere. You live in London. It’s 3 PM. For you, that’s mid-afternoon. It’s your brother’s birthday. You want to phone him and wish him a happy birthday. He lives in Sydney. In a world without timezones
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> Does meat actually taste good though? It does to me -- but I think there's a good point here (even if unintentional): Meats have _textures_ that vegetables don't have. Someone else mentioned how the Impossible Burger replicat
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work. E
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by brightlancer 3y ago
Could this be because Apple doesn't run a social media service? On some levels, are their products/ services competing _against_ social media? Or is this just part of Apple's (and many of its users') elitist and exclusiv
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> If all stocks had a minimum 10 year ownership requirement Then nobody would ever buy that stock, because they have no exit if things go south. And then that's combined with > If a company dumps illegal nuclear waste in some riv
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by brightlancer 3y ago
The problem is that this really screws the shareholders, and _obviously_ so. Most of the value of stock comes from the ability to sell it to someone else who wants to buy it. Who wants to buy stock in a company that has presented a plan to
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by brightlancer 3y ago
The current legal status of "Winnie the Pooh" provides examples for all of this. The original book has entered the public domain and can be reproduced, in whole or in part, by anyone. This includes the characters. The Disney creat
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> I think he's pointing out that an anticompetitive cabal already exists, Of course, they're called _unions_, which prevent companies from hiring or contracting anyone who isn't part of their cabal -- I mean union. Disney
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> They might say that, but they're just signing their own death warrant. Those who watch, like myself, will just wait out the 10 years and download it. (Well, not really, I will probably download it the next day). What does copyrigh
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> It would be one thing if Unity were hosting the game on their infra, but I still have to pay Unity a fee if I host the download on my own website? Yes -- and by most copyright laws, _of course_. Bob builds his game using Software X. Re
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by brightlancer 3y ago
The conflation of "MacOS" with "Apple computer" is a problem that should be addressed. Tails works on Intel arch. It does not work on ARM arch. This has nothing to do with an Apple branded computer.
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by brightlancer 3y ago
> I know it sounds weird, but unless you reviewed the source code AND built the binary from it, no open source software is to be trusted. Why specify "open source software"? Is it not true of ALL software? "Unless you revi

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