karllager

7 ms·

1.
by karllager 9y ago
> replacement parts for models several years old are still plentiful. Data point: Just replaced a battery in a six years old Samsung smartphone in 20 seconds. It did not even cost me $10. Incredible value compared to the hassle to do thi
2.
by karllager 9y ago
A friend of mine enjoyed her first years in school in the Pannonian basin; I am not sure, whether they did something special - but it was enough to get her into a selective German high-school specialised in maths and sciences later in her l
3.
by karllager 9y ago
Firefox 56 had some kind of performance regression[1], but FF Quantum is a joy to use. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74irm5/is_ff_super...
4.
by karllager 9y ago
Met a guy in his twenties recently. He wanted to share something with me on FB. Told him I had no account. He replied politely: Oh, yes. I believe the many people in tech do not have one. He was a smart guy.
5.
by karllager 9y ago
I wholeheartedly concur. Most people see the problem of power in that they don't have it. I believe, fewer people understand, that power itself is the problem, and not its particular location in a point in time. > We could have had
6.
by karllager 9y ago
> most powerful distributor of news and information on Earth Sandberg (somewhere else recently): "We are explicitly not a news company, we are a tech company."
7.
by karllager 9y ago
Would give this study a fresh angle, wouldn't it?
8.
by karllager 9y ago
The trouble with this study - if I should guess - is selection bias: How many of those high IQ individuals are actually member of Mensa? Given some test many years ago, I might have been qualified to become a member of this club - but never
9.
by karllager 9y ago
> However, Facebook really is, at this point, a clear monopoly. But here's a point: The zero-cost marginal cost characteristics of many software businesses makes this sector prone to be monopolistic. Acquire: data, users, or intelle
10.
by karllager 9y ago
> 1 billion people shouldn't have their lives dictated by a proprietary, opaque Skinner's box with no regard for privacy or rights. Of course they should not. Or should they? We live in a free society and you are voluntarily pa
11.
by karllager 9y ago
Yes, true. But I am not a salesman to sell you a solution. All I ask for is to be more conscious about these, sometimes subtle, sometimes less so - things. If it helps you, here's a simple framework of mine to develop some kind of dire
12.
by karllager 9y ago
I'm sorry for being short on content, but I wish, more people would really go deeper into theory and open their eyes on the things around them and realize, that capitalism is an extremely aggressive beast that has sucked up everything,
13.
by karllager 9y ago
Fun fact: Capitalism depends on crises - they are not the exception, they are the rule. People forget that and treat it as something that happens, like a natural catastrophe. This is unfortunate, because this is a purely man-made thing, but
14.
by karllager 9y ago
> So, for example, a family would go to their local technology artisan to put together a smart home system tailored specifically to their needs. I am a software developer and consultant and you do not figure how insanely expensive I am -
15.
by karllager 9y ago
I am the proud owner of a Laptop, that I can enjoy for years to come, since I can upgrade and replace disks, RAM and battery (hint: it's the last Macbook Pro that allowed this). Recently my smartphone battery died and I could order a n
16.
by karllager 9y ago
Gini coefficient is the among the highest in Europe, about 0.76. About ten years ago, a neoliberal shift loosened labor laws and saved the overall economy by letting less skilled workers not get unemployed, just take a pay cut (what France
17.
by karllager 9y ago
> Germany is becoming a low income country for a lot of jobs and the unions are doing nothing against it. Yes, this is true. About 39% of the currently employed have so called atypical jobs [1] - some of which are actually subsidized b
18.
by karllager 9y ago
> 23andME HAS handed your most personal data over to the authorities. Now just wait for some strange shift in power. I hope I do not wake up in ten years, leave my house and am welcomed by the authorities (maybe the Evocops), because my
19.
by karllager 9y ago
> The amount of mindless, repetitive boilerplate one has to write because the language tries to be "simple" at the expense of abstraction, genericity and expressiveness looks intolerable to me. After wasting half a day staring
20.
by karllager 9y ago
I'm sure I read this long ago but wasn't thinking about it. But it seems very relevant, unfortunately.
21.
by karllager 9y ago
Thanks for this story. I believe a lot of people would love to work on some greater good. I, for one, would love to work for a aggressive non-profit, if there is such a thing. Software and automation is the way to the future - why let just
22.
by karllager 9y ago
I believe the tech sector is extremely prone to this: If you cannot climb out of a technical role, over time, you realize just how clueless most people are, especially those who imagine themselves of being "in control". Not just a
23.
by karllager 9y ago
> so my guess would be 2025 at the earliest. And since we are in guessing mode, here is another one: In a few years we will have multiple sci-hubs and pirate edu sites so by the time the public arrives at completely free research, it won
24.
by karllager 9y ago
The research system is kind of ill[1] and this illness (ratings, prestige, grants, publications, metrics) is very much in line with the interest of publishers. So both the researcher and the business man have a shared interest - and this is
25.
by karllager 9y ago
Best of luck. Elsevier and other giants are putting significant resources in mimicking free and open structures in their portfolio to hide the infamy of their business model (selling a few bytes of publicly funded research over and over aga
26.
by karllager 9y ago
One thing that made me smile on https://stackblitz.com/edit/ball-demo : The dependency placeholder. Funny for those who remember, useful for those who don't.
27.
by karllager 9y ago
I could have said "two people", it would have not changed the situation not much, I guess.
28.
by karllager 9y ago
> The universe itself is a giant ocean of distraction. Well said. What makes me a bit sad is that generations of scientists and engineers poured their sweat into building chips, network and a giant incredible infrastructure and what we c
29.
by karllager 9y ago
Congrats on the launch. > We’d love to hear your thoughts on our product I find it useless and just another dash in the ocean of distraction.
30.
by karllager 9y ago
This experience makes me sick. There are very different places, where people are generally polite and professional and even fun. And where a sexist comment would not go unnoticed. Hope your next job will be like that. I once attended a hack

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