sonnyblarney

11 ms·

31.
by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Actually, the US used to have any number of currencies in the 19th centuries and it was a mess. Having a centralized currency is a reasonable thing, though the Fed is a private entity, it operates ultimately like other central banks. The ba
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Yes, I have to agree with cromwellian here. I think the it's ok to disagree, that's the whole point of discussion. That doesn't deserve a downvote on HN.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
>>> ""Trump situation", and by situation, one would assume, the massive abuse of social platforms to spread false and misleading data about Clinton, " I don't know how one would assume the term "Trump
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Those are all legitimate points. I don't think anyone is concerned about Google trying to get past fake news (or rather, surely there are few voices there) The issues are more disconcerting, like senior executives trying to make sure t
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
"but almost any Facebook software engineer has permission to still take super user actions" If this is true, I find it shocking in light of all of the recent allegations especially.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
I'd disagree. The narrative in 60 minutes often decontextualizes information to the point of misrepresentation. It's a matter of thresholds.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Every investigative journo program selectively edits their interviews. If you see some 'behind the scenes' from 60 minutes, CBC, BBC ... it's all edited to elicit the 'prime moments' and often in the favour of the n
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
I think that goes a little too far. I don't trust them very much as an entity, I think they are kind of seedy and 'slant' their findings, no doubt. But there is materiality in their revelations. It's a 'noisy channe
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
"they already spectacularly failed to prevent a Trump election." They were not trying to prevent it. Google was just a search engine, trying to do their best. Since Trump, their view on information has changed from 'neutral&#
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
I think it's relatively important. CEO's tend err on the side of hubris, and it'd seem they all have strong political views. I think power maybe does that. So in a more informal 'TGIF' setting, I'm not surprise
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
This is a very good anecdote, and helps us understand that 'shit' is in the eye of the beholder. If it solves a real problem, and allows companies to do 'xyz' , maybe it doesn't matter if there are bugs and glitches
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Long range hypersonic/cruise missiles with micronucleaer warheads. They have them demoing right now, they'll eventually work out the bugs. That said, it's all armchair because a) We don't know what they really have b) we
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
This has likely a lot to do with a wave of 'new' experiences in tech that possibly required a whimsical and specific curiosity, and of course a degree of 'nativism'. When someone said something about 'digital native
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Documentation might be the most overlooked aspect of technology. Every time a user has to ask a simple question and they have access to the docs, I see it as a 'product fail'.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
As a resident, yes this is pretty much it. For an American firm especially, it's just a odd little place with everything in a different language, it's just not worth the hassle for lawyers and risk, so they just skip it.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
"U.S. abuses and provocations, (Iran?)," - this is a two sided coin.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Something that differentiates Slack from other apps, is that there should never be any need to manage data across corporate clusters. Instead of a massive, complicated back-end, imagine if each Slack 'installation' (i.e. customer)
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
The newer cinemas are too much like a grotesque plastic theme park. Buzzling lights, games, fast food. They are like 'Chucky Cheeze'. No thanks. How about nice, quaint theatre? Maybe a coffee shop out front. Popcorn, soda, candy,
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
What 'Virginia wants' is almost irrelevant. "Virginia tried very hard to make sure that HQ2 is not just more government contracting jobs" Virginia can think whatever they want, but Amazon will do what it wants to do. The
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
The #1 criteria is DC. The government is 25% of the economy, and it's just starting in the cloud. The amount of money the US Gov. is going to spend on AWS will be jaw dropping. It will trickle down into states, cities, and other govern
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
There's nothing here to indicate which parts were relevant or mattered to Amazon's decision. Big Gov is just starting in the cloud, and Amazon wants the biggest piece of that gadzillion dollars. I can see a private wing of AWS run
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
They use wallets, paper money just like the rest of us. Though there's a recent phenom of 'cashless', cash is still normative, moreover, this is a very recent thing. A 'wallet' in China is the the same thing as a &#
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
That's a great point. A grocery list and a business card is hardly 'a wallet'. Even with $13 ... that's still 'a wallet with some lose change'. Without credit cards, id, or some some real money, i.e. 'mean
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
When dealing in such embedded systems, there's often not a whole lot of help online for arcane issues. Device documentation etc. usually makes default assumptions about C/C++. Drivers, other tools - same. This is usually a big con
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
It would be nice if some details could be given about the project so we could put 'performance' etc. into context. There are not that many applications that really need the extra performance boost from the JVM to C++, usually, tha
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
I didn't miss your point, I disagree with it. I believe people in China understand very well what paper money is and means, in roughly/ballpark the same terms as Americans. I could be wrong.
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
The Chinese invented paper money :) so it's not as though the concept is foreign to any of them. While there might be some differences between cultures in that regard, I think it's kind of a stretch to try to explain away the not
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
I don't know why people are so cynical, the results are generally what I would have imagined. Most interesting - the $13/$100 difference. Notice that in the US and UK, the 'return rate' goes way up when there's $100
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Yes, I agree with all of that. But that kind of change is very rare. China has done more economic growth in 30 years than any nation in history. I don't see India or Vietnam moving that quickly in any direction. Vietnam does not have t
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by sonnyblarney 7y ago
Corruption, corporate messaging lies, political lies etc.. Corruption in UK is about the same as Germany. UK is super deferential and not candid, i.e. 'it's not polite to point out ugly things', but this might be perceived as

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