Hacker News: JacobJans

New comment by JacobJans in "Lessons from Seoul's controversial privatized subway line"

JacobJans — Sun, 23 Jan 2022 14:01:59 +0000

The nature of some things require a monopoly or quasi-monopoly. In those cases, there is an argument for public ownership.

New comment by JacobJans in "Germany locks down unvaccinated people, as leaders plan to make shots compulsory"

JacobJans — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 23:00:43 +0000

In Canada, we had a longer gap between doses, which may be a factor in extending efficacy. There is also a robust booster strategy, though it does not get much attention here. Not sure how it compares, though.

New comment by JacobJans in "The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)"

JacobJans — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 16:31:02 +0000

That is actually the definition of bad, inneffective advertising. Good advertising comes from a deep understanding of what people want to do, and then presents them with an opportunity to do just that. This is literally why Google is so valuable. Their ad business is largely based on understanding “intent.” As any decent advertiser knows, you can’t create intent, but you can harness it.

New comment by JacobJans in "The Green Premium – The cost of going carbon free by category"

JacobJans — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 18:09:25 +0000

This adds so much clarity, in terms of where the most effective actions on climate change can happen right away, and where we still need more research.

The Green Premium – The cost of going carbon free by category

JacobJans — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 18:08:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/our-challenge/the-green-premium-v1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28503382

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by JacobJans in "There is no ‘getting back to normal’ with climate breakdown – Mark Blyth"

JacobJans — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 01:24:05 +0000

The only hope is massive political pressure on our leaders. If enough people force our leaders to force change on all of us, then we stand a half a chance. I wish this was a hopeful situation. It is not. If this were a war, we would be badly losing. We are effectively sending our children into the deadly hands of our enemies.

New comment by JacobJans in "AWS EC2/RDS Outage in us-east-1"

JacobJans — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 17:03:29 +0000

Leaseweb Virginia is having a major outage as well. Maybe it is related?

https://www.leasewebstatus.com/incidents/updated-connectivit...

New comment by JacobJans in "Middle School Misfortunes Then and Now, One Teacher’s Take"

JacobJans — Sat, 02 Mar 2019 01:31:44 +0000

Think about this:

How many times in the past 24 hours did you unconsciously check your email, browse Facebook, visit a website, or check some other app?

Do you ever find yourself looking at your phone, and not remember consciously deciding to look at it?

If you're like 90% of smart phone users, this happens to you all the time.

Sure, you can be like the 10% that doesn't fall victim to the "slot machine" psychology of the modern internet. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the other 90% aren't going to impact your life.

I feel the quality of conversations has vastly decreased, on average, because of the intense level of smart-phone addiction that is so common now. Even if nobody is looking at their phone. ("Attention residue" is a real thing.)

New comment by JacobJans in "Are robots better baristas? Berkeley’s Bbox café thinks so"

JacobJans — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 18:09:40 +0000

I don't get it. There have been fully-automatic, vending machine style espresso machines around for a long time. This seems to use technology suited for a different purpose; it's certainly a big robot, but it doesn't exactly seem good at making coffee.

New comment by JacobJans in "The U.S. Is Getting Closer to a Recession, Data Show"

JacobJans — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 15:51:42 +0000

I don't think that's the right logic.

Say there are ten "events" that have had recessions follow them (or not). Each of these events happened 10 times.

For the first type of a event, a recession happened just once afterwards.

For the second type of event, a recession happened twice.

For the third type of event, a recession happened three times

The third, a recession happened three times.

The fourth, a recession happened four out of ten times.

The fifth, a recession happened five times.

Etc...

This has very little to do with flipping a coin, and much more to do with deciding the right time to pay attention.

Half a chance of getting hit by a car is not the same as "flipping a coin."

Generally, throughout the past hundred years or so, there has been much less than a 50% chance to enter a recession. I don't know the numbers, but for any given year, it could be 10%. If there is now a 50% chance, isn't that a 5 fold increase in risk?

New comment by JacobJans in "Proposed Jail Time for Tech Companies Who Steal Data"

JacobJans — Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:38:31 +0000

The great irony here is that people have no issue stealing data -- copyright theft is considered "normal" by many people.

However, if it's your data, then maybe jail time should be on the table?

New comment by JacobJans in "Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline"

JacobJans — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 19:59:12 +0000

That is not necessarily true, as industrial food companies increasingly push for larger yield per acre, they do not account for the objective quality of the product. They're looking to maximize their profit; and quality is just one metric among many others that have an impact on this.

New comment by JacobJans in "Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline"

JacobJans — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 19:55:51 +0000

Many local news sites now have online subscriptions available. Combined with an ad blocker, it seems as though you can generally get a pleasant local news experience, while still supporting the publisher.

New comment by JacobJans in "Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline"

JacobJans — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 19:52:32 +0000

This is a very immature view of advertising, that, unfortunately many advertisers share -- and it leads to scummy ads, with no eye on the long term relationship with the person viewing the ad.

However, many ads are not deceptive in any way, and instead simply offer something of value to people who may be interested, without any deceit, psychological trick, or ulterior motive.

Just because there are bad ads does not mean that all advertising is bad.

New comment by JacobJans in "The rise of alternative milks"

JacobJans — Sun, 03 Feb 2019 01:39:27 +0000

Store bought almond milk also has additives that may not be good for you. Emulsifiers, thickeners, starches, preservatives, etc. For people with sensitive digestion, it may be safer to make it at home.

New comment by JacobJans in "U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers"

JacobJans — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 01:42:56 +0000

Instead of downvoting, maybe answer my question.

New comment by JacobJans in "U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers"

JacobJans — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 01:41:46 +0000

Why is copyright infringement tolerated on HN?

New comment by JacobJans in "How chicken became the rich world’s most popular meat"

JacobJans — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 19:26:37 +0000

The problem is that people want to dictate publisher's business models.

> they’ll put out a single decent article a month, and you’re currently required to subscribe to everything to read it.

> But you can’t make an informed payment.

It sounds like you are informed about this publisher, but simply don't think it's worth it to subscribe to them. That's fair, but it's not a valid reason to infringe on intellectual property rights.

I fail to see how allowing readers five or so free articles a month fails to give you a proper way to evaluate whether a subscription is worth it.

New comment by JacobJans in "Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids"

JacobJans — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 12:44:55 +0000

Actually, you can now buy a Presto Card from machines. There are no more change collectors! And there are absolutely no more tokens. They just transitioned.

New comment by JacobJans in "Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids"

JacobJans — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 02:33:34 +0000

> Why they can't just get machines for that?

That's actually what they do in Toronto now. It's all "Presto Card" automated.