Hacker News: MockObject

New comment by MockObject in "An intuitive guide to Maxwell's equations (2020)"

MockObject — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 13:23:13 +0000

New comment by MockObject in "If gravity isn't a force, then why does it "need" a boson?"

MockObject — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:47:51 +0000

> GR says that the Newtonian law of gravity is an approximation that makes reasonably accurate predictions when the spacetime curvature is small and all relative motions are slow compared to the speed of light.

These are merely the aforementioned caveats.

> It does not say that the Newtonian interpretation of that equation is correct.

If the interpretation were wrong, and that's not a force, then the amount of force in that equation would be 0.

With no force, Gm₁m₂/r² = 0.

However, that's not the modification that GR applies to this, though.

New comment by MockObject in "If gravity isn't a force, then why does it "need" a boson?"

MockObject — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 16:20:16 +0000

GR agrees (recognizing the obvious caveats) with the classical law of F = Gm₁m₂/r², where F stands for "force". This force is caused by spacetime curvature.

New comment by MockObject in "Apple Vision Pro review"

MockObject — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 16:41:46 +0000

People used to look like dorks walking down the street staring at a smartphone, or pulling an entire computer out of a bag at a coffee shop.

We'll adjust.

New comment by MockObject in "What was behind Microsoft's layoffs of over 20k people in the last year?"

MockObject — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:30:52 +0000

That's right. Someone's happily paying those $5000 rents in New York, and it's not largely engineers doing so.

New comment by MockObject in "What was behind Microsoft's layoffs of over 20k people in the last year?"

MockObject — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 20:24:26 +0000

> "Conservatives" feel that their entire ideology is being unfairly attacked by global Jewish power brokers

The Wall Street Journal, Mark Levin, and Mitch McConnell fret over these Jewish power brokers, do they?

Or did you mean the ultra-MAGA wing, where DeSantis flies to Israel to cheerfully sign a bill against anti-Semitic hate speech? Or Donald Trump himself, the most popular American president among Israelis?

New comment by MockObject in "YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform"

MockObject — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 20:47:10 +0000

Because there's no such association.

Nobody associates Coke with the reek of bum piss because they encountered a messy billboard. This is simply an unreal line of argument.

It certainly would be interesting if we lived in a world where advertisers refused to run ads in stadiums of losing teams, ran their ads only on sunny days, and only on positive, uplifting tv episodes while entirely avoiding shows about serial killers. We can fantasize, but the actual world has never worked this way.

New comment by MockObject in "YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform"

MockObject — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 14:45:36 +0000

This "association" business smells like a logical fallacy to me. Since when has advertisement even implied endorsement of nearby content?

If I see a billboard on a bus station, what is the advertiser endorsing here?

What about a magazine ad? Reasonable people assume the advertiser supports every view expressed therein?

If I happened to see an ad on a website with user generated content, would I really think the advertiser endorsed each post?

Sorry, this argument is fallacious. Reasonable people do not make these conclusions.

New comment by MockObject in "YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform"

MockObject — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 21:11:01 +0000

This seems like a generalization with as many counterexamples as examples. Also, users don't actually want censorship, they want a tailored experience that filters out whatever content they don't like.

New comment by MockObject in "How many medical studies are faked or flawed?"

MockObject — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 21:01:19 +0000

Maybe experiments can take thousands of hours.

New comment by MockObject in "How many medical studies are faked or flawed?"

MockObject — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 20:57:59 +0000

When I first grasped how many fake papers are floating around, I gnashed my teeth and called for heinous penalties upon the fraudsters.

After a moment, I thought better, and decided that we should actually offer incentive for fraudulent papers! Liars will always have incentive to lie. When their lies are accepted by those who ought to be more skeptical, it's an indictment of the system, which should be more robust in detecting fraud.

New comment by MockObject in "America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it"

MockObject — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 20:11:54 +0000

The CPC under Deng, unlike the CPSU, paid attention to the materialism part of Marxism, recognized that the business of America is business, and realized that the Western ruling classes stood to earn trillions from cooperation. In the west, still fresh from remembering WW2, bankers felt that trade linkages could prevent WW3. In hindsight, it was an obvious and brilliant strategy.

New comment by MockObject in "Meduza co-founder's phone infected with Pegasus"

MockObject — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 14:47:55 +0000

Yes, the comment had been edited, and makes much more sense now.

New comment by MockObject in "The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)"

MockObject — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 19:54:33 +0000

What did you think "anecdote" means? Why wouldn't your individual report of your meter measurements count? You haven't shown us the data, shown that you've controlled for confounding factors, or anything.

You posted an anecdote.

New comment by MockObject in "The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022)"

MockObject — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 19:48:16 +0000

Hard drugs have been illegal in America for generations, and yet every city has had a junkie community all this time. How much more failure must we entertain?

New comment by MockObject in "Google lays off hundreds on recruiting team"

MockObject — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 19:45:08 +0000

It's absolutely disingenuous. The public doesn't care if Google employees are emotionally suited for their management roles or not!

New comment by MockObject in "Meduza co-founder's phone infected with Pegasus"

MockObject — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 15:53:52 +0000

>> I try to correct for their biases by reading Kremlin propaganda (and US, and Chinese, and some others) and comparing what they are saying.

> Yes, you are living in a tiny bubble.

How is that a tiny bubble?

New comment by MockObject in "iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus"

MockObject — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 13:55:42 +0000

Phones are longer than 6.3cm, so put the other camera on the other end, with the added benefit of encouraging landscape-oriented images as well.

New comment by MockObject in "The Power of Prolog"

MockObject — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:42:45 +0000

> Prolog is often used in things that are kept very secret.

As in national security secrecy?

New comment by MockObject in "Chicago’s parking meter disaster"

MockObject — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 14:09:39 +0000

It's shocking to consider that any fee system is ever equitable, because people vary drastically in their wealth, and I hope that's not an assertion that requires a citation.

An equitable system would involve each citizen receiving an equal number of parking tokens annually.