Hacker News: atwood22

New comment by atwood22 in "Two Mexican drug cartels came to dominate America’s fentanyl supply"

atwood22 — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 18:56:00 +0000

The cartels are also extorting avocado farmers for a cut of their profits. It turns out that, if you have a lot of bad people in power, they find ways to do bad things for personal enrichment.

New comment by atwood22 in "Germany’s €9 train tickets scheme ‘saved 1.8m tons of CO2 emissions’"

atwood22 — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 21:36:15 +0000

> - public transportation being free also means that it will be used even in cases where it is both economically and ecologically a suboptimal solution. This is a problem because more usage means higher costs. E.g. someone now might take a bus instead of cycling.

That’s really reaching. Presumably people would do the thing that bear fits their circumstances after weighing the costs and benefits.

New comment by atwood22 in "What does it take to be a good programmer?"

atwood22 — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 20:20:34 +0000

Being a good programmer can also be situation dependent. The ideal author for code that powers a nuclear reactor may be different from the ideal programmer making a consumer product.

New comment by atwood22 in "Slack’s free plan change is causing an exodus"

atwood22 — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 00:19:04 +0000

Reddit is pretty much dead IMO. There seems to be a few substantial posts, if that, per day. Discord is way more active.

New comment by atwood22 in "German digital signage ban prompts confusion"

atwood22 — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 12:55:19 +0000

> Think of advertising as a way of companies to say "Hey! here's something we're proud of -- please have a look.

Do you like being approach on the street by solicitors? Personally, I hate it. When I’m walking, I appreciate undisturbed personal space. I feel the same way about advertising. I don’t care that the company is proud. I want my personal space undisturbed. You can show me something if I ask, but to assume I care to see anything you have to offer is rude.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 20:20:15 +0000

Are you advocating for returning to the way people lived millennia ago? You’re free to do that. I’m going to keep enjoying penicillin.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:50:48 +0000

The kids may not like the car, but I’m sure they like the lifestyle it affords them.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 18:13:59 +0000

I find it extremely condescending to say you understand and empathize with something you have no direct experience with. Like put your money with your mouth is. Instead of telling people to live a certain way, live that way yourself and get back to me. Imagine we were talking about something else, say race, instead of of child rearing. Would you really consider the opinion of a white person saying “I understand the experience of black people in America because I have a lot of black friends” valid? Sounds pretty crazy to me.

New comment by atwood22 in "Orcas are breaking rudders off boats in Europe"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 16:47:36 +0000

Well, there haven't been many deaths that we know of. However, the behavior of the orcas seems to be a learned behavior. Obviously they're doing this for a reason. Who knows, maybe this pod of whales has developed a taste?

There are a few ways I could see this happening. Perhaps they found a lone sailor, or maybe a small boat of migrants coming from Morocco made an easy target.

New comment by atwood22 in "Ask HN: CEO wants us to fill out NOT ANONYMOUS survey that only he can read"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 16:24:43 +0000

Just so you know, surveys are rarely truly anonymous at companies. Feedback may be anonymized, so, for instance, a manager can receive more honest feedback from their direct reports. But if you include a racist tirade in your feedback, it's very likely HR will be able to track you down.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 16:15:45 +0000

Sorry, you don't have kids so you just don't get it. I didn't get it either before I had a kid. All of the reasons you listed, bad public transport, dangerous biking, safety, etc. have nothing to do with why I want to buy an SUV. There are just so many items involved with raising a child. Yes, you might be able to take public transit so your kid can see the doctor, as long as you time it to be at an off-peak time, but there are so many other cases where you need a large car. A very basic example: You have a young child in NYC and you want to spend the weekend with your parents who live in Westchester. Without a kid, getting on Metro North with a small duffel bag of clothes would be trivial. With a kid, you need to bring a crib, toys, stroller, diapers, multiple changes of clothes, and maybe even a high table with you. Good luck getting all of that on the train, especially with a screaming kid!

The failure in your reasoning is that you see parents on the train, so you think that's their only mode of transportation. Yes, you can take the kid on the train for certain errands. Other times, however, having a car is 100x more convenient. And that is true everywhere.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:56:02 +0000

And yet, the most expensive places to live in dense areas are single family homes. Like how much does a brownstone in Greenwich Village cost? 15 million? Clearly in any environment, a single family home is the most desirable option. People may be willing the settle for a different option in exchange for some other benefits like having a lot to do, but given the choice they’ll still pick a single family home.

New comment by atwood22 in "Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:52:55 +0000

> Why are cars and phones giant these days? Is it because nobody wants smaller ones, or because perverse market incentives have distorted offerings in a chase for product growth?

Do you have kids? If you did, you’d know that many people want bigger cars. I drive one of the smallest cars you can buy in the U.S. Now that I have a kid, I’m going to buy a big SUV. Kids require a lot of stuff. Taking them on public transport is a huge pain. Even if you don’t have kids, I’m sure you’ve been annoyed by a stroller on the subway.

New comment by atwood22 in "Can Types Replace Validation?"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:20:23 +0000

That’s an interesting idea. You could define a custom type that has the type of [number, number] and combine it with Omit to remove methods that allow extending the array.

New comment by atwood22 in "Can Types Replace Validation?"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 04:44:12 +0000

Have you seen the library runtypes for TS? It lets you specify types using a library rather than pure TS type syntax. The library code looks very similar to the normal TS type syntax, but when you use the type you get input validation for free. And of course the type TS thinks the type is matches what you’d expect based on your type definition.

Also, TS let’s you specify things like ”this type is an array of 4 numbers”. Obviously TS isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good!

New comment by atwood22 in "Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 03:59:30 +0000

To me, it’d be pretty weird to enter a lifelong agreement with someone to share everything, but then as soon as you hit the lotto you start to squirrel things away on the side.

New comment by atwood22 in "Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?"

atwood22 — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 03:56:45 +0000

Do you have a prenup? If not, I think it’s important to understand that half of what she earns is yours and half of what you earn is hers. If you don’t have a prenup, you should really be pooling your money. If not, you’re asking for trouble later. Like if you get divorced and she conveniently forgets about the buyout money during the settlement. Also, she could be spending it or investing it in things you might not be comfortable with.

If you have a prenup, then just keep doing what you’re doing.

New comment by atwood22 in "Why do arrays start at 0?"

atwood22 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 20:05:56 +0000

From your own link on countable sets:

> Equivalently, a set S is countable if there exists an injective function f : S → N from S to N; it simply means that every element in S corresponds to a different element in N.

Defining N is usually done via a successor set, on which case 0 makes no sense to include.

New comment by atwood22 in "Why do arrays start at 0?"

atwood22 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:29:48 +0000

No, the mathematical definition of counting (i.e. whether or not a set is countable) involves mapping to the natural numbers, which doesn’t include 0.

New comment by atwood22 in "Why do arrays start at 0?"

atwood22 — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 18:28:12 +0000

Do you know the definition of countable? A set S is countable if there is a one-to-one mapping from S to N where N is the natural numbers. Do you know that 0 is not a member of the natural numbers? We literally start counting at 1 by definition of countable.