Hacker News: brighton36

New comment by brighton36 in "Opt Out of Cynicism"

brighton36 — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:44:58 +0000

One of the great frustrations in these debates, is the tendency to criticize a messenger who sees a cynical system. Instead of blaming the system for being cynical. Sometimes the most Optimistic people are shut out of debates, because they won't assume the system is optimized for a noncynical purpose. My suspicion is that this ostracization is what grows the cynicism out of control.

New comment by brighton36 in "Twitter’s heads of engineering and design will leave in a company shake-up"

brighton36 — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 22:05:41 +0000

I truly don't see what happened in his administration that was unusually awful. (and I didn't vote for him) Given the constant hyperbole on matter, and now, in the aftermath, I think the antics of his detractors just look ... hysterical. Quite frankly, I think it's these antics that would be likely to see him re-elected. Food for thought.

New comment by brighton36 in "Raspberry Pi Trading plans £370m+ stock market IPO"

brighton36 — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 16:28:09 +0000

Imo, it's a flaw in our model. If 'fighting them' failed, then, we should join them. Here, that would mean participation in the ipo, in the style of gamestop. Push the p/e ratio to something completely absurd. Maybe it'll fail as a result. (Thus begetting a libre office, response to an open office initiative.)

New comment by brighton36 in "Is Technological Progress Slowing? The Case of American Agriculture"

brighton36 — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 21:19:30 +0000

Thank-you. Candidly, I think 'no car' is what we should be promoting. I got rid of mine earlier in the year. I may find out this plan is wishful thinking. We'll see.

New comment by brighton36 in "Is Technological Progress Slowing? The Case of American Agriculture"

brighton36 — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 18:49:49 +0000

I'm very skeptical that these technologies will be more efficient than incumbent solutions. These products seem to be designed to comport with well intended political goals, rather than consumer preferences.

It may be that these products are taxes-by-another-name, as consumers either shell out more money for inferior solutions (ebikes, I guess), or, turn to the secondary market instead (for gas leafblowers, say).

After seeing what we did with recycling, I would not be so naive going forward, on the claims of environmentalists. (I still have yet to see the research on the electric car co2 implications of producing batteries and offloading co2 output to power plants, when compared to the incumbent solution)

New comment by brighton36 in "Moving to Texas"

brighton36 — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 21:03:53 +0000

Hurricane proof windows are fantastic. I install them in all my homes.

New comment by brighton36 in "Apple stopped sales in Turkey after the lira crashed 15% in a day"

brighton36 — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 17:03:44 +0000

That's the same thing as pricing in dollars. If you haven't noticed, Bitcoin is as valuable as the usd/btc pair. It's why every bitcoiner knows what the price of Bitcoin is every day.

New comment by brighton36 in "Gay men earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at the highest rate in the US"

brighton36 — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 15:52:27 +0000

There was once a time in America, when this was a marginalized group.

New comment by brighton36 in "Ruby removed “Participants will be tolerant of opposing views” from its CoC"

brighton36 — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:37:01 +0000

Throughout history, men have bonded by expressing humor, angst, and emotions regarding sex. It may be an outrage by the moral fashion of today. But, you would have a hard time making the case that this behavior is unusual by incumbent standards of collaboration.

New comment by brighton36 in "QuickBooks Desktop moves to subscription model"

brighton36 — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 20:19:05 +0000

I switched away from Quickbooks, years ago, to plain text accounting. Couldn't be happier. I can do everything better using hledger/ledger, git, vim and make. I don't know what value this software has at this point for a community such as we have here on hn.

New comment by brighton36 in "Personal finance experts don’t get wealthy by following their own advice"

brighton36 — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 15:55:56 +0000

Average People require average advice. Above average people can figure it out on their own. This piece is fine and good, and I appreciate that it was written. I agree with its thesis.

New comment by brighton36 in "2020 Census Statistics Highlight Local Population Changes"

brighton36 — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:34:24 +0000

I always write-in other. Both on gender and race. Mostly because I resent the politics.

New comment by brighton36 in "Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities"

brighton36 — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 22:44:53 +0000

I think the problems of governance are non-trivial in tenant-owned apartments. Not that they can't work, obviously. But, I think the ability to 'vote with your feet', is a bit more powerful than the ability to reconcile disagreements between owners.

New comment by brighton36 in "Strengthening our workplace with neurodiverse talent"

brighton36 — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 20:33:13 +0000

Over-representation assumes that there's an objective taxonomy by which representation can be factored. I find it very amusing that no one thinks of this, and/or can't bring this 'obvious' fact to light. "Imagined Communities" is a good book on some of this, if anyone cares to read more. I suspect that there's a lot of civil religion at work, that causes these taxonomies to not immediately appear assumptive. I would guess that we'll lose these components of the civil religion, over time, as a consequence to these initiatives.

New comment by brighton36 in "Libertarian Party of Colorado First to Officially Support Ending IP"

brighton36 — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 20:37:07 +0000

This is a wonderful idea. The people who own the signs, direct the traffic. It's why small business is drying up.

Also, 'intellectual property' is mostly just postmodern nonsense

New comment by brighton36 in "Raiders player Carl Nassib comes out as gay, first active player in NFL history"

brighton36 — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 22:37:07 +0000

Do we have to believe in gay? What do we call the people who date redheads? (And why not celebrate that instead)

New comment by brighton36 in "Seeding by Ceding"

brighton36 — Sun, 20 Jun 2021 13:42:37 +0000

Probably people resent how equal the wealthy are, in terms of dictating public policy. There's a degree of wealth, at which point the government is merely a performance.

New comment by brighton36 in "Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021"

brighton36 — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 15:44:18 +0000

I've never understood school either. Now that I'm 40 years old, I understand it less. I think there was a generation of adults who were 'in on the rhetoric' at one point. Telling people that these are places of education, instead of a kind of reformation facility, akin to jail.

New comment by brighton36 in "Global banking regulators call for toughest rules for cryptocurrencies"

brighton36 — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 17:12:49 +0000

"anything but this" is a compelling direction, when people don't subscribe to a least-worst model of governance. 'Anything but this' is an utopian path. There's really no justification or even rationalization, for compromise, online. 'Anything but this' is a form of 'cures whatever ails you'.

New comment by brighton36 in "'I lost millions through cryptocurrency addiction'"

brighton36 — Sun, 30 May 2021 18:38:28 +0000

Day traders are gambling on surface noise. It's not much different than roulette. Long term investors have some notion of longitudinal value accrual and stability.