Hacker News: coldelectrons

New comment by coldelectrons in "Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? (1956)"

coldelectrons — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 21:43:33 +0000

Their ethereal unobtainability?

New comment by coldelectrons in "Laser for control of mosquitos, weeds and pests"

coldelectrons — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 17:46:06 +0000

Since humans only care about cute animals, you should probably add hummingbirds to your list.

New comment by coldelectrons in "GR-1 Anvil – world’s first handheld Gauss Rifle"

coldelectrons — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 06:19:34 +0000

ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN

New comment by coldelectrons in "It's time to treat social media like the climate crisis, researchers argue"

coldelectrons — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 03:27:28 +0000

Pretend it doesn't exist and double and triple down on everthing that led to the problem?

New comment by coldelectrons in "Why Russians do not smile (2002)"

coldelectrons — Sat, 29 May 2021 17:22:39 +0000

Some of us Americans can't even adjust to the culture of other ever-so-slightly different Americans.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Humans Could Live up to 150 Years, New Research Suggests"

coldelectrons — Sat, 29 May 2021 16:41:26 +0000

Just great; adding another 50 years I have to wait for certain (corrupt, well-funded) people to stop obstructing improvement.

New comment by coldelectrons in "How to get rich without being lucky (2019)"

coldelectrons — Sat, 22 May 2021 22:40:39 +0000

Nit^3: Quit adversarially picking nits and do your part with societal knolling.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Amazon loses effort to install camera to watch counting of ballots in union vote"

coldelectrons — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 04:40:04 +0000

While every improvement is a change, not every change is an improvement.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy"

coldelectrons — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 06:04:27 +0000

It doesn't balance out; nefarious usage is going to cause many, many tiny harms that are harder to detect, and many larger harms that will be excused, up to and including denying that beneficial use of indentifying tumors, because algorithms are going to be presented as beyond reproach.

Beyond detecting union affinity, maybe someone will also makes its ML twin that predicts how much they can underpay someone.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Facial recognition can predict person’s political orientation with 72% accuracy"

coldelectrons — Sat, 06 Mar 2021 05:50:34 +0000

I'm sure that's exactly what the tech giants will do in their feudal-governed cities they are going to carve out of Nevada.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Amazon-Owned Twitch Bans Amazon’s Union-Busting Ads"

coldelectrons — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 09:05:40 +0000

It's not just the bottom line; too much of Amazon's practices rely on treating humans as more expendible than styrofoam packing peanuts. It's a culture of control and expediency, and it's a feedback loop because the only way to rise in that culture is to be for more control and more expediency.

Workers with no legal protections or fallbacks, can be coerced to do things that are self-destructive out of fear, or they can be screwed out of benifits or protections through the same banality of evil as EULA agreements.

Management culture has some serious fucking problems. When I worked a factory job, the latest managerial fad was 'make workers mad enough to quit'. Because if they quit, they lost their vested retirement benefits. And those that came back, did so on reduced pay. Deplorable? Yes, but _perfectly legal_, or if not legal, the power imbalance was such that the company could get away with it scott free.

Crap like this goes on all the time, see an example FAQ lawyers put up: https://www.kentonslawoffice.com/workers-compensation-lawyer... Lawyers working in worker compensation law are not likely starving for clientel, or they'd be seeking greener pastures. Hell, yellowpages.com shows 23 hits for 'worker comp lawyer' just within a ten mile radius of where I live.

Corporations are amoral profit-optimization engines, externalizing all possible costs to everyone else. Corporations are not people. Corporations do not think like people, even if they are made of people. Corporations do not care about people, especially not in any of the ways we would want someone who is our neighbor to care about us, not even to the bare minimum of polite indifference of not pooping on your doorstep.

Remember tetraethyl lead? https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520283930/lead-wars https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-... https://www.epa.gov/history/epa-history-lead

Given a choice between the nebulous future of preventing provable harm, and the shorter term and slightly more concrete consequence of lost profits, corporations (and even government) chose profit.

If corporations were actual people, they would absolutely poop on your doorstep to save on their water bill, and then gaslight you with studies showing that poop on your doorstep is normal and healthy, not a big deal, and totally your own fault if it is.

The only way to made corporations (and government) behave in morally acceptable ways is to force them and watch their every move, and make the alternative more expensive.

New comment by coldelectrons in "McDonald’s Secretive Intel Team Spies on ‘Fight for $15’ Workers"

coldelectrons — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 08:39:10 +0000

Link is currently 404.

New comment by coldelectrons in "An alien machine already visited us, Harvard astrophysicist still contends"

coldelectrons — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 06:40:47 +0000

"Get a load of this bunch; they do everything with meat! Lets get out of here before they notice us."

New comment by coldelectrons in "Toledo Zoo first to record biofluorescence in Tasmanian Devils"

coldelectrons — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 23:50:10 +0000

First thing I thought of was Gears of War and lambent wretches.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution"

coldelectrons — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 15:12:49 +0000

This is still 2020. Are we really flirting with a Planet of the Apes scenario right now?

New comment by coldelectrons in "The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)"

coldelectrons — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 09:40:50 +0000

Don't forget lead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis

History has _a lot_ of moving parts.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Diluting blood plasma rejuvenates tissue, reverses aging in mice"

coldelectrons — Sat, 07 Nov 2020 02:45:19 +0000

Maybe a catch-basin

New comment by coldelectrons in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular (2003)"

coldelectrons — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 23:32:32 +0000

I did not know I needed this, or how much. Thank you.

New comment by coldelectrons in "Reddit removes Aaron Swartz from founders list"

coldelectrons — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 23:07:41 +0000

The heart still beats! The heart still bleeds!

New comment by coldelectrons in "Changes to Fusion 360 for Personal Use"

coldelectrons — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 23:04:41 +0000

Introduce yourself. Establish a connection or rapport with the audience. Set expectations.

"My name is Inigo Montoya..."