Hacker News: equalsione

New comment by equalsione in "Undiagnosed Cognitive Decline Eats into Seniors' Retirement Savings"

equalsione — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 11:34:05 +0000

People are living longer after retirement (over 10 years longer since the 1970s) and birth rates have fallen. Expenditure surpasses income eventually. There are other factors but that seems to be the main issue.

New comment by equalsione in "Trump wins presidency for second time"

equalsione — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 17:57:44 +0000

Given the generally high regard that the US has for service people - military, police, emergency services etc - it always puzzled me that Trump was never held to account (in a political, rather than legal sense) for the harm caused.

Is there a reason why this has been glossed over? I thought that would surely be a red line for many of his supporters.

New comment by equalsione in "Voters' Yearning for a Dictator Is a Danger to the Country"

equalsione — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 12:16:38 +0000

Just bear in mind that dictatorships tend to have broad (and arbitrary) definitions of "pre-dicatatorship ruling classes" that could include you, your loved ones, your friends, etc...

Life360 confirms a hacker stole Tile tracker IDs and customer info

equalsione — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 19:36:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/12/24176889/tile-life360-customer-data-breach-hacker-extortion

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40662075

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by equalsione in "Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?"

equalsione — Tue, 07 May 2024 14:04:26 +0000

It would result in fewer units, but you could introduce "courtyards" that would act as corridors of light. It would depend on the depth of the building. You could potentially do it over two or more stories.

Alternatively sacrificing the central core of the buildings to act as light tunnel might work. Or give the deeper units over to utilities, communal areas, etc

A good architect could transform these buildings into pleasant and useful spaces. It just requires a willingness to try. Check out the youtube channel like @nevertoosmall or @kirstendirksen - I'm sure there are many others that explore topics like this.

New comment by equalsione in "What if null was an Object in Java?"

equalsione — Sun, 28 Apr 2024 22:21:52 +0000

I’m not familiar enough with kotlin to comment fully but from your description the checker framework [0] appears to do the same thing in Java.

I confess I’m not fond of checker framework. I find the error messages can be obtuse but it is very effective.

0 - https://checkerframework.org/

New comment by equalsione in "The one about the web developer job market"

equalsione — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 19:58:36 +0000

> Tech companies are still performing mass lay-offs, even with a tech bubble in full force. > Many organisations are also resorting to employee-hostile strategies to increase employee churn, such as forced Return-To-Office policies.

Would generally agree and it’s been discussed a lot but apart from “because they can” I haven’t heard a really compelling reason why. I’m not convinced by the claims about AI taking jobs (yet). So what’s going on?

New comment by equalsione in "First 'cyberflasher' convicted under UK's new law, gets more than 5 years prison"

equalsione — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:50:32 +0000

I think you’re seriously downplaying the seriousness of these acts and the kind of person who does something like this:

“Hawkes was already a registered sex offender after he was given a community order last year for exposure and sexual activity with a child under 16. That registration ran until November 2033.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-essex-68543605

New comment by equalsione in "Stop postponing things by embracing the mess"

equalsione — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:26:46 +0000

Growing up, my parents didn't have encouragement or patience in their emotional toolkit. You were expected to do everything perfectly - homework, writing a letter, any kind of planning, even sweeping the floor or washing dishes - and if you struggled in any way you were berated at length.

Many decades later even mundane things can be a battle - ringing a doctor to ask for an appointment, or a provider to query a bill, filling in forms and so on. Most of my procrastination stems from my experiences back them. It is easier in my mind to defer action than to risk the imagined verbal abuse. I'd imagine a fair share of non-ADHD related organisational issues can be traced to similar experiences.

Just like you can't out-train a bad diet, you can't out-live a shitty childhood.

New comment by equalsione in "All code is technical debt"

equalsione — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 20:42:29 +0000

This is a “when you think about it” argument. As in “humans are just tubes, when you think about it”.

Technical debt is a thorny issue already. Arguments like this don’t help.

New comment by equalsione in "GM says it's dropping Apple CarPlay and Android Auto because they're unsafe"

equalsione — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 08:22:59 +0000

One option is standalone CarPlay and Android Auto head units - search for carpuride or Atoto for examples. There’s other manufacturers as well. I recall seeing model specific replacement head units for the pop up type display you describe but can’t find them now

New comment by equalsione in "The Placeholder Girlfriend"

equalsione — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 01:41:47 +0000

Perhaps the parent comment is indirectly referring to the Margaret Atwood quote:

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

New comment by equalsione in "The world nearly adopted a calendar with 13 months of 28 days"

equalsione — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 09:44:50 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar

New comment by equalsione in "Bringing garbage collected programming languages efficiently to WebAssembly"

equalsione — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 15:28:26 +0000

GraalVM has multiple language implementations that can now run on both GraalVM and OpenJDK.

They are typically as fast and sometimes faster than their standard counterparts (e.g. can't find the announcement now but mastodon runs much faster on GraalRuby than on JRuby, and JRuby is pretty fast). I have personal experience with GraalJS being very fast.

So I _think_ that you could now say that the JVM can now properly support multiple languages. There are still limitations, mostly related to language libraries that have native bindings so it's not all flowers and chocolates. But still worth considering. But as a general purpose multi-language platform I think you could say it's viable now.

But I share the scepticism - is this really the point of WASM? Whether it is or not, it does seem to be the general direction

https://www.graalvm.org/latest/graalvm-as-a-platform/languag...

New comment by equalsione in "EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram"

equalsione — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:17:04 +0000

The moral threat is that your private data is processed and transformed into influence. And it's been the case over an over again that that influence is wielded without accountability or care for those being targeted. The methods of applying that influence are sometimes sophisticated, sometimes crude but almost always effective. The only protections against this an individual has is privacy. Yes there are other forms of influence, but targeted campaigns feed from data that _should_ be private is vastly more toxic.

Microsoft accused of damaging Guardian's reputation with AI-generated poll

equalsione — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 14:41:40 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/31/microsoft-accused-of-damaging-guardians-reputation-with-ai-generated-poll

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38085592

Points: 16

# Comments: 10

New comment by equalsione in "GlassFish Embedded – a simple way to run Jakarta EE apps"

equalsione — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 15:05:44 +0000

I haven't read the article but if they are referring to https://microprofile.io/ then it's a sensible choice. But if you're going down that route I would recommend something like Micronaut/Quarkus/Helidon/etc with native image compilation. Spring does native image compilation now too, but I personally would lean towards more the more lightweight frameworks

New comment by equalsione in "The World’s First U2 Spy Plane Photo Shoot at the Edge of Space"

equalsione — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 14:02:24 +0000

At the risk of joining the tinfoil hat brigade, this is a 70 year old design. The sr 71 is retired and publicly there’s nothing like it. Has aircraft development regressed since the end of the Cold War or are there successors to these craft out there?

New comment by equalsione in "VanMoof acquired by e-mobility company Lavoie"

equalsione — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 18:09:27 +0000

Apart from an oil refilling kit, hydraulic brakes don't need specialist equipment.

Most ebikes still use standard derailleurs (usually a 1x drivetrain).

For internally geared hubs, Nexus or Alfine IGH are the most common, and apart from getting the cable tension right, don't need any specialist equipment (though the Alfine 11 speed hub is apparently somewhat tricky because it has to be packed with grease).

Most IGH still use chains, belts are less common. Newer chains are rated for ebike use but that generally just means they're more robust.

Belt drives do need to be tensioned properly but again, this doesn't requires specialist tools nor does it require a huge amount of specialist knowledge for a bike mechanic that is (there's literally an app for that). Enviolo, Roloff and other gearbox style systems are specialist equipment and not what you would normally expect a regular bike shop to do intricate servicing on.

Also, internally geared hubs have been around for almost a century and both IGH and belt drives are used on regular bikes. You would expect bike mechanics to be able to deal with them easily.

So by and large, they really are bikes with motors. Yes, there are some things that are more complex but the majority of things are basically the same

New comment by equalsione in "Ironically, Zoom tells employees to return to office for work"

equalsione — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 17:16:55 +0000

‘Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.’ [0]

Oh well then of course!!!

There is no data to back it up. Managers I’ve talked to have in fact said their figures show productivity has gone up but who knows. How do you measure productivity in a knowledge economy?

In the absence of a compelling argument for return to office it’s reasonable to assume this is driven by other factors.

[0] https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-offic...