Hacker News: human20190310

New comment by human20190310 in "Why some software developers hate Agile"

human20190310 — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 17:19:57 +0000

The outgoing product is nevertheless fully determined by the incoming work being done. It would make more sense to group a set of tasks into a deliverable than a time period. You have to do that anyway to deliver anything coherent.

New comment by human20190310 in "Why some software developers hate Agile"

human20190310 — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 17:12:13 +0000

Sprints to me seem completely contrived.

In reality, there are only things that people are working on, and things that no one is working on. There's no need for a third category of "things that are in the sprint" as long as someone (anyone!) keeps the task queue sorted in priority order.

New comment by human20190310 in "Google – polling like it's the 90s"

human20190310 — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 16:26:20 +0000

Moreover it might not just be developer time vs. latency that's being traded off.

Maintaining a stateful websocket connection on the server side isn't cost-free, and that connection would be idle nearly 100% of the time. The bandwidth consumed via Google's polling solution might well be cheaper than open socket file descriptors of a websockets solution.

New comment by human20190310 in "The Asymmetry of Internet Identity"

human20190310 — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 15:32:45 +0000

> There is no good way for a person to identify another person without first mutually agreeing on Brand identities.

How is this absence not a good thing? If someone wants to be identified, they have to go through the trouble of creating an identity. In fact, it would be preferable to also not have a permanent or consistent personal identity with respect to brands either.

New comment by human20190310 in "Billionaire’s Guide to Buying Your Kids a Better Shot at Elite Colleges"

human20190310 — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 19:15:05 +0000

> if they pump out people that don't have skills over time their "Prestige" doesn't amount to much

I think you're underestimating the degree to which corrupt, inept institutions can maintain their influence over society.

New comment by human20190310 in "WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO"

human20190310 — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 16:38:05 +0000

Hippies are at least as greedy as anyone else.

New comment by human20190310 in "How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer"

human20190310 — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 05:10:39 +0000

Anything that is more advanced than necessary is too advanced to be comfortable with.

New comment by human20190310 in "How to Succeed as a Poor Programmer"

human20190310 — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 04:46:26 +0000

It's a great, succinct post. Deeply uncool. A programmer should be modest about their skills, skeptical about new-new things, eschew bullshit, and terrified of dependencies. I buy the whole thing.

Moreover, I trust the advice of someone who rates themselves poorly more than someone proclaiming that they're a hotshot.

New comment by human20190310 in "JSON for Modern C++"

human20190310 — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 15:37:34 +0000

While I agree that in many cases JSON parsing is not the largest consumer of resources, it really sucks when it is.

At some point it seems like a general mindset shifted from making things efficient at every level to assuming things don’t matter if you’re probably doing something worse anyway.

New comment by human20190310 in "An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted"

human20190310 — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 19:21:58 +0000

At risk of embarrassing my self statistically, what exactly happens when you do this?

I.e., if you're controlling for country, that means you're bucketing by country, and looking at each subset, right? So if country is represented by a non-discrete value... what exactly happens?

New comment by human20190310 in "Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate Lobbyists"

human20190310 — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 14:40:07 +0000

> However, if the top-level politicians, who remain technically inept, are the ones giving the orders, confusion will remain.

The converse would also be true though; a technologically adept leadership that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion, likely worse confusion.

Deeper still, a militarily adept leadership, or any other narrowly adept leadership, that didn't understand society's principles would also lead to confusion.

Politicians have to deal with society as a whole, and as long as no one can master every area of expertise, they need to have someone doing analyses on their behalf.

New comment by human20190310 in "The Octopus: An Alien Among Us"

human20190310 — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 23:31:18 +0000

If I recall correctly, one theory is that octopuses are such voracious cannibals that a swift demise after reproduction evolved to keep them from eating the next generation.

New comment by human20190310 in "The Octopus: An Alien Among Us"

human20190310 — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 19:05:55 +0000

Wow... if dreaming evolved twice, I don't know what to think.

New comment by human20190310 in "Neither, and New: Lessons from Uber and Vision Fund"

human20190310 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:54:33 +0000

I found it incomprehensible from the start.

EDIT: The first five sentences invoke Uber, the author's previous article, the Wall Street Journal, Gurley, Damodaran, and two different dubious valuations.

New comment by human20190310 in "WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism"

human20190310 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:22:28 +0000

I really wish the author had sensed the limits of his argument, because I think the point he's trying to make is basically correct. He's just stretching it to the breaking point by invoking Amazon and the subprime crisis.

If he'd left the stretch goals out of it, it would have stood as a perfect foil to the avalanche of "meta-meta-meta analysis of everything except where the money's gonna come from" in the Stratechery article [0] also up on HN now.

[0] https://stratechery.com/2019/neither-and-new-lessons-from-ub...

New comment by human20190310 in "Uber CEO calls business 'sustainable' amid huge losses"

human20190310 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 14:26:26 +0000

If the VCs are being bankrolled by Saudi money (via Softbank) that has noplace else to go, because no one wants it, the money might not dry up. With this in mind, Khosrowshahi may be right about Uber's sustainability.

New comment by human20190310 in "Google Chrome Keystone is modifying /var symlink on non SIP Macs causing k-panic"

human20190310 — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:18:49 +0000

I like Chrome for Javascript development/debugging, but I don't use it for anything else.

New comment by human20190310 in "WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO"

human20190310 — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 17:41:16 +0000

At what point do these deranged estimates start damaging the credibility of the estimators?

New comment by human20190310 in "How to Cold Email Investors [video]"

human20190310 — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 16:07:32 +0000

Indeed; I should have been more specific in referring to people already working in the Bay Area technology scene, where salaries are quite high.

New comment by human20190310 in "How to Cold Email Investors [video]"

human20190310 — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 15:56:10 +0000

It's always surprising to me how many people in tech need to seek investment. Saving some scratch over a few years of paid employment, then bootstrapping, seems like a seldom-traveled route.