Hacker News: ianstallings

New comment by ianstallings in "33 dead after arson attack at Kyoto Animation studio, dozens injured"

ianstallings — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:48:57 +0000

Are you seriously calling me a racist or are you joking?

Edit: Sorry didn't see the greyed out comment above yours on my screen.

New comment by ianstallings in "Don't donate canned goods to food banks (2017)"

ianstallings — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 17:08:29 +0000

I pick through boxes of potatoes/carrots, throwing out the bad ones and bagging up the good ones, then throwing those bag into another box. I do things like this for 2 hours on the weekend at a local charity called harvesters.org. At the end I've worked up a sweat, but it's quite relaxing and I always meet friendly people there to chat with.

New comment by ianstallings in "YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”"

ianstallings — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 19:07:03 +0000

Agreed. Being of the Libertarian mindset, I was at first completely okay with it under the argument of personal liberty and personal property. It's a private company and they can do what they want.

But the closer I looked at it the more I realized that it truly is a public space. And then when powerful political figures started influencing what was okay to censor on it I realized they are trying to do an end-run around the actual law via technicality. No need for the government to censor anything when they can just get the technocrats to do it for them. And everyone seems okay with it, so long as it's not them.

New comment by ianstallings in "Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)"

ianstallings — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:48:47 +0000

It's a tough nut to crack. Think about fields like architecture and engineering, where the historical knowledge is well over three thousand years. Yet they still have failures, go over estimates, and generally suffer the same issues that we do, but at much greater costs.

New comment by ianstallings in "Momentum is building to explore Venus"

ianstallings — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 22:30:56 +0000

We can still explore them. It's the contamination of them that is at question.

New comment by ianstallings in "Momentum is building to explore Venus"

ianstallings — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 20:14:04 +0000

It's not that we can't or won't. It's that we should study and debate it before we do anything to change the environment. Given how humans have run roughshod over so many environments, I think carefulness might be warranted.

New comment by ianstallings in "Momentum is building to explore Venus"

ianstallings — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 17:16:03 +0000

There is debate within the scientific community about changing other planets in general. Not everyone is convinced that we should alter or terraform to suit our needs.

Some related links:

https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/intpolicy/

https://www.astrobio.net/mars/should-we-terraform/

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

New comment by ianstallings in "Apple's Audacity"

ianstallings — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:56:19 +0000

Get your arguments in order and come back like an adult and make your point. That wall of text is all over the place.

New comment by ianstallings in "Apple's Audacity"

ianstallings — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:13:11 +0000

Do you think that government ownership would lead to more competence and benevolence? If so, just visit the inside of any government agency.

New comment by ianstallings in "Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment"

ianstallings — Wed, 22 May 2019 15:17:21 +0000

We do it currently. Holland is a good example of fighting back the sea, but at great expense. And not every country will be able to do this type of engineering.

The temp rises are another thing that we can adapt to. Maybe even some global engineering to thwart it. But again it will be at great cost. And this will probably have the bigger impact on all of us. Our eco-system is very susceptible to small temp changes.

New comment by ianstallings in "Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment"

ianstallings — Wed, 22 May 2019 15:03:14 +0000

Please explain how you put "reflectors in space" without putting them into orbit.

New comment by ianstallings in "Taking Notes by Hand May Be Better Than Digitally (2016)"

ianstallings — Wed, 08 May 2019 20:22:59 +0000

Basically what it comes down to for me - I don't want to be distracted by my laptop and only bring it to meetings if I feel it's necessary:

- Daily stand ups? My laptop is distracting and I use a paper notepad instead.

- Long planning sessions or tech meetups? I need my laptop in order to be effective.

Staying focused is a constant struggle. Example: Being on Hacker News "wasting" a few minutes right now when I have a long list of tasks to work through.

New comment by ianstallings in "Fasting Affects the Brain"

ianstallings — Wed, 08 May 2019 15:21:06 +0000

I was very skeptical of fasting for quite a while, but over winter I was on a contract with a guy that did intermittent fasting and his particular schedule had him eating after 3pm. The guy was like a machine. Just this sense of urgency in his work that was incredible to watch. He accomplished so much more than the other guys in the same position. I'm sure part of that was his own character and his work ethic, but when I talked to him he attributed a lot of it to his fasting. Turns out he's probably correct.

New comment by ianstallings in "Much of the “science” used in design is bullshit (2014)"

ianstallings — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 14:38:34 +0000

Agreed and I I think a lot of it comes down to financial factors. In other words, why are we paying someone so much to make design decisions and how can we be assured they are doing it correctly? Because of science.

New comment by ianstallings in "‘When the Glaciers Disappear, Those Species Will Go Extinct’"

ianstallings — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 15:29:41 +0000

I've spent a lot of time in software and I am looking to exit so I can spend more time away from the desk, but I have to say - this is a great attitude to have!

New comment by ianstallings in "‘When the Glaciers Disappear, Those Species Will Go Extinct’"

ianstallings — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 15:19:46 +0000

I've spent 24 years writing software professionally and I often think about my exit. I don't think I'll ever stop writing software, I truly love it. But the career itself is incredibly stressful. The money is compensation for that stress, but I'd much rather be outside and working with my hands. I'm going to create other channels of income and then move on.

It's not that I think people can't be happy at a desk. I've been very happy. Just looking for a change and some sunshine.

New comment by ianstallings in "Jack Dorsey says it’s time to rethink the fundamental dynamics of Twitter"

ianstallings — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 21:31:04 +0000

This seems to be a problem in general across all social media. They create a platform people like, people join up because they enjoy the format, then they tweak it until it's no longer recognizable. Twitter is a great example of this. No real UI improvements in years, just graphing gone wild. FB is the same.

The social media market seems ripe for a disruption, imho. It sounds crazy, to try and topple these current networks. But it's happened before.

New comment by ianstallings in "Kraken, an Open Source Peer-to-Peer Docker Registry"

ianstallings — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 21:16:08 +0000

This has to be the most insane shit I've seen in quite a while.

New comment by ianstallings in "How I'm still not using GUIs in 2019: A guide to the terminal"

ianstallings — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 17:58:45 +0000

This dead argument seems to re-animate itself once a year or so. But my question is this: Why not learn both the IDE of your choice and how to use your terminal/vim? No need to arbitrarily limit your own knowledge and abilities. It just makes you stronger.

New comment by ianstallings in "Launch HN: Modern Labor (YC W19) – Paying People to Learn to Code"

ianstallings — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 21:09:39 +0000

I would counter that those things are not to limit supply, but to ensure quality of service. When you're holding someone's life in your hands the profession can suffer greatly from bad actors or just those with limited skillset. It behooves everyone in those professions to make sure the quality of service remains as high as possible because bad service could damage everyone in the industry.

As we move forward and software does impact people's lives more and more and in some cases can lead to injury or death, we will see many more professional hurdles put in place. But it won't be to keep the profession pool limited.