Hacker News: jcromartie

New comment by jcromartie in "‘Superbug’ scourge spreads as U.S. fails to track rising human toll"

jcromartie — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 15:31:17 +0000

But our gov't is right on top of banning even more harmless plants... (Kratom this time).

New comment by jcromartie in "What If Evolution Bred Reality Out of Us?"

jcromartie — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 02:19:25 +0000

If bananas reflected yellow light, but we saw them as blue instead by some purely neuropsychological phenomenon, would this cause any significant problems?

New comment by jcromartie in "The Macaroni in ‘Yankee Doodle’ Is Not What You Think"

jcromartie — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 12:40:48 +0000

Am I the only one that actually did learn this in school?

New comment by jcromartie in "Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe"

jcromartie — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 13:03:36 +0000

The most terrifying thing about prions is that they are infectious but not alive: they can't be "killed" in the normal sense by sterilization. The proteins must literally be dissolved to neutralize them.

New comment by jcromartie in "Immutability is not enough"

jcromartie — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 20:01:35 +0000

I don't think anybody ever meant to imply that pure functions can be composed in any order. That's the confusion here. "Pure functions can be run in any order" only means that they don't have side effects so one call doesn't impact another, but nobody ever meant or (hopefully) understood that to mean that the inputs and outputs of pure functions could be composed in any order. I don't even know what kind of confusion could lead to such an idea.

New comment by jcromartie in "Immutability is not enough"

jcromartie — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:47:49 +0000

Are you sure we are talking about the same "functional programming"? Consider a function that parses a number from a string, and a function that doubles a number. How could anybody expect the order of these applications to not matter?

New comment by jcromartie in "Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco"

jcromartie — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 14:24:21 +0000

When reading anything on The Guardian it's important to ask what they aren't telling you, because it's almost certain that they are omitting many very salient details out in order to fit the story into their own narrative. If you knew that Nieto had other problems, you likely wouldn't come away from the Guardian article believing that he was executed for being Hispanic.

New comment by jcromartie in "Safety Check for Brussels"

jcromartie — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:16:17 +0000

People in third world nations don't have any empathy super powers for people who are ethnically, religiously, or socio-economically from themselves either.

New comment by jcromartie in "How Imgur Became a Megacommunity"

jcromartie — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 18:17:38 +0000

I remember that thread. I actually think they took my advice to heart.

New comment by jcromartie in "Modeled After Ants, Teams of Tiny Robots Can Move 2-Ton Car"

jcromartie — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:29:23 +0000

They moved a 2-ton car... on wheels, on sealed concrete, with winches...

New comment by jcromartie in "Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do"

jcromartie — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 14:04:18 +0000

So, how does it turn out for people who shoot at the police? I'm sorry but you are living in libertarian cowboy fantasy.

New comment by jcromartie in "Toddlers Kill More People in the USA (with guns) Than Terrorists Do"

jcromartie — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 14:02:00 +0000

And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are. It would require real total mutual disarmament of citizens and police to change anything in the USA.

So I don't see it changing any time soon.

New comment by jcromartie in "Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug"

jcromartie — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 20:39:47 +0000

And until the people employed by the systems that police, prosecute, and incarcerate other people have a sufficient safety net, they will be motivated to prop up those systems.

Universal basic income just makes too much sense.

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 16:04:26 +0000

> those of us who are non-white, older than 40, disabled, trans, not neurotypical, queer, from low-income backgrounds, and/or a host of other identities will continue to be locked out of tech.

What if those people are just less likely (note: this is about probability, for all I know the best programmer in the world could be a disabled queer 50 year old black person from a poor family) to be competitive among candidates? This basically amounts to hiring as charity.

There is no end to the list of possible "identities". You can ALWAYS slice humanity up into smaller and smaller groups to find some identity that is underrepresented. Everybody is clamoring to grab a niche identity to claim oppression points. This is why identity politics is garbage.

Unless for-profit corporations are actually jobs programs in disguise, there's only one sensible thing to do: value people for what they can do for the company. Period. Though maybe favoring a candidate because they have the right skin color IS actually good for companies? Who knows?

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:55:43 +0000

Trans people have contributed some crucial developments in tech. The ARM processor was invented by a trans woman. If trans people were barred from the industry we might not have all these amazing mobile devices right now.

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

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:52:20 +0000

How about a "blind" hiring process? For software engineers, it's easy to imagine tools that could help evaluate skills without revealing that person's race or gender.

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:46:41 +0000

If I want to see someone's work, and they provide a URL, I'm interested in the content, not the identity of the service it's hosted on. Gee, this sounds familiar...

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 14:08:11 +0000

You say "adapt" but you mean "capitulate."

New comment by jcromartie in "GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart"

jcromartie — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 21:03:26 +0000

How many more years before all of these orgs finally come to the realization that making hiring decisions based on skin color or genitals isn't a winning strategy?

New comment by jcromartie in "Tablet shipments decline 10.1% in 2015"

jcromartie — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 19:07:53 +0000

Unless my 2013 Nexus 7 has a hardware problem I don't see any reason to replace it. It's really hard to imagine a compelling reason to upgrade from today's crop of tablets.