Hacker News: jessedhillon

New comment by jessedhillon in "Why women in tech are so angry all the time"

jessedhillon — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 23:50:24 +0000

I don't trust the results of anonymous online surveys, nor should you. It's amazing that any organization purporting to be journalistic would report such results, but those are the times we live in, I guess.

Anyway, my comment was about base rates of harassment received by anyone saying anything critical of anyone else: they are high, no matter who you are and what you are saying. It's not right, but it's not limited to women.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Why women in tech are so angry all the time"

jessedhillon — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 06:10:30 +0000

For the record, I didn't say any of this. It's not controversial to talk about your experience. It's certainly controversial to generalize your experience across an entire industry, or sex. And it's not acceptable to be harassed, but yes it's normal and not specific to women.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Why women in tech are so angry all the time"

jessedhillon — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 02:25:46 +0000

Edit: removed. I should take my own advice.

New comment by jessedhillon in "My mindfulness practice led me to meltdown"

jessedhillon — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 16:41:18 +0000

In this sense, this person is talking about empiricism as the outlook that only what can be measured matters. Hours spent in meditation can be measured, but your embodiment of right view can't (or isn't, at least).

New comment by jessedhillon in "India bans MasterCard from adding new customers"

jessedhillon — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 14:27:22 +0000

In the case of MasterCard that might be true, but the law applies generally. It's not inconceivable that another piece of critical infrastructure could be provided by a country who has a data center in a more likely adversary, say, China. In general, the Indian approach is not to whitelist everything and then blacklist whatever specific exceptions become necessary, but the reverse.

As for avoiding war: sure, but how should we conduct things until utopia arrives?

New comment by jessedhillon in "AI Text-to-Speech models have accents too"

jessedhillon — Sat, 10 Jul 2021 13:20:58 +0000

What does `uname -a` return for you?

New comment by jessedhillon in "Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever"

jessedhillon — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 18:03:41 +0000

I cannot understand how, almost 20 years after it was first created, a default install of WordPress still falls down gracelessly when faced with any significant traffic. There's no reason why a sensible default configuration can't automatically serve a cached version of an article.

As it is, the default posture of WP is to be software suitable for those who write things that very few people will read.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Walmart unveils low-price analog insulin amid rising diabetes drug costs"

jessedhillon — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 18:55:31 +0000

In case anyone else has no experience with diabetes and is looking for key quantities to understand the context here:

- "Most people with diabetes need at least 2 insulin shots a day. Some people need 3 or 4 shots for good blood sugar control." (https://www.aafp.org/afp/1999/0801/p649.html)

- "In November last year, Walmart launched the ReliOn Novolin 70-30 insulin pen. The cash price for a pack of five pens is $42.88, compared to $300 for the brand name option." (https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/verify-yes-walmart-do...)

So we're talking about $25 for 1-2 days of vital injections. Approx $4,500 - $9,100 annually.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Why we don’t understand heavier-than-air flight"

jessedhillon — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 10:01:58 +0000

Almost nobody understands software then, by this definition.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Building a WebAuthn Click Farm"

jessedhillon — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 21:45:53 +0000

Disclaimers have become magical incantations of a litigious, safety-obsessed culture.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Hague Invasion Act"

jessedhillon — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 18:30:06 +0000

Seems like the position you'd expect of a country founded on a mistrust of centralized, remote authority.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?"

jessedhillon — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 13:11:58 +0000

Yes, well on the one hand you shared evidence of actual outcomes and presented that as meaningful, and that's what I challenged. Weaving theories about how social benefits are good for entrepreneurship is not much of a counterpoint here, unless you can connect it back to the same outcomes in question.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?"

jessedhillon — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 04:59:06 +0000

All of which is an entirely separate set of points from the point you were making about the number of billionaires.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Europe is now a corporate also-ran. Can it recover its footing?"

jessedhillon — Sat, 12 Jun 2021 03:53:09 +0000

I'm not familiar with the wealth situation in Scandinavia, but I just want to point out: what matters is the numbers of millionaires/billionaires created, not just the number existing. For example, these higher numbers could be leftover nobles or aristocracy.

Also, it's a pretty unconvincing comparison to pick a small population country to benchmark the US against.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Hundreds of fishing vessels vanishing along Argentina’s waters"

jessedhillon — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 16:05:43 +0000

>The highly symbolic law - which also removed preferential tax rates for foreign companies operating in China - was overwhelmingly passed by the National People's Congress (NPC) on the final day of its annual two-week session in Beijing.

Seriously?

New comment by jessedhillon in "IRS records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax"

jessedhillon — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:30:39 +0000

There's nothing that can't be justified by this reasoning.

New comment by jessedhillon in "Show HN: I made a webapp to help people create flag designs for fun"

jessedhillon — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 06:18:23 +0000

Here's one that allows you to mix and match symbols and motifs that are common to national flags: https://flag-designer.appspot.com/

New comment by jessedhillon in "Pandemic homeschoolers who are not going back"

jessedhillon — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:56:37 +0000

At least in CA, and probably other liberal states, you have what is ironically called the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) that distributes funding equally, more or less, and tries to erase these advantages.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/

New comment by jessedhillon in "Pandemic homeschoolers who are not going back"

jessedhillon — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:54:20 +0000

First off, because of Bloom's two sigma effect [0], public schools will never be able to match the experience of a good homeschool. Unless you're talking about class sizes of four, each headed by someone who has mastered the material, the level of achievement possible under homeschooling will, in general, vastly outstrip what a public school offers.

Second, you can't talk about school funding unless you talk about both administrative bloat and teacher's unions. As long as teachers can keep voting themselves raises and escaping even the most basic levels of accountability for their results, money will not solve the public school crises. And administrative employment has grown by 75% over less than a decade -- 10x the growth in teacher employment during the same time. [1]

So sure, you solve the bloat and local control issues, there's plenty of money for instruction and classroom resources.

0: https://nintil.com/bloom-sigma/

1: https://www.educationnext.org/growth-administrative-staff-as...

New comment by jessedhillon in "Employees are quitting instead of giving up working from home"

jessedhillon — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 14:21:40 +0000

I find myself feeling vaguely offended by this response.

These are needs that all previous generations fulfilled through their community, or by meeting strangers. But I have the feeling that (some subset of) current generations find that proposition unacceptably risky. And I guess the offense comes from the idea that we should all be inconvenienced for their sake, and also from how the idea "I can only make friends in a safe space" is presented here and just expected to be believed.