Hacker News: johnpmayer

New comment by johnpmayer in "Succinct data structures"

johnpmayer — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:49:13 +0000

Whoa - I was there! This was at a small elm-lang meetup; Prezi hosted this while Evan was working there.

Thank you for sharing this link!

New comment by johnpmayer in "Samsung's folding screen tech has been stolen and sold to China"

johnpmayer — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 03:08:34 +0000

Unless it turns out that strong protections for intellectual property rights isn't correlated with the survival of a sovereign nation. Then it won't matter how loudly the international community complains; China will just do its thing. They're large enough and have the agricultural and industrial base to weather isolation in the way that Iran/Russia do not.

New comment by johnpmayer in "There is more to high house prices than constrained supply"

johnpmayer — Sat, 24 Nov 2018 17:56:19 +0000

Well yeah, that apparent injustice is the ethical rationale behind a progressive wealth tax, once you've decided to enforce property rights.

New comment by johnpmayer in "There is more to high house prices than constrained supply"

johnpmayer — Sat, 24 Nov 2018 17:51:57 +0000

A home produces rents. If you live in the home that you own, you can think of it equivalently as a productive asset that provides you one unit of free rent (modulo some quality of life factor based on how nice the property is to live in) every month.

New comment by johnpmayer in "There is more to high house prices than constrained supply"

johnpmayer — Sat, 24 Nov 2018 16:18:56 +0000

Credit allows people to purchase things beyond their current wealth but rather within their future means to pay (their future productivity and trustworthiness). This is particularly useful for those who aren't born into wealth: Credit is practically the only way for normal folks to access productive capital, such as a home that allows you to avoid paying rent, or an education that in theory makes you more productive in the future.

You are correct to point out that the prediction of one's future ability to pay (their future productivity and trustworthiness) is difficult. But I think eliminating credit (at least when used to purchase productive capital) is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Prove the badness of coworkers at your own risk (2012)"

johnpmayer — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 01:30:58 +0000

Yep. It boils down to wanting to work at a place where it's OK to make mistakes, but unacceptable to not learn from mistakes. It's a culture thing, and it comes from the top.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Baltimore State Attorney Drops Dozens of Cases: Body Cam Shows Drug-Planting"

johnpmayer — Sun, 30 Jul 2017 01:20:19 +0000

This is silly and short-sighted. There are many people who genuinely want to 'serve and protect', multiple generations in some families. Some people take duty very seriously and in good faith. Applying to be a cop in no way implies that a person holds arrests and the use of deadly force as anything other than a necessary component of the real-world, end-to-end justice system.

New comment by johnpmayer in "An 89-year-old Reinventing the Train in His Backyard"

johnpmayer — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 14:57:39 +0000

> more than one train on a line at a given time.

Seems like the system is capable running different trains in different sections; the pressure/vacuum system is distributed and segmented down the length of the line.

New comment by johnpmayer in "What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?"

johnpmayer — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:01:57 +0000

I mean, it's all about "for whom" in this question. What's better, widgets and a polluted stream, or no widgets? Depends on whether society values the fish.

New comment by johnpmayer in "A bot has successfully appealed $3M worth of parking tickets in the UK"

johnpmayer — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 17:38:16 +0000

Sure, but then you're paying an attorney, not a bot.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Surrender fiscal sovereignty in return for bailout, Merkel tells Tsipras"

johnpmayer — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 02:34:37 +0000

QE is monetary policy. The (somewhat simplified) difference between the two: Fiscal policy is taxes and expenditures; monetary policy is what your central bank does.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Elm 0.15: Asynchrony with Tasks"

johnpmayer — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 00:47:22 +0000

There's probably going to be something like do-notation in Elm 0.16.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Learn Prolog Now"

johnpmayer — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 16:23:03 +0000

Authorization is a good fit - express your groups and roles as facts and rules (primitives) and then queries are... queries.

New comment by johnpmayer in "China fines Qualcomm $1B"

johnpmayer — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 22:53:39 +0000

...Qualcomm will offer licenses to 3G and 4G essential patents and will no longer require the bundling of those rights with other patents in its portfolio...

Wow, is that a common tactic? No wonder antitrust was on them.

New comment by johnpmayer in "First Impressions Using React Native"

johnpmayer — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 18:59:10 +0000

Regarding moving script code off the main thread: I wrote a cooperative FRP engine that multiplexes signal graph update recalculation onto Web Workers. UI updates like virtual DOM would live on the main thread.

https://github.com/Johnpmayer/liquid-thorium

New comment by johnpmayer in "Elm 0.14 – Simpler Core, Better Tools"

johnpmayer — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 16:39:16 +0000

For the record, I voted for enum, like in rust-lang ;-)

This was going to be contentious no matter what. For what it's worth, Wikipedia (top Google result) seems to have a compatible story.

Luckily, it's just a conversation change. I think it will be fine, and net more helpful than damaging. The overall goals are intuition and accessibility.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Who Has Your Back 2014: Protecting Your Data From Copyright/Trademark Bullies"

johnpmayer — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 00:39:32 +0000

I've been with them since SOPA. Never had issues but I'm not power user.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Nearly Every USGS Topo Map For Free"

johnpmayer — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:32:32 +0000

That's pretty cool. I'm a casual user who might go on a hike a few times a year; thought about picking this up but $20 plus IAP (do I need to buy maps?)... is there a trial or lite version?

New comment by johnpmayer in "Understanding what Minecraft really means to Microsoft"

johnpmayer — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:26:25 +0000

Care to elaborate? Much of the modding community is eagerly awaiting an official API.

New comment by johnpmayer in "Anger mounts over Barclays ban on rooted Android phones"

johnpmayer — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 13:34:49 +0000

Barclays surely has a web app; not sure how a rooted phone is any more unstable/unknown than HTML/Javascript running on an unknown browser client.