Hacker News: jrs95

New comment by jrs95 in "Tear Gas Is Way More Dangerous Than Police Let On - Especially During COVID"

jrs95 — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 17:48:15 +0000

At this point we need herd immunity so young people gathering and getting infected is probably a net gain. More people will die due to economic damage than the virus if we maintained quarantine until vaccination.

New comment by jrs95 in "Deno Is a Browser for Code"

jrs95 — Fri, 29 May 2020 05:41:28 +0000

It's now the most popular programming language by a decent margin, there are a lot of libraries available for it, and it lacks some of the performance limitations that affect other dynamic languages. Anyone that does frontend dev knows JavaScript, its about as close to a universal language as you can get.

Personally theres about a dozen other things I'd rather use but from a pragmatic perspective it makes sense. It's easy and it gets the job done relatively quickly.

New comment by jrs95 in "Deno Is a Browser for Code"

jrs95 — Fri, 29 May 2020 05:33:31 +0000

I still use this directory structure and it doesn't really bother me honestly. Makes it very easy to work with multiple local repositories without having to worry about any linking or installing bullshit you have to do with other systems.

New comment by jrs95 in "HBO Max taking on Netflix with human curation instead of relying on algorithms"

jrs95 — Wed, 27 May 2020 20:38:36 +0000

It makes a lot of sense IMO. They can immediately make more money in the short term, and after their competing product is ready they can negotiate more favorable terms with Hulu or not renew their agreement, which will direct a portion of people that discovered their content through Hulu to their own platform.

New comment by jrs95 in "Software will eat software in a remote-first world"

jrs95 — Mon, 25 May 2020 18:20:00 +0000

RPA seems to be the biggest area where this is currently popular. The "citizen developer" bullshit they're pushing IMO sounds good on paper but will lead to fragile bots that end up falling apart and not being properly maintained at scale. I can't imagine handing someone with no programming experience UiPath or whatever and having them basically deploying software directly to production. As far as I know there isn't a "code first" approach to this set of problems but there probably ought to be as someone who can't write code isn't likely to produce a high enough quality product even with a dumb downed drag and drop tool to make it worth it.

New comment by jrs95 in "Microsoft Surface Go 2 review"

jrs95 — Mon, 11 May 2020 16:07:21 +0000

Also in terms of TDP and lack of a dedicated graphics card. And then with the Surface Book, not only is it more awkward as a laptop but because all but the GPU is in the screen the hardware has the same constraints as a tablet. Even with the excessive thinness of the 16" MacBook Pro, it can run circles around any of the Surface devices in terms of performance.

New comment by jrs95 in "Microsoft Surface Go 2 review"

jrs95 — Mon, 11 May 2020 16:04:01 +0000

The funny thing is they advertised this as a feature when it was launched because it was supposed to be more aesthetically pleasing and not collect dust etc. I guess there's a reason Apple still uses rubber after all...

New comment by jrs95 in "The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret"

jrs95 — Thu, 07 May 2020 20:42:38 +0000

I think the idea is partly "I could use some help with this, but I'll get some food and drinks and we'll try to hang out and have a good time even though the work part sucks"

New comment by jrs95 in "Reviving a 16-year-old Mac App"

jrs95 — Wed, 06 May 2020 03:54:38 +0000

Especially given how Mac was at one point ahead of everyone else in terms of automation...

New comment by jrs95 in "A look at modern PHP"

jrs95 — Tue, 05 May 2020 17:09:21 +0000

Not gonna lie my #1 complaint is that PHP jobs on average pay like shit in comparison to most other things. I don't want to work with it solely because it has no value on my resume.

That being said the biggest argument for PHP is productivity and I just prefer Ruby + Rails for that. Honestly though I will say I find PHP more pleasant to work with than Python these days.

New comment by jrs95 in "Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]"

jrs95 — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:33:54 +0000

That wasn't at all the point in my opinion. I'm pretty sure the intent was just to point out the political dysfunction of our system that's basically denying Asian Americans a voice on the issue that can actually impact policy.

New comment by jrs95 in "Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]"

jrs95 — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:32:02 +0000

A lot of white Americans have a problem with this, I don't think most are aware that it also impacts Asian Americans. If they were, they'd be behind you 100%. Save a few extreme elements, most of us just have a problem with people being treated unfairly at an individual level because of demographics.

New comment by jrs95 in "Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]"

jrs95 — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:18:26 +0000

Are these sorts of policies really going to get any better when the rhetoric they're based on is ramping up and demographics continue to shift in favor of groups that benefit from the policies? It's already practically socially forbidden to debate this sort of thing in public using your own name. I'm not going to have children, but I'm worried for the children of my siblings and cousins. Their parents don't have money or college educations and they're going to have a lot of roadblocks in their way and people telling them they don't deserve what little they do have.

Overall, I don't really know what any of us can do about it other than complain on the internet though. Unfortunately I don't really see a viable path forward to changing any of these policies.

New comment by jrs95 in "Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]"

jrs95 — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:10:20 +0000

There's almost no other explanation, unfortunately. Opinion on it does tend to be pretty closely tied to conventional political orientation, but I know plenty of women in tech (or other traditionally male dominated spaces like gaming) that don't really like this kind of stuff because they have a lot of friends from over-represented groups that have had a lot of difficulty in life that's basically ignored based on their demographics.

New comment by jrs95 in "Ask HN: How much coffee do you drink as a programmer?"

jrs95 — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 08:05:30 +0000

Now that I'm working remote & holed up in my apartment all the time, none. I got some of the DOOM Eternal branded G Fuel for the game launch, and it's strong (300 mg of caffeine per serving...and it's spicy lemonade, which sounds weird but it's delicious) so I have that on occasion in the morning to recover from a night of bad sleep. For the most part been staying away from the caffeine though and I've adjusted to it pretty well.

As soon as I get back in the office though, I'll probably be having 3-4 cups a day. Sometimes cold brew, mostly just black coffee. Occasionally I just do tea. Part of it I think is I just have a bit of an oral fixation, so drinking something helps me vape less (I used to smoke) and eat less (mostly sedentary lifestyle unfortunately)

New comment by jrs95 in "Coronavirus may mean automation is coming sooner than we thought"

jrs95 — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 17:07:54 +0000

There is growing political demand to move away from China entirely though. I doubt its particularly popular with most people with influence, but if we've learned anything from 2016 it's that populism can be an unexpectedly potent force. If someone were to force the issue, the new GOP party line could very well end up being policy to move manufacturing away from China.

New comment by jrs95 in "Why are Soviet math textbooks so hardcore in comparison to US textbooks? (2017)"

jrs95 — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 04:50:38 +0000

AP classes aren't really close to the same in my experience. They may technically be on par with entry level college courses but none of the content is so difficult than anyone else couldn't do it. If anything we just have low expectations and do very little to foster any critical thinking skills in most students. You could be below average in terms of natural ability and not have a problem with AP classes just by actually giving a shit.

New comment by jrs95 in "TypeScript to C++"

jrs95 — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 07:44:00 +0000

Doesn't Vala compile to C and handle memory safety somehow? Obviously that depends on some GObject stuff but I think a similar approach could probably be used in this case.

New comment by jrs95 in "[dead]"

jrs95 — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 17:31:43 +0000

Holy shit imagine this being what you're focused on right now, of all things.

New comment by jrs95 in "Hungarian Coronavirus Act passes granting PM Orban unprecedented emergency power"

jrs95 — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 17:27:08 +0000

A little too late now isn't it? Even if they were going to kick Hungary out of the EU, Orban would be an idiot to give up that power.