Hacker News: matt4077

New comment by matt4077 in "“I lost my inheritance with one wrong digit on my sort code”"

matt4077 — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 01:46:46 +0000

Money in your account does not in any way inconvenience you in the way that a car parked in your driveway does.

New comment by matt4077 in "The FBI considers FaceApp to be a potential counterintelligence threat [pdf]"

matt4077 — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 00:56:27 +0000

By that logic, very app should be designated “a counterintelligence threat”

New comment by matt4077 in "California car burglaries are at crisis levels"

matt4077 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:46:10 +0000

There are exactly one-and-a-half points of his bio in the text (one being cut off halfway). The rest is a list of relatives. If that doesn't imply a judgement based on his relatives, it's just completely pointless.

New comment by matt4077 in "PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy"

matt4077 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:42:52 +0000

By that logic everyone and everything is corrupt, monitored, etc. Including the hardware you might install your own VPN node on, all messenger apps, all phone lines, the mail, and so on. Your best friends are all spies. Your bedroom is bugged.

That would mean there is absolutely no way to improve your privacy and you might as well do nothing.

New comment by matt4077 in "California car burglaries are at crisis levels"

matt4077 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:23:58 +0000

As others pointed out, this is break-ins, not cars being stolen. Typical cost of a break-in is one window. I have no idea how much that costs, but let's say $1000, which is probably 10x too much. That comes out to $1000 x 0.0364 = $36/yr.

New comment by matt4077 in "California car burglaries are at crisis levels"

matt4077 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:21:40 +0000

Are you seriously judging someone by their great-great-uncle's book?

And why are you including a relative being a Appeals Court judge, and an independent journalist? Is "independent journalist" a code for something?

New comment by matt4077 in "Life expectancy in the U.S. is declining for middle-aged people of all groups"

matt4077 — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:08:21 +0000

How long do US citizen stay with a single healthcare provider (/insurance)? If, say, only 50% are still with the same provider at age 50 as they were at age 30, there is a discount on the benefits of preventative measures compared to single-payer systems.

New comment by matt4077 in "ISOC sold the .org registry to Ethos Capital for $1.1B"

matt4077 — Sat, 30 Nov 2019 05:00:03 +0000

The $1.1 billion isn't profit. They're selling an asset (the .org rights). That transaction should be entirely neutral in terms of profit/loss.

New comment by matt4077 in "Total sleep deprivation impairs attention and higher-order cognitive processes"

matt4077 — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 18:07:28 +0000

Sleep could also just be a low-energy mode for times that are (used to be) unproductive, i. e. darkness.

New comment by matt4077 in "What is energy, actually? (2011)"

matt4077 — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 13:18:17 +0000

I believe they may be referring to the idea that not everything is consumed in the year it’s produced. Infrastructure, for example, is useful years or even decades after it is built (and, presumably, counted in GDP).

New comment by matt4077 in "Singapore tells Facebook to correct post under new fake news law"

matt4077 — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 11:09:12 +0000

I do hope the “barely-human underclass” is supposed to be a characterization of the government’s beliefs, and not your own.

New comment by matt4077 in "Ask HN: What should be taught in high school?"

matt4077 — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 11:01:58 +0000

I’ve seen that error in just about any discussion of charitable giving, including on HN. I doubt it’s due to a lack of knowledge/skills, because these people would tend to give away all their earnings in the belief to somehow make a profit.

New comment by matt4077 in "Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users"

matt4077 — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 10:42:40 +0000

So you left Twitter 5+ years ago expecting them to soon fail, and you feel vindicated by the very-much-still-existing Twitter of today purging some accounts?

The Untold Story of the Secret Mission to Seize Nazi Map Data

matt4077 — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 23:17:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/untold-story-secret-mission-seize-nazi-map-data-180973317/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21643737

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by matt4077 in "The California DMV Is Selling Drivers’ Personal Information"

matt4077 — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:48:42 +0000

Building roads, writing traffic rules or enforcing them just isn't amendable to optimisation using your preferred mechanism of free-market economics. Or, more accurately: competition only works for rather large competitive difference needed to overcome the natural friction introduced by the difficulties of moving.

It's painful to see that people seem to not even be aware anymore that our societies have yet another organising principle beyond capitalism, namely democracy.

Sure, you never agreed to be somewhat dependent on "society". But there just isn't enough land to live in the anarcho-libertarian fantasy where you don't have to find compromises. And the standard hyperbole of the "threat of violence" makes even less sense if you unquestioningly champion capitalism while rejecting democracy, because capitalism also relies on the ultimate threat of violence, as anyone not paying their rent will notice sooner or later.

New comment by matt4077 in "The California DMV Is Selling Drivers’ Personal Information"

matt4077 — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:30:01 +0000

Private prisons seem to be a good counterexample here. Not only does the profit motive lead to inhumane conditions and perverse corruption, such as the Chicago(?) judge getting a kickback for every juvenile sent into the system. The outsourcing of that "monopoly on power" OP decried exaggerates any problems inherent in the government<->citizen relation: civil servants at least have a certain professional ethos, swear an oath, are usually invested in a long-term career, have pensions to look forward to (and not risk), are subject to far more rules (FOIA etc), can mostly not escape liability through bankruptcy, and so on.

Privatised security is an almost prototypical dystopian nightmare. Look no further than TSA. Millgram might have fudged his data, but the idea that giving someone a uniform and power over others tends to awry is still somewhat plausible.

Other examples: those rent-a-goons shooting civilians in Iraq for sport. (With, by the way, double the salary and many military toys not relevant to the job at hand). The US health system also comes to mind, only that you would have even less choice to chose your local police short of moving.

New comment by matt4077 in "Battle Chess"

matt4077 — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 21:39:58 +0000

I learnt far too much chess theory trying to take the king with a pawn, which was the last animation I had not seen.

IIRC they grab the crown with their pike and it somehow ends up on their head.

New comment by matt4077 in "Edge vs. Chrome: Microsoft's Tracking Prevention Hits Google the Hardest"

matt4077 — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 21:35:02 +0000

No, the premise of Brave is that there can never be enough middlemen scalping some money off creators.

The Jungle Prince of Delhi

matt4077 — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 09:16:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/the-jungle-prince-of-delhi.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21619277

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by matt4077 in "Hacker Laws: Theories, principles and patterns that developers will find useful"

matt4077 — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 10:48:21 +0000

It's commendable that the author counteracts the tendency towards cynicism with the occasional rebuttal, although to fully embrace the spirit of kindness, I would maybe skip the Dilbert reference.

Remember: If everyone really were as stupid and/or evil as some of these maxims postulate, it'd be highly unlikely that you just happen to be the exception. Also: management, design, law, marketing, journalism, social sciences, and politics are all disciplines just as challenging as programming or engineering.

And if you can't think of any reason why one of those fields should be difficult, you're just as likely to better at it as that field's practitioners being better at your job.