Hacker News: meritganset

New comment by meritganset in "Hackers hijack and publish mental health data of hundreds of people"

meritganset — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 15:57:56 +0000

To be fair, you made a claim that "mental health treatment has come an incredibly long way". And the only evidence you have offered to back that up is a vague personal anecdote.

The poster was simply providing their viewpoint on the state of mental health that differs from yours.

I understand these things can cause strong emotions, but you don't do yourself or your stance any favors by letting it get the best of you here.

New comment by meritganset in "My Life Countdown (2007)"

meritganset — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 01:04:26 +0000

I did something similar, but in reverse. Rather than give myself an arbitrary "death day", as the author did, I instead chose to make a life clock. It's just a display of my age in years, months, days, and seconds.

The advantage of this is that it is 100% true. There are no mental tricks you can play. Things like: I know my clock says 8500 days, but I'm sure I have more than that.

I find I get much the same feeling watching the values ever increasing as I would watching some arbitrary number increase. You're watching the grains of sand fall through the hourglass.

New comment by meritganset in "Why most Hacktoberfest PRs are from India"

meritganset — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 00:04:54 +0000

To answer your first two questions: yes and yes.

New comment by meritganset in "Two members of videogame piracy group “Team Xecuter” in custody"

meritganset — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 00:02:02 +0000

Modifying something that _you own_ should never, ever be a crime. It saddens me that indictments like this are the direction everything is headed.

New comment by meritganset in "The Apple Watch heart monitor sends too many people to the doctor"

meritganset — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 19:04:01 +0000

So long as it worked out for you, the costs everyone else bears is irrelevant?

New comment by meritganset in "The Apple Watch heart monitor sends too many people to the doctor"

meritganset — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 19:03:29 +0000

Let's take this idea to the extreme for a moment and see if you agree that it's a problem.

A new device is created that alerts 50% of the US population that they have a condition that needs to be treated. Only 10% of those cases warranted further action.

Do you imagine there would be adverse side effects of hospitals being overrun with patients that didn't need to be there?

How can you utterly fail to see a problem with an influx of false positives to an already overloaded healthcare system?

New comment by meritganset in "The worst tool for the job"

meritganset — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 18:08:00 +0000

It sounds like you're the type of person to blame external factors for your own issues. Nothing you're saying counters the original advice.

Additionally, in the guitar example, you learned how to play and learned what it meant to own a decent guitar. Then, when presented with the opportunity to buy a new guitar: bought a crappy one, ignoring everything you had already learned about the instrument.

Given that you were so easily discouraged from learning the guitar, it's also equally likely that it wasn't something you were truly passionate about and gave yourself an excuse at every turn as to why you weren't progressing.

New comment by meritganset in "Spies can eavesdrop by watching a light bulb's vibrations"

meritganset — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:48:00 +0000

I can't tell if this is serious or not. You realize that not all vibrations are visible by eye, right? In fact, the vast majority aren't.

New comment by meritganset in "How Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger (2019)"

meritganset — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 17:44:42 +0000

You _can_ omit it, but why would you?

And it absolutely introduces ambiguity for those who don't happen to know where these scales are equal.

New comment by meritganset in "Turning the world into a 'safe space' – but at what cost?"

meritganset — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 18:54:56 +0000

> You don't have much freedom if your lungs don't work.

Freedom and safety may not be polar opposites, but there's certainly tension between them. Many believe that you should have the freedom to decide what to do with your own lungs. The idea that you lose freedom because your lungs don't work seems to be a willful misinterpretation of the idea of freedom from government.

New comment by meritganset in "Tell HN: Airbnb now opts in your name and photo to data sharing"

meritganset — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 02:35:29 +0000

Alert me on the web page the first time I log into my account after the policy goes live.

New comment by meritganset in "Tell HN: Airbnb now opts in your name and photo to data sharing"

meritganset — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 02:32:15 +0000

You're one of those people actively driving away otherwise decent people from a worthy cause. Congratulations.

New comment by meritganset in "SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit"

meritganset — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 15:55:24 +0000

Which part of it was historic? The part that we'd already done before, or all of the other parts that we'd already done before?

I guess if you consider funding coming from a source other than the government historic, then the launch was borderline mind boggling.

Agreed about "Bob and Doug". But then again the bravery, training, and talent of the astronauts weren't the focus of this launch. This was all about Elon and SpaceX.