Hacker News: nguoi

New comment by nguoi in "BlackRock’s decision to dump coal signals what’s next"

nguoi — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 11:27:08 +0000

>So far China doesn't look very interested in climate change either

I disagree with this, I think it's easy to paint China as the villain across a cultural, lingual divide in an attempt to make the case that one's own obligations to reduce emissions don't matter. China has a carbon market now and produces more nuclear power than any other country. Climate change is a very real problem for a country with an encroaching desert.

New comment by nguoi in "Toyota will transform 175-acre Japan site into a ‘prototype city of the future’"

nguoi — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 14:31:12 +0000

2hrs/Illegal for medical reasons/doesn't exist/doesn't exist

New comment by nguoi in "Toyota will transform 175-acre Japan site into a ‘prototype city of the future’"

nguoi — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 15:36:43 +0000

Unfortunately, I do need to go to work if I'm interested in continuing to live.

New comment by nguoi in "The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)"

nguoi — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 12:42:55 +0000

I think you should have indicated that you weren't certain in the original accusation.

New comment by nguoi in "Hacker News Classics (2018)"

nguoi — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:57:14 +0000

Some of the same websites also break middle click functionality. Sometimes, if you fail to load the next 'page', you can't have another go at loading it unless you refresh and scroll down n 'pages' again.

Facebook has the most Fun with tabs: you go to the new tab and wait for it to load everything. And then it loads everything again in a slightly different overlay! You have to open it in a new tab, of course, or the video you're trying to watch will vibrate around your screen from comment sections growing above it, and pop out into a different view.

New comment by nguoi in "BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X"

nguoi — Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:48:15 +0000

Players didn't have to aim up to shoot something above them

New comment by nguoi in "Let the Compiler Do the Work"

nguoi — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 12:09:37 +0000

It happens. Imagine you decide on the MS-compatible bits C99, then the team naturally picks up new people and loses the ones who made the decision. Eventually, people will know the standard is C99 from the build system but not the reason behind the decision.

So they add a feature not supported by MSVC and don't learn that it doesn't work until someone else tries to build on Windows.

If you choose to use features based on whether they work or not, you don't need to choose a standard at all. But that loses you all of the guarantees a standard provides.

New comment by nguoi in "America's Biggest Milk Producers Are Going Bankrupt"

nguoi — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 17:23:18 +0000

I used to be weekend staff at a clothing store that changed layouts every week. Every weekend, I'd have to relearn where everything was.

New comment by nguoi in "Let the Compiler Do the Work"

nguoi — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 17:21:56 +0000

That doesn't matter if features you're able to used are gated on the standard you use. If the standard you choose is based on what your target platforms 'support': no inline for you.

New comment by nguoi in "Let the Compiler Do the Work"

nguoi — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 12:26:39 +0000

Inline was added in C99, which MSVC still doesn't support entirely. If this has to be taken into account when you choose what standard to use for your codebase, that's a quarter of a century trickle down for features to reach the consumer.

I hope I get to use C2x* before I retire.

*postmodern C?

New comment by nguoi in "Rob Pike on good commit messages (2014)"

nguoi — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 18:29:27 +0000

Fundamentally, I think you are correct, however my English-second-language friends/colleagues tend to write better English when it's in a structured fashion - like a commit message or in documentation - than they do colloquially. That is how they learned it, after all, while native speakers learn it from osmosis. It's rare to see the ESL speakers use the wrong there/their/they're like native speakers do.

New comment by nguoi in "Is the Netherlands becoming a narco-state?"

nguoi — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 11:56:39 +0000

I suspect 'The Hague' from the byline is not in a country with a murder rate double that of the Netherlands.

New comment by nguoi in "Learning from OpenBSD can make computers marginally less horrible"

nguoi — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 08:40:07 +0000

I thought Linux didn't provide a stable ABI and tells developers to upstream instead? Is this the same topic?

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 16:18:47 +0000

We do ban lots of things. They're children.

>There is in my opinion a very clear danger associated with setting up draconian surveillance states borne out by history.

In my experience, if everything that was compared to 1984 was actually like 1984, we'd be at war with Eastasia.

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:43:03 +0000

I don't think that's a fair assertion. Even going in through the front doors with guns in their coats, the perpetrators of Columbine massacre used bags full of bombs.

>if they are looking to commit a public atrocity they'll...

Which gives everyone else a sooner notice to run away. This won't work for e.g. gang violence.

>Mandating clear backpacks is just as much security theater as is banning 4 oz liquid containers at the airport

Yes, they started that after someone actually tried to blow up a plane with bottles of explosive disguised as soft drinks.

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:36:21 +0000

This is a good point and I hope they can work around it (such as by allowing small opaque bags inside the bag).

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:13:10 +0000

Look at how that same argument fails to apply to suicide statistics being reduced by removing access to guns or falls from bridges. You're trying to apply a logical train of thought to an inherently illogical act of homicide.

But even if you can apply that, it doesn't work. The gun and ammo you can fit in a textbook is smaller than what can fit in a backpack. Backpacks are good at carrying things, that's why we - and school shooters - use them. So if someone wants to pack heat, they'll be less effective.

Maybe the effect from this is insignificant. But how sure do you have to be for the risk of dead children to be less bad than someone not being allowed a cute backpack?

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 15:08:52 +0000

Welcome to mandatory education

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 14:53:49 +0000

That's a poor comparison though. Both of the others provide other benefits: a method of commuting to school or exercise. Potentially even scholarships.

Fashionable backpacks do nothing.

New comment by nguoi in "Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance"

nguoi — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 14:52:41 +0000

>But clear backpacks do nothing at all to make them safer

I must be missing most of my brain then because, to me, this sounds unfounded.