<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: parennoob</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=parennoob</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:11:43 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=parennoob" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Toilet paper is only available if you scan the train station QR code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> as they don’t clean as thoroughly as wet wipes IMO<p>Once you have a bidet, your regular TP is equivalent to a wet wipe.<p>If you're using the ones that are almost cloth-like strength, those really shouldn't be flushed down most sewage systems, even if they're marked as supposedly "flushable": <a href="https://www.today.com/series/one-small-thing/are-flushable-wipes-really-flushable-t151945" rel="nofollow">https://www.today.com/series/one-small-thing/are-flushable-w...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Dec 2019 16:28:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736661</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736661</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736661</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Toilet paper is only available if you scan the train station QR code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This isn't entirely a trivial absurdity. One of the biggest things I hear about traveling in China (and Japan) is that you're expected to carry your own toilet paper everywhere.<p>An analogy would be – someone from a non-tipping country complains about the fact that some restaurants in the US have a "compulsory gratuity" of 20% for larger parties. Sure, somewhat outrageous, but less so if you consider that tipping 15-20% <i>is the norm in the US anyway</i>.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Dec 2019 16:08:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736551</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736551</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736551</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Toilet paper is only available if you scan the train station QR code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As an aside: Toilet paper is an ancient, inefficient, and doubtfully hygienic  way of cleaning your backside in the modern world.<p>Start using bidets instead of this nonsense. The TP can still be used for drying purposes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Dec 2019 16:03:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736526</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736526</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736526</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I can't even pass as white, and I'm still excluded from most diversity programs because my race (South Asian) is overrepresented in tech.<p>However, overrepresentation in tech in Silicon Valley does not necessary translate into societal privilege, or even extend to all places in the US. Like sure, Google's CEO is Indian, but the entire upper layer of management at the company I work at (and a lot of other companies in Middle America) is 100% golf-playing white males with no way to break in. So I'm kinda SOL both in the diversity programs in Silicon Valley / more progressive tech places as well as the golf-and-whisky club at work.<p>Would like to hear solutions or experiences from other brown South Asians working outside Silicon Valley.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Dec 2019 22:34:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21697572</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21697572</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21697572</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Blue Apron falls 9% on fourth day as a public company"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Blockbuster and Netflix did not sell perishable goods.<p>Now I <i>could</i> buy the argument that the supermarket chains just won't be able to attract the appropriate talent to deliver an experience rivaling that of Blue Apron (or Amazon, if they decided to get into this market tomorrow via Whole Foods).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Jul 2017 04:33:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708148</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I would happily pay 80% taxes if I knew that when I needed it most the welfare state would have my back, but I know that it won't.<p>This crucial point of yours seems to have been missed by the author of the article. I wonder if that has something to do with them being from the UK, which has nationalized healthcare and some sort of a welfare state.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 12 Jun 2017 12:05:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536582</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536582</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536582</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Millennials are killing chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Applebee's"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Also these places aren't good at the things they (sometimes) claim to specialize in. The wings at Buffalo Wild Wings are not better than the wings at a random bar.<p>Maybe millenials care about these things because we want value for our money and don't want to spend it solely on the basis of Super Bowl advertisements?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jun 2017 03:13:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485040</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485040</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14485040</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Good point! I missed that and focused on the emphasized Boolean test, which is the first time I have seen any code in the NYTimes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 May 2017 02:40:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442724</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442724</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442724</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "As Computer Coding Classes Swell, So Does Cheating"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>EDIT: My comment completely missed that there were 100 lines of identical code noticed as well. Leaving below for context.<p>-------<p>Does anyone else find the example cited in the article rather flimsy? Out of 450, two students incorrectly used the inverse of a Boolean for a conditional – an error I have seen tens, if not hundreds of times.<p>Perhaps they used better ways of detecting cheating (some are covered later in the article) for uncovering the collusion in this specific case. If not, this “veteran computer science professor” is going on unnecessary witch hunts.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 May 2017 01:34:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442509</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442509</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14442509</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "A year of digging through code yields “smoking gun” on VW, Fiat diesel cheats"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> In 2015, regulators realized that diesel Volkswagens and Audis were emitting several times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides (NOx) during real-world driving tests.<p>This means that they can detect emissions levels during real world driving tests. What's wrong with just making those tests the actual regulatory ones? So whatever ingenuity automakers can use will be put to minimizing emissions in the <i>exact same scenarios</i> that will be used in real life.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 May 2017 19:22:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14435700</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14435700</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14435700</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Down the Drain: How the Swachh Bharat Mission Is Heading for Failure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>SF-isms (I understand NIMBY is also used outside SF) don't map perfectly across oceans.<p>Suffice it to say that people living in slums in India can have a <i>lot</i> of political clout. For example, once a large slum pops up in an urban area, literally no one dares to lawfully remove it, for fear of losing the next local election.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 May 2017 12:28:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409489</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409489</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14409489</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "NHSbuntu – an OS for the NHS [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Hospitals have to work with proprietary devices -- for example, retinal scanners etc, many of which only have Windows drivers.<p>Then the tenders for buying those devices should state "Devices that work with $YOUR_FAVORITE_DISTRO will be given preference.". If it's a reasonable one, they will make a driver for it. Customer demand always generates product; and the NHS is about the biggest customer there is.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 May 2017 13:30:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341382</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341382</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341382</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "How Stripe teaches employees to code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This. While I have come around to the concept of "It's probably better if more people learn to code", I rarely see other parts of the company so eager to share their knowledge.<p>In particular, I'd like more training on law and finance. For some reason, I have never seen any lawyers or accountants being eager to teach me about interpreting laws, or balancing books.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 May 2017 01:59:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270567</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270567</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270567</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "How Stripe teaches employees to code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> take home homework and other things that blow up the 2.5-hour mark<p>I would think "take home" implies you take it home, i.e. do it in your own time. I don't know what your undefined "other things" are.<p>> The 2.5 hours will also scale up with the number of participants, 20 employees who are committing 2.5 each week (at very, very minimum) is a loss of 50 hours per week.<p>It is this sort of thinking that is super counterproductive. Even if one of those employees learns something simple, like how to programmatically create CSV files and import them into Excel, they will have saved thousands of man-hours.<p>You can't nickel-and-dime people's time like this. Philosophies like yours tend to end up with timing people's bathroom breaks and scathing articles in the newspaper; rarely successful companies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 May 2017 01:51:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270540</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270540</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14270540</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Simplified Common Lisp reference"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I find it quite useful! My username should explain why :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 May 2017 13:02:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245977</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245977</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245977</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Evidence-based advice we've found on how to be successful in a job"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a good point, and why I didn't include the positive psychology point in my list – because it is a genuinely different thing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Apr 2017 11:52:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14210765</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14210765</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14210765</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I will bet that most of the comments in this thread are from people who have never lived in rural India.<p>I have, and will tell you the real reason. It has little to do with literacy or education. It is because (warning, this is going ironic) <i>Indian people are incredibly disgusted about shit and want to not think about dealing with it</i>.<p>I'm Indian myself. For example, we think toilet paper is a horrible idea. You just clean your shit with...paper...and just leave it like that? That would not fly, even in any of the villages you mention. They have to have water to clean their shit, usually supplied in a small bucket or vessel. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)</a><p>Now think about temperatures. The current temperature at many places in India is more than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Your average restroom or shovel pit or whatever is going to smell incredibly bad and be full of flies and a horrible smell. <i>That</i> is why some people prefer the river, and don't use the toilets that are built for them (links elsewhere in this thread).<p>Solutions? It's a usability problem. Bidets for poop washing that can be filled up instead of using piped water, super hydrophobic coatings, really large pits (so you don't smell the waste) –- things like that are going to be the solution. Unfortunately, no one approaches it in that way, and prefers to go the route of "Let's teach these uneducated savages not to shit where they eat." This is very unfortunate and I hope it will change in the future.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Apr 2017 03:29:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14208979</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14208979</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14208979</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Evidence-based advice we've found on how to be successful in a job"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree, I think that a lot of the points seem to serve only to pad the article length and are not actionable for most people.<p>- Surround yourself with great people<p>- Consider changing where you live<p>- Save money<p>- Look for ways to become more productive<p>- Figure out how to perform better in your job<p>- Think better<p>The authors could consider cutting out points that sound like platitudes that can be found in a standard self-help guide or magazine.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Apr 2017 19:44:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14197286</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14197286</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14197286</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Remote work statistics for April 2017"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The interesting thing with Remote is that most companies these days "allows remote" as part of their package.<p>This question goes for the original post too -- but how many of these are <i>truly</i> remote? i.e. I can work for the majority of the year remotely, with maybe one or two visits to the company main office, if that.<p>Asking because I see far too many companies these days trying to brand themselves as remote-friendly, when they really mean something with far less freedom, like “We'll maybe allow you to work from home two days out of five”.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Apr 2017 13:13:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14193147</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14193147</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14193147</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by parennoob in "Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> How do you impose a "robot" tax? Do I get taxed every time a neural net tarts up a photo on my Nexus?<p>It would have to be a balancing act. My guess is "probably not", because mass-producing modified photos wasn't a big source of jobs done by humans in the past.<p>Manufacturing industries where you could show a direct "1 robot replaced these 200 humans" causal relationship would (hypothetically) be the ones to be taxed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 31 Mar 2017 22:19:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008860</link><dc:creator>parennoob</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008860</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008860</guid></item></channel></rss>