Hacker News: ridethebike

New comment by ridethebike in "California law forces Netflix, Hulu to turn down ad volumes"

ridethebike — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 12:02:28 +0000

you can be very much liable if you publish something damaging and false on YouTube

New comment by ridethebike in "Ask HN: What Will War Between Russia and Ukraine Mean for the World?"

ridethebike — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:57:37 +0000

> After WWII Ukraine made a verbal agreement not to join NATO/EU

Thanks for reminding why I try to stay away from [geo]politics/military opinions on hacker news.

New comment by ridethebike in "I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now"

ridethebike — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 04:25:22 +0000

I personally can't speak to SV tech company. However I worked in msft and difference is staggering, it's two completely different universes.

>> ([..] most businesses these days) are driven by tech and would fall apart without it

Yup. It's like, is Coca-cola a "tech company with soda department"? Pretty sure they have programmers and some non-trivial IT infra as well.

New comment by ridethebike in "I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now"

ridethebike — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 12:59:32 +0000

Worked in several banks. "We are not bank, we are tech company with bank department" - was mentioned occasionally in each of them. What was also common - red tape, outdated software (tools, libraries, frameworks), restricted access to workstation, processes focused around pushing approvals around (instead of automation). That's why my response to "we are not a bank" sentiment above is "it's a bank, alright".

New comment by ridethebike in "Burn My Windows"

ridethebike — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 22:33:10 +0000

So much this.

Things I need my OS to do are: run my apps (office/browser/games), connect my devices (printers/game controllers/displays), basic file operations (copy/paste/delete)

And while doing this be: secure, reliable, out of my way.

All these adding people/chat/weather widgets "innovations" (looking at you, msft) make me throw my hand up in the air and ask "why", I wish they would spend that time and energy on security and reliability instead.

New comment by ridethebike in "Burn My Windows"

ridethebike — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 17:11:40 +0000

I remember when Compiz was released. It was mind-blowing, its sheer awesomeness was something out of this world. "ok, Windows is done" me and my friends thought, "prepare for linux dominating the desktops".

Yet ~15 years later here we are.

New comment by ridethebike in "Web3 is centralized"

ridethebike — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 08:26:49 +0000

not sure how web3 would solve any of that

New comment by ridethebike in "GCC: The customer has nuclear weapons. They do not do “bounty”"

ridethebike — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 19:33:09 +0000

In practice it's also very likely that customer mind boggling amount of bureaucracy, allocating extra penny might require approval from several committees.

New comment by ridethebike in "Steps Towards Happiness (2015)"

ridethebike — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 18:20:57 +0000

As a person who grew up in farmer's family (and who's parents are still farmers) I can attest that that kind of life is way tougher than being office worker in a city .

New comment by ridethebike in "Waymo will start testing self-driving cars in New York City"

ridethebike — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:06:26 +0000

Yeah, approximately 10 minutes for me to pass driving test (from second attempt). And then around a year of driving (effectively training myself) in city to get more or less comfortable with traffic.

New comment by ridethebike in "It takes a PhD to develop that"

ridethebike — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 20:50:09 +0000

Can't recall when it was the last time I played game with no internationalization support

New comment by ridethebike in "Asynchronous Programming in C#"

ridethebike — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 19:35:25 +0000

Async/await were officially added to c# 5 and .net framework 4.5

I think it was possible to have async/await in .net framework 4.0 via some workarounds when it was still in CTP mode but I don't recall the details.

New comment by ridethebike in "El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so"

ridethebike — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 06:23:55 +0000

Ok, good points

New comment by ridethebike in "20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?"

ridethebike — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 02:39:11 +0000

Compared to lives lost $100 is not expensive at all.

But sure, let's forget about morals for a second (lives lost and all that) and be very cold and cynical about the pricing. Still - reputational damage, political outcry, people suing the company/government for "failing to do even basic security checks like belts and shoes" - $100 million is nothing.

New comment by ridethebike in "20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?"

ridethebike — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 15:24:43 +0000

Planes are not that expensive

New comment by ridethebike in "El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so"

ridethebike — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 16:56:23 +0000

This probably eliminates this whole "bitcoin is privacy and independence from government" thing but I think for majority of bitcoin buyers it was not more than just a nice talking point anyway.

New comment by ridethebike in "The End of Social Media"

ridethebike — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 19:09:43 +0000

Nothing bad with creating fun stuff for profit.

And over the last decade youtube creators has been providing content with quality way superior compared to what more traditional entertainment industry has been producing (mainly marvel junk food, low effort remakes and SNL)

New comment by ridethebike in "U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, new Gallup report finds"

ridethebike — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 19:03:43 +0000

Hi, Hope you're doing well.

Wanna grab a drink?

New comment by ridethebike in "Most hospitals aren't complying with price transparency rule"

ridethebike — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 16:37:11 +0000

oh yeah, IRS, they still owe me $3k. Thanks for the reminder :)

New comment by ridethebike in "Most hospitals aren't complying with price transparency rule"

ridethebike — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 15:41:20 +0000

I went to hospital and they assured me my procedure was covered by insurance and I wouldn't need to worry about that and in worst case scenario insurance would contact me. Couple of days later this hospital sent me $400 bill. It took me several phone calls to get them to acknowledge that they sent it by mistake.

Exactly same situation happened year later but with ~$800 bill.

Although doctors and medical staff themselves are ok, the US healthcare system as a whole is some incompetent clown mafia.