Hacker News: sage_joch

New comment by sage_joch in "Youtube-dl"

sage_joch — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 17:54:10 +0000

It seems like this functionality should be part of YouTube itself, at least as an option settable by the uploader.

New comment by sage_joch in "A New Approach to Aid: How a Basic Income Program Saved a Namibian Village"

sage_joch — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 01:12:31 +0000

If philanthropy became a bigger part of our culture, I believe we could achieve something similar to basic income. Of course, that starts with individuals getting in the habit of giving and encouraging others to do the same. A couple things I have found:

1) The starfish parable ("it made a difference to that one") is the right mindset. It can be daunting when you consider how much is needed compared to how comparatively little is in your bank account. Instead visualize at what was made possible by your donation.

2) As a general rule, I think it makes more sense to give habitually over the course of a career than it does to wait until the end of your career. This probably applies more to stable jobs than startups, though.

Ask HN: is this idea interesting or obvious?

sage_joch — Thu, 21 Aug 2014 05:50:16 +0000

Article URL: http://www.reddit.com/r/Posterity/comments/2e5mwl/skynet_public_domain/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8206072

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by sage_joch in "CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’"

sage_joch — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 04:16:15 +0000

I have been on Reddit for eight years, and only came out with my name today. People should be encouraged to use aliases for any number of reasons. To name a few:

  * You should be able to express an idea without that idea being attached to a known identity (partly because people may judge the idea based on the known identity)
  * You should be allowed to "start over" (heck, I might want to start over soon)
  * In the face of an Orwellian government or an unaccepting society, you should be able to safely express your true opinions

New comment by sage_joch in "The Developer's Dystopian Future"

sage_joch — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:49:17 +0000

"Choose what not to learn (while being outwardly supportive of endless learning)."

So that's why I didn't hear back from the (initially enthusiastic) Google recruiter.

(edit): I re-read the email thread and I think I was being unfair in the previous iteration of this comment. "See randomness" and all that.

New comment by sage_joch in "First they came for the Whistleblowers, and I did not speak out"

sage_joch — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 01:20:25 +0000

The Snowden documents revealed that Germans visiting the Tor project website would be subject to permanent NSA surveillance. Does that make you more or less likely to click the link below? If the answer is "less likely", how does it feel to be intimidated out of your free expression?

https://www.torproject.org/

New comment by sage_joch in "U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement (2013)"

sage_joch — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 03:31:11 +0000

It's also not reasonable for the public to be excluded from the conversation of how that data is handled.

New comment by sage_joch in "Eigenmorality"

sage_joch — Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:50:25 +0000

I don't think "tyranny of the majority" applies here. The proposed system makes minority opinions more visible, if anything. There would even be an incentive to have a minority opinion, if you truly believed the majority was incorrect about something. In response to your last point: that sounds like an interesting modification: letting every bot see every other bot's (possibly evolving) code. But perhaps to avoid Skynet, bots should use the other bots' published APIs (which could opt to include a "getCode" method), and judge each other by their actions.

New comment by sage_joch in "Eigenmorality"

sage_joch — Sat, 21 Jun 2014 22:26:08 +0000

He is exploring how the Internet might be used to save civilization. What constitutes an "important idea" in your book?

Copyright status of The Wizard of Oz and related works in the United States

sage_joch — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 17:59:56 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_The_Wizard_of_Oz_and_related_works_in_the_United_States

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7859406

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

We need net neutrality because companies are not subject to the 1st Amendment

sage_joch — Sat, 10 May 2014 04:54:10 +0000

Part of this realization came to me because of an xkcd comic I read recently. Last year there were many revealed instances of the government violating the 4th Amendment through the forced cooperation of various tech companies. I don't believe it's a huge leap to assume they could do the same to the 1st Amendment if there were ever a caste system for Internet data.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7724539

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by sage_joch in "A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt"

sage_joch — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:54:53 +0000

Reddit actually brands itself as a "platform for online communities". Given the nature of subreddits, this does not seem like an unfair characterization.

New comment by sage_joch in "A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt"

sage_joch — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:28:27 +0000

There are a lot of good use cases for throwaways (suppose a former cult member wanted to share their experiences, for example). And the fact that an account is brand new is also a data point. You'll notice that Reddit/HN have produced a lot of insightful/informative comments from throwaways.

New comment by sage_joch in "A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt"

sage_joch — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:22:22 +0000

This made me realize: Reddit/HN wouldn't be nearly as valuable without usernames. They allow you to scan someone's posts to see if they have a history of being mean, intellectually dishonest, etc.

Claim: the comment thread is as fundamental a form of expression as the essay

sage_joch — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 05:41:30 +0000

Reasoning: an essay is a path/list of ideas, whereas a comment thread is a "manypath"/directed-graph of ideas. So the claim can be reduced to "'graph' is as fundamental a data structure as 'list'", which is uncontroversial.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7632340

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by sage_joch in "The Government is Silencing Twitter and Yahoo, and It Won't Tell Us Why"

sage_joch — Sat, 19 Apr 2014 17:19:27 +0000

If Twitter and Yahoo really wanted to disclose this information, there is nothing the government could do to stop them. Civil disobedience is one of the most important tools we have against Orwellian governments. And doing the right thing is infinitely more important than following authoritarian orders.

New comment by sage_joch in "A dose of perspective"

sage_joch — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 21:28:59 +0000

This post does a great job of showing a simple truth that many people forget: when you genuinely help a person, you are also helping everyone in that person's "sphere". There is a kind of exponential echoing effect when you are good-to.

New comment by sage_joch in "Ask HN: Idea Sunday"

sage_joch — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 00:14:55 +0000

A service that facilitates company matching of employee donations to non-political charities. Ideally, the service should make it as effortless as possible for all participants: employee, company, charity. This could be generalized into a kind of philanthropic social network.

Show HN: an extremely simple program shows a 2D structure in the integers

sage_joch — Mon, 24 Mar 2014 04:42:09 +0000

This seems unlikely to be a "new" idea, but I stumbled into it by accident and thought it was cool. Java source code below:

  // This class is in the public domain.
  public class Numbers
  {
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
      int numRows = 256;
      int numColumns = 128;
      for (int row = 0; row < numRows; row++)
      { 
        StringBuilder rowOutput = new StringBuilder();
        for (int column = 0; column < numColumns; column++)
        {
          if ((row & column) != 0)
            rowOutput.append("1");
          else
            rowOutput.append("0");
        }
        System.out.println(
          String.format("row/col %s:\t%s", row, rowOutput.toString()));
      }
    }
  }

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7456751

Points: 24

# Comments: 13

New comment by sage_joch in "Russia Blocks Access to Major Independent News Sites"

sage_joch — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 06:33:27 +0000

Edward Snowden is not currently in a country with press freedoms, and people have to pick their battles. Snowden has already picked some pretty huge battles. Besides, if you've been paying the slightest amount of attention you already know his feelings on Internet freedom.