Hacker News: satellites

New comment by satellites in "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For"

satellites — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 16:18:03 +0000

Bandcamp rules. I do still subscribe to Apple Music for cheap streaming, but for albums I really like, I'll spend the $8 on bandcamp for the high quality album download. Better support for the artist, and protection against license-pulling BS like this.

New comment by satellites in "Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)"

satellites — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 15:43:41 +0000

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.”

“By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here.

This article follows most tropes of behavioral science blog articles: broad moral statements taking a vaguely contrarian stance, analogies comparing humans to random animals (gazelles?), and “gotcha” survey data with questionable sample sizes. I find it difficult to take it seriously.

New comment by satellites in "53% of parents say climate change affects their decision to have more kids"

satellites — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 16:47:50 +0000

You’re making a huge false equivalence. We’re talking about anthropogenic climate change specifically. Implying that it is the same as ancient weather patterns from before the Industrial Revolution is comically dishonest.

New comment by satellites in "Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts"

satellites — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 22:55:27 +0000

1. Replace the protesting mods with new ones who don’t care about 3rd party apps

2. Continue making Reddit more addictive and user-hostile, attracting casual browsers and alienating super users (who they don’t care about anyway)

3. Cash checks from advertisers and VCs who like the new strategy

4. IPO

5. Eventually lose relevance and get replaced by the next fledgling community forum site before that, too, gets hollowed out by VC money

New comment by satellites in "Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews"

satellites — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 16:47:31 +0000

I fell for this once when I was a newer developer. I bought a book on my Kindle about Ruby on Rails, thinking it might be more insightful or accessible than the Rails docs. But every chapter was literally just copy/pasted from the Rails docs (which are free).

New comment by satellites in "Southwest Airlines halts flight departures amid technology issue"

satellites — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 17:02:02 +0000

The more vague and hand-wavy it sounds, the better it is for corporate PR statements.

New comment by satellites in "Spanish climber emerges after 500 days in cave"

satellites — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:36:33 +0000

The trouble with arbitrary societal consensus is that it’s arbitrary. And not necessarily any wiser than an individual’s personal desires.

These monks aren’t impulsively killing themselves, they seem to be towards the end of their lives anyway and are choosing how they want to go out. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. I might prefer to be in hospice hopped up on drugs when I pass, but I won’t claim to be morally superior for it.

New comment by satellites in "In 2017, developers competed for who could create worst volume control interface"

satellites — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 22:14:36 +0000

Gotta get those engagement metrics. Also it actually is nice having them all in a row in a tweet thread.

New comment by satellites in "Senate Bill to Ban TikTok"

satellites — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 21:01:22 +0000

I think we can safely say that social media hurts mental health worldwide, and school shootings are also really bad for people. It’s almost like they’re separate issues and we don’t have to pick one or the other to deal with. Does that sound reasonable?

New comment by satellites in "Senate Bill to Ban TikTok"

satellites — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 20:43:41 +0000

The person you’re replying to said that the possibility of being shot at school is psychologically taxing. This would apply to all students at all schools, not just ones where a shooting literally happened. It is relevant because of how frequent school shootings are now, compared to say, 30 years ago. Columbine shook the country when it happened, now we’re at a couple Columbine-style incidents per year. You can say “well that’s still a low overall percentage of students who get shot” and be technically correct while ignoring the gravity of the situation and the fact that other first world countries don’t have this problem.

The fact that school shootings have been so normalized that we’re sitting here and discussing the math around whether they’re worse than social media is… so profoundly sad it’s hard to describe.

New comment by satellites in "Senate Bill to Ban TikTok"

satellites — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 20:33:07 +0000

Can you explain how TikTok (a Chinese “psyop”) is more harmful to the average citizen than Facebook or Instagram (a corporate American “psyop?”)

Can you explain how TikTok is more harmful to the average citizen than the constant mass shootings that happen in the U.S.?

Touch grass, indeed.

New comment by satellites in "Robots have been about to take all the jobs for 100 years"

satellites — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 23:00:38 +0000

How long have you been following politics and economics in a serious capacity?

> Being conscious intelligent creatures, humans ought to be able to learn from their mistakes and implement change accordingly.

We sure ought to, I agree with you there.

New comment by satellites in "Robots have been about to take all the jobs for 100 years"

satellites — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 21:17:47 +0000

Social Security in the U.S. is typically for retired people age ~65 or older. There are other social programs for low-income people, but they are abysmally insufficient for what we’re talking about. Usually disabled people are paid by “disability insurance” but you have to get a job first to even qualify for that. So that’s usually for injuries etc.

If you don’t live in the U.S. it’s hard to grasp just how hostile the political/economic system is towards the lower and middle classes. The idea of a UBI program to support people whose jobs get automated and lack the skills to work elsewhere is completely out of the question. A trip to the hospital can easily bankrupt the average American family ffs, but we can’t even fix that. There is zero political will to provide robust social programs here, despite any evidence that shows it might improve society.

Sorry for the rant. TL;DR if you look at the last few decades of politics in the U.S. you can see there is close to zero chance of the solutions you’re describing.

New comment by satellites in "Ask HN: Any solo game developers here?"

satellites — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 16:41:39 +0000

I’m sorry that happened to you but this seems like a bit of an overreaction.

New comment by satellites in "Salesforce Lays Off 8k While Paying Matthew McConaughey $10M/Yr to Sit Around"

satellites — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 17:04:50 +0000

Yes, I’m sure an actor adds more real value to a SaaS company than engineers do. Recognizable talking heads who read lines into a camera are famously hard to find.

New comment by satellites in "Google and Mozilla are working on iOS browsers that aren't based on WebKit"

satellites — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 05:22:23 +0000

Most people don’t give a shit about 3rd party app stores. I doubt 90% of iPhone users even know this is happening. (I say this as an iPhone user myself). So, I’m not sure negative PR is that much of a motivator.

New comment by satellites in "Amazon Closing AmazonSmile"

satellites — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 18:46:53 +0000

But that price and convenience is at the cost of quality and employee safety. And honestly not even worth it as a consumer even if you don’t care about the ethical issues. I’ve been severely disappointed with the quality of the average item on Amazon over the last few years, to the point that I have stopped using them completely. Even Walmart is better, which is saying a lot.

New comment by satellites in "‘Excuuuuse me, Princess ’: An oral history of The Legend of Zelda cartoon"

satellites — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 02:13:10 +0000

I think they were just mentioning some catchphrases that got stuck in their head at the time, not presenting a grand theory of everything based on cartoons.

New comment by satellites in "Woman ordered to repay $2k after her employer used software to track her time"

satellites — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 23:26:04 +0000

She admitted on video that she misrepresented work hours “by mistake.” That’s how they got her.

New comment by satellites in "Woman ordered to repay $2k after her employer used software to track her time"

satellites — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 23:23:17 +0000

I’m usually guilty of not reading the whole article, but this time I did.

She admitted on video that she misrepresented some working hours “by mistake.” That video was cited in the ruling.