Hacker News: seangrant

New comment by seangrant in "Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut"

seangrant — Fri, 07 Jun 2019 19:30:04 +0000

This is something I've wondered... Do all Facebook/Google employees drink the Kool aid? Are there no privacy proponents?

New comment by seangrant in "Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users"

seangrant — Thu, 30 May 2019 01:59:43 +0000

Rule-based ad blocking limited to 30k, as stated in the article. That's why people are upset.

New comment by seangrant in "Where the Educated Millennials Congregate"

seangrant — Wed, 22 May 2019 21:40:21 +0000

Extreme moderation that makes conversation as boring as possible. That's how subreddits like /r/science stay sane.

New comment by seangrant in "Build your own IoT/MQTT node for less than $2"

seangrant — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 01:26:58 +0000

Because cost is prohibitive.

New comment by seangrant in "Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview"

seangrant — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 08:41:33 +0000

How would it look if someone else got the patent and completely blocked Google? It's not even a question for large companies. The issue is this archaic patent and copyright system where someone "owns" an idea... Absurd.

New comment by seangrant in "Scammers are changing the contact details for banks on Google Maps"

seangrant — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 06:41:58 +0000

Never underestimate the power of fake internet points.

New comment by seangrant in "Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone"

seangrant — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 07:53:54 +0000

Not in America

New comment by seangrant in "A year later, Equifax has faced little fallout from losing data"

seangrant — Sat, 08 Sep 2018 16:32:37 +0000

It upsets me a lot how these financial institutions have complete power over us. God forbid a bank writes a loan to a scammer in your name, cause to them it's your fault. Absurd!

New comment by seangrant in "Man dies on Mount Everest during cryptocurrency promotional stunt"

seangrant — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 22:58:29 +0000

A consenting adult pays another consenting adult with more experience to do a life threatening task together. One dies. How is this not okay? What are you expecting? For people to never climb Mt Everest again?

New comment by seangrant in "Dealership Makes Woman Sitting Right in Front of Them Confirm She's Not a Robot"

seangrant — Fri, 25 May 2018 19:48:08 +0000

The point of the crystal clear rules is to reduce how much the human operator needs to think about what they're doing. Should you teach your workers every legal nuance they need to sell a car (and hope they follow them), or do you setup clearly defined rules that can be easily followed and repeated?

New comment by seangrant in "Snapchat’s decline and the secret joy of internet ghost towns"

seangrant — Fri, 18 May 2018 19:09:10 +0000

Snapchat is not a "dick pic network" and if you've read the article maybe you could understand how someone can have a personal connection to a website, it's users, and the culture around it.

New comment by seangrant in "Starbucks to Close All U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Education"

seangrant — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 01:09:26 +0000

Why would they shut down all their locations at once, losing hundreds of thousands in income, if not for the media and social attention it would receive?

Simply put, why close business when these trainings can be done staggered or off store hours? That's my line of thinking.

New comment by seangrant in "Starbucks to Close All U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Education"

seangrant — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 23:15:13 +0000

The fact that they're doing it all on one day at the same time implies it's mostly about the PR

New comment by seangrant in "Why is everyone so busy? (2014)"

seangrant — Sat, 07 Apr 2018 17:50:35 +0000

Sounds like your life has been gracious to give you many different experiences. I think the distaste is mostly from people who've worked their lives in an office job. Yeah it's cake, but are you gonna do it for 40 years and die happy?

New comment by seangrant in "Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone's Mic"

seangrant — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 22:17:42 +0000

The fear comes from exactly that. People aren't worried about targeted advertising. People are worried that swathes of their data isn't "theirs" anymore and can suddenly be used maliciously. Sure maybe not by Facebook. But Facebook's customers? The customers to those customers?

New comment by seangrant in "Ad campaign runs cryptocurrency miners while unwitting users watch videos"

seangrant — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 21:17:53 +0000

Wait, what?? I can inject my own Javascript into Google ads? How is this done?

New comment by seangrant in "Inside Amazon Go"

seangrant — Sun, 21 Jan 2018 20:39:34 +0000

Seattle area here. All my life I remember waiting in lines 10-20 minutes if you go to a store on a busy day (fri/sat/sun). It's just simple math sometimes where there's so many people with $400+ carts trying to check out and cashiers can only scan so fast. Everyone with medium or small sized carts have to wait in this.

I've seen great strides in recent years to advance self checkout technology and its user flow. Walmart is my favorite example of this, my local one having almost half of the area devoted to self checkout. It seems to have been successful for them so far. I don't see anyone having a hard time operate them and perhaps more surprising, it's filled me with the idea that I can pop in and out of a big store on a busy day to just buy 1 item.

New comment by seangrant in "Chat app for use when your battery is less than 5%"

seangrant — Sat, 20 Jan 2018 02:02:32 +0000

Costs $1 when the same can be accomplished with a native web app. Seems like a quick cash grab rather than "art" or anything.

New comment by seangrant in "Ask HN: Extremely easy steps towards extra security/privacy?"

seangrant — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 06:27:44 +0000

if you have an extra raspberry pi laying around you can install an ad blocker for your entire network with pi-hole.

New comment by seangrant in "The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed"

seangrant — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 04:48:49 +0000

I'm an Instagram user that genuinely enjoys clicking on a lot of ads - to buy dumb cheap stuff. Pins, clothing, general apparel gets sent to me and it's exceedingly obvious when the quality of the ads start to degrade and soon enough my feed is full of new no-name companies. They front like an established brand having only 4 products all with the same design, all with ridiculous markups.

I would love vetted ads with established companies. I really understood the longing for walking through a mall. No tricks, just here's a cool thing of mine (a serious business) please buy it.