Hacker News: smcmurtry

Beyond the Rabbit Hole: Conspiracism and the Quixotic Quest for "The Truth"

smcmurtry — Fri, 01 May 2026 15:00:57 +0000

Article URL: https://anessayeverymonth.substack.com/p/beyond-the-rabbit-hole

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975589

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by smcmurtry in "Show HN: A tool to convert Jupyter notebooks to beautiful blogs"

smcmurtry — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 21:37:48 +0000

The numbers track the order that the cells were executed in. So, strictly speaking, you need the numbers to be able to reproduce the output of the notebook's author. However, I think it's bad practice and pretty uncommon to publish a notebook where you need to execute the cells out of order. So most of the time the numbers aren't useful.

New comment by smcmurtry in "Red Flags in Software Developer Job Descriptions"

smcmurtry — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 05:27:48 +0000

The Government of Canada is.

New comment by smcmurtry in "How mapmakers help indigenous people defend their lands"

smcmurtry — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 16:45:11 +0000

A similar thing happened in the last place I lived, a small town in the Northwest Territories, Canada. The indigenous people in the area (called the Tlicho) were able to take over some of the governance of their land from the Canadian government, including mineral rights. It is a pretty significant amount of land too, about 100km x 200km. To make the case they had to map which land was included in their territory and demonstrate that their use of it goes back a long time. So they sent out their elders and professional map makers on canoe trips along their traditional hunting routes. The map makers collected gps data and associated it with stories from the elders and artifacts they found along the way, which built a compelling case for the land claim.

New comment by smcmurtry in "I Got Paid $0 from the Uber Security Bug Bounty"

smcmurtry — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 21:07:31 +0000

Genuinely curious about this - why would the price swings in this case be worse than with uber? With enough drivers, I would expect prices to reach an equilibrium that depends on time of day/day of week, with highly rated drivers charging more. And even if the price swings were larger than uber's, wouldn't the prices be more optimal since they would be set by individual actors with more local info about the cost of providing the service?

New comment by smcmurtry in "I Got Paid $0 from the Uber Security Bug Bounty"

smcmurtry — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 20:17:46 +0000

Good point - a subscription model would probably be better.

New comment by smcmurtry in "I Got Paid $0 from the Uber Security Bug Bounty"

smcmurtry — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 19:49:01 +0000

I've often thought it would be cool to build a fairer ride hailing app that gives drivers more autonomy. The driver buys the app as a one time purchase, they get to set their own prices, and there is more transparency between buyer and seller. There could be a simple bidding process where users request a ride, drivers make an offer, and the user accepts one based on price, how far away the driver is, and their reviews. Basically the app would be more light-weight and be more like a marketplace.

New comment by smcmurtry in "A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm"

smcmurtry — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:01:07 +0000

I disagree with your sentiment. Rural living and small-scale farming can be very inexpensive compared to city living, and easily supported by a remote tech worker salary or the part-time work clord mentions. Yes you need capital to get started, but this can be much less than buying a house in an urban area. I think the tech industry would be a much better place if more people chose to work remotely to improve their quality of life.

New comment by smcmurtry in "The Vanual – Guide to Living in a Van"

smcmurtry — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 18:31:20 +0000

Some van dwellers get a gym membership and use the facilities there. If it's a widespread chain then this can work for travelling to multiple cities.

New comment by smcmurtry in "High Arctic relocation"

smcmurtry — Sun, 12 Nov 2017 04:55:01 +0000

Well, that was how the government described it initially. More recently they've admitted wrongdoing and apologized. I think it's more likely they were trying to assert sovereignty in the high arctic using people they knew would stand a good chance of surviving there.

New comment by smcmurtry in "High Arctic relocation"

smcmurtry — Sun, 12 Nov 2017 03:00:55 +0000

Great article. In Canada a lot of people don't know about the injustices the government has inflicted on the Inuit and other indigenous people. It's all conveniently left out of the school history curriculum.

Can you make a 10-year malt whisky in weeks? The chemistry says yes

smcmurtry — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 01:37:30 +0000

Article URL: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-year-malt-whisky-weeks-chemistry.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659002

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

The Taxman's Axe

smcmurtry — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 23:06:10 +0000

Article URL: https://environment.probeinternational.org/chapter-10-taxmans-axe/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326995

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by smcmurtry in "Show HN: Light Flip – A cell inversion puzzle game"

smcmurtry — Wed, 10 May 2017 18:29:49 +0000

I haven't downloaded the app, so maybe this makes sense somehow, but the following text from the app description confused me:

Difficulty ratings:

- 2x2 board - Easy

- 3x3 board - Easy

- 4x4 board - Hard

- 5x5 board - Medium

- 6x6 board - Impossible

- 7x7 board - Hard

Shouldn't the difficulty rating increase with increasing board size?

New comment by smcmurtry in "A profound apology"

smcmurtry — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 03:28:21 +0000

>Kalanick: You know what?

>Kamel: What?

>Kalanick: Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else.

I think that is a very insulting and superior thing to say to someone.

New comment by smcmurtry in "Craig Newmark donates $500k to reduce harassment on Wikipedia"

smcmurtry — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 00:32:48 +0000

I actually had been contributing small edits for grammar anonymously for a while, and was interested in getting more involved in Wikipedia. My intention wasn't to promote my employer, I just thought it met the notability requirements.

New comment by smcmurtry in "Craig Newmark donates $500k to reduce harassment on Wikipedia"

smcmurtry — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 23:22:32 +0000

In 2012 I wrote my first Wikipedia article on the 50-person startup I was working for at the time. I didn't include anything overly self-promoting, just the basic facts and referenced some news articles. My article was immediately nominated for deletion and a number of community members accused me of being a "single purpose account", i.e. not interested in contributing, just advertising. Needless to say I did not go on to create/edit more articles after a welcome like that.

A couple of editors did come to my defence. I got the impression there was a lot of internal conflict about this sort of thing.

Edit to add the following: The article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecobee Deletion discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...

New comment by smcmurtry in "Jack Ma's theory of how America went wrong over the past 30 years"

smcmurtry — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 07:31:10 +0000

Those are certainly examples of countries that have gone backwards in income and life expectancy over some of the recent years. However, the vast majority of countries have seen huge increases in average income and life expectancy over the last 100 years, 50 years, etc.

Source: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#_chart-type=bubbles

Air Canada software outage briefly halts computerized check-ins

smcmurtry — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 02:06:26 +0000

Article URL: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-outage-1.3939216

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13423418

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by smcmurtry in "President Obama's International Visits from 2009 to 2016"

smcmurtry — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 08:13:00 +0000

Right, thanks! My US geography is a little rusty.