Hacker News: ttesttom

New comment by ttesttom in "Monitoring my home's air quality with AirGradient's DIY sensor"

ttesttom — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:59:12 +0000

Did you buy an AirGradient monitor or any brand you recommend that is not DIY?

New comment by ttesttom in "Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your stable brain"

ttesttom — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 01:23:04 +0000

Thanks! Yeah, I definitely think immersion listening can really help and I've used it a bit (subs2srs and audio books), but sometimes it can be used as a crutch to avoid speaking. Your app looks really cool and love that you incorporated SRS. Anecdotally, the hardest thing I've seen with my SO and I is that we end up switching back to english as we aren't disciplined when practicing together (even when in the other country itself lol)

New comment by ttesttom in "Struggling to learn a new language? Blame it on your stable brain"

ttesttom — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 21:53:48 +0000

I would kindly disagree and say that it's better to learn the pronunciation rules and practice producing them. There is a lot of research around learning that production and testing are better for learning (and also why is easier to understand than speak). Specifically, to train pronunciation, the anki decks from the author of the book Fluent Forever are incredible.

Source: Learned a romance language for my SO and everyone I've met in the native country tells me I have a very natural accent and clean pronunciation.

https://fluent-forever.com/product/fluent-forever-pronunciat...

New comment by ttesttom in "How to Remember What You Read"

ttesttom — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 20:50:41 +0000

Out of curiosity, do you mean words that are technical or specific to a field? Or more general words such as 'didactic'?

New comment by ttesttom in "Watches from the Soviet Union"

ttesttom — Sat, 15 May 2021 18:51:16 +0000

Awesome, this is very helpful! I know where i will be spending the next few hours : ) Very much appreciated!

New comment by ttesttom in "Watches from the Soviet Union"

ttesttom — Sat, 15 May 2021 18:14:54 +0000

Any recommendations for where to purchase these vintage watches? I've always thought they were beautiful but never sure where to find legitimate sellers (despite googling a bit)

New comment by ttesttom in "FDA authorizes Pfizer vaccine for kids age 12 to 15"

ttesttom — Mon, 10 May 2021 23:28:50 +0000

Pre-print for that paper was published 7 months ago and the sample collection date was from April-May 2020. Obviously there have been huge spikes in cases across the world since May 2020 with majority of infections occurring after that timeframe.

> Sample collection date Apr–May 2020

New comment by ttesttom in "FDA authorizes Pfizer vaccine for kids age 12 to 15"

ttesttom — Mon, 10 May 2021 23:18:27 +0000

I think commenter is referring to Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) that specifically impacts children.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/...

New comment by ttesttom in "US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine"

ttesttom — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 21:40:37 +0000

The phase 3 trial for JnJ/Janseen had only ~44k participants whereas here we are talking on the order of ~1 per million (that are reported as of today)

New comment by ttesttom in "Pfizer 91% effective in updated data, protective against South African variant"

ttesttom — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 20:59:55 +0000

There have been a bunch of studies that have come out, with a range of quality in case selection methodology eg. biased sampling, so its still early days. I've seen estimates ranging from 2% - 33% for effects up to 7 months after infection for mild-moderate symptomatic cases. But generally, it seems quite a serious issue.

This is a good review on whats out there: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01283-z

New comment by ttesttom in "EU agency says AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe and effective'"

ttesttom — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 18:55:24 +0000

In the EMA statement from today they said:

> there is no evidence of a problem related to specific batches of the vaccine or to particular manufacturing sites;

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/covid-19-vaccine-astrazene...

New comment by ttesttom in "EU agency says AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe and effective'"

ttesttom — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 17:22:16 +0000

I think this article is a bit more nuanced based on what they are seeing on the ground. Derek brings up good points about background rates, but papers over some things. It's a complex picture and the below article paints it well.

Also scientists in Norway claim they found the mechanism that causes it.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-pi...

https://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/i/KyGv2G/professor-says-...

New comment by ttesttom in "Airbnb will build a new tech hub in Atlanta"

ttesttom — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 03:02:00 +0000

Lots of different problems that are complex! For example:

+ Text internationalization system

+ Payment processing

+ User auth

+ User verification

+ A/B testing system

+ User metrics collection from UI

+ offline storage of said metrics

+ data pipelines to process stored offline storage

+ iOS app

+ android app

+ Image storage and caching infra

+ fraud detection

+ search ranking and indexing

https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/airbnb-engineering-inf...

New comment by ttesttom in "Airbnb will build a new tech hub in Atlanta"

ttesttom — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 02:44:21 +0000

How is a company that is an entirely online marketplace with no physical property not a 'tech company'?

New comment by ttesttom in "Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump"

ttesttom — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 20:54:54 +0000

How is it a logical fallacy to check the opinions of both political parties? The parent asked:

> "Am I in a media bubble?"

Usually helps to check what both sides of the partisan isle are saying to avoid a bubble.

New comment by ttesttom in "Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump"

ttesttom — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 18:17:35 +0000

Well that is the cleverness of most trump statements, toe the line, give a nod to your side, but also retain deniability. If you don't start interpreting, you get into a trap in which you will be outfoxed by anyone who can toe lines enough to not blatantly incriminate themselves.

As for BLM, personally I was never very sympathetic to the portions of protests/riots that caused violence.

New comment by ttesttom in "Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump"

ttesttom — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 17:26:15 +0000

Maybe check what the Republicans are saying, for example Bill Barr said:

>“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable. The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”

https://twitter.com/GingerGibson/status/1347213610406313986?...

New comment by ttesttom in "Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump"

ttesttom — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 17:24:30 +0000

Even Bill Barr, Trumps former AG, said Trump incited a mob.

>“Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable. The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”

https://twitter.com/GingerGibson/status/1347213610406313986?...

New comment by ttesttom in "Facebook Indefinitely Suspends Trump"

ttesttom — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 17:14:50 +0000

I think the point is that after his supporters broke the law and stormed the capitol, interrupting a constitutionally mandated process for the peaceful transfer of power, he told them:

> "Remember this day forever!"

Thus approving of the actions that already occurred and telling them that the crimes that they committed would be justified by history looking back at what they have done. It in no way deescalates the risk of future conflicts.

New comment by ttesttom in "New York Times retracts core of podcast series ‘Caliphate’"

ttesttom — Sat, 19 Dec 2020 19:43:00 +0000

I think we do have those organizations with trust.

If you want facts only news, go to apnews or reuters. They are the mastheads of impartiality, or at least as much as possible with humans.

However, the NYT is what I consider as investigative journalism that includes informed speculation. A lot of stories that otherwise never would have seen the light of day were broken by the NYT, however at the time of publishing there was a degree of uncertainty given the nature of the story. The uncertainty means they could be wrong, even if the odds are high at 90% correct. However, I would argue both are valuable, just understand which you are reading.