Hacker News: unishark

New comment by unishark in "Captcha Patent Is an All-American Nightmare"

unishark — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 13:33:29 +0000

Switch to not using Captchas I'd say. Technology can already beat them a solid percentage of the time, so they're becoming just an obsolete tool for blocking obsolete attacks. With ten years left on the patents, amusingly.

New comment by unishark in "Swiss Ph.D student’s dismissal spotlights China’s influence"

unishark — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 07:47:08 +0000

There's information on his Swiss PhD program in the article. The Swiss University advised him to de-register so he could maintain years of eligibility or whatever, and the Swiss advisor continued to supervise him obviously. The University had told him that re-registering upon his return would be "no problem" with the support of the advisor. So he kind of got caught in a transitional stage where he has no options if a dispute with the advisor arises. Maybe it's not fair to criticize the University administration for this, but it's not accurate to simply describe him as unaffiliated and making up fake news or something.

As for the Canadian student, the quotes from the professor herself are what say the complaints came "from China". Perhaps she meant from the Chinese student in Canada, but if so that's her error, not the author's.

New comment by unishark in "Surveys show Americans want more walkable cities"

unishark — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 02:43:11 +0000

Well if businesses are clustered together for the convenience of drivers, it will also be especially easy to access for the people living close enough to walk. But the math may hold be that this cannot be so possible for everyone.

New comment by unishark in "Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship"

unishark — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 02:41:31 +0000

What if you live in another town and are paying for that fire department? Just kidding. But really if you live in a country which has a tax treaties with the US, you also can offset your taxes with taxes paid to a foreign country anyway, so even for high-earners nothing goes to the embassy. If you do use the embassy, you generally do pay them fees of course.

The embassy is for maintaining relations with foreign countries, not just passports and birth certificates (and pricey notary services). That seems like a sideshow. When it comes to services for the public, they appear to spend most of their time dealing with visa applicants, based on the crowds and lines I've seen. They also do offer assistance for missing persons abroad; if you have a relative that goes missing abroad the embassy will investigate. That seems nice of them. I assume other developed countries' embassies are basically the same though.

New comment by unishark in "Wealthy people are renouncing American citizenship"

unishark — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 18:02:59 +0000

Kept all what benefits? People who fled the US are now living under some other country's benefits, and pay taxes there instead.

Don't citizens of (almost) every other country in the world have the ability to go live abroad and keep all their benefits, whatever they are? I'm not following where Americans can actually get away with anything special.

New comment by unishark in "The STEM Crisis Is a Myth (2013)"

unishark — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 16:46:57 +0000

ABET accreditation (not as important in CS as engineering, but still very common) requires a CS program to teach software development and strong programming skills.

Training for professional roles (like engineering) is essentially vocational training. There is an industry need that drives the curriculum requirements.

New comment by unishark in "Sentenced by Algorithm"

unishark — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 05:10:41 +0000

Well if you enter as a legal visitor through a border checkpoint you give the govt the opportunity to do security checks, restrict import of various things, charge customs taxes. Plus they have an idea you are there. It makes sense that sidestepping some or all of that screening and record-keeping will be treated more harshly.

New comment by unishark in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

unishark — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 07:30:42 +0000

No relocation assistance means no guilt when you switch to another job in under a year. Or at least less, if you got a signing bonus too.

New comment by unishark in "Sentenced by Algorithm"

unishark — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 07:19:42 +0000

I thought the US was somewhat unusual in its lax treatment of illegal immigration. However lying to or sneaking past border officials to enter a country is literally a crime yes (certainly for foreign nationals, and probably not kosher for citizens to do either). Though entering on a visitor visa and overstaying is just a civil violation with a civil penalty (deportation). If a citizen had a record of using false identity documents or trying to evade legally-enforced border crossings, a fair algorithm would presumably have to take that into account just as well.

New comment by unishark in "Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era"

unishark — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 05:11:45 +0000

Society has moved beyond possibility/impossibility (i.e. behaviors prohibited by law and lack of opportunity) and we've moved on to decrying the emotional difficulty in doing things that are hard because they feel awkward or uncomfortable, like asserting one's self and asking for a raise.

New comment by unishark in "Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S."

unishark — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 03:47:02 +0000

It is confusing. There's also Family Dollar. I was a bit glad they combined them because I never remember which is which, but it probably does hurt their generalizations.

Also, in my experience when you can find the same items as the grocery, the Dollar store will be cheaper. They somewhat fit the description of a convenience store, but in terms of prices they are at the opposite end of the market with Walmart and Target.

New comment by unishark in "The rise of never-ending job interviews"

unishark — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 12:14:35 +0000

I think people can still find it off-putting that after all the evidence they provided you to get to that point, you're challenging them to prove they aren't complete frauds. Like you could has spent 30 seconds googling them and verify they are legit, but it seems you didn't even bother to read their resume. Not saying it's the case, but rather that not everyone is aware of how good the frauds can be at presenting themselves and bullshitting through interviews.

New comment by unishark in "The rise of never-ending job interviews"

unishark — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 10:40:49 +0000

Well there might be a defense of that one.

"Data-oriented programming" (to distinguish from object-oriented) is largely C-style C++ that is written for performance rather than reusablility/abstractness/whatever. In the embedded programming world where performance is paramount, a lot of people have low opinions of many C++ features. One could also never completely trust compilers to implement everything correctly.

New comment by unishark in "The Day the Good Internet Died"

unishark — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 09:41:37 +0000

While we're dreaming, the ultimate solution is an artificially intelligent agent that stands between you and the internet and can be instructed to pick out what you like and show it to you. It would ideally serve a variety of different types of users.

The current system basically amounts to loading code from remote servers and running it on your device in a leaky little sandbox, so it's a natural next layer of protection.

New comment by unishark in "Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years"

unishark — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:38:12 +0000

I think you're taking for granted all the benefits to society provided by those profit-seeking public companies. The baseline is all of us starving to death with no possessions or food except what we can grow ourselves or scrounge, not the local supermarket/retail/etc. stores always being there to provide for our needs efficiently.

New comment by unishark in "Blizzard's reputation collapsed in just three years"

unishark — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 07:28:54 +0000

This is basically the innovator's dilemma.

A large market position (not really anything related to monopoly power per se) leads companies to be very risk-averse since they can always make better gains in the short-term by incremental improvements rather than radical changes. Right up until someone disrupts the market and crushes them.

New comment by unishark in "Jeff Bezos loses attempt to block the Moon-landing contract NASA gave to SpaceX"

unishark — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 05:50:15 +0000

Sure compared to those same scientists and engineers doing subsistence farming or something as an alternative. But compared to working elsewhere in society as scientists and engineers it's not so obvious what an alternative world would look like. There's always a hidden cost.

New comment by unishark in "The Pleasures of Tsundoku: How I learned to stop worrying and love book piles"

unishark — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 05:19:53 +0000

There's still the guilt when you have to tell the movers that this big stack of boxes is filled with heavy books.

I get rid of any book that can be found used for under a couple bucks or so used online, unless I am actively reading it or need it for something. I can always get it again later when I feel like reading it, just bookmark a link to the place it's sold.

New comment by unishark in "Fencers Refused to Fight. Then Came the Rule That Changed the Sport"

unishark — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 15:11:27 +0000

I don't know that the lack of this particular feature is contrived to make matches more entertaining for the fans.

New comment by unishark in "Fencers Refused to Fight. Then Came the Rule That Changed the Sport"

unishark — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 14:13:45 +0000

I don't know, it's a sport that's supposed to test athletes against each other in certain skill sets. Finding ways to win with less exertion and less athletic (i.e., less risky) moves is sort of hacking the game and losing the point. If a guy came at you with a sword in real life (not sure how often this happens but still), you can't necessarily count on being able to get them to agree to rest for a round.