Hacker News: vegannet

New comment by vegannet in "How Antidepressants Work, at Last?"

vegannet — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 21:29:41 +0000

I’ve always understood the chemical imbalance description of depression (and other mental health conditions) to be a casual way of describing the conditions as being part of the person rather than a choice — and not a way to describe the internal mechanics of the conditions. I’ve found it effective when having conversations about mental health conditions: how would you describe depression without using that phrase, based on what this paper reveals?

New comment by vegannet in "Can’t Find an N95 Mask? This Company Has 30M That It Can’t Sell"

vegannet — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 15:48:11 +0000

> you gotta do some guerrilla marketing

Like getting a piece in the nytimes?

> Or start selling direct to consumer using marketplaces like Amazon.

Per the article, most consumer destinations ban any mask advertising because of scalping.

New comment by vegannet in "Fueling Reddit’s Future"

vegannet — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 01:57:55 +0000

Does anyone have a take on where Reddit might be, say, 5 years from now? A view on the path to profitability? The obvious outcome for an unprofitable Reddit is an acquisition by a big media company but I’m curious if anyone has a contrary view on how it can become profitable and what sort of shifts it’ll need to make.

New comment by vegannet in "Launch HN: Infracost (YC W21) – open-source cloud cost estimator"

vegannet — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 16:18:25 +0000

I love the idea but one of the challenges I’ve found at quite a few companies is a difficulty across the organisation in understanding the true cost of infrastructure: I’ve experienced situations in which putting the $ upfront causes people to focus on the $ amount.

Do you have a guide for how this information should be used most effectively? I’m thinking of co-workers who would request a change that reduces the monthly cost by $10 but the time it takes to go through the code review and make the change and test it... by that point any $ cost saving has been spent on the time it spent in code review.

My instinct is that perhaps rather than reporting the $ or % change, instead projects could have alarms / limits on cost increases, but I’m not so sure if that is really tackling the problem.

New comment by vegannet in "Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”"

vegannet — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 03:26:47 +0000

I’ll take that bet. How much? I’m not anti-Tesla but I do see Tesla as a brand more than a technology company: good for business but not good good for breaking new ground with technology — I’d put a lot against Tesla on that bet (I don’t think it matters for the business much though).

New comment by vegannet in "Another scam paper published in a “scientific” journal"

vegannet — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 17:04:27 +0000

As a lay-person who reads scientific papers sometimes because they’re referenced on HN, how do I validate the credibility of a journal? Does a directory of journals exist with scoring, or is there a strategy I can use when evaluating a paper or journal to determine credibility?

New comment by vegannet in "Bumble S-1"

vegannet — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:21:39 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly that Bumble is the dating app for relationships — and it’s the app I recommend! — but from a financials perspective: casual dating is much more profitable, Bumble will always be far behind Tinder on revenue — so as much as I love Bumble, I’d question the room for revenue growth it has vs. tinder.

New comment by vegannet in "No-code platform Webflow (YC) raises $140M at a $2.1B valuation"

vegannet — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 18:00:21 +0000

I’ve used Webflow directly and seen it used within companies: although not perfect, my assessment is that they’ve bridged the gap between WYSIWYG and website builder. They’ve got room for improvement but they’re definitely on the right path, I’d bet on Webflow — if you look to how Wordpress is used in most companies, Webflow is all the good parts.

New comment by vegannet in "Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support"

vegannet — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 23:51:00 +0000

They literally erected gallows on the grounds of the capitol, they literally marched through the building chanting "hang Mike Pence". The entire basis of the Q Anon conspiracy is that Donald Trump is preparing to destroy the deep state and retain power. Spend more than a few minutes browsing around Gab (you can just look at the top posts) and you'll see explicit references to overthrowing the government.

You can absolutely argue that this was a laughable attempt to install an illegitimate government and you can absolutely argue that they have no chance of succeeding, but you can't argue it isn't the intent -- it's the entire basis of the Q Anon conspiracy. The laughable nature of their attempt doesn't disprove the intent.

New comment by vegannet in "Tether price manipulation"

vegannet — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 13:11:51 +0000

You can’t redeem Tether — that’s a core part of the fraud, they have “banking issues” and had them for years. You can sell it on an exchange but the Tether organisation have prevented any redemption of USD from USDT for years. Anybody turning USDT into USD is selling their USDT.

New comment by vegannet in "GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran"

vegannet — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 14:19:04 +0000

I can’t speak for Microsoft but certainly at Amazon there was a very strict policy about working from specific US locales for tax liability reasons: it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn Microsoft employees are quite explicitly banned from ever taking equipment into places like Iran. Would they ban themselves if it did happen? No, but also it should never happen vs. this case where they have an employee working from Iran.

New comment by vegannet in "Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine approved for use in UK"

vegannet — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 18:23:52 +0000

That’s a shame, back in November AZ said:

“Where we stand today is we have four million doses available right now and we've got enough active that we think we will be able to make a further 15 million available to the UK by the end of this year. Subject to regulatory approval, it could actually be 19 million doses by the end of this year (to the UK)."

That seems like something has clearly gone wrong, if more than a month ago they were in that position and now we are so limited by available dosage.

New comment by vegannet in "Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine approved for use in UK"

vegannet — Wed, 30 Dec 2020 16:07:20 +0000

My understanding was always that AZ had capacity to produce many billions of doses by year (2021) end, and already had a large supply ready to go: is it possible that “first week of January” is referring specifically to the number of doses that can be administered by then which is limited by more than supply? Distribution, appointments etc. And if so, could we see the second week of January jump substantially? Access to just 500k doses would be a significant shift from the expectations that have been shared so far.

New comment by vegannet in "Horseshoe crab blood to remain big pharma's standard as group rejects substitute"

vegannet — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 15:27:13 +0000

This is a funny line that I hear a lot as a vegan and it’s based on a misunderstanding. Veganism is actually quite pragmatic, veganism is not driven by saving lives it is driven by harm reduction. If I thought that the greatest harm reduction outcome for dairy cows could be achieved by a mass cull, I would support it.

New comment by vegannet in "Horseshoe crab blood to remain big pharma's standard as group rejects substitute"

vegannet — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 15:20:06 +0000

You can sort-of argue that there are examples of ethical milking if you just consider the direct action of milking, however if we look to the bigger picture of dairy production — which includes how the cow came to be and what the milk is intended for and why the cow needs to be milked — it becomes more difficult because dairy cows have been bred to produce more milk to the detriment of their health: you’d need to find an example of the more broad “ethical dairy production” and that’s a lot more difficult, as almost all dairy production builds on the unethical behaviour of the past.

New comment by vegannet in "1MB Club"

vegannet — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 18:31:55 +0000

1MB in size feels like an attempt to define “performant” without considering... performance. A speed test from an “average” connection that also measures first paint etc. would be much more meaningful: not all megabytes are equal.

I love the idea, just needs a better measurement.

New comment by vegannet in "Docker update ToS: Image retention limits imposed on free accounts"

vegannet — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 15:06:59 +0000

GitHub storage for docker images is very expensive relative to free: I don’t think it’s a viable solution in this case.

New comment by vegannet in "A Keyboard with Blank Keycaps Made Me an Expert Typist"

vegannet — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 10:35:39 +0000

I have the same problem: I can type fast but not properly — 120 wpm with 2 fingers — and any attempt I’ve made to learn to type “properly” has decreased my error rate... and my speed so much that any error-rate reduction gains aren’t worth it. I feel like, after typing a specific way for decades, it’s practically impossible to ever change effectively.

New comment by vegannet in "Losses at Revolut more than triple to £106m"

vegannet — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 17:46:58 +0000

I think people like yourself value “data” too much. The value of financial data is that it can be used to target financial products: if you’re a bank why would you cut in a middleman on that? Look to any financial services company trying to make money through “data” and you’ll see they have direct relationships with advertisers that integrate directly into their product through “recommendations”. This is very well established and very very profitable — see nerdwallet, CreditKarma etc.

New comment by vegannet in "Ask and Show HN: Ever coded for love? Willing to share?"

vegannet — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 14:15:59 +0000

I’ve made quite a few things _for love_! From websites that tried to quantify the love through stats (number of messages exchanges, seconds together, things we enjoyed) to text-based adventure games that were just reference after reference to ourselves and our relationship. Unfortunately because they were so personal I cannot share them as I don’t have the consent of the others involved, however I would say that from my experience, code is a fine form of expression of love and everybody who feels inspired should do it.