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Saturnaut's comments

Saturnaut | 9 years ago | on: Teaching Machines to Draw

How is this different from a human? As humans grow, they receive input from their environment. The world around them is what feeds their imagination. Even advanced professional artists are still just using their memories and life experience to create works of art. The only difference here is that the machine has been provided a much smaller, more focused environment.

Saturnaut | 9 years ago | on: The Problem with Mechanical Switch Reviews

My grandfather worked for IBM starting in 1979 till the mid 2000's. Towards the finale of his career, he worked from home, so a lot of IBM hardware ended up accumulating in his home office. One day, years after he retired, I was going through the closet and I saw a bit of beautiful beige sticking out from under a pile of other useless keyboards. A 1987 IBM Model M. I nearly had a heart attack. It was in perfect condition and only needed a bit of dusting. It has been my primary keyboard ever since, no modern mechanical has come anywhere close to matching it for me. The noise drives my coworkers absolutely bonkers though.

Saturnaut | 9 years ago | on: No more rock stars: how to stop abuse in tech communities

Yes, but young girls being forcibly gang raped is a far cry from what is laid out in this article.

Yes, the action is on the abuser. I never once said the blame is on the victim. However, most of what the author has laid out is "He is a jerk, people have said he is a jerk, he takes advantage of people, etc". Not "He forcibly raped me and others." So - as an individual - taking very simple steps, like the ones I outlined in my first comment, are only common sense, and can only work in said individual's favor.

I've read some of this author's other posts, including the one that talks specifically about her relationship with Appelbaum (including consensual sexual acts). Calling her a victim because she was taken advantage of, on the same level the girls in Australia you mentioned who were forcibly gang raped are victims, is absurd.

Edit: Leaving the above alone, but on further inspection, it looks like several people have claimed that he "sexually assaulted" them. Now, if true, they should have reported these things to the police immediately. However, I went ahead and read through the stories on the Appelbaum shame website. In every one of the instances, the victim put themselves in a situation to be taken advantage of by this scumbag - drinking heavily enough to black out with him, sleeping in the same bed as him, etc.

Am I defending him? Hell no. But something has to be said about taking responsibility for one's own safety and well being, and being intelligent about not getting into situations like these.

Saturnaut | 10 years ago | on: Material Design Lite Components in HTML/CSS/JS

I think we need to be careful of treating Material as an all encompassing solution. A lot of UI / UX folks I know are full on embracing it without taking a step back and seriously evaluating what problems it will and won't solve. I'm not saying I dislike it, I just think that there are different solutions for different situations. There is no silver bullet in our industry.

Saturnaut | 11 years ago | on: DHS to Launch Nationwide License Plate Reader Program

We should honestly be doing away with traditional license plates anyway. First off, and I say this as a sports car enthusiast, it highly detracts from the design of a car. Second off, there are much better ways for law enforcement to identify a car other than limited sight. RFID or some other tech that could be required at a federal level. This could be tied into registration and inspection, as well as other services that would benefit drivers as a whole. There are of course privacy concerns, but I would rather deal with that than standing in line at the DMV.

Saturnaut | 11 years ago | on: What I'd tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years

Sounds like the company I currently work for, sadly. We have .NET, Python, PHP, Java, Node, and front end developers. Most of them are entry and mid level. Owners are constantly trying to get anything and everything through the door. It makes for a frustrating work environment and usually unhappy clients. Sure, we are growing ... just not in the right direction.

Saturnaut | 11 years ago | on: Introducing Progressive Equity – Increase employee ownership as company grows

I worked for a company a few years back that followed a similar idea. We had a bottom line for operating costs (salary, benefits, rent, utilities, other general expenses) plus a flat 25% being invested back into the company. Everything else left over at the end of the month was distributed to the employees based on their roles. It took a while to iron out. At first we had issues as the money was rolled out as a quarterly bonus, which caused a lot of tax to be taken off the top. It changed a lot over the first year, and ended up being abandoned in favor of giving consistent raises.
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