hn_check's comments

This doctor[1] is basically claiming that all of Sweden, or the vast bulk, have had SARS-CoV-2 and are now immune. This goes completely contrary to every medical authority, and is the sort of claim that generally gets something removed as disinformation. Disinformation does well on HN.

Of course you get to the article's slant when it claims that Sweden is "normal" right now, which is an outrageous lie.

Virtually all events are cancelled. Social engagements are non-existent. Streets are empty. Huge percentages of people work from home. Bars and restaurants were closed for a period of time in hot areas, and regardless have operated under a significantly reduced capacity. Sweden's summer school break began at the PEAK of their outbreak, and we'll see what happens when they return in a little over a week.

Sweden's societal reaction to COVID-19 is basically optimal as a general society, and some parts of the US that are "locked down" have much higher social engagement. Either we've redefined normal to be "completely and absolutely unlike the before times", or this guy is just twisting reality pretty generously because he likes the views, particularly among a certain conspiratorial segment of the US population (a Swedish MD whose blog is in English).

[1] An MD who has extraordinarily little expertise in virology or immunology. Yet he discounts immunity tests. This is like a JavaScript developer telling you why Metal is better than Vulkan.

The only "defense" I saw were against people who were grossly misrepresenting what Damore had said. If you contrive a fiction to push your narrative, expect pushback.

As to what shows Damore appeared on, note that this was after he was fired by Google and pilloried by a large portion of the pitchfork "simplify everything to an easy villain" mob. It isn't surprising that he leveraged the small group that didn't ostracize him.

Damore's essay was horrendously poorly considered. People like Molyneux are effectively clowns playing to an audience that they can monetize. This doesn't change the fact that Damore's core argument was actually fairly reasonable.

The simple reality that every fist-pounding critic needs to grossly misrepresent what Damore said, turning it into some grotesque caricature far detached from truth, is revealing.

This "we'll be like the worst examples in the rest of the world" is not a winning strategy. It is simply remarkable that anyone in the US, much less anyone learned, could cheer this nonsense on.

Further Trump didn't just say they had to be sold, but instead they have to be sold specifically to a US buyer. That is...incredible. He is effectively engaged in technology piracy. Then again he just announced new tariffs on Canadian aluminum -- leaving Russian and Chinese aluminum untouched, and just after the ratification of the revised NAFTA -- under the guise of "national security", so it's into serious parody territory now.

The US is currently a corrupt banana republic.

Regardless, China has an enormous number of US targets they can and likely will retaliate against. And when they do, be sure to thank Trump.

"Blame Qualcomm"

This seems incredibly dubious as an excuse (for a variety of technical and business reasons), but has been the Google get out of jail card for a decade+ now.

More likely Google loses interest, the devices no longer make them any money and they want to wipe their hands of them.

I was specifically responding to the Wikipedia extract.

The citation for the statement "Firefly populations are declining worldwide, for a variety of reasons" is a link to firefly.org. That is a small, Texas group that appreciates Fireflies, which is nice. But it is home to no studies, no research, no analysis. Nor does it (that group, or the wiki page that was cited to apparently refute my personal anecdote...) cite the publication you mention. So I'm not really sure what we're discussing here.

I'm not disagreeing that there is a decline for a multitude of reasons, or that light is probably bad, but if someone says "my yard has no fireflies the apocalypse is upon us" it probably isn't credible.

I assume fireflies are declining from the loss of habitat, along with so many other insect species. The speculation about light being a cause seems logical, but is unproven. Indeed, even the population variations of fireflies is unproven -- the wiki citation in the other link uses as its authority a cite that merely notes that they recall more when they were kids. It is an extremely poor quality citation (but it will play well on HN).

"Doom!" is a very seductive narrative that we fall to regarding virtually every change in our environment. Sometimes reasonably, as with AGW, but other times just taking natural variations and screaming end times...then just going quiet when they recover again as we move to the next cause.

Fireflies certainly are in decline in urban areas, and from that in a holistic population sense. The amount of natural areas continues to decline worldwide leading to reduced habitat for a lot of insects and animals.

However I was replying to someone who stated that they live in a rural area so lighting isn't the cause. I also live in a rural area, albeit on the edge of a very large city (e.g. there is the large light bubble on the horizon, actually from several large cities in each direction), and fireflies are absolutely rampant, and have been for years. My comments makes zero claims about the worldwide population of fireflies, or about how many fireflies there are in your or anyone else's backyard. In mine there are loads.

However it is a reality that localized ebbs and flows happen. Nature is prone to waxing and waning. The reproductive potential of many insects is so enormous that one year can be a dearth and the next overwhelming. Small seasonal weather variations, of the completely ordinary and natural kind, can dramatically impact the mix.

To go back to the ladybugs, specifically the Asian ladybugs, last year they were everywhere. Every corner would have a bunch of them. They'd get in the house and then smash into the ceiling near every pot light leaving discolorations (blood or something). This year I've seen barely a dozen or so all season. It's just a complete 180.

Aside - I swear I am not intending to be combative, but the citations make me recall a prior comment-

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899565

The Wikipedia page you link cites the second link you gave as its source to demonstrate the worldwide decline in fireflies. That citation cites nothing as its source but fond recollections of youth.

Plenty of fireflies in my yard. As prevalent as ever [1]. This is just an anecdote, but I give that anecdote as another person who lives in a somewhat rural location.

Speaking of the lady bug explosion, this year they are incredibly rare [2]. Not sure why, but they went from being a massive nuisance to being a very rare sight (of any variety).

Humans are absolutely having a calamitous effect on insect life in a variety of dimensions, however on the flip side it does seem like insect populations massively fluctuate for entirely natural reasons. A bit of an early summer, or more rain in April, etc, and one insect type explodes and another wanes.

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071745

2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24071745

"Everyone calls me stupid every time I bring up the fact that Twitter had a better TikTok before TikTok in Vine"

The view that "Vine was tiktok before tiktok" is extremely common. Vine was very popular, was a trend beachhead, but it just wasn't something Twitter was really interested in so they shanked it.

Speaking of which, I didn't realize that musical.ly morphed into TikTok. I knew musical.ly only from Paymoneywubby - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmphkNDosg

Not entirely sure if you intended to reply to my comment, however just to clarify I'm saying that this particular machine isn't for developers or hackers. Apple has different machines for different markets.

Developers buy MBPs. Industry users buy iMac Pros (which starts at 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD, going up from there) or even the goofy Mac Pro.

"When someone needs a "computer" for their kid to do their homework, that's increasingly going to be an Android/iOS device."

Lots of people do the vast majority of their "computing" on pads and smartphones, but they still like a computer on the desk for..."productivity". For many of those people, this device is more than adequate.

HN clearly isn't the target market. When HN frets about how it isn't suitable for them, it's just a lot of meaningless bluster and noise.

Though let's be real here. I have a 2018 MBP with 256GB of storage. I have XCode, the XCode beta, Logic Pro, virtually the entire Adobe gamut of software, brew and a massive selection of brew packages, every browser, IntelliJ, GoLand, and just a tonne of crap.

I've used about 150GB. As fair disclosure I have a USB 3 1TB 970 Pro in an enclosure that I use for the occasional massive file download, purely because I'm paranoid about flash exhaustion, though by the system metrics I'm still at less than 1% wear.

Yeah, someone buying this for their kid to do their homework is going to be completely fine with 256GB. Though it's worth noting that the next option is just $200 more and gives you a faster process and 512GB. The lowest end one is just the one to frame the value, and presumably isn't their recommendation.

LOL, it has since been retracted the author admitted it was their own misunderstanding.

Here the post still sits on the front page.

Don't ever change your adorable ignorance, HN. It's such a laugh.

And this will be auto-dead. I was spot on and completely right and got pummeled down by the imbeciles of this cesspool. Hilarious.

EDIT: LOL the guy retracted it and noted that he was mistaken. Every clown who repeated this and argued the unfairness of it, like rattray here -- delete your accounts.

>If you charge $10, you get paid $7, and if the customer refunds, Apple removes $10 from your account

BUT APPLE DOESN'T DO THIS

There are literally dozens of developers with monetized apps saying that Apple does not and has not done this in this thread and replies to the tweet. There is one guy misrepresenting some facts. The overwhelming truth according to the pitchfork mob of HN is the lie. Amazing.

The gullibility of this crowd is simply incredible. Do you not think this would be bigger news than "hey look, some guy says something billions of dollars into app store sales".

cc @ dang -- rattray is intentionally spreading hilariously dumb misinformation to make HN look like a bunch of stupid assholes.

Hilariously this is auto-dead. Of course it is. Yet another of so many times HN has been so catastrophically off the mark. This place is a den of absolute idiots, time and time again. And when it is realized it goes to auto-dead time. Absolutely fucking embarrassing for anyone who is proud of their association with this shithole of stupidity.

Which sources would those be? Someone linking to preliminary text of Apple's refund policy when they were forming the app store in 2009? Because that is meaningless.

Apple takes back exactly what they gave the developer. There are zero sources demonstrating otherwise (and the source of this links a basic sales chart -- guess what, that doesn't prove his point whatsoever). There are literally a half dozen developers replying to him countering his claim, yet it's remarkable seeing the gullibility of this crowd regarding a simply absurd claim.

The guy's trump card is that they had "negative days". No shit. One day they had more refunds than sales. That doesn't mean Apple is taking an extra 30%.

EDIT: Even the Reddit story on this absurd tweet now has a top comment refuting it, and a wide acknowledgment that they need to be more discerning. HN -- all the top comments are falling in line. My two comments are at -1. LOL. My bio that this place is Dunning-Kruger demonstrated writ large holds true. What an embarrassment.

"which I think adds weight to the argument that is unfair behaviour by Apple"

Apple takes back from the developer exactly what they gave the developer. This has been verified by a number of people, and this submission is just farcically wrong.

How is this nonsense front page on HN? Is this community this clueless?

This isn't correct at all.

This is a serious misunderstanding by someone in a pretty incredible way. Literally a single person claiming this and _multiple_ people refuting it from their own experience.

Yet it's top of HN. Amazing. A lesson to never, ever trust anything here because the masses clicked an arrow.

And the price for what he did would have been extreme. Serving a 14GB is something like $1.19 USD on CloudFront.

It sounds like he was operating in tiny land and expected bills to be commensurate, so it just seems irrational to expect a low or free tier of another service to do this for nothing.

Not only are they not hidden, they should really be common sense. That he seems surprised that Cloudflare doesn't cache 14GB files is surprising. There is some common belief that every service has infinite capacity in every dimension.

In this case it is retailers secretly rating customers, and sharing those ratings between each other. Retailers can and purportedly do use this to determine how to interact with you, how forgiving to be, etc.

My only real concern with it is that it kind of has the incentive for every retailer to say that every customer is terrible, in a way that ostensibly lead their competitors to treat customers worse.

"But certainly I would expect accounts would accumulate warning flags and at some point be banned."

https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-style-rating-helps-bran...

Though there seems to be a bit of a conflict with such a system -- wouldn't every retailer want to say everyone is terrible, you surely don't want to deal with them, etc.