killedbydeath's comments

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Slack refunds customers 100x amount paid during outage

Interesting approach. Maybe that should be the "real SLA" number: 99% = 100x refund, 99.99% = 10000x refund.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: TransferWise announces $280M investment

Poland has 30x the population and likely 30x the number of immigrants to the UK.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

Poker is a niche hobby, not some metaphor of competition in life. That picture says more about poker as a way to spend time than about competing. You might as well show pictures from a fly-fishing competition. I don't play poker, yet I am pretty competitive in many aspect of life. All I know is that pretty much every woman I have talked to wants to be more popular, more famous, more successful. And I have seen girls compete for influence, and grades, and victory in sorts from a very young age.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo

Are women not taught to compete? I do not remember girls being any less competitive (in school, in sports, etc.) Almost everyone wants to stand out and be better than others in some aspects and is proud when they can achieve that. Life is very competitive, I am not sure why need to de-emphasize it to much. Making it "us" vs "them" is the more problematic part, but individual competition is a pretty constructive force overall, for men and women of all colors.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Facebook’s Onavo Gives Social-Media Firm Inside Peek at Rivals’ Users

For crypto/security people on this thread, what encryption could app developers use to wrap their API call so that the least amount of information is leaked to this kind of man-in-the-middle services? I.e, is it possible to: 1) hide which apps are installed on iOS/Android; 2) hide or obfuscate how frequently the app is used; 3) hide specific API calls

I assume at least #3 should be achievable with additional encryption.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Incredible shrinking airline seat

You can go really deep down the rabbit hole of seat knowledge with Seatguru, but it's quite time consuming. Their flight search is reasonable, and probably many people who care about seats do use them. But the majority probably does not even suspect that there are major differences in seat sizes between airlines and even planes. So having that information more visible across the board would change incentives more. I also suspect given how many booking sites make money they would be dis-incentivized to do this on their own.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Incredible shrinking airline seat

May be the first step of regulation should be requiring some standard disclosures around seat sizes, etc. If kayak or some other comparison engine showed that you would are getting 2 extra inches for the $40 more when flying Virgin instead of Frontier (hypothetical example), more people would pick Virgin.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child

It's not obvious that speaking second language better will come out at the expense of English. I grew up bilingual and was at the top of my class for my second language compared to monolingual natives. There are whole countries of bilingual/trilingual people in Europe who speak their main language very well still. I think knowing a second (and later third) language gave me a better understanding of language structure. Same in sports, if you are athletic, you will have easier time picking up new sports.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Google to add 'news feed' to website and app

2020 election will be Larry Page running against Mark Zuckerberg

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Hampton Creek’s Entire Board Leaves Except for CEO

I almost bought their stuff once. The bottle looked nice, and I was looking for mayo. I was not looking to experiment, so buying their stuff would a a case of me buying something because it pretends to be something else. I want things to be called what they are. They could have called it "I don't believe it's not mayo" or something but they decided to try to trap people. I would feel cheated even if it does taste like mayo, I don't want vegan mayo in my chicken salad.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Bars

Come on, is respecting US laws on US soil really that much to ask without the fear of alienating Turkey? There need to be boundaries, even if you care very much about diplomacy.

killedbydeath | 8 years ago | on: Chicken tax

But why? Animals eat animals, and death is just part of life. Should humans really need to transcend what has been part of our nature for so long because we developed empathy for animals or should we stay close to what we have been all this time. I think that's very much open for arguing. Should we start preventing cats from eating birds? Should we replace every animals diet with vegetarian alternatives?

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Why are crime victims being jailed?

I am amazed by the "lost his wife" part. What did she say in her wedding vows, "I take you as a husband from this day forward and until our combined income falls below 75% of the average income over the previous 3 years"?

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Milpitas BART Station to Open in December, VTA Says

Well in many big cities nobody expects to be able to sit on a subway train anytime during peak hours. Where I lived, seats were mostly for seniors, children, people with disabilities. That's just what mass transit looks like in a busy city. It is not unusual for cars to be packed so dense you can't move or even get on a train. And all that with trains coming every couple minutes.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: “Mindless Eating,” or how to send an entire life of research into question

Well that's a lot of data you have there. I did some GLM analysis and clearly weight is correlated with gender. Let me go tell some journalists.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Did Spellbound Show Us the Power or the Myth of the American Dream?

There is a large difference in effort needed for being good at spelling and for becoming the best in the world. Not a perfect analogy but you wouldn't call competitive eating a very useful skill just because eating is useful. Also, as a side remark, in most languages I am familiar with competitive spelling would not be a thing. English is rather unique in that it does not enforce spelling or pronunciation rules on foreign words and prefers to take them as is instead.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Vibrator Maker to Pay Millions Over Claims It Secretly Tracked Use

You are misunderstanding. Bluetooth pairing is not foreplay, it's real sex.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Questions the FBI Uses to Determine If Someone Is a Likely Terrorist

Sorry but that narrative has a basis in reality. Islam was started with the goal of expansion and that has not changed enough. Every territory taken over by Muslim rulers underwent subtle or not so subtle islamization. I was born on the Eastern border of the Christian world and the tensions have been very real there for many centuries. My great grandfather was killed for refusing to convert into Islam and some of his murderers were his neighbors whom he trusted and lived with together for ages. This was in an area where my ancestors lived in for many centuries and that was periodically taken over by Muslim countries. There are many examples of peaceful coexistence and the majority of Muslims are great people, but I personally would not raise my kids in a Muslim-majority country.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993

People die of cancer if they don't die of something more treatable before that so lower cancer contribution may be not for a good reason.

killedbydeath | 9 years ago | on: Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson’s Epic Literary Feud

I am puzzled what you consider being sexist here. It's just consented sex between adults, no need to feel sorry for anyone. Both men and women who have had many partners often get cynical about that and I have heard this kind of language from people of both sexes. And it does not mean treating partners terribly. Two people can meet, have sex and part ways thinking that they had another "conquest" without having any bad feelings about the encounter.