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macu | 4 years ago | on: How to be uncertain with dates (2020)

Someone could add an approximation range syntax if they derived their own fuzzy dates specification. I've been considering the problem of fuzzy dates for a project idea. Maybe something like "..<" could join the first and last days of an approximate range, like "156X..<1585-12-25", which would be equivalent to "156X..1584-12-25", to say anywhere from 1560 to 1584. Depending how much information you want to encode you can imagine other extensions like showing the most confident guess. At that point it would be simpler to create tables to encode the available information.

macu | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Feeling guilty for doing the bare minimum at work

I work 7-hour days, but I might work 2 or 3 hours during that time. A lot of the time I find the work unbearable and can only bring myself to do it in short intervals. When the task is interesting, involves my skills, and I'm making progress, I can work for hours with almost no breaks. It really is an emotional thing. I won't force myself to do anything that is really painful because it ruins my mood for the whole day. At the same time I feel guilty of days I get little or nothing done and I feel trapped by the time constraint of the work day, even though I work from home. I would really like to make a deal where I work independent of a work day, with no set hours and no expectations, and not feel like I'm on call all day, so I can do things other than work through the day and not feel like I'm cheating.

macu | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Askap Dataset in Steradians/Pixel

Approximation for the ASKAP images with help from Wolfram Alpha, .83 spheres is 10.4 steradians, so 903*70 billion is 63.21 trillion pixels, at ~1.65e-13 steradians/pixel, though there may be overlap in the images, unsure.

Approximation for HUDF is 38.44 million pixels, covering 11 square arcminutes (from Wikipedia) which is 9.308e-7 steradians at ~2.75e-14 steradians/pixels, so the HUDF is about an order of magnitude higher resolution.

macu | 5 years ago | on: Canada extends financial aid for millions for two more months

The only thing that gets me is that unlike EI, CERB is not taxed up front, so many low-income Canadians claiming it are going to owe taxes on it next year. I would rather it be taxed up front or tax-free for the recipients. People are really going to struggle when it comes back on them.

About the original 4-month term (with 2 additional months at 0.15% tax, $12000 works out to $1800 to pay back):

"A recipient who earns the maximum benefit of $8,000 will have to repay $1,200 at tax time."

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/don-t-spend-it-all...

macu | 5 years ago | on: Don’t require a user to be interested twice: lessons on reducing signup friction

This issue came up for me recently when signing up for Audible. You get 1 free audiobook/month but have to verify a credit card before the free trial month. I imagined this was to cut down on users who sign up with throwaway accounts to get free books. What gets me is you can buy $10 prepaid credit cards and sign up repeatedly anyway, spending your $10 elsewhere. Completely opposed to the practise, however, when it enrols you in automatic payments which you have to opt out of before your free trial expires.

macu | 6 years ago | on: Burnoutindex.org

I finished the survey and clicked "get my personal results" - email is required to receive the results, but you can "Join" without providing an email.

macu | 10 years ago | on: Seattle Considers Measure to Let Uber and Lyft Drivers Unionize

Feels like we can imagine how we'll define the future:

Government and industry will react in ways we understand to initiatives of our own. They'll be quick to allow any motions that will limit the growth and power of our new companies. We should maximize on this.

macu | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: Am I the only one outraged by Twitter shutting down share counts?

I hadn't heard about it till now. I'm not affected because I didn't invest in the feature in any way, or know anyone who did. Yet I can appreciate the "outrage" from the perspective of people who invest in features that are later taken away, with apparently no regard or care for the impact to users who put their time and loyalty into the service because of what it offered. It's just a fact in user land, we accept the TOS and throw our time into the furnace.

macu | 10 years ago | on: Introducing the new Google+

I wonder if this keeps people mystified when they visit the news feed, wondering what's beyond the fold and scrolling their hours away.

macu | 10 years ago | on: Stop pushing the web forward

I constantly get the sense that I am missing whole swaths of the configuration options available in mobile and web development. The fact is, a dedicated team with experience will know how to tweak variables for an excellent product. New possibilities are continually arising but not everyone will use them. A lone developer is likely to produce something more retro. Experience and dedication pay off as you develop finer control.
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