masterphilo's comments

masterphilo | 3 years ago | on: “Multiple personality disorder” probably doesn't exist

This article is trying to make an excellent point (emphasized in the second half of the write-up), but the claim that "DID probably doesn't event exist" is untrue, and but I'm sure the author only meant as click-bait.

DID does exist, the problem seems to be the willingness of many psychologists & medical professionals to broaden the definition to encompass much of the phenomena we see on Tik-Tok.

Could it be that all young kids are extremely impressionable, and without a consistent culturally-enforced set of values (especially regarding identity), it's perfectly plausible for many of them identify (at the personality level) with a number of influencers that they follow on that platform? And how is that ultimately affecting their general mental health, even if they are not outwardly unhappy?

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Crypto Scammers’ New Target: Dating Apps

The highlight to me in this article is how pandemic loneliness + crypto frenzy has made this type of victim a lot more common today.

You can't do anything about crypto over the short-term, but I hope the loneliness aspect of this gets reduced as people slowly go back to their pre-pandemic lives.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Don't Be Anti Car. Be Pro Something Else.

This is just a case of false equivalency. Smoking and car-usage are completely different phenomena and the one should not be used make judgements about the other.

You're going to have to do more than that to convince me & others why car usage is that bad, sorry.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: GitHub Copilot regurgitates valid secrets

Copilot, as far as I know, also does not seem to factor in the greater context of the application/code you're in when auto-completing these tasks.

To me, this is a huge part of modern-day development. It's not only about producing functionally correct code, but also code that integrates well and is semantically relevant to the broader context of the application itself.

That doesn't mean Copilot's input will have no value, but it just means that developers will generally need to refactor that code in a way consistent with the app they're building.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Book Review: A Philosophy of Software Design (2020)

It seems strange to assume anything truly "philosophical" when the main topic of the book is something as practical as software engineering/design.

Even if he did try to shoehorn a few bits of metaphysics in, most of the book would've had to lean more on the practical side of the domain.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Curiosity damned the cat

I must be on a different planet because he didn't sound that way to me at all. Even his "village atheist" comment that parent had a fit over completely slipped by me until he pointed my attention to it just now, and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing the author meant in bad faith.

I quite enjoyed the ideas discussed in the article, and even though it is steeped in religious undertones, you don't have to be religious to understand his broader point, I think.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces

All I'm saying is that the charge of "antisemitism" is too heavy and the author's post didn't sound that way to me, but since I'm not Jewish, I'm not going to press this point this further at the risk of sounding too insensitive or privileged.

If you'd like a Jewish perspective on this, here's a comment made by someone who claims to be Jewish that basically echoes my sentiments -- that the author of that blog post was naive and got carried away in his rhetoric, instead of being an actual antisemite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27385448

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

Does anyone really believe that these giant companies actually care about the so-called 'woke' values being foisted upon them?

Once companies realize that getting political is no longer a virtue (and by 'virtuous' we mean anything that increases their bottom line), we'll slowly start seeing sanity crawl back to the workplace. I'm glad to see some companies clearing that path.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Irish health system hit by ‘significant’ ransomware attack

This kind of attack is growing beyond what I've imagined, and is quickly becoming the more significant epidemic of the world today. As soon as Colonial Pipeline decided to appease the attackers, it paved the way for more targeted infrastructure attacks, since the earliest ones were so successful.

I don't work in cybersecurity, but I wonder if this problem is merely a symptom of the lack of proper security standards that have been running these industries for years, or whether this is a new type of vuln that was just "discovered" recently and no one has any idea how it works.

masterphilo | 4 years ago | on: Egypt holds grand procession of ancient mummies in Cairo

Why is celebrating one of the oldest civilizations in human history, their own nation's history, considered "awful"?

I thought the whole thing looked beautiful. I hope to visit someday when the area is fully developed.

I suspect your complaint was targeted at Sisi's management of the country, in which case this is a complete aside.

masterphilo | 5 years ago | on: Arabian Nights

> Folklorists have pointed out that the set of stories recorded from the storyteller have a number of story tropes more characteristic of European rather than Middle Eastern folk tales.

Interesting, could you give us an example of these characteristics?

Islamic and European societies during the period of these stories were different in unique ways, and for that reason I'm not exactly sure how those characteristics were more similar to the one rather than the other.

masterphilo | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for software delivery?

> But most companies are incapable of the kind of equality and empowerment necessary to achieve agility, so they will force the terrible cargo cult version upon us.

I would argue that most companies cannot afford to give that kind of "empowerment" to most developers, especially if these companies rely heavily on masses of junior/inexperienced developers. So they figure a strong management layer is necessary to properly direct the project's goals.

Now I'm not saying that's how it should be, but that's the reality of the software talent market today.

masterphilo | 5 years ago | on: A 25-Year-Old Bet Comes Due: Has Tech Destroyed Society?

You're right - it definitely wasn't close by the metrics of the bet itself, but to me, it was close enough to a degree that I found hard not to emphasize.

What struck me most was that all of the foundations for the kind of collapse he was describing - economic (income inequality) as well as environmental - became much more obvious after the COVID pandemic hit. So while he wasn't right that 2020 will be the end of civilization, does that really mean that our civilization (in this case, the West) isn't heading in that direction?

page 1