pattusk's comments

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: The rise of the Gen Z side hustle

> “The stacking of jobs has always existed, but it’s usually been done by workers who’ve needed to as a means of economic survival,” explains Meredith Meyer Grelli, assistant teaching professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business, based in Pittsburgh, US.

I see very little evidence in this article to suggest that something different is happening. Gen Z (is it actually only Gen Z?) is stacking multiple jobs because job security and wages are at historically low levels for most of the population.

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: The Identity of Kim Il Sung (1949) [pdf]

Korea hardly had any nationalist armed resistance by the 1930s. The nationalists camp had either turned to peaceful resistance a la Ghandi (Cho Man-sik), exile (Syngam Rhee) or collaboration (Lee Kwang-su, Ch'oe Nam-Seon and so many others).

Kim Il Sung participated in two attacks on the Japanese in the Korean Peninsula confirmed by modern historians (at Hyesan and Pochonbo, the latter of which may have been led by someone else) and other attacks in collaboration with the Chinese communists (see book above for details).

For those wondering why Korean nationalists would have become collaborators: they thought colonozation by an Asian race was less likely to erase Korean culture than colonization from a white race (as the nationalists believed a Japanese defeat in the pacific war would lead to Western colonization of East Asia)

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: The Identity of Kim Il Sung (1949) [pdf]

this is untrue, the Korean peninsula had a strong socialist (including non-Marxist forms of socialism) and later communist (as in affiliated with the COMINTERN) movement from the early 20th century and its main influence was the Japanese Communist Party - not Mao. (Incidentally, a large part of the membership of the Japanese Communist Party was Korean - up until the cadres.)

North Korean troops (and earlier the so-called "Yanan Koreans") were also instrumental in securing the Chinese communist victory during the Civil War through their actions in Northeast China. So in a sense they forced communism on China just as much as the Chinese forced communism onto Korea.

> It was Mao foisting it onto Korea. Stalin was a careful opportunist and thought Korea would be too risky and reckless, so he was hesitant but was eventually persuaded by Mao that it was a good idea.

Your statement refers to the Korean War. As archive records now show, both Stalin and Mao were reluctant and Kim Il Sung only managed to convince Stalin by pretending that Mao was on board for an invasion of the South (and likewise lying to Mao about Stalin being on board).

In any case, North Korea was already socialist before the Korean War. And the South also had a very strong communist movement - the first governments that sprouted in Korea after 1945 were "people's committees".

But the US backed dictator Syngman Rhee (selected for his staunch anti-communism, the man was so reactionary his conservatism shocked even US intelligence) managed to politicide the Southern communists in large numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeosu%E2%80%93Suncheon_rebelli...

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: The Identity of Kim Il Sung (1949) [pdf]

The reference biography of Kim Il Sung is "Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader" by Dae Sook Suh. A relatively fair treatment of the man given that the author is notable for his anticommunist bias: https://www.amazon.com.au/Kim-Sung-North-Korean-Leader/dp/02...

I can also recommend Kim Il Sung's own autobiography, With The Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_the_Century (wiki page has many links to the full book). Because it was written by Kim himself, it's a lot less hagiographic than what you might expect (he didn't have to worry about censorship). Plenty of embellishments sure, but also shows a very human picture of the man.

To give a bit more historical background on the conspiracy theory: Kim's anti-Japanese actions in the 1930s-40s had received some coverage in the Korean press - despite Japanese censorship. He went into hiding in the USSR in the early 40s and was sent back to Pyongyang by the Soviets a couple months after the August 1945 liberation of the peninsula. Dissatisfied with their first choice for a North Korean leader (a man named Cho Man-Sik), the Soviets intended to replace him with Kim (a convinced Stalinist) after some PR efforts to bolster his public image.

At Kim Il Sung's first public appearance at a rally in Pyongyang in late 1945, people were shocked by his young age (there are several testimonies from people present at the event attesting to this). This was exploited by the anti-communist South to discredit him, claiming that someone that young could never have done the resistance deeds that people had heard about during the colonial period. As Suh's book shows, however, there is a good amount of evidence to support the fact that he was indeed a leader in the resistance against Japanese colonization (albeit not the only one) with several feat of arms (albeit not nearly as many as later claimed).

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

French universities absolutely do have legacy admissions. It's called admissions paralleles (or sur dossier), you can pay your way in with minimal effort and get the same diploma upon graduation.

pattusk | 3 years ago | on: The Crypto Elites Are Plotting a Wall Street Merger

> I thought the overall "shadowy Wall Street elite cabal" in this article was bizarre and a bit nauseating.

Especially since most of it is circumstantial, guilt by association or outright misleading. I don't know of anybody in crypto who still takes enteprise blockchains or the likes of JPM Coin seriously. In any case, it would give little credence to an accusation of collusion between Wall Street and the "crypto elite". It's just a private company using a certain technology.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Stop Using Pie-Charts

Is it just me or does TFA's whole argument rests upon the assumption that you don't add labels to your pie charts ?

If I add percentages or values to the chart, there are no issues with either interpretation or comprehension. The pie chart is just a visually pleasant way to display data compared to, say, a table or a bar chart. Data that's displayed in a boring is quickly forgotten, but data presented in a striking way will help your point being remembered. It's akin to rhetoric/style in writing. You can write in a matter-of-fact descriptive way and bore 90% of readers to death, or you can articulate your point with striking metaphors, rhythm, etc... and make an impact.

This is an issue that I often notice with engineers. They assume that communication is transparent. A five page long table of figures? Sure! A front-end with tons of buttons, slide bars for every adjustable parameters and a full report of everything going on under the hood? Who wouldn't want that!

There's nothing wrong with pretty. You don't always have to sacrifice accuracy to get pretty. And pretty ensures that your accurate data isn't ignored.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

I do not disagree with your take, but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated. The article likewise seems to discard the importance of money in favor of three other more immaterial factors, but I do not think this is representative of the situation of the global job market right now. I also think such a perspective can not fully explain the difficulties that many companies are having with regards to hiring engineers at the moment.

If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. And people job hop frequently for a few extra $k because that corresponds to a significant increase in quality of life for them. The difference between a 2 br and 3 or 4 br apartment, between another kid or not, etc...

People will absolutely leave your company if they think they can get paid more elsewhere. People will absolutely pass over your job offer if they think they can get more elsewhere.

You also see the reverse phenomenon which is that you'll find plenty of engineers doing soul-wrenching, boring jobs in toxic environment who still say because they are very generously compensated (hello FAANG).

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Christmas is the busy season for ham sniffers

> Ms. Sánchez Blanco said the company has given the test only three times in the last 20 years. She, Mr. Vega and Rocío Ortega Velázquez, 46, the deputy technical director who is Ms. Sánchez Blanco’s superior and who spot checks Mr. Vega’s work, are the only three people to have gotten a perfect score.

So basically every single one of the test takers got a perfect score? Or am I misreading this?

I have to say the article left me a bit skeptical about there being any sort of scientific basis for the sniffing.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Sad, lonely people more likely to be ‘natural’ social psychologists (2018)

> a new study by Yale psychologists found a surprising group of people are particularly good at accurately assessing truths about humans’ “social nature”

I am not a social psychologist (whatever authority that title may grant one), but I wonder about how one goes from a few conclusion that may hold true under certain conditions to "truth about human nature".

For instance, "Do people work harder in groups or as individuals? "

I could see peer pressure being a motivating factor to work harder as a group. Among highly accomplished and productive peers a new group member might strive to prove themselves by over contributing to the group. I would also expect cultural factors and (im)proper management to play a role.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: The Problem with Ethereum

> "The hope a lot of people had/have for crypto is that it replaces people, instititions and rules with explicit code"

My experience in crypto over the past two years has been exactly the opposite. The main issues facing the space today all have to do with governance: how do you get holders of gov tokens to vote rather than hold? how do you involve them in the evolution of your protocol? There are entire protocols being designed to allow "vote selling" to incentivize delegation for small owners.

Code is a tool to make sure laws are enforced. But the rules are increasingly being made and amended at the social/political layer.

It may not be democratic. it may not be fair. it may not be efficient. but it's a damn interesting experiment to watch evolve.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Huge data leak shatters the lie that the innocent need not fear surveillance

I don't think the problem is with the "lie" that the innocent need not fear surveillance. Most people will agree that mass-surveillance will negatively affect some people that are indispensable to healthily functioning liberal society: journalists, activists, academics, public figures...

The problem is that even if most people don't subscribe to the "nothing to hide" argument in general, they do not care about themselves being the target of surveillance.

Having unsuccessfully tried to make family and acquaintances more aware of privacy issue, I can confidently say that the "nothing to hide" argument is nothing next to the "I don't care" attitude. It's not just being the target of a wrongful accusation, arguments about unintended public shaming, identity theft, negative economic consequences (higher insurance premium or mortgage rates if your bank has more information about you), none of it will work.

I think there is some sort of a Tverskyan study to be done here about expected value and perceived risk. Overall for most people the equation is always: (probability of data being mishandled) * damage < time and effort required to maintain my privacy.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

Solidity is only the language of the C-Chain, which is basically the EVM with better scalability but only constitutes one part of the ecosystem.

It is currently the most visible part because most of the protocol's features are still under development.

But the Avalanche protocol itself isn't tied to the EVM or Solidity, it is designed to let you run any customized blockchain.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Students flee field as computer 'fad fades' (1987)

Thank your for articulating something I've experienced over the years so clearly.

It's one thing I wish recruiters/HR would understand. I have an advanced college degree in a field that has nothing to do with engineering and I've found that omitting it from my resume actually made the recruitment process a whole lot smoother as a candidate.

Interviews went from inquisition sessions about why I wasn't doing what my graduate degree had "destined" me to do, why I had "given up" on it, how I could relate my academic background to the current job (I don't because I haven't cared for it in years), etc... It's like you're inherently suspicious if you didn't follow the path you took in your 20s all the way to your retirement.

So I stopped making any mentions of my academic creds, and the worse I get now are some condescending lines about how hard I must have worked. Other than that response rate & interviewer's attitude have improved markedly.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Teaching open-source software in North Korea

I think these provisions came after the patch was pushed to Github back in 2016.

I remember that when the Github rules related to US sanctions were first posted there was a lot of backlash here on HN from Iranian developers and it must have been 2017~2018.

Doesn't mean it wasn't illegal before but at least Github didn't seem to be enforcing it.

Also the class was likely at PUST (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_University_of_Scienc...) which is operated with US funds and likely had clearance to teach that sort of material.

pattusk | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?

I thought tech would lead to much more isolation than it has.

By isolation I don't mean lack of socialization of course. There was plenty of socializing back then. But the people I met on Usenet, BBS, IRC and phpBB forums were people like me. We worked on tech projects, we talked tech, we had our specific jargon and subculture.

I distinctly remember when people asked me what I wanted to do back then, I'd make up some lie, but knew that my future would be living in a single room with no social interaction but with my online friends. (I did not think this to be bad at all, this was my idea of a good life).

I thought tech would evolve to make the internet more into an alternate reality, more separate from the real world. Maybe I was reading too much cyberpunk sci-fi.

In any case, I certainly did not anticipate social media, dating apps and the digitization of traditional brick and mortar businesses. And to be honest, I'm not sure we wouldn't be better off without them.

It seems there aren't that many "pure internet" projects out there. IRC replacements are all tailored for the workplace and real life interaction (maybe except for discord?). It still feels very strange to me that communication platforms would ask your for your real name (especially when, at this point, there's more "reputation" or "social credit" or whatever you'd like to call it attached to my online persona as to my real world one).

Crypto is perhaps the last bastion of such an autarkic technology (i.e. by netizens for netizens) but even that is slowly moving toward real world asset tokenization and institutional integration.

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