thread_id's comments

Caribbean countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribbean

Thank you making note of this. The Guyanese I know have an oral history of being decieved and compelled. They were tricked into getting on board a boat and once there not allowed to leave. They were heart broken that their families did not know what happened to them. The return to India was offered later as reparation. But by then they had built entire lives and had new families of their own. The British did not call it slavery because slavery was outlawed by this time.

The author's heavy reliance on a historical narative authored by the U.S. military probably contributed to the rather sanitized recounting of the role Britain had in imigrating 286,000 Indians to Guyana.

I am curious to know if anyone else here shares this history in their family.

The best measure of productivity for a software implementation team is the quality of the product as measured by latent defects and technical debt. The team that remains to support the system will get to spend some or all of their time dealing with these. For a year or a few years or in perpetuity. Their productivity is directly related to how much time they spend unburdening themselves from that hidden cost.

I think Elon totally blew it. He spent all that time and money building his stainless steel vanity project when his block buster truck was right under his nose the whole time.

I find more reference to subculture in the dicussions that I never knew existed. Most of the time I start with the discussion and then decide if I want to read the content. This is a particularly interesting discussion because of the nature of the subject. Frequently there are these hidden references that just need to be expanded.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41401224

summermusic 1 day ago | root | parent | next [–]

> Goodwolf is the name he uses for interviews and is not his legal name. I read this and immediately suspected that he is a furry

This is reminiscent of a story in the New Yorker about Reddit - there is a part of the story that describes r/Place:

Last April Fools’, instead of a parody announcement, Reddit unveiled a genuine social experiment. It was called r/Place, and it was a blank square, a thousand pixels by a thousand pixels. In the beginning, all million pixels were white. Once the experiment started, anyone could change a single pixel, anywhere on the grid, to one of sixteen colors. The only restriction was speed: the algorithm allowed each redditor to alter just one pixel every five minutes. “That way, no one person can take over—it’s too slow,” Josh Wardle, the Reddit product manager in charge of Place, explained. “In order to do anything at scale, they’re gonna have to coöperate.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the...

I have a friend who lives near NYC and is a theatre director for a company in St Louis. Travels in person 1 week a month and remote with Zoom the other 3 weeks. It pays better than what he gets in his local market and allows him to support his family and spend more time with his children. Opportunities and life has changed significantly since COVID.

Search for "March of Dimes Syndrome" on Wikipedia and the topic does not exist. But now it can. The first paragraph if published on wikipedia would be loaded with [citation needed] as in 'this claim needs references to reliable sources'.

> universal truth: Everything and everyone you’re worried about will be gone soon, really soon. This is your instant, your moment. Why wouldn’t you be kind to yourself, love others, forgive yourself, forgive others and create joy for you and your loved ones wherever, whenever possible? Your heartbreak, disappointment, and grief will be the receipts for the joy and the agency you forge. Heartbreak, disappointment, grief, joy … I wish for you all of these things.

It's always good to get grounded every so often and reconnected with what matters most.

For me personally, I cannot overstate the value I get from solving problems in the physical space and how that transends into my work as a software engineer. However, that being said I really enjoy the dynamic of software development that allows the ability to hack: start building without a clear plan, try, prototype, tear down, throw out, start again.

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

This is why I visit Hacker News every day. Thank you community!!!!

So many... here are a few

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Sophies Choice

English Patient

Master and Commander

"How to tell which Dropcam you have" ... one clue is that it doesn't work anymore.

It is interesting to see how cell phone data was used as features and inputs to the model (along with other surveilance data). And how the models parameters were adjusted to achieve high leves of correlation. Human behavior regarding sharing cell phones apeared to create a false postive bias. Its too late now but the first thing the entire Palestinian population should have done was to smash all thier phones and go completely dark.

I also am over 60 and my philosophy regarding this topic is similar. Life is a series of moments that happen and are over never to be revisted again (unless you make this effort - and good for those who do and get value in their lives for having done so). My memory of the past is also limited - I remember random people and events going back to early childhood for reasons I don't fully understand, but mostly I have forgotten all the eras of my life and I don't really dwell on it. I have no concept of time and it has always been that way and age has had zero impact here. I get it "The unexamined life..." etc. So I invest energy in introspection and self discovery in service of continuous improvment. Whether I am satisfied with the life I have lived or not makes no difference - I cannot go back and change it. However, no longer do I have the luxury of time. By comparison to the journey I have already completed, I have very few moments remaining. And one day.... So I gratfully focus on this moment and all the precious few moments I am graced with.

WHAAAAATTTTT!!!!!

“…thousands were queuing in Nairobi to have their eyeballs scanned as part of the “Worldcoin” project, founded by OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In exchange for handing over their biometric data, some 350,000 Kenyans each received 25 free crypto tokens, worth approximately $50. Those tokens were transferred directly via Kenya’s main mobile payments app, M-Pesa.”

Actually that doesn’t sound so forward thinking when you consider that the UN has been doing since 2016:

“In 2016, the UN World Food Programme trialled a system that issued relief payments through the use of biometrics. Refugees were able to buy items from the supermarket using their biometric data as a credential: all they needed to do was scan their iris to pay for an item. The idea was to improve convenience and prevent fraud. Since that trial, the World Food Programme’s Building Blocks initiative has become the world’s largest humanitarian use of blockchain technology.”

This a good point... it is an opinion piece and the authors emotional reaction to her family's experience with this system. There are some stats but a more useful artical would be a fact based exploration of the abuses by insurance companies that are enabled from the inherent structure of Medicare Advantage plans.

My own anecdotal experience is how the insurance companies call the elderly (prey on the elderly - abusive practice) to schedule vists from nurses who do nothing more than ask 100's of invasive questions and provide 0 care. They are simply collecting data that is not protected by HIPPA. The data is immensely profitable to the insurance companies to drive the accuracy of their predictive models. The insurance companies then in turn charge CMS for this visit.

So now one day hence the new light is even brighter!!! Interesting that this 5th column can have so much power over so many U.S. institutions and be able to bring down university presidents.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/09/business/upenn-board-of-trust...

Doesn't seem coordinated to me...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stefanik-applauds-resignati...

Very illuminating information - now reading this ABC article about what is happening on university campuses and the pressure that university presidents are under is seen in an entirely new light.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/uproar-university-presidents-remar...