yazan94's comments

yazan94 | 2 years ago | on: Pyobd - a free and open source program for car diagnostics

For better or for worse, there are no such mandatory inspections nor certificates required when selling your car in the USA. Its a common trope/issue that people can often get misled by sellers when buying a vehicle, either by the seller clearing the engine codes or some other shady practice that would keep the car looking good until it drives off the lot

yazan94 | 2 years ago | on: Go with PHP

I know NodeJS well but have never used PHP, but I can attest that using PM2 is a pain and node_modules deps issues can be a hair-pulling event. But the package.json scripts provide a simple and built-in way to run basic build tasks. There's always an ~~app~~package for that, no matter what "that" is. There are also tons of tutorials, examples, and snippets for everything you want to do to get up and running quickly. TBH I really enjoy working with Typescript, it really brings sanity to JS (as long as you are consistent with it) and Express is dead simple and just makes sense.

Would you mind sharing your insights into why one should go with modern PHP+Laravel instead of NodeJS+Express+Typescript? what does the PHP equivalent of pm2 load-balancing look like and how does it compare?

yazan94 | 5 years ago | on: The Unmarked Federal Agents Occupying Washington, D.C

President Andrew Jackson famously shrugged off the US Supreme Court decision in Worcester v. Georgia by (probably not) saying "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!". Like you said, "Laws are worth zero if the law enforcers ignore them with impunity". This is why we need a system to police the police. At some point, we as a society need to commit to forcing those who swear to uphold the laws to also live by them.

yazan94 | 5 years ago | on: De-Escalation Keeps Protesters and Police Safer

Honestly, it is funny to me that the group most dedicated to standing up and fighting against a tyrannical government and refuses to believe that the military would be called in against peaceful protesters is still standing on the sidelines and watching the violence unfold. The day they realize that they and the BLM movement are mostly on the same side for this issue (anti government heavy-handedness) will be the day that these protests start getting seriously scary.

yazan94 | 5 years ago | on: 92 of top 500 subreddits controlled by same 5 people

Sorry for the tangent, but that sounds really interesting! Would you feel comfortable sharing more info about how you did the processing? Astrophotography is a hobby I've been wanting to get into and learn about, but I can't justify purchasing an expensive camera for just one hobby.

yazan94 | 5 years ago | on: Colleges at the breaking point, forcing ‘hard choices’ about education

I fail to see how an ISA is better than an unforgivable loan, and to be honest, this seems a lot more like indentured servitude/wage slavery without the pretense of a loan. If the investor (Purdue in the article) has to step in and say we won't make more than 2.5x our investment on you, you know the student is being taken advantage of. The problem is that the ISA model is still bound to the private market by virtue of the fact that the investors are private and not public entities. The carrots and sticks that are in place are not there to benefit the student.

I wonder how society would react by making student loans forgivable. Would banks stop giving out loans because there is no collateral? Or would they require a cosigner to rope in an adult with collateral to lose? Would schools get cheaper as a result of people not being able to afford the already high tuition, would they become a status symbol for the mid-upper class who can afford it? It is definitely an interesting thought experiment.

yazan94 | 6 years ago | on: The Pandemic Is Showing Us How to Live with Uncertainty

Times definitely have changed in the past few decades. There was widespread looting going on during the 1977 blackout in NYC [1]. I hope that you're right and everything is being blown out of proportion, but lets not forget that:

* everything is possible * looting and pillaging has happened before in lesser times * it doesn't help to be unprepared

I honestly think that if we had a firmer, more coordinated, and less fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants government response and action plan, anarchy would definitely be reigned in and less of a concern in people's minds.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977

yazan94 | 6 years ago | on: CNN-generated images are surprisingly easy to spot for now

Seriously? You want to be able to join a community you might not be familiar with and understand the lingo/jargon off the bat? Of course people will abbreviate things when the word/phrase is sufficiently long, commonly used, and the abbreviation mutually understood (brb, tldr, OOP, etc.). There is no elitism involved, if you don't understand something either Google it or ask. No reason to act snobbish because people cater the the most common denominator in a community rather than the lowest.

yazan94 | 6 years ago | on: Chinese military personnel charged for hacking into Equifax

Also plausible is that the Americans don't want to toot their own horn (as the CIA and NSA seldom do) and the Chinese don't want to appear vulnerable and admit they were hacked. The difference in responsibilities to the people that a dictatorship and a democracy are stark, almost regardless of how broken of a democracy it is.

I am no hacking expert, but the fact that the internet is such an open place and knowledge sharing is so widespread, I would lean to the side that they have comparable hacking capabilities as America. I've yet to hear of a reason why they wouldn't other than the standard " 'Murica #1". And given a dictatorship presiding over a massive economy and a valid raison d'etre for such capabilities, there is no reason they cannot fund an equivalent of the NSA

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