TinyRick (u/TinyRick)

TinyRick commented on I should have loved biology too nehalslearnings.substack.... · Posted by u/nehal96

intrasight · 10 months ago

My fork in the road with hard tech hard science versus biology was in high school. It seemed that students that wanted to become doctors took AP biology and students that wanted to be engineers took physics and chemistry. I had wanted to be an engineer since I was 12 years old so I felt the decision was already made. But all studying neural networks in college in the 80s I realized that there was this tremendously rich domain of real neurons which I knew nothing about. I worked as a software engineer for a couple years after graduating but then went back to school to study Neurophysiology. I did not pursue it as my area of work or research, but I am grateful for having had the opportunity to look at the world from the perspective of a biologist.

If you're an engineer and early in your career and feel there's something missing from your intellectual space, I encourage you to go back and get a graduate degree in something totally different. Humans live a very long time so don't feel like you're wasting time.

TinyRick · 10 months ago

I would love to do something like this but simply cannot afford it. I think it is good advice but going back to school for a degree one does not plan on utilizing is not as feasible today as it was in the 80's, largely due to the sizeable increase in tuition without reciprocal increases in wages.

TinyRick commented on FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies ftc.gov/news-events/news/... · Posted by u/nabla9

arminiusreturns · a year ago

Because I don't want to be associated with companies that break the law and violate regulations knowingly. I've long had a reputation of integrity, and it's one of the few things I have left having almost nothing else.

TinyRick · a year ago

So you would rather be known as someone who had an opportunity to report a violation, and chose not to? From my perspective it seem like you decided against acting with integrity in this situation - the moral thing would have been to report the violation, but you chose to look the other way and resign.

TinyRick commented on FTC: Vast Surveillance of Users by Social Media and Video Streaming Companies ftc.gov/news-events/news/... · Posted by u/nabla9

arminiusreturns · a year ago

I agree. Let me tell you about what just happened to me. After a very public burnout and spiral, a friend rescued me and I took a part time gig helping a credit card processing company. About 2 months ago, the owner needed something done while I was out, and got their uber driver to send an email. They emailed the entire customer database, including bank accounts, socials, names, addresses, finance data, to a single customer. When I found out, (was kept hidden from me for 11 days) I said "This is a big deal, here are all the remediations and besides PCI we have 45 days by law to notify affected customers." The owner said "we aren't going to do that", and thus I had to turn in my resignation and am now unemployed again.

So me trying to do the right thing, am now scrambling for work, while the offender pretends nothing happened while potentially violating the entire customer base, and will likely suffer no penalty unless I report it to PCI, which I would get no reward for.

Why is it everywhere I go management is always doing shady stuff. I just want to do linuxy/datacentery things for someone who's honest... /cry

My mega side project isn't close enough to do a premature launch yet. Despite my entire plan being to forgo VC/investors, I'm now considering compromising.

TinyRick · a year ago

Why would you resign? You could have reported it yourself and then you would have whistleblower protections - if the company retaliated against you (e.g. fired you), you then would have had a strong lawsuit.

TinyRick commented on PFAS in blood are ubiquitous and associated with risk of cardiovascular diseases medicalxpress.com/news/20... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

hilbert42 · 2 years ago

"Fast food consumption is also associated with both"

I'm not arguing the point here but why would fast food have more PFAS in it? Seems these days all food is grown under conditions and goes through similar handling before it gets to customers.

TinyRick · 2 years ago

Many fast food wrappers/containers contained PFAS until very recently [0]. Putting hot food out of a fryer into those containers would leech some of the PFAS into the food.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-fast-food-...

TinyRick commented on Ancient counterfeiters and their fake coins coinweek.com/bad-money-an... · Posted by u/goles

roshin · 2 years ago

slightly related, but I've always wondered, why don't criminal governments (N Korea, Taliban, ...) make a professional US dollar forgery factory (or another currency, if some other kind is easy to forge)? It seems to me like a very profitable business.

TinyRick · 2 years ago

North Korea already does that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#North_Korea

TinyRick commented on FCC rules AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal fcc.gov/document/fcc-make... · Posted by u/ortusdux

bityard · 2 years ago

I have a system that takes it one step further and both reduces the awkwardness and false-positive rate at the same time: I add the people that I know to the contacts on my phone. When a call comes in as a number instead of a name, I simply decline to pick it up. If it's not a spam call, they will either leave a voice message or send a text. If they do neither, then either it was a spam/scam call, or whatever they had to say probably wasn't that important in the first place. Win/win.

I've been doing this for a little over a decade and it hasn't let me down yet.

TinyRick · 2 years ago

I do exactly this but take it even one step further. My actual (primary) phone number is only ever given out to humans. I have a second Google Voice phone number that I give out to machines (e.g. online shopping that "requires" a phone number that will eventually be leaked).

TinyRick commented on Canadian man stuck in triangle of e-commerce fraud krebsonsecurity.com/2024/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

oh_sigh · 2 years ago

What part of him talking to the police worsened his situation?

TinyRick · 2 years ago

My interpretation is that he provided enough evidence to the RCMP that convinced them to stay the case, since they likely thought the evidence they had to convict Barker was weak. This lead to him not having a chance in court to clear his name.

Had he not spoken to the police at all, and instead waited to present his evidence in court, he likely would have been found not guilty and therefore would have cleared his name.

Him talking to police worsened the situation because they are not the ones who evaluate the evidence and make a conviction decision (judges/juries do that). The job of the police is to collect evidence, and Barker did that for them (to his detriment).

TinyRick commented on Judge blocks JetBlue from acquiring Spirit Airlines nytimes.com/2024/01/16/bu... · Posted by u/i0exception

haliskerbas · 2 years ago

Spirit also doesn’t live up to that in my experience. Their cost structure nickel and dimes the consumer so much that by the time you get to the destination you may have paid more for a much less comfortable trip.

At least in my anecdotal experience.

TinyRick · 2 years ago

> Their cost structure nickel and dimes the consumer so much that by the time you get to the destination you may have paid more for a much less comfortable trip

That lends more credence to the comparison against Dollar General and similar discount stores. Dollar stores generally charge a higher price relative to quantity, but they offer smaller quantities than big box stores which allows their customers to spend less (but also get a lot less). Wendover on YouTube did a video on this recently [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao