Readit Newsandrewvc commented on The average college student today hilariusbookbinder.substa... · Posted by u/Jyaif
I can’t tell you how many professors I’ve had this exact conversation with.
It’s also clear that kids whose parents restrict phone use seem to have superpowers compared to those that don’t.
A good starting point would be fully banning all phones for the entirety of the school day in K-12.
andrewvc commented on All clothing is handmade (2022) ruthtillman.com/post/all-... · Posted by u/panic
> Indeed, the wallets I've made are still going strong
I'm confused - I purchase a new leather wallet from a department store (a UK one that has a reputation for quality) about once every ten years. How old are your wallets? Or how quickly did your other wallets wear out?
The oldest are maybe old 5-6 years, but they still look great!
That said depending on how you store it ymmv. If you keep it in the same pocket as your keys you’ll have a different outcome from keeping it in a separate pocket of a bag or just even in its own pocket in your pants.
andrewvc commented on All clothing is handmade (2022) ruthtillman.com/post/all-... · Posted by u/panic
A few years ago I got into the hobby of handmade leather goods, like wallets.
One thing that struck me as I learned more about the process was that I could with little training, make a higher quality, hand sewn wallet than even most luxury brands for less money by simply buying more expensive material. Indeed, the wallets I've made are still going strong.
What was also apparent was that I certainly had far less skill than the people constructing those mass market wallets. To be able to operate an industrial sewing machine at speed takes far more skill than learning to saddle stitch by hand. When you stitch by hand you can go quite slowly, and taking the time is the point of a hobby anyway. A sewing machine is slightly worse in quality (but not by a lot) but also scales way better.
If you watch videos of skilled folks sewing together shoes on youtube it's insanely impressive how precise and practiced those folks are!
Back to wallets, most hobbyists will take a very high end and thick piece of leather, cut out the pattern with an exacto knife, skive the parts that need it, hand stitch it with a saddle stitch, then finish the edges. Whereas a mass-produced wallet will often use a blend of leather, synthetic fabric for pocket liners, and be machine stitched, with some other machines used along the way. The hobbyist design is simple and robust, it's just layers of leather thicker than you'd find in a normal wallet.
A mass manufactured wallet, even many luxury ones use thinner pieces of leather and synthetic material and construction methods that are less robust. It's not all about cheapness though, some of these things require extra work. I think a lot of it is about producing a product that looks a specific way, even if it is less durable. For instance some luxury products will use a delicate finish (like a paint) that will look awesome, but just won't last as long as a thick piece of vegetable tan. A thin turned edge can certainly be a failure point as well, and that takes more effort to make! I also have to wonder if these brands intentionally want their items to wear out to encourage people to buy more. I imagine the sort of person who buys a Gucci wallet sees it more as a seasonal status symbol than as an investment.
> But while some readers might not subscribe to outlets that give away some of their best journalism for free, it’s just as possible that readers will recognize this sacrifice and reward these outlets with more traffic and subscriptions in the long run.
In other words we have a wild guess this will be sustainable for news organizations.
Stories like this are always popular on HN but I’m convinced get upvoted because people agree with the idea of more free stuff. I’m skeptical that this will improve the quality of reporting in an already under resourced journalistic environment. Maybe it’s a good idea, but it’s hardly obvious.
andrewvc commented on The meathead margin: how lifting weights might have saved my life jakeseliger.com/2024/02/0... · Posted by u/jseliger
Whenever I read these kinds of stories, I eagerly seek details on what might have caused the cancer. I think it’s very unsettling to imagine that it’s random. I’m not looking to find blame, but to find anything that I can grasp onto as an explanation for why I’m different and I won’t randomly lose an organ or limb.
I can’t imagine wanting to live through that horror of detachment, which makes me admire people like Jake who demonstrate an extreme level of courage.
That’s natural, I think the same way, but in person try to stick with the here and now. Anyone who’s ever been sick with anything knows that other people often probe with questions and advice that is often unwanted and takes the focus off the sick person.
andrewvc commented on Most states start school too early in the morning atlasobscura.com/articles... · Posted by u/jseliger
>The primary function of state funded K-12 is childcare to enable two parents to work.
That's the PRIMARY function, eh?
Whether we want that to be true or not it is. If every school were to close the immediate emergency would be that people would have no one to watch their kids.
One challenge with the term over-engineering is that it implies that the over-engineered solution would be generally superior to the under-engineered one were it not for the extra cost. The article rightly points out that this is not true, but it's something that really isn't discussed as much as it should be.
A good example of this would be avg's teardown of the Juicero, in which IIRC he described it as under-engineered despite it's expensive ultra durable components. The rationale being that rather than build a design suitable for the purpose of squeezing juice out of bags they built a machine that was specced for a much more demanding task, thus driving up costs and wasting materials. The implication being if they'd spent more time or care engineering it they wouldn't have poorly engineered over-specced components.
Perhaps a preferred term should be "well engineered" or "poorly engineered". A well engineered thing is something that is well suited in a number of different dimensions, including product capability, business needs, cost (and its impact to end users in terms of price), etc. That sometimes means ugly code, it sometimes means technical debt, but it always implies elegance at a higher level than just the code or components, but an elegance that encompasses a wholistic understanding of the context in which that code exists.
In the software world some examples of poor engineering might be using kubernetes for a small internal app that could run well on a single VM or container. Or, in a different context NOT using kubernetes for the exact same app, but in an organization where k8s is standardized, thus creating more inconsistency and driving up organizational complexity in order to reduce local complexity.
andrewvc commented on SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities twitter.com/tier10k/statu... · Posted by u/zone411
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How do you know that he wasn’t capable of understanding those requirements? It seems just as possible that he consciously chose to ignore prudence in favor of easy profits.
In fact, it seems that he completely did understand the importance of things like separating customer funds between businesses given that FTX claimed to have rigorous procedures around this prior to their collapse. From the outside, it appears that he is trying to save his skin by pleading ignorance.
They’ve all been solved 100x over by founders who’ve been funded on this site. It used to make sense to have a directory or cgi-bin of helpful scripts. Now it only makes sense as a bit of nostalgia.
I miss the days when we had less, could get less done in a day… but felt more ownership over it. Those days are gone.