jmopp (u/jmopp) - Readit News

jmopp commented on Ask HN: What rabbit hole(s) did you dive into recently? · Posted by u/RetroTechie

mmh0000 · a year ago

Hard disagree.

The real world only has pain and suffering. Endless trials and never a payout.

Games on the other hand and very detailed and have a well defined path to success.

jmopp · a year ago

But when you succeed in the game, then what? Yes, the real world is full of endless trials and never a payout. But the entire point is that there is no point. The fun is in the journey. The real treasure is the friends you make along the way, to quote the meme.

jmopp commented on Bayer is getting rid of bosses and asking staff to ‘self-organize’ fortune.com/europe/2024/0... · Posted by u/cwwc

jncfhnb · a year ago

So… the goal is for you to do nothing? Except not impede people making decisions and hiring consultants when you, not the person closer to the issue, thinks it’s not working?

jmopp · a year ago

It's kind of like how the north star for a programmer is to automate themselves out of the job. A good manager will bring the best out of their reports, which leads to making good decisions and executing on them.

jmopp commented on Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide bloomberg.com/features/20... · Posted by u/fromthegut

dclowd9901 · a year ago

This seems like such a contrived example.

By all accounts the Dr would probably be in better shape if the kidnappers weren’t able to contact their family.

jmopp · a year ago

It's not the kidnappers trying to contact the family in this case. It's the clinic administrator who doesn't know why their doctor hasn't shown up for a week

jmopp commented on Scammers are targeting teenage boys on social media and driving some to suicide bloomberg.com/features/20... · Posted by u/fromthegut

gttalbot · a year ago

Why would Facebook not just block messages from Nigeria to rando North American towns at this point? Shouldn't the network analysis required to detect this sort of crime ring be a slam-dunk at this point? I don't get how this is still even possible.

jmopp · a year ago

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, the false positives (and the fallout from it) might outweigh the negatives: imagine a volunteer doctor who disappears in West Africa due to being kidnapped/robbed etc and someone local tries to contact the family back home, but all the messages end up getting blocked.

jmopp commented on How to found a company in Germany: 14 "easy" steps and lots of pain eidel.io/how-to-found-a-c... · Posted by u/olieidel

miningape · a year ago

This is interesting because I have the exact opposite experience. I'm a South African but I live in the EU, for me, I need to book my new passport 1 year+ in advance of it expiring because it takes on average about that long (if I pay the bribes).

jmopp · a year ago

The trick is not to do it at the embassy, but to take a two-week holiday and do it in South Africa.

jmopp commented on The man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas (2022) maxread.substack.com/p/th... · Posted by u/dbcooper

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

Nuclear fission is relatively straightforward so long as you either don't know or don't care about the health risks of radiation. It's just a pile of spicy rocks at the end of the day.

Fusion, on the other hand, requires you to get center-of-sun temperatures and pressures going on to work properly. That usually requires either extremely difficult engineering processes or a fission bomb (and more precise engineering calculations but they're actually reasonably solvable).

jmopp · a year ago

I always thought fusion was easier than fission, since all* you really need is water and electricity — the problem being that it's currently impossible to get more energy than what you put in

* I am eliding over the fact that building a Farnsworth fusor is still a challenge, but less of a challenge than sourcing, purifying, and enriching uranium certainly.

jmopp commented on New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco tlacuilolli.com/2024/03/2... · Posted by u/dzdt

wolverine876 · a year ago

How many of these are by Aztecs about Aztecs?

* "The first is called Map of the Founding of Tetepilco, and is a pictographic map which contains information regarding the foundation of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": San Andrés Tetepilco must have been Spanish, of course.

* "The second, the Inventory of the Church of San Andrés Tetepilco ...": Churches would be Spanish.

* "Tira of San Andrés Tetepilco, is a pictographic history ... comprising historical information regarding the Tenochtitlan polity from its foundation to the year 1603.": At least it seems to be about Aztecs.

Why were the first two books about Spanish topics but written in the local language? If Spanish people writing, wouldn't they write in Spanish? If Aztecs were writing, why would they care to record these things? I suppose the latter is plausible if they were absorbed into Spanish society.

jmopp · a year ago

Fun fact: the descendants of Moctezuma still live today as Spanish nobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Moctezuma_de_Tultengo

jmopp commented on Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019) rootsofprogress.org/why-d... · Posted by u/onychomys

WalterBright · a year ago

I suspect that nobody thought of a 2 wheel design because nobody thought it would be stable. The hinge between the front and back wheel is crucial. Even today, few bicyclists understand how a bicycle is able to turn and remain upright.

None of the early designs seemed to have any brakes, making them quite impractical.

Without modern steel and machined parts, a bicycle of wood and iron would simply be too heavy.

jmopp · a year ago

The bicycles that were made from wood and iron gave an extremely stiff ride and were called boneshakers.

jmopp commented on E-Bikes Overtake Buggies for Some Amish (2021) thisebikelife.com/e-bikes... · Posted by u/thunderbong

looping8 · a year ago

Perhaps it is because it is a USA thing, but I do not understand the limits they talk about in the article. These Amish cannot use electricity... but they can use solar power? Why is regular electricity in their faith worse than the same energy harnessed via solar power? What is the difference from their point of view?

jmopp · a year ago

The Amish view of technology is a bit more nuanced than "modern technology bad". Generally, technology needs to have a legitimate purpose for the community in order to be adopted. So a grid connection would be bad as it's a connection to the outside world, and electricity on tap would encourage vices like television. But battery power, or solar power, where the purpose is simply to power your tools to make your work more efficient is acceptable. Were people to start hooking up smartphones to the solar panels and posting videos on TikTok, the opinion about the technology might change.

jmopp commented on Bruno: Fast and Git-friendly open-source API client (Postman alternative) usebruno.com/... · Posted by u/ulrischa

masa331 · 2 years ago

Can someone explain what Postman or Bruno is for? I know it's something for interacting with apis but why would i use it. I interact with apis a lot with curl or wrapper in my languages but never really needed something else?

jmopp · 2 years ago

As someone who uses curl and postman regularly, both tools have their places: I've found curl most useful for quick ad-hoc requests, or if I need to figure out why my service is no longer working. Postman I've found most useful to create a library of requests that are available on-hand: If I need to call services but I don't want to have to remember what the exact URL is or what the exact payload is.