pmcginn (u/pmcginn) - Readit News

pmcginn commented on Tell HN: Merry Christmas · Posted by u/basilikum

a022311 · 2 months ago

The Bible and the Big Bang theory are not mutually exclusive. The Old Testament is a very symbolic book and gives no specific details on how exactly the world was created, other than the seven days of creation. We know that the 7 days weren't referring to our current concept of a day. There's also no water above the sky. It was written like that, because it would be easier for people to understand. Science wasn't a thing back then. If it were written in 2025, it would obviously be very different and probably much more detailed.

Modern Christians know that religion and science can go together. Science researches _how_ something works. Religion answers _who_ created it. The Big Bang theory is actually accepted by them today.

pmcginn · 2 months ago

The big bang theory isn't just "accepted by them today," it has been since the beginning. The father of the big bang theory was a catholic priest.

pmcginn commented on Tell HN: Merry Christmas · Posted by u/basilikum

pdevr · 2 months ago

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Being a non-Christian and it being Christmas time, I am sharing one verse from the New Testament that is, in my opinion, useful - or at the very least, insightful - to anyone, regardless of religion.

Luke 16:10: He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.

pmcginn · 2 months ago

Thank you for sharing this one! It's from a beautiful parable found only in Luke's gospel, from which only "no slave can serve two masters" seems to have entered the popular lexicon. Your quote, or the closing line "you cannot serve God and wealth", better speak to the spirit of the passage.

For anyone interested in approaching the Bible this season, perhaps as part of a New Year's resolution, there are many wonderful free and paid resources to do so. It's easy to get bogged down in a comparison of translations and tools, or to ambitiously pick a Bible in a Year reading plan and get waylaid in the pentateuch. Instead, I'd recommend starting with the Berean Standard Bible (a modern, public domain translation with good footnotes) and Mark (Matthew is my favorite, but it starts with a genealogy and requires some Old Testament knowledge to fully enjoy.)

Here's a link: https://biblehub.com/bsb/mark/1.htm

pmcginn commented on The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state nber.org/papers/w33697... · Posted by u/imakwana

busymom0 · 10 months ago

Hope you are right but I think it's different. Smoking has very visible side effects fairly soon though- types of cancer, photos of rotten lungs and throat everywhere on cigarette packs etc.

Social media only seems to have psychological side effects which aren't as openly visible to our eyes.

pmcginn · 10 months ago

Your attitude is exactly what the parent comment is describing. You have the benefit of decades of scientific research and government mandates that didn't exist for previous generations. Modern cigarettes date to the late 1800's but the link between smoking and cancer wasn't established until the 1950's. It took over a decade after that for the first warning labels to appear on packs, and the photo type you're describing didn't exist until the 2000's.

It seems obvious to you because it has been made obvious to you. It wasn't the same for people in the first half of the 1900's. The parent comment is making the same point: it's not obvious to most people today, but in fifty years from now, people will look at the research, the decline in the birth rate, the increase of anxiety, and effects we can't imagine today and go "social media has very visible side effects fairly soon, how did they not know?"

pmcginn commented on My stupid noise journey (2023) dynomight.net/noise/... · Posted by u/ustad

Night_Thastus · a year ago

I suffer this at work, mainly if I'm more in a thinking-mode than a doing-mode. I struggle very hard to concentrate and get anything done if there's noise around me. I'd be curious what model OP bought, maybe I could consider doing the same thing.

pmcginn · a year ago

The two brands that could have a claim to producing "the model that everyone says are the best" are Bose and Sony. For Bose, the QuietComfort Ultra are the top of the line, but the cheaper/older QuietComfort 45 and 35 are both good too. For Sony, the WH-1000XM4 is the consensus favorite, even though the XM5 is newer. I own the XM4 and the older XM3 and I prefer the XM3 because I like the way it sounds with nothing playing better. I don't know how to describe it but the "silence" of the XM4 with ANC on but nothing playing feels too artificial for me. For office use, though, I prefer the XM4 since it has bluetooth multipoint and I can use them easily with both my laptop and phone without mucking around in settings.

I'm changing jobs and going from having my own office to hoteling desks, so I imagine I'll be wearing the Sony's a lot more and I'm not sure if they'll be comfortable enough for all day use. At home or on a plane, I usually need to give my ears a rest every hour or so. I'll give one of the Bose a shot if I can't deal with the Sony's all day.

Apple is also very popular. I haven't tried the new AirPods with ANC, but I love the Pros. I have to fuss with them a bit to get a good seal, and they don't stand up to city or airplane use, but they're fine in a relatively quiet environment, and they're so small I pretty much always have them on me. I have no experience with the Max, but from what I've read they can be uncomfortable for some people.

pmcginn commented on Plain Text Accounting plaintextaccounting.org/... · Posted by u/pessimizer

vagab0nd · 3 years ago

How does it compare to ledger-cli? I've been using ledger for a long time, but heard good things about beancount and hledger.

pmcginn · 3 years ago

I haven't used ledger-cli much; I ruled it out pretty quickly when I was testing PTA software. For me, I loved the reporting and hledger-add for entering transactions manually. As I learned to automate my input, I started to appreciate beancount's automatic strict enforcement, BQL, and fava web front-end. Then I learned some pandas and was able to replicate most of the hledger reporting I liked with my beancount data and some python scripts.

If I were in your shoes, my only question would be: am I happy with the output? If you are, I'd stick with ledger. If you're not, fava is pretty cool.

pmcginn commented on Plain Text Accounting plaintextaccounting.org/... · Posted by u/pessimizer

AlbertCory · 3 years ago

Wow, two posts about accounting at the very top of the front page! Must be a slow Sunday.

For my (extremely simple) accounting needs for my book writing, I looked at some of the packages, got turned off by the subscriptions, and realized I could do what little I needed just by opening a separate bank account, and doing all the costs & revenue through that. The bank takes care of the storage, and you can download a CSV of the whole year and import that into a spreadsheet. Some massaging and then give it to the accountant.

Obviously for a real business, you need something more, so I'm not saying this would work for everyone.

pmcginn · 3 years ago

Reading the LWN post about why they chose GnuCash was a great reminder to me of why I chose beancount--all the other financial solutions out there did about 80-90% of what I wanted, but never 100%, and no way to get them to 100% either.

I'm not a programmer, so I had to install and learn a lot of tools along the way, but now there's literally nothing I want to do with my financial data that I can't. It's all just text files, python, git, csv, and json. I haven't encountered a single problem that I wasn't able to solve with just a bit of time and searching through stackoverflow or github.

pmcginn commented on Ask HN: Looking for Email Service Recommendations · Posted by u/yeezyszn

pmcginn · 3 years ago

If you're a paid iCloud user or an MS365 user, both have ways to use a custom domain and tap into the storage you're already paying for at no extra cost. MS365 locks you in to GoDaddy as a registrar and I'm on Cloudflare, so I use iCloud. I'm not sure what your threat model is, so you may not be willing to consider either of these options. For me, email privacy is an oxymoron and I prefer communication methods with forward secrecy like Signal. For email, I'm mainly just looking for a vanity domain I can share with my wife for spam and mailing lists.

Growing past the above suggestions, at the cheap tier, I'd recommend Migadu, MXRoute, or Zoho.

If you're willing to pay what I consider to be Too Much For Email, then my favorites are Proton Mail, StartMail, or Fastmail. You'll want to research these heavily before transitioning though, as they may be missing features you're used to from Gmail that you find you can't live without.

pmcginn commented on 700M users and Premium telegram.org/blog/700-mil... · Posted by u/bathory

nazka · 4 years ago

Honest question: How is Telegram better than Signal? Is Signal not the best in term of security and privacy?

pmcginn · 4 years ago

I really tried to like Signal and convince my family to use it, but the lack of iOS backups, CarPlay support, and web client were dealbreakers for me. I'm no Meta fan but I've found WhatsApp to be the best mix of secure default settings plus usability. It's ugly as sin and doesn't have a Linux app, though.

pmcginn commented on Truckers sue California, say new gig economy law would kill 70k jobs foxbusiness.com/money/tru... · Posted by u/kmod

crooked-v · 6 years ago

The loads hauled by these truckers aren't going to magically vanish because the employment laws have changed, which would strongly suggest there will be about the same number of jobs in the end, since the same amount of work still needs to be done.

> Many would have to abandon $150,000 investments in clean trucks

I read this as: truckers will no longer be expect to supply their own $150,000 trucks to get into the business.

> and the right to set their own schedules

I read this as: truckers will no longer be expected to "comply with the laws, wink wink" to meet impossible schedules in ways that legally aren't the contracting company's fault.

pmcginn · 6 years ago

I'm in finished vehicle logistics, and I've worked directly with a wide variety of truckers, including three years in California. You are very right that the amount of cargo that needs to be moved will not change because of this law, but you are, in my opinion, wrong about everything else.

I don't want to stereotype truckers because it is a diverse group. But I will say that in my anecdotal experience, this is a job that tends to attract people who want to be left alone. These are people who value freedom and hard work above everything else and many of them will change careers or retire if they are forced to work for big corporations. The average trucker is 55 years old, and many of them will just sell their and retire if AB5 is not overturned.

Supplying a $150,000 truck is not at all a barrier to entry. There is a major shortage of truckers and employers are offering free training, big sign on bonuses, and high starting pay to attract talent. Walmart, which is certainly not known for paying its employees well, pays truckers an average of almost $88,000 per year--and Walmart supplies the truck. The people spending $150,000 on a truck are doing it because they want to, not because they have to. This is not a medallion situation.

As for your "wink wink" comment, ELD's have been mandated since the end of 2017, and even companies that are small enough to not legally be compelled to use one are often forced to comply due to customer contracts. (Shippers want the data the ELD provides to offer better ETAs to their customers.)

In my opinion, the most likely outcome of this law is that some truckers retire and sell their rigs to big corporations, some decide to work for big corporations, and prices go up for everyone who ships goods or buys shipped goods. Unless you're in asset based trucking and looking to expand, the chances are that AB5 is going to hurt you, not help you.

pmcginn commented on GNU Nano 4.0 nano-editor.org/news.php... · Posted by u/snird

geuszb · 7 years ago

I'm sure nano/pico and the like are nice but to me there's two things a terminal editor can try to solve for: being nice, or bring ubiquitous. The nicest ones (say emacs) are way nicer than nano in terms of features, extensibility, etc. Now for being ubiquitous, nothing beats vi to date. I can't tell what nano is aiming for?

EDIT

I guess I had assumed that vi/vim was significantly more widespread than nano. Maybe that's an outdated assumption? I feel like I've come across a few instances where vi has been the only choice...

pmcginn · 7 years ago

I use nano because I don't have to remember anything to use it. If you put me in front of nano I can open a config file, go to the line I need, edit in something, save it, and exit without knowing a single thing about nano. If you put me in front of emacs or vi I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at.

I am sure vi and emacs are much powerful than nano, but the time I'd have to invest in learning them would outweigh the benefit. I just don't edit text files enough for it to pay off.