prmths (u/prmths) - Readit News

prmths commented on How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up (2014) medium.com/swlh/how-quitt... · Posted by u/startupflix

tomhoward · 8 years ago

It only takes 3 votes for a new story to get on the front page.

It drops off pretty quickly if it gets no more votes or if it gets flagged.

Re-posts of old stories are welcome as long as they're interesting and the story hasn't had a significant discussion thread for the past 12 months [1].

If you see a story that doesn't belong on the front page, flag it or email the mods - hn@ycombinator.com.

Don't publicly trash the site by speculating it's broken when the site maintainers work damn hard to make sure it works smoothly, and when there's no evidence that it's working in any way other than is intended and desired by the community.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20dupe%20porous&sort=byPo...

prmths · 8 years ago

> It only takes 3 votes for a new story to get on the front page.

That's not true because I've seen posts with far more than 3 languish in the "new" section.

> It drops off pretty quickly if it gets no more votes or if it gets flagged.

I've seen posts with 0 votes stay on front for a long time.

> If you see a story that doesn't belong on the front page, flag it or email the mods - hn@ycombinator.com.

It's not my job.

> Don't publicly trash the site by speculating it's broken when the site maintainers work damn hard to make sure it works smoothly,

Did I trash the site? I just offered my opinion.

> and when there's no evidence that it's working in any way other than is intended and desired by the community.

By the community? Is this your first time on HN? The community doesn't run HN. The moderators do.

What's the point of getting so defensive?

prmths commented on Report: Chinese government is behind a decade of hacks on software companies arstechnica.com/informati... · Posted by u/valiant-comma

forapurpose · 8 years ago

> everyone does it

In this discussion of 19 comments, I count around 5, more than 25%, that say some variation of 'everyone else does it too', but never with any support for the claim. It's generally true of any discussion mentioning China, though I don't have the precise numbers. The marginal value of these comments was low, lacking any support, and is greatly diminishing with use.

prmths · 8 years ago

> but never with any support for the claim.

Because it's well known and established.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/israel-wont-stop-spying-u...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intellige...

https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/politics/germany-media-spying...

That every major nation spies on each other is obvious.

Why do you think every major nation has a spy agency?

> The marginal value of these comments was low, lacking any support, and is greatly diminishing with use.

It's not everyone's fault you don't know the basics. What are you whining about? That you are ignorant of what government and spy agencies do?

If people said all governments pass laws are you whine about how people don't provide evidence of it?

prmths commented on NSA collected 500M U.S. call records in 2017, a sharp rise: official report reuters.com/article/us-us... · Posted by u/Jerry2

stickdogg · 8 years ago

The Russians and Chinese manipulate the American public every day all day. Not to mention the Americans and Western Europeans with money and influence whose interests align with theirs. How do you think we ended up with president chump?

prmths · 8 years ago

> The Russians and Chinese manipulate the American public every day all day

So does our media, government agencies, NGOs, Canada, Britain, Israel and many european nations. But lets scapegoat the russians and the chinese.

> How do you think we ended up with president chump?

Certainly not because of the chinese or europeans. The chinese and europeans wanted hillary to win.

Let me ask, did the chinese and russians get obama elected? I love how easily people are brainwashed by the media. They say something and the mindless just repeat it.

prmths commented on Report: Chinese government is behind a decade of hacks on software companies arstechnica.com/informati... · Posted by u/valiant-comma

forapurpose · 8 years ago

If China was doing this with boots on the ground - with people physically acquiring this information on-site - it would be a major international incident. I don't quite grasp why doing the same thing over the Internet is significantly different.

prmths · 8 years ago

What makes you think they don't do that? Of course they do that. They even send chinese women to seduce lonely pathetic FBI/CIA/etc officials to get information. There was a huge story about it a few years ago.

But everyone does it. The brits, french, russians, koreans, japanese, germans, saudis, etc all do it. Hell the nation with the largest spy network in the US is our ally Israel.

The chinese are amateurs when it comes to spying on the internet or in the real world. Once they get to israel's level, then you the media won't even report on their spying and if they do, they'll make excuses for it.

prmths commented on Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley theglobeandmail.com/busin... · Posted by u/paulashbourne

whack · 8 years ago

Canada is in a really tough spot here. I've always admired Canadian culture/values, and in the abstract, would love to live in Canada one day. However, as a Software developer, the compensation and opportunities that one can find in SF/Seattle/NYC dwarf anything in Canada. Until this changes, Canada is always going to lose its brightest engineers, which will in turn worsen the problem even further.

Some solutions I can think of, which might help:

- Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions.

- Offer very lucrative perks to the major software companies, to expand their engineering presence in Canada. Yes, it stinks having to offer tax-breaks, but at least it will help build initial momentum.

- Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.

prmths · 8 years ago

> I've always admired Canadian culture/values

What is canadian culture? What are canadian values? I've never heard anyone mention canadian culture or values before.

> would love to live in Canada one day.

You are one of the rare individuals. Most canadians I've met want to live in the US. Especially those with money or skills to make money. Better food, weather, culture, history, life, etc.

> - Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.

But they can't compete because of scale. Canada isn't large enough and it certainly has too little internal talent to compete with the US. California by itself can out compete canada by itself. Thrown in the other 49 states.

Even if canada retained all its "brains", it wouldn't matter. We outnumber canada 10 to 1 and outrank canada in every economic facet from resources, ports, infrastructure and foreign talent.

Foreigners with skills, from china to india to the middle east to eastern europe, all want to come to the US to study and work.

It's almost impossible for canada to compete with the US. They have nothing going for them vis a vis the US and their internal market isn't large enough to compete with the US.

prmths commented on Never Write Your Own Database (2017) medium.com/@terrycrowley/... · Posted by u/ahiknsr

lmilcin · 8 years ago

What I am really objecting to is those hard "rules". "Never optimize early". "Never roll your own database", etc.

All those rules work for most but not all projects. It's the same as saying "You shall allways obey traffic rules". Maybe I should, but sometimes I may not want to brake on yellow light when I have clearly impatient driver tailgating me.

As we gain experience we learn the world is not black and white. Akin's law #8 says:

"In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point."

prmths · 8 years ago

Exactly. Exceptions prove the rule. But this applies to everything, not just databases. Never write your own OS, unless you are faced with an exception where you have to.

If you have a special case where RDBMs can't fill your need, then you obviously have to build your own. But these cases are so rare that it proves the rule.

prmths commented on Debtors in China Shamed on Highway Billboard Featuring Their Faces and Names scmp.com/news/china/socie... · Posted by u/anw

rajacombinator · 8 years ago

Wow ... if you scroll down (on mobile) and keep reading the articles there, it’s just an endless list of “really bad stuff happening in China.” To the extent that I had to look up whether SCMP is some kind of American propaganda outfit. And ... from what I can tell it seems to be heavily influenced by the Chinese govt. Can someone with more insight offer a quick rundown of how SCMP fits into Chinese media?

prmths · 8 years ago

SCMP was founded as a pro-british propaganda newspaper in the early 20th century and has pretty much remained so while switching owners ( rupert murdoch then robert kuok ). SCMP's claim to fame is coining and popularing the propaganda term "Rape of Nanking" during ww2 when the japanese invaded british/western interests in nanking.

It was bought out by Jack Ma in 2016. Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba and it is rumored that he maintains close ties to the chinese government/party.

It is assumed that SCMP will be the english language pro-beijing propaganda arm going forward.

prmths commented on Competitive Programmer's Handbook (2017) [pdf] cses.fi/book.pdf... · Posted by u/linouk23

zerr · 8 years ago

The most irritating thing with these competitive/algo stuff is that no matter how many times you master it - eventually you always forget it, because you don't need it on a daily (or more like yearly) basis in the real world.

prmths · 8 years ago

Just like sql and regular expressions. You work hard to get it to work and then forget about it.