astalwick

6 ms·

1.
by astalwick 5y ago
If a child or a teacher at a school caught covid, the entire class was fully quarantined for a minimum of 14 days and two negative covid tests were necessary for anyone in that class to return. Classes were kept fully isolated from one anot
2.
by astalwick 5y ago
It was possible in other countries. My children (Quebec) were in class all of last year, except for a 10 day period in January - the tail end of a local lockdown at the height of the third wave. Infection rates were certainly higher due to
3.
by astalwick 6y ago
We've decided to solve that problem by consuming very nearly the entire residential power consumption of Canada, a country of 38 million people. We've done this with a network that can process 400k transactions per day (at $20&#x2
4.
by astalwick 6y ago
Bitcoin currently consumes roughly the energy used to power one quarter of CANADA. I'm optimistic that there is a better way to store a ledger as you describe. Perhaps a database?
5.
by astalwick 7y ago
You don't know how hard it is, as a parent, to make the call to medicate your six year old child. Here are some of the things that went through my own mind: - Maybe he'll outgrow it (he's fairly severe ADHD, but we went throu
6.
by astalwick 8y ago
It's not about removing human agency. It's about nudging the aggregate views of a whole population, ever so slightly. Determine what works, reinforce that, repeat algorithmically. He's making the point that Facebook has the a
7.
by astalwick 8y ago
https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/976783608219279360 He goes on to defend his work at Google, arguing that they're similar on the surface, but Facebook is truly dangerous where Google is not. I'm not s
8.
by astalwick 9y ago
> However, don't forget that when a baby is left unsupervised and is submerged in a pool for 15 minutes, it's called neglect. Whoa there, slow down. Kids are quick. One moment, your three kids are happily watching Finding Dory
9.
by astalwick 10y ago
We removed the youtube app from our iPad, because our 4 year old was starting to get too deep into these. There's a lot of great stuff on Youtube for kids (genuinely, whole-heartedly, terrific stuff; I was amazed), but there's als
10.
by astalwick 10y ago
You may be right. However, the Volt is basically just a hybrid with a bigger battery. By 2011, hybrids were pretty common, so being nervous about the tech wasn't as much of an issue. That's the point I'm trying to make: for
11.
by astalwick 10y ago
This is a big deal. Car of the year, when you're talking about normal internal combustion cars, doesn't really matter that much. When you start talking about new (and, for $30000, scary) tech like electrics and hybrids 10-12 year
12.
by astalwick 11y ago
I'm so not surprised by the comments here, so far. The core points here are good ones: - In a fundamentally emotional argument, you 'win' with empathy, not by beating people over the head with the same (very reasonable) argum
13.
by astalwick 11y ago
You'd be surprised. This is in Canada, not sure about the US. Deaths per 100,000 people (drowning), Canada, 2006-2010: 0-4: 1.1 5-12: 0.6 13-17: 0.9 18-24: 2.2 24-34: 1.6 34-49: 1.4 50-64: 1.7 65+: 1.6 I don't have the source han
14.
by astalwick 11y ago
The problem with against-the-flow is that it's unexpected to cars that are making a right turn. The other day, I was coming out of an alley, turning right on to a one way street. I'm turning right, so I expect all road traffic to
15.
by astalwick 11y ago
I actually do. I'm arguing a lot in this thread, but I stopped watching game of thrones around season three. I maybe pirate a movie every 8 or 10 weeks or something? I have young kids and a startup job. :) And I have Netflix (Canad
16.
by astalwick 11y ago
Yeah, I totally get that. And there's definitely a part of me that is biased to "free is better than not-free," so for sure, that's a part of my decision-making process. But unless the content companies actively work to
17.
by astalwick 11y ago
And one last thing: It is actually quite insulting to be reduced down to 'free is better than having to shell out money'. No, it's not. I buy books (audible.com is amazing), I buy music, I buy software - all of which are jus
18.
by astalwick 11y ago
I'm not trying to help HBO at all. Seriously, not. Couldn't care less about HBO. And you're right, I don't want to pay for it, not when it's priced like that and the distribution mechanisms in Canada are so broke
19.
by astalwick 11y ago
It's not oppression, you're right. It's way, way smaller than that. My little act of 'defiance' is way smaller than it would be if it were exactly oppression, too. I'm pirating content. I'm watching som
20.
by astalwick 11y ago
Laws aren't all equal. Stealing a car is zero-sum: if I take your car, you no longer have a car , which is a very, very expensive toy. If I download Game of Thrones, the outcome for every single person in the world except me is exa
21.
by astalwick 11y ago
You've decided that, under no circumstances whatsoever is it ok to pirate content. (Or, perhaps more generally, under no circumstances whatsoever is it ok to break the law) That's cool, and that's a fair position. I disagree
22.
by astalwick 11y ago
I consider piracy to be a form of protest. I'm happy to pay, as long as the terms are reasonable. (I have a Rdio account that's been active for years now - I can't remember the last time I pirated music... I can't remem
23.
by astalwick 12y ago
To me, the core problem here is that evernote's cloud synced notes are stored locally in some very proprietary cache. I'm happy to use Evernote and assume that it will fail in some horrible way. When it does, I want to be able to
24.
by astalwick 12y ago
We switched from underscore to lodash several months ago, and haven't regretted it. The fact that lodash follows semver is huge. Underscore has introduced serious breaking changes in minor point-releases more than once, which is comp
25.
by astalwick 12y ago
So, as the rightful owner of the laptop, with proof (serial numbers, receipts, etc), could she not just have walked in, asked to see it, and walked out with it? What are they going to do, call the police? And are the police really going t
26.
by astalwick 12y ago
I think you're assuming an awful lot based on the fact that you haven't been surveyed by Facebook. Facebook has 1B+ people. Do you know how trivial it is for them to run surveys? 100K population surveys, if they want? Many hund
27.
by astalwick 12y ago
Oh, so do I (and I'm more often on the receiving end, too). No question, there's a cost to being interrupted. Personally, I have to actively push back against my own displeasure at being interrupted. At the end of the day, thoug
28.
by astalwick 12y ago
I think that's one thing that gets missed in these discussions: software development is different from, say, accounting or administration or whatever. I get huge value out of being right beside the people that can answer the question
29.
by astalwick 12y ago
Interviews are tough. There's very little time to get a feel for whether a person would be a good fit for an organization - and often, you have to make a judgment: was this comment just off-the-cuff curiosity, or does the fact that the
30.
by astalwick 12y ago
Sure. Lots of factors go into deciding a data store, and you're right that you shouldn't just choose at random. I disagree with the implication that if you do actually think about it, you'll necessarily land on MySQL or Po

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