PascalsMugger

Joined 10 years ago

Karma
133
Submissions
55
Member since
Feb 16
View on Hacker News

Recent submissions

Comment · 10 years ago
Since we invitably have legislatures heavily influence (and sometimes fully captured) by moneyed interests, often the best we can hope for is competition between the different factions of moneyed interests to shape policy such that the outcome is triangulated to be somewhat more beneficial to the public than if one faction had unchecked influence. Until the last 20 years or so, the media and telecoms industry were separate factions that had some competing interests and sometimes served as a checked on one another. Now they're merged/merging into media telecoms conglomerates, but the tech industry has recently risen as a competitor with even more directly competing interests.

It'll be interesting to see how the lobbyist wrangling behind the scenes works out. The tech industry is the new kid on the block, especially in terms of their presence in Washington DC, and it takes time to build up relationships and influence in politics. It's not quite as quickly scalable as the tech industry is used to, but they also have vastly more resources.

Comment · 10 years ago
I think this was a plot to a Michael Crichton novel, except instead of Zina it was a terrorist group's bioweapon.
Comment · 10 years ago
Is it even possible to compress it down tha much?
Comment · 10 years ago
So in a vacuum, yes people probably perform on a bell curve. But that bell curve is self-aware and will start sabotaging itself if you incentivize it to.
Comment · 10 years ago
That kind of bacteria sounds like something that would spread very quickly in unleashed in the wild. I wonder what the outcome would be.
Comment · 10 years ago
CEOs get the credit when the company does well and they get paid extraordinarily well. Either they don't deserve that credit and shouldn't get paid nearly as well as they do, or they should get just as much credit when the company fails. None of this heads I win, tails you lose bullshit.
Comment · 10 years ago
I think perhaps a more subtle warning would be to have the container sense an rfid tag in peanut allergic peoples' hands and set off a warning alarm and flashing lights.
Comment · 10 years ago
I'd call "__proto__" a magic string, but it's kind of an accident of history and a one off that everyone wants to get rid of, but can't.
Comment · 10 years ago
This pain is one of the most potent things that keeps people from trying to pull off fraud more often.
Comment · 10 years ago
Can't let that precious link juice spill out to other websites! Don't you remember link juice? Bullshit SEO tactics are killing the web.
Comment · 10 years ago
Bathroom breaks are not a form of compensation any more than than breathable air is a form of compensation. They are bare necessitates of life. That kind of thinking is what leads to this kind of dystopian shit.
Comment · 10 years ago
I'm sure this has been asked and answered before, but why do companies acquire startups just to shut their product down within a year so often? Is this just an acquihire? Or do big tech companies just play whack-a-mole with startups, buying any out with interesting products just to make sure they don't one day turn into competition?
Comment · 10 years ago
Why are we adding (2016) to current year submissions now?
Comment · 10 years ago
Absolutely, but this incident is the perfect example of how new technology will always be used by assholes to do asshole things, along with whatever good uses it was designed for. We should always ask "what would 4chan do with this capability?" when inventing new things.

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