huntie

Joined 9 years ago

Karma
567
Submissions
158
Member since
May 7
Hi, my name's Hunter and I like long walks on the treadmill.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 years ago
When did C add standard library functions for Vecs and HashMaps? You're putting words in his mouth, no one claimed C lacked "robust, debugged standard library functions". It's no secret that the C standard library lacks implementations of a variety of things that programmers use on a daily basis.
Comment · 6 years ago
You're right, it would be a shame if the police had to face any sort of retaliation for blowing up people's houses. If we ban guns they can blow up everyone's house without fear!
Comment · 6 years ago
The problem with the English Rule is that it protects the rich.
Comment · 6 years ago
As far as I know, there is no way to legally verify that an animal is a service animal. I remember when I worked as a bus driver we were extremely limited (legally) in the questions we could ask, basically just "Is it a service animal?". It would be very easy to lie although I never had problems with untrained dogs.

The amount of "emotional support animals" at the local university is pretty ridiculous as well. I'm pretty sure students just lie so they can have a dog while they live in dorms.

Comment · 6 years ago
There is something seriously wrong with Firefox if the default spellcheck dictionary is so bad that I might need to install a different one, especially for the English language. Hell they should just be able to merge theirs with Chromium's. Regardless, as I said I don't normally use spellcheck and I trust my own judgement over the computer's so it isn't a big deal for me.
Comment · 6 years ago
Firefox's spellchecking is just generally awful, even for English. It fails to recognize even basic words such as 'surveil' with the closest suggestion being 'survive'. I've found several other words I wanted to use that weren't found too. I have spellcheck off by default but when I write something long I do a quick check at the end so I don't normally notice this.

Firefox is by far my least favorite piece of software that I regularly use and I've considered throwing my computer out the window because of it.

Comment · 6 years ago
I wouldn't act like you're better than politicians when your "expertise" is based on a documentary. My experience is that factory work is not dangerous[1] and companies try to eliminate any danger if it's brought up because any OSHA/medical costs are very expensive. My experience is also that the work is pretty easy. It can be boring but so are most programming jobs. I don't understand how writing CRUD day after day isn't as boring as working in a factory.

As for whether it is something that should be done or not: why should programming be done? How do most apps benefit the average person. I'm willing to argue that FAANG companies have been detrimental to society.

I've also been well-payed at the factories I work at, but $20/hr in rural Iowa goes way further than in LA or wherever. There were quite a few people who had moved from cities to work where I was at.

The idea that automating these jobs is a good thing demonstrates how out of touch you are. A lot of people were worried that long-term our jobs would be automated or moved to Mexico.

[1] This may depend on what is being done and more importantly on the age of the company.

Comment · 6 years ago
>not a single county...

I'm going to call bullshit on that. Federal minimum wage is over $1000 per month at full time and I've seen 2br in my county for $550+utilities. I don't disagree with your general point but that report did a piss-poor job. I suspect they only looked in urban areas.

Comment · 6 years ago
Unlikely, it will just eliminate the "easy" jobs. Just look at writing, mass literacy surely eliminated many jobs but lawyers are still quite well compensated. Another area is mathematics with actuaries.

Democratization of computing will lead to greater stratification of programming jobs. The "Excel Programmer" won't exist being supplanted by the "Office Drone" whereas the "Distributed Systems Engineer" (or whatever) will keep on going.

Comment · 7 years ago
You can do that with the standard library, just do File::read_to_string and String::lines or String::split_whitespace.
Comment · 7 years ago
This isn't a modern problem. If you read Thucydides you'll find that cities were often betrayed by a small, radicalized percentage of the civilian population hiding in plain sight. Their solution was sometimes to kill all of the men and enslave the women and children. Obviously this wouldn't fly today, but I imagine that a nation like China might simply surveil everyone, sending anyone suspicious to concentration camps. That seems like effectively the same win condition; making it effectively impossible to resist.
Comment · 7 years ago
I work in a factory and I see all of the problems my older coworkers have. Along with that I think the company wants to move the whole plant to Mexico so there is no long-term job security. I've learned programming in my spare time but when I've tried applying for jobs I didn't get a response, which I assume is because I don't have a degree. I've been trying to get back into university but I'm not sure that it will happen anytime soon. We've been working a lot of weekends too so programming time is limited. I'd quit but this is the best paying job I've been able to get.
Comment · 7 years ago
It wouldn't work as you imagine because it would be far too expensive for the government. In the Middle East it works out because none of our infrastructure is affected by the war; so our GDP, and thus tax revenue, is still strong. In a civil war where the government is bombing its own infrastructure the cost for each kill will skyrocket and the effect on the economy will be catastrophic. Fighting a defensive war is immeasurably cheaper than an offensive war as the defenders value the lives of their soldiers much less than the offenders do. Also keep in mind that a rebel faction could very easily sabotoge critical infrastructure like electricity which would be very difficult to repair in a timely manner.

Relying on very expensive advanced weaponry is the modern equivalent of relying on mercenaries, and Machiavelli told us why mercenaries are bad.

Comment · 7 years ago
Windows is pretty common for control systems in factories. One factory I worked in used a web application, the one I'm in now uses VB applications. One of the control systems I use is running Windows2K. These computers have Internet access too.
Comment · 7 years ago
No I mean it is not viable in any way if you leave the bubble of US cities which account for a small percentage of the total area. Rural US is struggling just to make school buses work. The distances are too great and the people too few to ever support public transit. Any tax on fuel/cars screws rural areas who have no other choice.

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