Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#151

Post by hzhou321 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #126

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

> The more you have been rewarded in life for being smart and knowing everything, the more you felt intelligent, the less chance you had of making a startup work. You just weren't able to admit all the things you didn't know. I think there's something to this, but I want to present an alternative, which is that the more I know, the more I know what I don't know. And with regards to startups and business, the effect o…

There are risky risks, and there are affordable risks. One of the risky risks -- at main job, I am also very reluctant to commit to any new projects without emphasizing that I can not guarantee result but only effort up front first. Luckily, I often get managers to acknowledge my emphases on the effort part, which somehow reduces the risk of unknown unknowns. But I also had many occasions that I succeeded to convince managers or coworkers to alter their ambition with my emphases. In other word, my job has some room for risks and my finance has some room for risk of jobs, I guess I am lucky.

Now once the risk reduced to affordable level, my curiosity often takes over and I often gets excited to explore my unknowns.

It is sad that for some people that all they see is unaffordable risks and they have suppressed and forgotten their curiosity -- the source of life's excitement.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#152

Post by hinkley » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #147

sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

> The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a little different. Automating this sounds like a business worth several million in annual revenue, easily.

Speakeasy, a former big ISP, presented at a Java users group one time about a logistics app they had written specifically to remind them when it was time to harass Covad about missing deadlines for wiring and circuit connections.

I’d had to deal with Covad before and so had my friend who used to own a mom and pop ISP. I thought the fact that someone wrote a management app just for them was funny and sad, brilliant and justified.

A few years later they sold... to Covad. D’OH!

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#153

Post by falcolas » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

Recursing wrote: post #81

falcolas wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, Bozeman doesn't have an opera house. Certainly not one with a burger stand across Main Street. Just sayin' ;)

Maybe there used to be one? https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/a-number-of-y...

!

I learn the damndest things every day. Thank you for a slice of history of my own home town.

It is a nice little park (and still there).

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#154

Post by acranox » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #104

littlestymaar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one human is teaching another human, you can leave the "countersteering" detail out and it won't matter. The 200 years of people learning how to ride bicycles is evidence of that. This is actually a well-known fact about motorcycle, and it's taught in driving schools. It's just that their is no bicycle driving school and people just figure it by themselves. I'm pretty sure it takes more time though.

I don't think regular driving schools teach you to countersteer when you turn.

The motorcycle class I took in the US did in fact teach this.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#155

Post by hinkley » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #131

le-mark wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're like my old boss, just tell the employees to assemble their own desks, and then wonder why all these developers who requested a standing desk, are still using their old sit down desks.

As long as they would allow me to do it on company time it would be a nice distraction from work.

I gotta say, I sorta miss assembling my own computer on the first day of work. I don’t miss the bloody knuckles though.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#156

Post by hzhou321 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #115

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

Sometimes in the hnews comments I'll ask a question and normally the answers I get back are pretty good even though my comment is rarely popular. Most recently I asked about some subtlety in the Meltdown vulnerability. It would be cool in addition to "comments", there was a Q&A section. I find I mostly click on the comments to get a more nuanced understanding of an article only to find a 20-commeny deep flame war abo…

Crowd sentiment is very important (to many circumstances and understanding), so reading the 20-comment deep flame war is useful too. You just need make sure to read it from outside but not into it.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#157

Post by hinkley » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

shoover wrote: post #68

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that's because Amazon sends out emails explicitly asking people to answer questions on their past purchases. And for some reason, this makes some subset of people feel obligated to reply even though it makes no sense.

I think you're right. That sounds exactly like something amazon would do and how people would respond. I must have turned those emails off, which makes seeing the answers utterly stupefying.

Amazon sent me questions about a product I gave a one star review to. I really should have sent it back.

Their system isn’t too bright.

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#158

Post by superhuzza » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #147

sly010 wrote: post #117

A few years ago I co-founded a standing desk company without any experience in real world products in general. The plan was to source desks and sell them to companies. How complicated could it be? Well, the freight company requires a lot of information about the destination building. The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a litt…

> The destination building require a lot of paperwork in a very specific format just to deliver something. The paperwork is always a little different. Automating this sounds like a business worth several million in annual revenue, easily.

The plan was to automate generating all the paperwork in a very specific format, with it always being a little different. How complicated could it be?

:)

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#159

Post by skolos » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

> If your screws are longer than 2”, you’ll need different ones, otherwise they will poke out the top of the board and stab you in the foot.

Actually nominal 2 inch lumber has thickness of 1.5" [1]. So your screws should be shorter than 1.5".

[1] https://www.archtoolbox.com/materials-systems/wood-plastic-c...

Re: Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

#160

Post by hzhou321 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

codingdave wrote: post #39

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

Something I've noticed now that we're all communicating online in written form: a lack of people saying "I don't know" It seems that everybody knows everything. Whatever the issue, a little bit of Googling and suddenly you know all there is to know. Even more wondrous, no matter what position you take on anything, some more search engine Kung Fu and you can find a hundred people willing to support you with arguments,…

Why would I jump into a thread, on any site, just to say I don't know? There are thousands of threads just on HN that I just let scroll by without participating because I don't know enough to add to the discussion. Explicitly calling out my lack of knowledge on every thread would serve no purpose to anybody. Online written communications will never follow the same patterns as direct communication, and that is a good…

I agree that there is no value of saying "I don't know" in general. But sometime people would say "I don't know" as an emphasis on his "understanding" that there are something deeper than the current common understanding, and that is reasonable.