awshepard · HackerTrans

One question I have on this - if rail travel became more ubiquitous, would it become a more enticing target for malevolent actors and/or a higher priority for security screenings, etc? We marvel at how easy it is to walk on a train today, but would that change / how might it change if rail carried a more significant portion of travelers?

awshepard

há 6 anosdiscuss

Another tool to look at might be Dendron[1]. It's a VS Code plugin with similar functionality to Obsidian (according to the docs, it actually evolved from being a standalone app like Obsidian into the plugin form). My understanding is the client/plugin are FOSS, and the developer plans to implement some (optional) server-side functionality to fund ongoing development.

[1] https://dendron.so/

awshepard

há 6 anosdiscuss

Have to second this comment. The Audible version of it had me riveted. A great story well-told, with a raft of good quotes, such as "People didn’t like game changers in the 90s anymore than the owners of of the Erie Canal liked the transcontinental railroad. New technology always leaves a battlefield littered with bodies."

awshepard

há 6 anosdiscuss

> Raw materials are also not a problem

Knowing very little about the topic, I recently saw an article talking about how the first wave of wind turbine blades was starting to be decommissioned, and running into difficulties with what to do with them. While they're no longer useful on the tower, since they're designed to withstand incredible forces, it's difficult to destroy, recycle, or otherwise dispose of them, and indicated they're ending up in storage.

Do you happen to know more about this particular phenomenon and what the end game is for that? Granted, this is likely less of a concern than the waste that coal creates, or the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel. I'm just curious about it.

awshepard

há 6 anosdiscuss

Many publishers and exchanges these days are using the OpenRTB format, which you can find e.g. here for MoPub: https://developers.mopub.com/dsps/integration/openrtb/

The call out to make are the fields device.d(p)idmd5, device.d(p)idsha1 (both now deprecated), and device.ifa, as well as the user/data/segment fields. That's where user ID's (and potentially other data) are passed around. Some exchanges pass a bunch of data, others pass less data but allow you to do a cookie or device-ID exchange/sync so that one side of the transaction can map the other's ID's to theirs, so that the bidder can look up their user profile information. (which they've either bought or accumulated somehow).

Looks like MoPub doesn't pass ID/buyerId any more (it's strikethrough'd), but they do still pass data/segment fields. Not sure what those contain though, perhaps others can chime in.

For what it's worth, getting approved as an ad network is potentially non-trivial. I don't know all the steps involved, but you do need to demonstrate that you can at least meet minimum network response latencies, among other things. Additionally, most exchanges do have some sort of bidrate/winrate monitoring that will eventually throttle you if you're not participating "in good faith" or with reasonable bids/expectations of winning (it's costing them processing power and bandwidth to send you a request even if you don't win). Most also have ToS (for whatever good that does; enforcement may or may not be strong) restricting your ability to collect and store data received from bids (you're typically only allowed to store data from the bid IF you've won the auction). I've heard anecdotes of companies trying to tap into bid flow as "passive observers" this way and ending up getting cut off.

awshepard

há 7 anosdiscuss

Without meaning to quibble with the numbers in the article, they point out that the bottom 50% of income has gone up $8,000, while the top 1% has gone up $800,000, which is indeed a 100x difference in absolute numbers. But on a relative basis, the bottom 50% of earners' incomes have gone up 42%, and the top 1% have gone up ~250%. Still a large difference, but not nearly as extreme as 100x.

Is there merit to analyzing these numbers on an absolute vs. relative scale, and/or is that beside the point? Does it miss the point if analysis like this doesn't also look at the cost/standard of living in those time periods too? E.g. if a particular standard of living that cost $19k in 1970 (manageable in the bottom 50%) now costs $21k, that's a great boon, but if it now costs $30k, that's probably a bad sign.

awshepard

há 7 anosdiscuss

I agree a data diff would be challenging, especially at scale, but one tool I think is lacking is schema diffs. For sure one can see the sequence of migrations that were applied, but if all you have is a series of sql files that add/remove/update column definitions, by the end of one or more diffs, you may not actually know or remember what's IN the table you're trying to understand. And if you don't have prod access to show create table (or equivalent), you're left with tracing the diff operations and reconstructing the table schema yourself. Have you seen a tool that can do that?

awshepard

há 7 anosdiscuss

Does that sort of regulatory capture accomplish the same effect though? If you're a competitor in the space, you'd either a) not have any access to an ingredient you want, or b) would have to go through the trouble of finding a new company to import it AND get them licensed (which I assume is likely a difficult thing to do).

To an extent, the barrier to entry could end up so high that it's effectively _as if _ Coca-Cola has a legal stranglehold.

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