skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As someone about to turn 40, it's creepy reading comment after comment here and seeing A LOT to agree with.

Less lines of code per hour than when I was young: CHECK

More productive than when I was young: CHECK

Not reinventing wheels anymore: CHECK

Recognizing all the wheels I reinvented when I was young thinking I was so clever: CHECK

Keeping up with new languages/tools/frameworks: CHECK

Skepticism at the people who think this new language/tool/framework is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING: CHECK

Paying more attention to my health: CHECK

Hobbies outside of work: CHECK

A couple of things I disagree with though.

Employment opportunity:

I definitely am starting to see evidence of ageism. Job hopping is more difficult, and the quality/appeal of available jobs is no longer what it used to be. It's much harder to get the attention of recruiters now than it was 15 years ago, and I feel I'm at a negotiating disadvantage vs. younger people who have no problem sleeping at their desks and subsisting on noodles and Mountain Dew alone. Quite honestly, 90% of job postings I read are utterly uninteresting to a 40 year old. Sometimes the company or product is boring, uncompelling, or something I've already worked on. Sometimes the culture reeks of bro-grammer. Or it's full of dog-whistle words that tell me I'll be working 80 hour weeks and not be compensated well for it.

Financial position:

Software engineering has not been very financially rewarding. I guess you can always find someone and say, boy they're doing much better than I. I seem to be permanently behind the people I knew who went into more lucrative careers. I feel like I'm much less well established at 40 than my parents (who made shit as school teachers) were when they were 40. The clock is ticking and I feel it's going to run out before I'm able to retire. Time feels like a predator, stalking me and waiting to devour me as punishment for not making/saving enough.
Quote from the article:

"A toxic plume of one million gallons of untreated wastewater accidentally released by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers from a closed mine upriver in Silverton, Colorado last Wednesday is to blame for the Animas’ dramatically different hue from its normal color."

So, EPA workers released the wastewater. It was an accident, so presumably the water wouldn't have been released if the EPA workers had done something differently (or not done anything at all). Thus, why is it inaccurate to say that the problem was caused by the EPA?

"Generally isn't it their job to protect the environment?"

Yes, but that doesn't mean that they can't do harm to the environment when they screw up.
This is a good point that I hadn't realised. It seems that both latex condoms and gloves can contain casein.

Apparently, this has messed up tests for latex allergy:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674999...
"You're really making it sound more complex and difficult than it is."

And you are suggesting it's simple with no actual data to back it up.
Can you cite a single study that shows that nutrition label calories were anywhere close to actual calories burned by a person. Or any mechanism people have to find calories:

Here's one that says the opposite:
http://www.livescience.com/26799-calorie-counts-inaccurate.h...

For example, for most people, they discovered almonds have 20% less calories than "estimated".

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/96/2/296.abstract

That's a huge variance.

"but there's really not a gigantic amount of variance."
Citation needed :)

"Quantifying the exact amount of energy you'll get from a food is difficult to do precisely, but the guidelines we have are good enough for use for the vast majority of people."

What do you think vast majority is?
Given the variance in everything else, we are probably talking 20-30% of the population.

"You can be pedantic about it, but that won't change the fact that it is that simple to lose weight, as proven time and again."

I'm not being pedantic about the mechanism. I'm being reasonable about the fact that the method most people have to figure out whether what they have is going to be successful is useless (IE if they can't determine how many calories they eat/burn, they can't possibly change the numbers :P)
I don't think IMs and SMS/MMS texts should mix. Period. Leave the legacy stuff to its own apps, and we just move on to new stuff without having to support that legacy burden. It's exactly why I welcomed TextSecure killing the SMS integration (it was even more annoying that it was asking you for it by default, as Hangouts does, too).
It's he 'I don't drink' part that causes this. If you just left it at 'no thanks, I'm good' you wouldn't get the same reaction.

The 'I don't drink' part comes across to insecure people as judgemental or superior, so drop it.
Yup they are dangerous. Be careful Donald Trump.
My father wrote essentially this article for Connoisseur Magazine in 1983; you can see the cover, with a zoomable photo of the hat that was made for him then in the hinterlands of Ecuador, here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B004MKRY30

The crown of that hat is about 6.5 inches across. Can you count the weaves in one inch? The NPR article claims 4000 weaves per square inch, or about 63 in each direction - I think Dad's has at least that!

I'll try to dig up the text of Dad's article, it was pretty interesting.
The hospital admission/re-admission policy (or lack thereof) is exactly the type of thinking that this article is addressing. ER/Urgent Care doctors have a list of criteria for hospital admissions that are not always present at the time but may comeback later. If they are use more caution then required a hundred dollar medical bill may turn into a several thousand dollar hospital stay over a minor issue. Doctors are dealing with imperfect information when making a diagnosis so to say that they need an "algorithm" is trivializing a complex problem. There is room for a lot of improvement in terms of helping medical staff make better decisions with more complete information. I am uneasy that some of the new regulations in this area will end up handcuffing doctors in ways that will not always be in the best interests of the patients
Note: not medical staff. Many years ago I processed claims for an insurance company and had some long and heated discussions about this topic with hospital staff. If some of these new regs are like what my oversized insurance company had, it will not end well.
But don't do it if you have Android :)
> I feel like company HR aren't there for you but for the company and unions are there for you.

HR is paid by management to manage -- that is, assure that the company can get the most out of for the least cost -- the "human resources" of the company.

Unions are paid by their members to assure that those members can get the most out of their employers for the least cost.

From the employees point of view, it is quite literally true that HR is not there for you whereas unions are (or, more accurately, the union you are a member of, if any, is) there for you.

> We also had an option to take out of our paycheck a monthly fee for legal advice and retainers. I got that option just cause I thought it was a nice security I really don't know why I would need it. It turns out these retainers cannot help you legally against your boss or company btw.

Yeah, employer-arranged group legal services plans never cover any scenario where you are against your employer; they are something the company arranges so that employers can be less distracted from serving the company's interest by outside legal matters.
> do you feel like you can hack life and get more years out of it then the average joe?

The biggest thing I've learned about all that, is the importance of eating right, staying active, and paying attention to your health. Oh, don't get me wrong... everybody KNOWS that stuff, and at least pays lip service to it. I did, for a long time. Then I had a heart attack at 41. Now I know, on a very visceral level, the importance of this stuff. And I've read and learned a lot about health topics, diet, etc. So I hope I will be able to live longer now that I understand (I think) a lot more about how to eat well, and now that I've renewed my commitment to getting outdoors and being active (which mostly means bicycle riding for me, but also running and hiking occasionally as well).

> Or do you feel lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing?

I don't see it that way anyway. There's a bit of a stereotype about the "college kid in his dorm starting a startup" but I think that's a fairly recent invention. And nobody I know thinks that entrepreneurship / startups / hacking / etc. are the exclusive province of 20-somethings.

Anyway, I'm just going to do what I do, and I'm not terribly worried about what everybody else is doing. Although I agree with what codingdave says about keeping up with newer technologies. Yeah, I'm 42 and yeah I am most comfortable with "old" tech like Java and C++, but I spend some time on Javascript and Scala and Clojure and the like as well.
> How do you define "online" when you're on a phone with a data connection, an extremely common use case for this scenario?

Perhaps that's why he asked for the ability to set such status manually, in the manner of desktop IM clients.
It'll happen. It took me 10 years of not-so-glamourous jobs before I felt ready to buy. Don't sweat it. (Pun not intended.)
Can I actively control my visibility settings, as with every other IM client? Inability to control my own visibility makes Hangouts an absolute non-starter for me, and many other people that I talk to. Our only choice is to keep it turned off at all times. Which is a shame, because Google Chat used to be my go-to messaging client.
"Roll their own" encryption is the main one. Search Hackernews for older, but indepth reviews of it.
How would selective dues even work? If the union requires dues you either pay and are represented or you don't join (go work somewhere non-union). I'm struggling to figure out where it would even make sense to be selective.
Well, it's been almost ten years now since my punk friends from the US told me the Bay Area was gone and that the new punk/alternative capital was Portland. Don't know if it still is, but they had all moved there or somewhere else. Almost ten years ago.
The stats show the opposite. As unions in the US have been dismantled over the last 40 years, inequality increased dramatically.
When running for exercise was for weirdos
Amazing. For most of us, your career begins about 22 and ends about 72. So at 50 years, the midpoint would be 47. Yet most of the comments below start with, "I'm 35 and...".

Jeez. At 35 you're still just a kid.

I'm 57 and I've definitely seen brain changes. At 20 I could learn 80% of new stuff in one pass. That ended by 35, when I had to take and review notes to learn as well. Now at 57, I simply can't remember minutiae like I once could. Proper nouns are especially tough to recall (famous names especially). I don't retain entire 1000 LOC programs in my head any more.

Learning new computer languages still isn't too tough but breaking new ground in math is. My ability to see multiple perspectives of a new concept all at once is not what it once was. I have to work harder at concentrating and distractions are more disruptive. I really HATE working in an open space without earplugs.

So yes, the brain ages. At age 50 I'll be much more impressed when you claim, "Oh yeah, my brain hasen't lost a step since 20."
it was probably the best ui google has done with the exception of their home page.
Why ‘Smart’ Objects May Be a Dumb Idea
They should just concentrate on making it work properly on android

The amount of times it thinks I'm in a call and I'm not is far too many. Or it doesn't dial. Or doesn't ring. And if turn the video on there's a good chance it'll crash so hard I'll have to force stop it.

Which is a shame as I really like hangouts

Also the sms part should be better integrated, why can't I view/send sms on my phone from gmail?
I agree. MOOCs would work if we did something like what Newt Gingrich proposed in the 90s: give every child in the US a laptop or PC as part of their schooling. Too bad his proposal was shot down as soon as he mentioned it.
Pretty high up at Goldman Sachs: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-25/how-an-und...

I know a large number of people in the tech industry with questionable immigration status.
But you can check out the SPIR-V IR spec which is almost finished:

https://www.khronos.org/registry/spir-v/

Not only the Vulkan API but new programming languages will target this IR, so far it appears to be an innovative architecture for concurrent software, that integrates graphics and compute, not a bolt-on like OpenCL.
"no friends, because everyone wants to go to the pub"

I went thru that back when I was young (once you have a herd of kids, you won't have time for adult socializing, so that kind of solves itself).

Anyway at least for an introverted young guy, I got way more than enough socializing at the gym (get drunk while lifting hundreds of pound weights, what could possibly go wrong LOL?) and hiking club (open container laws are enforced in our parks, maybe not all countries). I also met people at non-credit night classes while learning some carpentry, Japanese, cooking, religion, philosophy, history, whatever looked cool I'd sign up for ... I would imagine its much easier for young people now with online event organization for meetups and conferences and maker spaces.

I wonder how much people drink at maker spaces. I would imagine drunken table saw and metal working machine operators don't live very long. They seem to produce things and the injury rate seems low, so probably not very much.

Things get complicated if you're in one of those situations where friends work and socialize together. Super awkward, will never go back to that again. "Never cross the streams" - Ghostbusters
Quantum mechanics is simply a set of equations that describe the universe. Whether or not those equations make sense or are interpretable is irrelevant, as our capability to understand intuitively is only based on the types of interactions we observe every day.

To ask somebody what interpretation they prefer is akin to asking a mathematician how they interpret the reality of ZFC they prefer. It's interesting, but ultimately pointless, because it has more to do with our ability to interpret than with the real meaning of the statements. To that end, Copenhagen makes the important point - "Shut up and calculate".
> Wait a minute, how is that even possible? Or rather, what do you mean?

It means that the stream of bytecodes (32-bit numbers in OCaml) is replaced with the corresponding label addresses (for 64-bit hosts - addresses minus a fixed offset) once. Then the execution is trivial. This is called "indirect threaded code" [1] and used a lot in Forth implementations, for example.

See the definition of the "Next" macro in interp.c [2] for details.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threaded_code#Indirect_threadi...

[2] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/byterun/interp.c

EDIT: if you wonder where the actual threading is done, see https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/blob/trunk/byterun/fix_code.c
I am confident of the value I deliver but I don't call my competitors stupid. One person being correct or a winner doesn't mean others are stupid.
Maybe some people can deliver value where the competition doesn't. Could be due to some leverage or insight or creativity.
>go explain that to people every time you are drinking water in a pub

Why do you feel a need to explain it? I've never had any reaction at all with 'no thanks, I'm good'. You don't have to say 'I'm on a diet' 'I don't drink' 'that crap will kill you' or anything else. Just no thanks. If someone does ask about your water, say 'I'm taking it easy' or 'I'm good'. Or get a club soda and lime.
How do I deal with it? Very badly.

When I first started in the software field, I didn't expect that it would come to resemble a brothel. But now it does, and I don't feel all that young and pretty any more.

Everybody is dreaming up the next big thing. The 20-year-old dreamers are just the ones that sell their dreams most cheaply. This whole industry seems like a continuation of the cool kid cliques in high school pretending to be the nerds' friends, so that they will continue doing all the homework. We're getting some money out of it, but no respect.

So I'm not really very motivated to "get more years out of it". The years I have had haven't been all that great. As Lord Farquad said in Shrek, "It's rude enough being alive when no one wants you, but showing up uninvited [to someone else's party]?"

So, yeah, I guess I deal with aging by shriveling up and getting bitter. The world will never lack for exploitable 20-year-olds, and I'll never be the one to get to them early enough, or with enough capital, to profit from one.
I'm 48 and I do feel that I can get more years out of life because I'm more aware and focused on making it happen. I've been fortune that I grew up playing hockey and developed an almost religious belief in the power of working out. It's the best way to stay sharp mentally, feel better physically, and stave of the effects of aging as best we can right now. We are also supremely lucky because our knowledge in this space has increased hugely; my parents had no clue about eating right, or working out, or any of that. My father at 48 looked like you would expect a 48 year old to look like; living in colorado, which is a hyper healthy state full of cross-fitters, runners and olympians trainers, it's striking how young older folks look. I often get mistaken for late 30's, and growing up it would be unthinkable that someone my age could play against 20-something Division 1 college players and be affect. I do this regularly, and I'm grateful I'm able to do it still.

I'm also a big believer in vitamins and supplements, but I know that's a major point of contention (I regularly get razzed by my surgeon buddy at hockey about spending money to color my piss). I disagree though, and I'll spare the lecture on why I believe so because ultimately it comes down to whether or not it helps you personally. I've posted in the past about the positive effects of fish-oil, ubiquinol w/ PQQ and Resveratrol in particular.

Bottom line, it depends on your goals. Mine is to live a 1000 years or so. I started telling my friends this about 20 years back, I think I'd just read K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation and probably one of Kaku's physics books and the written to me was clearly on the wall - progress would work in my favor, if I worked hard to keep myself in great shape, I just might make it far enough in life to see these cascading breakthrough's that will eventually propel man's lifespan into the hundreds and beyond. I do realize this is a long shot, but at the same time have nothing to lose by using this to drive my workout and health.

Regarding the 20 something culture... be careful on that... it's natural it seems as one gets older to lament how things have changed, how the 'young folks' are different and the world is changing. In reality we've changed, they are mostly the same, just as angst driven, excited for the future and full of hope and promise and probably a bit too optimistic. This is great, really, don't let it get you down and try to remember/embrace that way of thinking.

I just started a blog on all this stuff, only a bit of content so far but I plan to write a few pieces a week:
https://existentialquandary.wordpress.com
> Last time I crossed the border I was even warned that my passport doesn't show proof that I left the US, it only shows every time I entered it so technically, they don't know if I am staying there more than 90 days.

I can tell you all about this. Technically, the onus is on the air carriers to use their passenger manifests to report back to DHS, who tracks it all centrally. You can imagine how well that works.

Read More: http://cis.org/biometric-exit-tracking-feasible-and-cost-eff...
The new switchers
I don't think there's any question that a union that lives up to the ideals of the labor movement - solidarity, equality, power for working people over their own lives - has to persuade people that membership is worth it, not coerce them. You're right that there's a connection between the collapse of unions and their bureaucratization and loss of the ability to persuade workers that membership is worth not just paying for, but fighting for.

But free riding is a real problem. If people can gain the benefits of union protection while avoiding the costs and risks of union membership, that temptation will be enormous. And if you believe workers deserve control over their own lives, including their workplace lives, some of that control has to be collective and democratic, not just individual. In a workplace and a society, decisions that affect everybody collectively and override individuals will get made. The alternative to democracy making those decisions isn't that everybody has infinite liberty, it's that the boss makes those decisions.
>> Ignoring what people think is cool
> In the end, it really isn't though.

It's true. The answers are not all found within. An idealized process would more like: Find out about something cool. Working with those people/that scene to improve it. Detect when it's losing its ideals. Nudge it back toward its ideals.

Lots of people who hack out of pure curiosity. It's how humans work and got to be the way we are. That's an ideal. Nowadays, we have people with lots of money distracting the hackers, saying, "Hey, why are you just doing that for the hell of it? You have skills, help me make money and you can have some, too."

It doesn't sound bad on the surface, but it goes wrong for everyone when the idea of someone have "skills" is abstracted to mean "skills that I can use to make $." Most hacking (lock picking, software stunts, diet coke and Mentos) is not commericially useful, at least not directly. But when a hacker suspends their natural desire and directs it toward someone else's ends, the natural "curiosity vector" is not followed. It's not bad, it's just the death of an ideal. The best we can do is help each other identify when we're compromising too much on our curiosity and ideals in chasing that holy billion dollars.
> I really don't like the link to "the profit fetish" in the last paragraph and the implicit undertone of profit being a bad thing

I'm on the other side of the fence, I have yet to find a good argument that defends profit when you weight it against all its fault. As far as I'm concerned the profit race is about the worst thing our specie ever came up with, it's directly responsible for destroying our planet, for the death of millions and as we speak for the lack of future for our specie.
Oh, neat! I've been researching this topic quite a bit lately. Here's some more references: https://github.com/nickdesaulniers/nickdesaulniers.github.co...
No, it isn't that way. It mostly ends up as a consequence of initially over-estimating the competitor. So your mind looks for their tiniest shortcomings to make sure that they do things wrong too.

Once it finds such a thing, subconsciously the mind registers the competitor as weaker than they actually are, to redeem your mind from the uncomfortable prick of a all-powerful competitor. It doesn't happen for everyone though. It takes a bit of rationality to overcome such conclusions.

I personally know people who'd read and stress negative reviews of their competitors' products, and eventually conclude that their competitors are not really thoughtful in their decision making.

TL;DR - Yes.