skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The actual study points out that on most of the measures, full open plan beat cubicles (high and low walled) and only barely lose to shared offices.

I suppose a more interesting question is how much a seating plan contributes to revenue, operating margin, and growth.

It is indeed interesting that people report higher ease of collaboration in full private offices. Perhaps the ability to have a conversation in an office means that you don't have to go somewhere to talk and so it works out.

Anyway, given the measures in the study, full open plan with no restrictions come out looking pretty good.
I see similarities here with pharma and medical research. Conflicts of interest are endemic there, and they will be here, too, but this sort of sponsorship is inevitable. What can be done? In the case of pharma, I'm OK with them sponsoring peer reviewed, academic research, as long as policies are in place to make it immediately obvious where the money is coming from when I read the literature.
Your observation about the number of workers this effects seems out of place.

For the many people who do work these jobs, this ruling strengthens their protection.
Does Scala fit as a functional language that is useful for data science?
Is this the story you're talking about? https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/why-did-scott-pruitt-spen...

Where the talking head concedes the pants were apparently sensible?
afaict, this study looked at only two instances of fortune 500 companies who moved some people to open office plans and compared them to those who were not moved.

Additionally, they measured 'interactions', which was a self defined metric that afaict has no grounding in anything.

I'm not sure if one of two Fortune 500 companies, used to working in an office, generalizes to me. So, I'm not sure how much I personally weight the outcome of this study.

I've worked in both offices and open office plans, and there were things I did and didn't like about both. Offices required more formal mind-melding but I had more concentration time during peak business hours. Pit allowed me to feel more camaraderie, but required me to work off hours to get concentrated work done. If it were up to be I'd do 3 days in an office and 2 days in a open pit.
Yes, because it is serious and because there are many useful ways to quantify knowledge worker productivity.

I can’t tell if you laughed because you’ve never looked into this field of managerial study before and have inadvertently assumed there aren’t useful, heavily relied-upon ways of measuring productivity; or if you laughed because of the dark humor that results when you realize companies are fully aware of how much lost productivity, increased communicable disease based time off, engendering of shallow / superficial face-to-face interactions, increased stress and lowered morale all cost them from open floor plans, and are sadly willing to pay those costs as a premium to get the status & optics effects they want from the look of the office layout.
What? As in "Bro, that's totally stupid"?

I guess that I'm more into cleverness and subtlety. Humor that directly or indirectly makes fun of people strikes me as sad, not funny.
Not even sure the last time I clicked "new" until you mentioned it, and I've been here since 2011.
What's he gonna say? "I'm not ready to slap more tariffs?" This is entirely expected.
> And both the game devs and Red Shell as far as I can see aren't selling this data.

Just collecting the data makes it vulnerable to abuse. What if there is a breach?
mistermann, I've noticed that a lot of your activity on HN seems to consist of demanding that others do research for your own edification. I wonder if you'd consider, please, recognizing that other people also value their own time and energy, and actually expending some effort to educate yourself. It seems like the polite and responsible thing to do. Thanks!
Well, I can see that this is a WIP library and I can also see how people actively working on an academic project don't really bother (or do not have enough experience with the package system quirks) to package it well for a variety of systems.
I was shocked to see the list of partners involved (which is why I assume their logos are big and bold and center).

I'm glad to see them participating, but I wonder what their motivation is? Is it truly genuine?

I know for example that when we made the reddit API people questioned our motives since "the data was everything" and "how can reddit be willing to make the data so accessible", but we knew that in reality "the community is everything".

So I really hope these companies are similarly motivated, knowing that it is the community and their platform that are their true assets.
I can understand filing for benefits if you were terminated by Uber (first one was for low ratings) but one of the plaintiffs quit because of low pay. Quitting for non egregious reasons (bad work environment, harassment, etc) is usually a blocker for filing for claims.
I would. I would go further and say it is reputation-threatening (if not ending), mortifyingly embarassing for the members of VIPS that wrote and signed off on the memo. If you had hacked a well-protected target, would you go in directly through your origin? There were probably dozens of hops, some of which may have been fairly indirectly. I doubt they leaked it directly, too.
I'm sure somebody would say that's precisely because they pay people so much, that they are constantly out to reduce costs elsewhere.

In reality, managers are simply on the constant lookout to squeeze costs down, and worker salaries escape the cut only in some job markets because of very specific circumstances (like a period of history when the need to build software severely outstrips overall production capacity). There is no real master plan to maximize productivity.
Your last paragraph perfectly captured my thoughts on this topic. Nice to know others see things in the same light.
>People choose to work where they work, right?

I chose to work as CEO of Amazon, but Amazon had other ideas.
Egypt passes law to regulate social media accounts with 5,000+ followers
I almost always have noise cancelling headphones and my colleagues ping me on Slack, "got a minute?" and when I'm ready (often instantly, sometimes not) I roll over to their desk. Decent compromise.
I don't get why this would stir controversy while Google Analytics would not - it appears they collect the same type of information. Are game devs not allowed the same type of tools that web devs are?
Are you referring to this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
The problem that Facebook, Twitter, et. al have run into is this: curating, moderating, (dare I say, policing?) our own feeds of information. This gives them a share of the responsibility for what's posted on their platform, which is something they can't take on -- both practically, and logistically.

Back in the day, if you ran an IRC server, you generally ran the service laissez faire. Your chief concern was providing the service. If someone was sharing illegal content, that wasn't your responsibility any more than state governments sharing culpability for roads that facilitate robberies. And behavior? Who cares what you do, unless you're attacking the service?

Channels themselves could come up with their own set of rules, if they wanted. You want to restrict swearing? No problem. Only registered accounts? Fine. No discussion of politics? Who cares? If you came crying to the server administrators, because you were unfairly banned from #atheism/religion/linux for walking in and trying to have an honest debate, they'd shrug their shoulders. Not their problem!

What a ridiculous state of affairs to have the service administrators make a network wide rule: "No saying untrue things", or "Don't be mean, but only to certain groups of people". It isn't their job to decide what is true, or what is hurtful.

"Oooh, but bjt2n3904, the First Amendment doesn't apply to Facebook! There's this great XKCD comic where he shows mean people the door, and..." -- Yes. I get it. But the fact remains, the 1A is a good principle to adhere to, even if you aren't the government. Policing your own little channel of the internet is feasible, if you so choose. Policing the entire internet is madness -- especially when it comes to subjective things like "hate".

Everyone has a different level of tolerance for putting up with jerks on the internet. One person might feel they're being targeted with harassment, another might just call that "Monday". The solution isn't to have Twitter declare how everyone should behave, the solution is for Twitter to push that decision to the user, and provide them with effective tools for filtering and blocking people.
The only way for open offices to work is when nobody is doing open work. The major fail of open offices are the constant distractions existing around you. If they don't exist, then of course can it work.

Anyway, what you discribe still has a price for your team. You not only break the persons concentration who is asked, instead of giving them the choice to answer when they have free time to concentrate on something new, you also break rise the chance of breaking the concentration of everyone else who is not involved.
You are 100% correct, it’s just not a popular opinion around here.

I take Uber a lot and not once has a driver had anything bad to say about the “gig economy”. Most are thankful to make a couple extra bucks during their free time.

Their ability to make that money is under constant attack by those who supposedly “know better” than they do about how they should be earning a living.
Why do you even want to silence anyone from posting in their own social network. I don't think companies should become moral authorities.

Leave it to the network to naturally filter out content they don't want.
Is this just some guy's blog? This seems like wild orientalization.
But it has nothing to do with the fact that they can't do proper packaging. Using their own, proprietarily-compiled interpreter is what keeps you using their products in a controlled fashion.
Who gets to define who a Nazi is?

If I say that 4 million died in the Holocaust rather than 6 million, is that Holocaust denial?
The "gig economy" perpetuates a false narrative that traditional jobs are being replaced with contractors. The numbers simply don't bear that out. It's tangential to whether or not contract worker protections should be enhanced.

I correct misinformation when I see it. The world is awash in false information.
The fact that the actors involved are not _currrently_ selling the data does not mean that can't change in an instant. Many other company's have pulled the "we're not selling your data" card only to switch later. Consumers do not trust companies to harvest this data anymore because as a class, company's have proven themselves untrustworthy.

They are outraged because the data is being collected at all, not what you are using it for
I think something like Red Shell is obviously good for society and consumers are hurting themselves by overreacting.

Better targeted ads == less money wasted on ads and more money spent on development == less people annoyed by ads they're not interested in == better games. Shame.
> By choosing to work with facebook you're literally working for a company that has stoked mob killings and enabled genocide.

Okay, granted.

> Anyone working there needs to be called out.

I'll take this seriously when you start "calling out" IBM employees for working for a company that in the past enabled genocide.

I'm unsure how research on "visual and robot learning" or on "geometric 3D reasoning" is supposed to be enabling genocide. Those seem more akin to "green energy researchers taking money from big oil cos". Which is very different, ethically, from actively helping build and maintain the core business. Unless you want to suss out the link between geometric reasoning and genocide for me?

And in the case of Facebook, your opinion is worse than just hyperbolic. There is an entire research field that focuses on detecting speech sentiment. Your position, as stated, is that those people should not work with Facebook, even if 100% of their time is spent designing algorithms and processes to detect and remove hate speech/calls to violence during active genocides.

I think that advice is actively dangerous because I don't believe in a magical world where Facebook disappears tomorrow.
Yes they are; the idea of the gig economy is great, like, doing the odd job in your own time and earn some money, but there's so many people that went ahead and are doing it full time as their primary source of income. The employees then compete with each other, driving the price down. And Uber's laughing all the way to the bank because they don't need to care about it, they'll make money either way. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Uber was lowering the prices to get more consumers to use ubers more often.
> Of course China is playing unfairly. Not many people disagree.

There's no way of knowing for sure, but based purely on what I see on TV and read in forums, I'd say 50%++ of people seem to disagree, and some of them extremely vehemently. And in my experience, you don't have to go too far to find similarly thinking people on HN either.

This whole situation is incredibly frustrating to me because so many people seem to have such incredibly strong beliefs and certainty, yet only know, let alone understand, a tiny portion of the facts.....while accusing the other side of this very same thing, for an extra serving of delicious irony.

> The argument has been that the West should fight China as a unified bloc as opposed to the unilateral tariffs being imposed. It makes no sense to alienate Canada, the EU, Japan, and South Korea when confronting China. All of those countries (and the EU) have serious grievances and would have provided the US additional leverage.

That is "an" argument, that I've heard in very few places. Much more common is the stance that Trump is completely and unequivocally wrong on China practices and tariffs, full stop.

> The current approach is rooted in showmanship rather than strategy. It’s meant to provide a spectacle.

Facts and logic seem completely impotent, so it seems to me like a reasonable approach. Why he doesn't accompany it with some evidence like this article is a mystery and suggests that he in fact doesn't understand these things at a very deep level, but simultaneously I find that hard to believe. I wonder if we'll ever find out what's really going on in his head.
Trust us, the pain on not having a tabbed console is felt here in the console team too. It's our most requested feature, but implementing it has always ended up a lot harder than expected. Fortunately we're working with the Tabbed Sets team to help nail that experience for the console.
That's tragic! What if the love of your life is on the other side of the Hilbert curve, fated never to meet?
Thanks for the advice. As I alluded in my footnote, I haven't been effective in convincing anyone to change. Apparently it's just not something that's top of mind for a person who feels they need to get my immediate attention (and maybe one tenth of the time the "immediate" aspect is actually warranted).

And to be fair, my characterization of "shouting" is probably an exaggeration, but in the moment it's how my brain interprets the hailing.
Are gig economy people included in that figure? It seems like a category on its own, contract workers (the way I see it) still get to work full-time instead of 'whatever the market demands'.
Right now companies use diamond wire blades to cut granite and it is not so fast and easy

The modern methods are done for speed and uniformity. If you're an ancient Egyptian, you probably have a lot more time to work on these things. Plus, you're probably not one person working on it.

Don't think of one guy banging rocks together. Think of a dozen skilled artisans with pretty good hand tools, and a longer-than-eight-hours workday.
I agree with that one. Haven't used PyQT since Uni and it was a hell to make sure you could use it.

Frankly at the time I just assumed I couldn't download the package simply because it generally takes to long to compile Qt.
On today’s “The Daily” podcast, they do talk about how difficult this kind of thing is. I don’t believe the NYT thinks at all that this is a trivial issue to solve.
> OTOH a properly sound-insulated personal office would either feel claustrophobic to many people

Why is it worth mentioning claustrophobia, but not agoraphobia?

Interestingly, both anxieties are much more common in women than men. I wonder if this is another case where a seemingly innocuous decision (like job postings with a large number of required qualifications) is actually turning women away from the industry.
Sure, yeah, using RSS is rare, but it always was, and nothing was going to keep the vast majority of people from using Facebook and Twitter instead.

I don't understand why you rolled your own server. Feedly works great. If you did it because it's a fun project, that's awesome! But it certainly isn't necessary if your goal is just to subscribe to RSS feeds.
I bet dietary, microbial, and even life choice factors exist. It’ll be a long time before we nail all those down (if ever, with all the marketing in those factors).
There is a certain amusing concordance with correcting use of the phrase “point of order” and its meaning.
I checked data for a few developed countries there and all show an increase in GDP per capita.
I'm not sure -- I haven't worked long enough at a company where managers had their own office & everyone was in an open office plan.

My experience was that everyone, including the CEO, was in an open office (40+ person startup, 800+ person growth company). But that it didn't really matter all that much because leadership (senior or not) was barely at their desk anyway.

I do agree that if senior leadership wants an open office plan, they should commit to working in such an environment with their teams.
I’d be interested to see a graph that indicates the actual amounts, in USD, that each country imports and exports relative to one another.
Becuase it's got nothing to do with left or right, just true or false.

The left just seems to value the truth more than the right. That is being vividly illustrated by our current president.
The issues raised by the article are not about morally grey areas, they are about overt Holocaust denial and InfoWars. InfoWars caused a person to shoot up a pizzeria. This is not a place where a slippery slope argument can be made.

Edit: funny that people are downvoting me because they think I'm speaking against free speech, thus silencing my opinion.
Uber drivers are contract workers (except in NY I guess). Yes they are included. A month ago we didn't have post Uber data. Now we do.
Students usually learn R in a statistics class - while also trying to learn statistics! They usually don't have any prior programming experience so the forgiving nature of the language makes sense. Trying to learn Haskell and statistics at the same time might be asking too much, esp. if the libraries aren't there.
That's an interesting conundrum. I don't think Uber or Lyft has it in their terms that they forbid it. At the same time, they don't seem to compete enough on worker rights and pay either, so for the drivers it's not beneficial to go exclusive.
>In the end it will mean ... higher costs for people taking advantage of the service.

As an occasional user of such services, I am OK with paying an increased rate if it means that the drivers are able to get unemployment.
Show HN: A Chrome Extension that lets you edit your tweets, finally
A good question. All crowd-ranked sites like reddit, imgur and hacker news rely on the initial votes of a few to get exposure to many.

I browse "/new" quiet often. The incentive being, that my opinion (comment) is more likely to be heard and seen.

Rather than leaving a comment among 600 of opinions...
Uber has tens of thousands of people who depend on it for a livelihood.
They made $2.5 billion in profits last quarter.

We're not talking about a lemonade stand..

It is far past the tipping-point where Uber has a social obligation to those workers.
Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter’s Project Simplifies Switching Services
How to design a hero image website with Justinmind
As an individual, what you say your ratio is of "Sure I can help now" to "I'll help you later" when a colleague asks for help?

Merely curious.
>People choose to work where they work, right? Why should you or someone else get to define the conditions they think are mutually acceptable?

The agreement between an employer and an employee is not "mutual" because of the massive power differential. Your premise is flawed.
Right -- it's done without transparency or due process.
I worked for a large education technology company that drastically increased its facilities costs to convert a huge office building, that the company owned already, from private offices into open-plan shared desks.

Worse, this office (in Columbus, Ohio), housed almost entirely corporate HR and regional sales staff, almost no engineering presence and no plans to significant change the headcount there.

Someone asked about it over the company’s quarterly web cast town hall meeting, and the CEO replied that they were transforming into an innovation company, that each and every one of us watching was an innovator and that innovators love open spaces.

The staff in Columbus routinely had to handle sensitive calls about HR issues, payroll, medical leave, terminations, etc., and needed private phone call facilities almost all day every day.

So the company paid money (pure loss here since they aren’t renting), to destroy privacy features that were actively needed, solely for optics.
Their performance numbers are sketchy as all hell, so even if they had some way of comparing performance with and without constant noise, would they be able to glean reliable information from it?

So it's close to perfect information on rent vs. some vague and unquantifiable "I can't focus" complaints regarding the noise in a work environment.
It's pretty bare-bones next to a postmortem like https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/postmortem-of-...
Well if you were offering, for instance, $40,000 loans for lemonade stands, and imposing a number of employee-like restrictions on where, when, how, and for what price they could sell the lemonade, I'd start to wonder whether you weren't actually employing those people too.
And yet Taxis weren't for 100 years? Taxi drivers were even more restricted and were still not employees.
Uber has been raising prices lately.

> there's so many people that went ahead and are doing it full time as their primary source of income.

Did you ever think that they do this because it’s their best opportunity and they’re acting rationally? That taking away the opportunity to drive for Uber would be bad for them? It’s a way to make money that didn’t used to exist and people want to kill it because it’s vaguely incompatible with their political ideas.