skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Hyper Conservative Dev Org
Currently I work for a company in the northwest. We were bought out a year ago. Surprisingly I’ve been happier since we were bought out. Having been bought out has given me the opportunity to wave a big hammer to move towards more common standards that software orgs use but I still find myself feeling like I’m taking a crazy pill when attempting to float ideas to the senior devs.

The place I work at is a SaaS. I’m going to try and describe tech and see if I can relate it to the levels of conservatism that we have at work culturally speaking. These levels of conservatism are championed by the founding devs.

Senior management is entrenched in their ways. After working at the company for a few months, I was entrusted with a project to help improve the development processes that were being used. In that timeframe I proposed seemingly common sense, community standard solutions. What happened next was that decision after decision was turned down for clever alternatives that were home grown. After a long time we had working solutions when instead we could have spent a percentage of the time using pre-built solutions. What’s strange about this is that even sfter showing said solutions we still chose the other because of our belief system. For example take installing seemingly commmon <language dep x> on a dev machine. That was a no go because we spoon feed our devs. Instead we decided to offload that elsewhere, which in turn created an even more complex and difficult to maintain solution.
Not to mention "lekking", which still means "playing" in parts of northern England.
Would you rather: "This just isn't working." "Okay, well we tried."

Once you're in the "this isn't working" phase of your story, shit is pretty dire. Hard to blame the caregiver for trying something else.
Note we don’t agree classes are “messy”. That has nothing to do with motivation for Hooks.

Longer comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19206401
Within that time we struggled to make a stable offering due to the “cool but unconventional” solutions that were offered by principal engineers vs my proposed solutions. Once we delivered said solution we dealt with the fallout of having to build your own solution: we had to maintain and document as well as update our dev training process. This of course took a lot of time and effort. In the end I ended up being given the go ahead to utilize the previously floated solutions I had proposed in order to reach stability. I ended up having to spend even more time undoing all the work I was told to do while moving to the more standard and easier to maintain solutions.

And yet I find myself fighting similar battles in my day to day. I just want to focus on what’s right, instead of having to prove the seemingly obvious. But not having the recognition that we wasted so much time seems to bother me, because our company continues to make similar seemingly batshit types of discussions. I feel as though not having that recognition damages my ability to make arguments and be taken seriously to stop further bad decisions from being made. I don’t like having reputation influence what ideas are adopted but this dev org definitely listens to the few instead of letting the best or most reasonable or commonly utilized ideas win.
The physcists we have had come in to check x-ray gear can generally do a conversion to banana equivalent dose in their head when asked. Seem to check out as accurate too.
Does this sound more like an explanation? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19206401

I’m happy to answer specific questions.
What Goes on in Those School Shooter Trainings Teachers Are Required to Undergo
> If the police asked for a general warrant to go collect footage from everyone's security cameras in the same area it would probably have been denied, no?

No, probably not.

The last aerial photo, with a gas station, the police would certainly be able to get warrants for security cameras for the whole area. Warrants require only reasonable belief that they would lead to evidence of a crime. All cameras pointed at the location that a crime was committed would be reasonably likely to contain footage of the robber.

The earlier photos, with 2-5 blocks of coverage, it's less clear, but still likely that the police would be able to get a warrant. The perps driving the get-away car is evidence and cops only need to show that there is a reason to believe that the camera footage shows a glimpse of the get-away car to get the footage.
I find it fascinating that people don't immediately translate "what was your reason for this?", "did you try x,y,z?" and "I wondered if this would work?" to "why?" "why?" "why"?
How hard would it be for a non-eu citizen to get a working visa in Sweden?
Just speculating, but could it be since there's very limited ability to file for personal bankruptcy in most European countries?
Cool! Finally the web version, this is more handy than the mobile app for me.
I wrote this — do you think it helps explain the idea a bit more closely?

https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/making-sense-of-react-hooks-...
Can any of the down voters add a comment? Is this inaccurate?
Kool stuff!
The work-life balance might be lagom. ;)
You should probably be more freaked out by your phone. It collects this data by default and sends it to Google or Apple. I think that Google still has an API for querying their database.
What’s worse is that those key devs are stuck in their ways and it shows in how the technical culture has been stunted. We’re stuck in the year 2006. They also don’t have formal software development training (e.g. they don’t know common design patterns, they believe that globals are a good idea, they think that front end load balancers are simpler and that hot swapping variables in the browser without having your customer refresh is a good idea) and they have a strong impact on how the rest of the org is able to progress. What’s worse is that they’re proud sbout these unconventional solutions and their surrounding practices. I feel like their lists of pros and cons in favor of their technical solutions are just thinly vieled arguments that cover up the true root cause for defending their ways; they’re prideful about their work and don’t want it to go away.

My spirit to continue to keep trying to make the dev org better has been crushed by constantly having to prove fundamentals of designing web applications. I want to help the org, but the sheer amount of effort to move the right stakeholders makes me want to look elsewhere. I love my craft and take pride in doing my best work, but now I just find myself wanting to work with a handful of devs that don’t need me to explain how their ideas fly in the face of seemingly obvious and fundamental concepts surrounding software engineering and modern web apps. The only thing that keeps me going is a handful of devs thst whisper encouragement along with the high numbers of wtf/s from brand new hires that know whst the ass end of a web app is supposed ro look like. That signals to me that I’m on to something, but for the life of me the key stakeholders don’t see it.

Alas, the pay is good and the benefits are pretty great too. I can’t tell if this is the burnout talking but I feel like I would be willing to take a $30k pay cut to work in a similar environment with open minded and technically capable devs.
It’s important to down the drink fast to reduce the risk of poisoning?
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> You can obviously screw up a great market -- and that has been done, and not infrequently -- but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca...
Communicating 2 Strong Propositions in One Ad Is Like Welding a JCB to a Ferrari
Maybe there is some process that makes the red ball to always go to the top, so the probability of finding it is larger than one to million.

In both cases you do not have enough information to make any conclusions.
Startup CEO Salary: How Much Should a Company CEO Make?
I found this website that lists the equivalent organisations around the world - or at least, it lists DKMS for Germany, and the one I know to be correct for the Netherlands: https://swabtheworld.com/become-a-donor/

For one reason or another they don't link directly to those organisations, but if you have the name, you should be able to find out the rest.
"Using the battle metaphor implies that if a patient fights hard enough, smart enough, and/or long enough, he or she will be able to win the war."

No it doesn't.

I imagine that the battle metaphor is comforting to some people for precisely the opposite reasons.

Being drafted into infantry (stereotypical mental image of a battle) there is likely no good outcome. The best case is probably a deeply unpleasant, emotionally and possibly physically painful, experience. The worst case outcome is death.

Ability to personally influence the outcome is limited at best. You can fight long, hard and smart and still find yourself on the losing side.

I have no direct experience of cancer but if I did, I'm not sure I would appreciate a critique of my choice of language.

If I found comfort in a metaphor then I'd hardly like for my doctor to point out that the metaphor is a cliche or a trope.
That's the downturn of Western philosophy that we are raised on. We perceive death as an opposite to life while naturally they are the parts of the same cycle.
Market Matters Most (2007)
> Here's what he said: 'a Leave vote would cause an "immediate and profound" economic shock'

Did you even read your own post?

> 'Leaving the European Union would tip the UK into a year-long recession, with up to 820,000 jobs lost within two years, Chancellor George Osborne says.

Leaving is not voting to leave. UK hasn't left yet. Note that I think that the statement is wrong, but it certainly hasn't been disproven yet.
I don’t think your example really applies, because no one expects the definition of “species” to imply that the “individual A can mate with individual B” relation to be transitive.
Internet at 35,000 Feet. How Hard Can It Be?
स्लिम एक्स एल हर्बल कैप्सूल
http://www.hindi.ind.in/obesity.html
केवल पुराने यूनानी चिकित्सा प्रणाली जैसे (हर्बल) इस समस्या के निदान के सबसे सरल उपाए हैं जो लोग अपने वजन को कम करना चाहते है परन्तु वह अपना वज़न कम करने में असमर्थ हो चुके हैं या बाज़ार में बिकने वाले बहुत से उत्पादो का सेवन कर चुके हैं और केवल निराशा ही उनको मिली है तब आप के लिए आशा है कि रास्ता है वो है स्लिम एक्स एल हर्बल कैप्सूल. यह एक हर्बल कैप्सूल है जिस्सको इस्तेमाल करके लाखो लोग लाभान्वित! हो चुके है ” स्लिम एक्स हर्बल कैप्सूल तेज़ी से वजन घटाने में प्राकर्तिक रूप से आपकी सहायता करता है स्लिम एक्स एल कैप्सूल एक उन्नत वसा बर्नर और ऊर्जा का स्रोत है यह 100% शुद्ध और प्राकृतिक है! स्लिम एक्स एल हर्बल कैप्सूल में प्रयुक्त जड़ी बूटी वजन कम करने की प्रक्रिया में सबसे बड़ी सफलता है! स्लिम एक्स एल हर्बल कैप्सूल वजन घटाने को बढ़ावा देने की क्षमता के लिए हलचल पैदा करता है!
It would still be very interesting to see how people would react to neutral usernames like randomly generated number sequences. It could provide some useful insight.
Is not the same dying at 80 from 'natural causes' than at 35 due to cancer after a grueling experience fighting it. Which is why I don't see how I'd find that comforting if I were diagnosed cancer when still 'young'. That's just me though.
Isn't an oncologist always medical ... ?
[microui] Tiny, Portable, Immediate-Mode UI Library written in ~1100 sloc of C
So, if I understand it correctly, the text argues in favor of the GPU approach of pipelining independant vector operations instead of the current SIMD approach.

I see how this could be beneficial, specially when writing codes, as it's way closer to just a normal loop.

Then again, why not combine both ideas and pipeline chunks of SIMD type? Say we have 4 execution stages and 32bit SIMD types (unrealistic, I know) and want to process 8-bit numbers. Wouldn't we be able to process 16 of them at the same time? Actually, isn't that kind of what GPUs already do?

I'm sure smarter people than I have reasoned about this, maybe someone can link a good article. I only know of this one [1] and one about GPGPU that I just can't find any more (but which was also very interesting)

[1] http://www.lighterra.com/papers/modernmicroprocessors/
Even if that was the case(I don't believe it is - there's nothing difficult about filling for bankrupcy it's just that the consequences can be rather severe - you can't run a company or get any kind of loan for years and years afterwards), why would car insurance companies go above and beyond what is required by them? My insurance is with Aviva, and I know as a fact that they are only required by law to offer 5 million euro coverage. Yet my policy clearly states 20 million euro 3rd party coverage. Why? I didn't ask for it at any point, and it still seems far beyond anything that I could ever cause in an accident. And it's certainly not like they advertise this fact anywhere, so it couldn't even be a marketing tactic(hey come with us, we offer more coverage than any other company!). It's just their bog standard policy as far as I can tell.
Yes. It’s crazy to think an IoT device would be constructed to aggressively spy on its owners for advertising purposes (https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/07/09/smart-tvs-are-sp...).
This seems to be the unfortunate truth. And if I was looking to join a niche interest, I'd go to these sites because that's where the people are. Only exception is for in person meetings, where I'd look to Meetup or Eventbrite.
I can only imagine the frustration you are describing, but I still wonder if the blame is really on the doctors or the branch of medicine. Is there a better alternative?
How I Climbed a 3,000-Foot Vertical Cliff – Without Ropes – Alex Honnold
Not an disagreement, but rather a remark. What ever the effect of gender segregation is, it would then be practically universal here because thats how the data look like.
> They seem to have no communication between their departments

I wonder what's more profitable.
It looks like the SVG has just been exported at a width much narrower than the text. If you inspect the SVG on the second link you posted, you can edit the `width` attribute to something like 200 and see the full text.

Normally, when exporting SVGs for the web, you would convert the text to shapes. That way, people don't need a version of the font you've used and you can guarantee it looking the same across browsers.
> Roll my eyes every time I see a "Considered Harmful" headline.

Same. Please, when you write a title for your article, be specific about what you think is wrong. "X Considered Harmful" is lazy writing and devalues any substantive argument you make because it's become a cliche to the point where it's almost anti-clickbait.

GUILTY ADMISSION: a related trap I started falling into when writing content for work (email, documents, whatever) and I was in a hurry for a subject line or title was "Thoughts on X". That's right, "thoughts": I communed with the creator and distilled them from on high. Yeah, ain't nobody got time to read that.
Why does sass have to be ‘compiled’ in 2019? It’s not like some heavy duty compilation is being performed. It should be as standard and supported as css.
Yeesh, tough crowd.
This argument is less effective given that SIMD is not always a straightforward substitute for vector processing. Sometimes we want 128, 256 or 512 bits of processing as a unit and will follow it up with something different, not a repeated instance of that same process.

We had numerous different examples of this in the Hyperscan project and I broke out something similar on my blog: https://branchfree.org/2018/05/30/smh-the-swiss-army-chainsa...

We also used SIMD quite extensively as a 'wider GPR' - not doing stuff over tons of input characters but instead using the superior size of SIMD registers to implement things like bitwise string and NFA matchers.

A SIMD instruction can be a reasonable proxy for a wide vector processor but the reverse is not true - a specialized vector architecture is unlikely to be very helpful for this kind of 'mixed' SIMD processing. Almost any "argument from DAXPY" fails for the much richer uses of SIMD processing among active practitioners using modern SIMD.
Nice. Have you worked anywhere else in Europe? How does it compare to Berlin? Are the salaries comparable with other major European cities? You say work life balance is great but I hear it can be expensive to live there. What's your experience? Is English widely spoken in offices or do people have to learn Swedish in order to work effectively?
I'm afraid I disagree with your last statement. It is possible that perhaps I've just been so fortunate that all the people I've ever come across are mostly similar in what they want from life. It seems to be the same all over the world: general well being, safety and security of their family and their future.

People disagree on priorities and not everyone's incentives are the same but I've never felt that by default people are bad. I'm no scientist (or sage) and just an average human. So, this is just how I see things and not based on expert scientific inquiry. Make of it what you will.
The root issue here is finding some path forward for helping people. Psychiatry, psychology etc aren't doing a great job with that.

He tries to determine what has happened historically but not why.

Why was this guy using drugs starting at age ten? What led up to that? Shouldn't it be classified as a parenting failure, not a "disorder" on his part?

What was the history with the father? Perhaps assaulting his father wasn't simply due to insanity. Some parents are really awful to their kids and it's a huge problem for the kid. That doesn't necessarily stop being true just because the kid became a legal adult.

Labels determine what mental models we use when trying to intercede in a problem. Different labels get very different reactions and treatment modes.

We need to up our game in myriad ways, but labels are a critical tool for this problem space. I hate labels, but they are a useful communication tool.
I definitely did pivot, but you did as well. You swapped between Google should censor to Google can censor. These are quite different issues, though they frequently end up intermingled, as in our chat.

Efforts at competition should not be neglected, but I think it will likely prove futile. There are already plenty of alternatives to YouTube, but that doesn't matter with a natural monopoly. Content producers want to go where viewers are. Viewers want to go where content producers are. Whoever becomes the 'big one' first, wins.

There's a fundamental problem. That is that content intended to be free by users is something that private companies then claim effective ownership of as a condition of being able to say anything. This is an interesting 'trick'. I call it a trick because let's say the average person posts something to e.g. Facebook or YouTube. Would they mind if another site, with attribution, also shared their content? In the vast majority of cases, the answer would be no. Most people are just posting things for enjoyment or to express themselves, they'd love if it got shared as much as possible. But other sites cannot share these users' content because e.g. YouTube or Facebook claim and defend exclusive ownership of what is posted on their site. You'd need to get a user's express permission to share their content, and that's not really viable.

Imagine for a second that we killed this trick. Companies that provide user generated content for free, or with a free account, could only publish content under non-free licenses if the content creator specifically opted in to that agreement. However, even if they chose to not opt-in the company would still be obligated to publish and treat their content identically to how they would have if the user had opted in. This would all go away if the company charged even $0.01 for access. The company could also incentivize users to opt-in, such as by paying them up front for their content.

The idea is to turn "free" into simply free. This would enable real competition since free access means somebody could simply start copying content created by users who wanted to post free content on e.g. YouTube or Facebook and share it in a different venue. The exact same would be true of comments and other such user generated content that was always intended to be free, and not "free", to begin with.

But so long as a monopoly is able to claim effective ownership of material users meant to be free, this system will likely only grow larger.
How to Write a Great Vulnerability Report
AOC: How Many Pundits Talking about Amazon Even Read the Deal?
You heard wrong. Sweden has one if the longest working weeks in the EU. Normal work day starts at 8am.

Most stuff that you read about Sweden (ie stuff that gets shared on socisl media) is false.
If the people who operate the weather station explicitly saying that its data should not be used for long term interpretation isn't credible enough for you, frankly I don't know what would be.

Once again, I am not a 'climate skeptic'. You need to dial down your irrational hatred.
Are there more than 100 start-ups worth working for in Stockholm?
Sure, if I was a conspiracy lunatic this would make a lot of sense.
Additionally a user is likely to pay a lot more attention to their phone than to their Nest devices. A compromised Nest device will likely stay compromised until Google find the exploit...
I totally agree, which is part of why I believe that age limitations on people who can vote is a bad idea.
It's too early to bury Alex. Donor immune system may still rise up and kill leukemia cells while leaving some liver tissue for it to regenerate. Not so much of a chance but still...
No - as they explained, medical oncologists treat with drugs. Surgical oncologists operate on cancer patients, and radiation oncologists treat with radiation. https://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/cancer-basics/...
My braincycles are much more expensive than the DBs. It’s fine to use select * if I do it.
Maybe CPU architectures should just have data-parallel loop support of arbitrary width. The CPU can implement it in microcode however it feels like, or perhaps a kernel can trap it and send it off to a GPU transparently.

Strikes me as much cleaner design-wise than stuff like CUDA or openCL or SIMD of today.
Client Feedback Tool
The linked post is a great comparison of functional and object-oriented approaches to building UIs. Thanks.

I think the crux of the issue is here:
> "So if we don't make the incorrect assumption that UIs are unstable (pure functions of model), then we don't have to expend additional and fragile effort to re-create that necessary stability."

In Cocoa, and generally in desktop UIs, your assumption is true. A UI is a set of "slots" into which dynamic data is displayed. But on the web this is a lot more fluid. You can have visibility toggles across the application, and the UI can vary drastically between one state to another. I think this is the fundamental mismatch between the object-oriented approach to UI and the functional approach to UI.

Also, in the "Lists" section, the functional approach would not be to create a persistent Map, which then has to be invalidated as its source data changes. Instead, the mental model in the functional approach is to always re-compute everything; memoization is an optimization that should be transparent.
Report on a General Problem-Solving Program (1959) [pdf]