skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah, that's not so much a "nifty bureaucracy hack" as a core skill to completing any project. It doesn't even have to be 20 unrelated people's feedback... it's my own priorities quite often that I mercilessly stuff on the backlog. YAGNI isn't just at the micro code level, it's a core project design skill. In fact I probably YAGNI my roadmap much harder than my code since I often have a good idea that I will in fact Need It at the microlevel after decades of experience and can save some time at that level, but at the project roadmap level anything you can trim is getting the product out generating value sooner.

(Obviously one can go too far, blah blah blah. But just as with code, we have a much larger problem in practice grabbing too much from the project feature buffet than too little.)
And doesn’t have any negative repercussions forcing people to constantly repeat themselves. “Yes, I still want what I said I wanted a month ago.”

“Why did you stop sending it to me?”

“You didn’t say you it.”

Yes I did! 15 times!

Well, not this month.

It’s like consent for sex is supposedly supposed to be like today for some inexplicable reason.
I'm actually not sure hiding file extensions was a bad idea. As a developer I hate it, but I'm not sure for ordinary users they should be visible or editable as easily as the file name.
Maybe they’re implying 7 year old geniuses who could read by the age of 3 and speak 4 languages by the age of 4. Anyhow, I agree that it’s not for the average 7 year old but it’s a cool book nonetheless
> It's like they are throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bags full of hundred dollar bills over your fence

Surely you realize that's not how it works. If the appraisal value goes up, the only receiving any money is the government from their increased tax collection. The owner didn't receive a penny.
This is like the “VHS will kill broadcast TV” argument all over again.
The problem is that you don't know ahead of time when 'sometimes' is which is worse than nothing.
> Create an extended product roadmap and put those items at least a year off into the future “and as long as they don’t seem relevant, you can just keep pushing them into the future.”

That actually seems to me like the root cause of all the calamity in the article, a culture of lying.
My leadership is constantly pushing for “hedgehog” style advice to be depersonalized, encoded in policies, and handed over to bureaucrats or automation to enforce.

Trying to empathize with their position, I think they think failure happens because the right hedgehogs didn’t show up to the design review that day, or forgot to harp on whatever point that time. They are never satisfied with the “it depends, there’s no hard and fast rule, you have to let the experts think about it in context” responses I give them when pressed for policy. This is limiting my advancement. But worse, someday someone will join the team and will write those hedgehog policies, and then I’ll have to live under them too.

Software engineering is a thinking person’s game. I get that management wishes it weren’t, but it is.
This Linus comment in particular makes me very very ashamed of writing "In every circumstance.".

This is the comment in question[1]. Linus obviously could have gone & seen who the original author was. And this is not a defense. But the person he was talking shit about was no longer around. He was talking about some old code, that some other maintainer was having to deal with, in some shitty crap ass situation that everyone was stranded in, ships smashing against the shore, &c.

While again I'd emphasize the "not a role model" aspect, I again can empathize with how batshit upside down the rest of the world seemed at this point. But overwhelmingly yeah, this is a not good look, this is really discouraging to hear. Which is sad, because, you know, typically when Linus is hammering it out, giving a big corporation the middle finger or what not, it's like: thank god, a decent human being (who is not easily ignorable like the rest of us) is finally saying it true.

But it's still an incredibly uncool way to phrase it all. Worst possible form of sound byte to be able to relay & parrot around.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495
While concerning, it's difficult to look at anecdata and be able to come to a conclusion. Like in my office, when someone declared that someone stole their phone. Suddenly every misplaced item going forward was reported stolen. So not sure if people are actually having a problem or if they are just 'normal' events that are now attributed to the vaccine.
You aren't factoring in the likely substantial underreporting of this, the fact that this could be a symptomless issue until it isn't (i.e. young athletes suddenly having fatal heart failure), the fact that many people just got the vaccine, the possibility that the onset of this takes longer than they think, the low chance of catching covid in the first place, or the fact that the vaccine doesn't even guarantee protection against covid. Not to mention unknown unknowns.

I'm not anti-vaccines, I'm anti this experimental & rushed vaccine. Buy hey let's create vaccine passports and try to force everyone to get it because of politics.
They're not the exact opposite.
Throwaway to get this off my soul.

In the first week of the pandemic (March 16th to be precise) I was going to give my notice to start a new job. When everyone was quickly sent home in my city, the logistical problem of being in two places at once disappeared. I struggled with conflicting standups for the first week, but eventually I normalized my schedule and just appeared as a busy worker that was hard to book meeting times with.

I do enterprise UX design (focusing on regulated industries versus e-comm) so I typically need to be briefed on a problem, conceptualize a solution, then iterate with folks. I found I do about 5 hours of real, hard work per job per week. Attending a zoom meeting isn't hard work, and shouldn't be counted as such. In fact, I do most of my hard work at 10pm once kids are asleep and I can finally think clearly.

The most I've hustled was doing three 'full-time' jobs (40/hr per week) concurrently. For 5 weeks I was making the equivalent of $650k per year (120 hours per week @ $100/hr), and honestly it was only hard because some folks wanted the precious 10am zoom slot. The hard work was manageable, and ironically I was more focused and thoughtful because the good habits of one job were brought over to correct the bad habits of another. Research on a UX pattern one week would give me the confidence to recommend a solution to another client that made me stand out as 'having my finger on the pulse of what users want'.

If I could be honest with all of the clients, I would have felt better emotionally and perhaps I could suggest some load balancing on user testing and UX patterns.

Only one manager wanted his 40 hours of flesh, but most have been happy judging me on my output and positive attitude since I no longer fear being fired... I will just take on another job.
Likewise, our RDS replica experienced degenerate lag, when neither the primary nor replica were in the scorched AZ.
> Voter registration systems constitute a control

Yes, for in person voting. I said so in my post.

> Similar controls exist for mail-in ballots.

No, they don't. Nobody checks to make sure that the actual person who fills out the mail-in ballot is the registered voter attached to that name. The process currently used for mail-in ballots before they get into the chain of custody system is nothing like what I described in my post. That's a big reason why so many people distrust mail-in ballots, particularly in such large quantities.

> What's your plan for influencing an election at scale by acquisition & submission of ballots that don't correspond to an eligible voter?

First, you don't have to influence an election "at scale" for the US presidency. A close election can easily come down to just a few key precincts in a few key states, as it did in 2020.

Second, the US already has a long history of various forms of skulduggery with voting. So anyone's Bayesian prior should be that, if there is any way of doing it, someone will try it, particularly in a close election where both sides have strong beliefs about how much is at stake. It should definitely not be that, well, as long as all the officials say it's okay, it must be okay.

> I don't think proposed but as yet missing extra layers of are the reason why people don't have confidence in the outcome

If there are obvious ways to make a system more secure, and every time they get proposed they are violently resisted, you have to wonder why. (And note that this is a problem on both sides: Democrats are violently allergic to things like voter IDs, but Republicans are just as violently allergic to things like early voting and expanding the hours that polling places are open.) I agree that the widespread lack of confidence in, for example, the 2020 results is not due to anyone having a detailed picture of how things could have been manipulated; it's a more general feeling that the system as a whole is not acting in the interests of all the people, but only of a few. And when measures to make the system act more in everyone's interest are violently resisted, that feeling grows stronger.

> the real problem, which is one of discourse and disinformation.

I don't think that's the real problem. I think the real problem is what I said above: the system in fact is not acting in the interests of all the people, but only of a few. The feelings that many people have along those lines are justified. Yes, fixing the voting system won't entirely fix that problem; but it would be a nice step in the right direction.
Anthropic principle
Sounds like the company where I work. Extreme lack of leadership.
[video] Invisible Statue Stolen and Destroyed by Mime
You're not wrong, there have been some cases where Astra and JJ caused some blood clotting. From what I read somewhere (can't find the link), the thought is that spreading out the two shots might be helpful. I thought it was Canada that was considering doing this but might be wrong. They were thinking of giving the first shot and then waiting 2 months too give the second shot to younger people. I wish I could find the article.

I got the 2nd shot of Pfizer recently (14 days apart) and considering the first shot did nothing, the second shot wiped me out for 24 hours. I wasn't sick just real tired and had a terrible headache. Just sat around all day and had to take it easy. I was thinking if the spike protein was enough to do this to me, I can imagine having to deal with the viral load on top of it and I'm healthy and consider myself fit. So if you catch Covid you're going to deal with both the spike protein and the virus all at once. Better deal with one at a time and get the vaccine so if you do catch the virus at least your body has fought half the battle and can deal with it instead of not knowing what to do while the Viral load goes crazy. I was one of those folks who felt like I could handle it, my wife convinced me to get the shot and I'm glad I did.
I believe you, on the other hand, you’re one data point, and apartment buildings have stricter rules about acceptable activities and behavior (as I propose above).

Even in the biggest cities, apartment buildings often have board that approve sales and/or new residents.
So is 64% drop in the middle of February is not the result of vaccine but then the ending result of an 80% drop by the end of February is? That makes no sense sorry.

It's clear you want to rewrite the timeline to show that the vaccine caused the massive drop down to where it is now. So I don't see a point today in this further with you.
Gordon, we cannot predict how long the system can operate at this level, nor how long the reading will take. Please work as quickly as you can. Uh...it's probably not a problem...probably...but I'm showing a small discrepancy in...well, no, it's well within acceptable bounds again. Sustaining sequence.
> These days it seems like investors don't really care about the ownership conferred by stock. I mean, they do for a small startup or LLC, but for blue chip stocks with no dividend, the "ownership" part is kind of vestigial; they're just vehicles for speculation.

This is exactly the kind of thing you read before a bubble pops.
I think one of the main issues with deepfakes is that it allows public figures to DISMISS evidence against them as "fake news" since the general public doesn't generally have the knowledge to determine whether it's true or not.
This is a useful way to frame it. I would add here that stage 2 is the likely the most comfortable and that the migration from stage 2 to 3 has an embedded disincentive structure.
"six people in a war room for week"

This sounds like hell, stop doing this to your employees.
It's pretty easy to game "working hours" when you're remote. Even an always on camera probably isn't enough and I wouldn't want my team to work under those conditions.

I'm also curious what productivity measures are being watched, especially for developers.
That's more or less what I did though. I have a 2010 VW bus and a 1997 personal car. I fully expect these to last me the rest of my life.
>most great scientists have been religious

So what?

Argumentum ad populum again.

Seriously, your country needs a hard basis on logic, math and scientific method. If not, your are doomed. Hard.
“Why adding a second engine can make an accident more likely—and what that means for side hustles, pivots, and new ventures”

Some good ideas here… example:

“ Aircraft design is an engineering problem that balances different risks against benefits in ways that quickly become very complex but are based on basic principles. These principles can be applied almost anywhere, including our personal lives and business ventures.

In the initial phases of any development, technological or otherwise, added capability comes only at the expense of added risk—and it’s extremely difficult to reduce that risk.”
It is hard to think of this as a ‘tech’ problem when it is rooted in the objectification of women and sexuality in general. There may be a back and forth of tech fixes and tech exploits but it will remain a societal issue.
On the URL shortener, or on the password reset token endpoint? Because only one of those will save you.
> You're assuming everyone has the same knowledge base as you and then inferring their decision making process from that. More likely is that people have formed broad opinions about a new event based on scattered information. That's the sort of information that would be helpful to provide, not Wikipedia pages to generalized propaganda techniques.

Hey, thanks for that. This helped me rethink and understand the entire conversation.

I'm not sure how much more effective new information or facts would be either, in hindsight, but it did remind me of an old publication (not research, I should add) discussing the use of personal narratives and stories to fight vaccine misinformation: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.4161/hv.24828

Possibly effective against other forms of misinformation too. Sadly, I'm too buried in the facts and not enough of a storyteller to be effective here.
Copyright 1991. This was probably making the rounds of homeschooling circles I hung out in.

We tend to do a sucky job of teaching math to kids. A lot of elementary school teachers are women who were encouraged to go into early education because they weren't doing so well in math and this is very much gender bias.

My ex husband wasn't good at math. No one told him he should spend his days teaching little kids because of it. He was a career soldier and he just got tutored in college (by me) for his math classes. He was just expected to work at it if it didn't come naturally and he did.

So we just culturally pass around this idea that math is scary and little kids can't learn it rather than going "Well, adults just need to up their game and, by god, explain it better."

My oldest was math phobic by the time I pulled him out of school to homeschool. My one and only goal for math was to get him over his phobia.

He loves physics. I hate calculus. Calculus makes sense to him and he has read calculus books for fun.

I was good at explaining the math to him and he learned lots of solid math concepts even though he likely has dyscalculia and isn't good at crunching the numbers. But I got the concepts through to him and that's more important.

He's what gets called "calculator dependent" in some circles.
Is that an indictment on the educational system and broader society or a comment that this material is only appropriate for gifted children?
Somewhat related: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation#Decline

> Although variolation eventually declined or was banned in some countries, it was still practiced in others. "Buying the smallpox" was still practiced in Sudan until the late nineteenth century. However, variolation survived longer elsewhere. During the World Health Organization's Smallpox Eradication Campaign, vaccination teams came across variolators in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan and their samples were confiscated. In the early stages of the campaign, live virus was detected in some, but as the campaign progressed variolators could not replenish their stocks, and although virus particles were detected in some samples, very few contained live virus. Our knowledge about the survival of smallpox virus suggests that passage of time makes it extremely unlikely that any infectious samples have survived.
Adding my anecdata: I’m a male in my mid-20’s, am decently fit with a slower-than-average heart rate, and have a benign congenital heart condition. First shot was fine apart from a sore arm, second shot forced me to take a day off. Smooth sailing since then, but occasionally do notice palpitations, which I chalk up to stress, but I’d be lying if I said this didn’t make me a bit weary.
On desktop, I see 3 of them with the ad blocker turned on (1st party ads about books), plus self-promotion. The blocker blocked several advertising networks.
Classic. $0.05 bit of junk causing a very large multiple of damage.

Nice case to prove that plastic waste is hazardous though!
I think I agree with the main thrust of the article but I view it from a different angle.

>they are always talking about a thing, that is the most critical thing in every case.

Yes, the quality person will always advocate for more tests. The safety person will always prioritize safety. The person managing the schedule will always prioritize deadlines. The cost manager will always prioritize the budget. It’s intent to human biases.

However, unlike the author I think “reaching alignment” is actually pretty important. But I don’t think alignment is about “the thing” central to the domain experts focus, but rather about reaching alignment about acceptable risk.

“What’s really at risk if we don’t meet the standard for test coverage?”

“What’s really at a safety risk if we don’t implement that testing strategy?”

“What’s the risk to the schedule if we miss this deadline because we implemented that extra safety?”

“What’s the risk to the budget if we miss schedule?”

In each of these, if you can reach alignment on acceptable risks it does a lot for the effort. It doesn’t mean any one “thing” has to be a priority in every instance but rather put in the context of overall risk profile. Conversely, if you avoid reaching alignment I’ve worked on teams that will actively subvert the effort because they don’t believe you agree with their “thing” as a priority in any case.

Standards aren’t written in stone but are there to partly guard you against biases. Are you not meeting them because the risk changed to be more acceptable? Or are you just v rationalizing some unconscious bias? Explicitly defining risk helps here.

I will say for that to work you need to have people who are willing to openly accept risk. I’ve also worked on teams where that wasn’t the case and alignment could never be reached because nobody wanted to be on the record accepting risk because if they didn’t make a decision they still had some plausible deniability.
I'm not talking about "sign up to get this for free", I'm talking about the very common case of a transaction to purchase or otherwise obtain something (potentially even a paid transaction) where there's a buried fine-print "spam me" checkbox.
I am 31 and have high BP and had both shots, first shot was.just arm and side pain. second shot was.just fatigue, but I didn't notice any heart issues. maybe my bp meds help, since they bind to ACE receptors but not sure.
Good decoding

> That was our number one secret to scaling when I was at warble

warble = google ?
That’s interesting, I’d never heard that before. Where could I read more about that?
> Longer roads, longer sidewalks, longer water and sewer pipes.

Digging a trench for that new pipe out in boonies over a dirt field can be done in an afternoon by one guy with a backhoe. Putting in the same length of pipe underground in Manhattan will probably take a decade and astronomical amount of money.
To be a good X you must follow the rules. To be a great X you
must have followed the rules so well as to learn why they’re there and when they should be broken.

Works for almost any X - writer, programmer, driving, etc.
Husband of Amazon employee sentenced to prison for insider trading Amazon stock
Visual Studio Code: Workspace Trust
The introductory section talks about a 7 year old working on the quadratic formula. What?? At 7!

“Calculus for 7 Year Olds (Who Are Geniuses)” should be the title.
I had a similar thing happen with a 30 day stay in Europe last year. Same cancellation policy. Host refused to refund us and Airbnb kept saying it was in the hands of the host. Basically each party refusing to do anything.

I contacted my credit card company and disputed the charge on the grounds that the host wasn't providing the product that was advertised. They agreed and refunded me.
I really wish there were something like an "executive" refresher classes on basic maths with a focus on practical applications and modeling.

I took Calculus II/III, Linear/Diff EQ and some others in college, but I haven't written a new mathematical model in almost two decades and am rusty.
Yeah, I think the only ones that will actually make use of that are cheat developers and maybe game modders to obtain a deeper insight in the game.
No, when multiple people own an asset the controlling shareholder generally has to act in the interests of all shareholders. The way this might work is that the minority shareholders would be paid out on a property sale.
The COVID mRNA vaccines have been in testing for more than a calendar year (first studies began, shots-in-arms, in March 2020), and this is not the first mRNA vaccine (the first is for Zika, which is still in development because its study is still waiting to accumulate the data to show its effectiveness).

At some point I can only treat people who still give these lame -- and untrue -- justifications for why they like vaccines, "just not this one", as anti-vax.
You are exactly right. And then they will eventually depreciate old cars because if google can’t maintain android development for old phones why do you think Tesla will be able to do it for old cars?