angdis

Yep, coffee has very little to do with actual "coffee" as a product.

Coffee is a ritual, and often, a social activity. You go somewhere sooth your mind on some coffee sipping, people watching, chatting with others, or just daydreaming, and then get on with your day.

OK, but even now Windows folks have largely given up on pressing <windows>/<All Programs> and looking for what they want.

There's simply too much stuff on a typical computer these days for a user to pick out what they want from a dropdown, yes, even if nested.

It is the same problem that Yahoo once had back in the day when it tried to "Categorize" the internet. At some point such attempts at categorization break down and you gotta look at more sophisticated strategies for search.

I think the underlying problem here is the expectation that you, the user, should be able to find stuff by looking "in" particular places. This is perfectly reasonable if you're dealing with a fairly limited set of files or executables, but that era has been slipping away for the last 5 years or more.

It is no surprise that the question comes from 2011. I believe that was near when Unity came out and Ubuntu did away with mouse menus to find "Programs" in favor of just searching for what you have. A lot of folks did not like it at first but I think its no longer an issue.

The comment you're responding to is about the political impetus for ever-increasing road construction to combat congestion.

Your "reverse" commute to exburbs/rural areas is likely not impacted much by congestion. You actually have a good reason to use a car.

That unending column of cars you see always headed in the opposite direction on your commutes is the actual subject at hand here.

Thanks guys, that helps me to understand. This stuff is usually explained either as utterly vague blanket advice or in technical shorthand terms. I think it is really important for people who might barely even know what https is to understand how and why the security of it is limited.

OK, but what about email read/composed on my personal gmail account using a work computer? When you say "personal email" do you mean @company.com email-- or do you mean _any_ personal email as long as it is read/composed on a company machine?

Is it safe to assume that the only way that that (or any https content) can be captured is by keylogging or some kind of desktop capture?

OK, that is what is "legally possible" in a worst-case scenario.

But IN PRACTICE, what is normal?

Your statement seems to indicate that IT staff can just browse personal communications, desktop displays, keypresses. I am sure that they can if necessary, but what kinds of scale and automation are we talking about? Doing such surveillance ad-hoc or without a very small number of targets seems like it would easily become intractable for any org with thousands of people.

I am not in an IT department, so I have no idea what goes on.

It seems the standard advice is always to take the most extreme precautions and to follow the corporate rules to the letter... but here I am typing this into a work computer on a chrome browser without a care in the world.

I hear this as "blanket advice" all the time, but very rarely is there a discussion about what is reasonable to expect from a "normal" employer who isn't draconian or looking to find an excuse to fire someone.

Its easy to conclude that but suppose you're a white high-income professional who is looking for a home in Baltimore city. You have your pick of any neighborhood. Would you choose....

A) A rowhome in a squalid neighborhood beset with heroin dealing, unsupervised youth, poor upkeep, and median household income of 10K, a main street of furniture rental shops, cellphone stores and liquor stores that sell mostly "40's".

or

B) A gorgeous house in a neighborhood of other professionals with meticulously maintained and upgraded houses, a mainstreet with a wine bar and coffee house that makes cappuccino's with the fancy swirly foam.

Whether you're black or white, you WILL choose B if you can at all afford it. The sad truth is there aren't enough African americans who can choose B enough to change the optics of this situation.

The pattern persists partly because large cities in the united states consist of the poor or the wealthy with very little inbetween. Middle income folks go to the exburbs because they can't afford the nice parts of the cities and can't afford private school for their kids (sending your kids to public schools in the cities is completely out of the question for any family that values education).

Having lived in Baltimore for 10 years, I can say that there are multiple causes for continuing segregation. There is no satisfying way to explain it and no end in sight.

You are right that this about far more than realtors steering people one place or another.

Yes. Although MAD doesn't necessarily require the end of the world (eg nuclear winter), or even the end of a regime. It just depends on consequences which are "unbearable" for either nation.

I've always felt that the best strategy against NK is to simply wait for the regime to collapse on its own (along with sanctions that isolate them, FWIW). This is fine as long as they don't try to invade South Korea, leading to swift US-backed retaliation. But perhaps now as they continue to develop and "show off" their nukes, they'll feel emboldened to "try something" before their time runs out?

The MAD doctrine seems to have worked with binary superpowers up through the 80's.

But, I think its an open (and rather scary) question as to whether MAD will continue to work with multiple parties some of whom are batshit crazy and have demonstrated utter disregard for the safety and well-being of their populace.

Is their leadership insane enough to sit in a well-stocked bunker while setting off an H-Bomb in South Korea or elsewhere.... umm yeah, I think so.

I think discussions about sobriety tend to ignore the vast middle-ground between "stone-cold-sober" and "shit-faced".

It is totally possible to enjoy one or two alcoholic drinks on a weekly night out without ruining finances, making a fool of one's self, and blowing-out the next day from a hangover. You don't have to choose one extreme or another.

Agree, although properly positioned monitor speakers which have been equalized by the listener for a particular spot in the room can sound really, REALLY nice (if you don't leave your listening chair !).

I agree that in terms of sound, digital is superior. But as the article describes there is very much a collectable "object appeal" to old media. Now that even CD's and their annoying jewel cases are becoming obsolete, there remains an attractiveness to vinyl for some folks that is unrelated to any technical characteristics (real or imagined).

There certainly are more opportunities to learn than ever before, but learning requires effort.

If you want to learn something that _really_ matters you have to give it full attention. That means total focus, not "continuous partial attention", not facebooking on another tab. Whether you use an ipad, a book, or sit across from a table from a professor, learning really does require undivided attention-- when has this ever changed?

> common to hear "how come they don't sit down learn to code and become full stack developers, that would be so easy."

Yep, that reminds me one of Phil Greenspun's smug blog posts from a while back: https://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2011/01/26/rethinking-99-wee...

Absolutely, and don't forget tidyr! Its hard to overstate Mr Wickham's contribution to making R a very handy and useful tool. I am sure that a lot of folks would have tried R and then moved on to something else were it not for the "Hadley-verse".

There is a weirdness to R. I found that taking a lot of time to focus on the basics helps.

If you're committed to using R, read John Chamber's book and also look for answers on the old "R mailing list" (a place so mean, it makes stackoverflow look like mister roger's neighborhood).

At the end of the day, the whole point of ggplot is to produce a graphical representation of some aspect of the data. How much information can you possibly cram into ONE graphic and have it be readable by a human? Your problem is really a data reduction problem and not a plotting/graphics problem.

Whether it is 10 seconds or 10 minutes (clearly hyperbole), the point is that these notifications are difficult to interpret because of poor design.

As the attempted re-design and the commentary shows, this is not an easy problem. It takes some serious effort and consideration of many use-cases.

Instead of someone trying to "Steve-Jobs" a redesign, perhaps the best thing to do would be to devise a process for coming up with a new design. To do something like this "right" requires actual study with users-- not just a designer applying his/her talents.

FWIW, I think the OP's redesign is more clear, but that's just my limited viewpoint, it doesn't mean that it would be successful over all possible use-cases.

I think what you're responding to is NOT about willingness to experiment with unproven drugs, but rather a feeling of horror about dementia and Alzheimer's disease. These are awful afflictions that impact not just the victims but also their families.

That said, regardless of whether or not they're proven/approved/tested, drugs are never magic bullets. The ones used to treat the most serious chronic diseases always come with serious risks and profound side-effects. I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Obviously, that only works if you don't _ALSO_ create a public relations disaster by doing so.

Well, actually, this whole discussion IS about Shkreli and your comments are within the context of the discussion so don't disclaim that.

Shkreli has foolishly attracted attention to himself by comically absurd price-gouging. Whether it is illegal or not, it was dick move and in the end probably not even likely to net much profit. It also has understandably destroyed the good-will of anyone other than Ayn-randian maniacs.

Now he's been arrested for what sounds like illegal and extremely irresponsible financial shenanigans that happened before all this stuff. Greedy, amoral business people that break the law are usually able to maneuver themselves around getting jail-time. Shkreli's going to have a much harder time with that (because as you noted the media has decided he's a villain) and its his own dumb fault.

Personality defects have consequences.

I can't explain why, but there has always been something dreamy and magical about the Soviet space program and its spacecrafts.

I've appreciated the apollo-soyuz exhibit at the Air and Space Museum in DC since I was a kid (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Apollo-s...).

The Venera missions to Venus were also remarkable. This dude's blog about it is a fascinating read: http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

I have some similarities with you. 8 full-time jobs in 15 years all after a 9 year stint in graduate school where I quit a PHD program. I also crave trying new things even when they're risky, much to the horror of the people I work with (I'm in manufacturing, so I deal with operations and supply-chain people everyday).

You cannot "cure" what you find motivating. Just learn to live with it and perhaps force yourself to take longer "tours of duty" in jobs. Consecutive jobs held less than 1 year is universally considered a red flag by employers, as is getting fired. Engagements lasting 2 years in fast-paced industries are generally OK. If you're good at what you do you can probably control your urge to quit for a bit longer and do enough to not get fired. 2 years is not a long time and if you're able to do other things besides work, it can be a great advantage to have a job while exploring new things.

Another thing to consider is your life outside of work and your relationships with family or a significant other. If you're defining yourself strictly through work and ignoring the role you play in the lives of others, you're going experience some profound disappointments. In other words, perhaps your career decisions aren't really the root cause of your turmoil-- perhaps it is something far more personal? In that case nothing you do related to work will resolve your issues. YMMV-- just a thought to consider.

I think the actual threat from AI is far more pedestrian than "Skynet" or killer robots. The real threat comes NOT from AI itself but from people who will be able to afford to exploit AI for profit at the expense of increasingly large numbers of people who just become redundant. The rich will get fabulously rich while everyone else just becomes marginalized into serfs.

Another scenario that is less likely but still more likely than killer robots would be AI that simply loses interest in human affairs, stops interacting with us, and does its own thing-- like depicted in the movie "Her" !

I think that more STEM folks _would_ be interested in teaching, especially those who are late in their careers. The problem is that the prospect of teaching high school is horrifying to someone that isn't prepared to deal with the discipline and safety issues that beset high schools today.

I'm always tickled when people say that something is "unacceptable" as if they're in a position to do anything about it and will somehow follow up with a response.

People are late to meetings because meetings, usually, are unimportant. They miss deadlines because, usually, deadlines are arbitrary and set by pushy project managers without regard to reality.

If the author wants people to show respect by being on time, he should make his meetings valuable and his deadlines based in reality with actual consequences for non-compliance. Ranting about it on Forbes.com will just make people forward the article to ridicule it.

That is exactly what was done in Philadelphia on Pine and Spruce streets. These are East-West bike lane "arterials" that allow parking on Sundays.