samkater

I had a similar experience where I was also assured the data was “doubly protected, it’s secured by a password here and re-secured at the remote site.”

Besides that immediately making me question their security, it is a great example how people trust things without much thought. I’ve heard of calls for statistics to be pushed over calculus to improve math literacy in the general population, perhaps some cybersecurity courses should be pushed over “learn to code” to improve tech literacy.

Written and illustrated as a kids book, but even adults will be edified by the stories here [1]: 101 Orthodox Saints. All are stories of faith and are quite inspiring. (Just a heads up, a lot of the saints were martyred, so you should consider how to approach those conversations with your kids. The book is delicate, but doesn’t shy away from the reality of their deaths)

https://store.ancientfaith.com/101-orthodox-saints/

An eye-opening perspective came to me a few years ago when I first heard the quote,” When you’re 20, you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place“[0] That can be good and bad, but is a personally useful frame of reference for the world. It helps to not take things too personally, but also to be intentionally active in people’s lives when I _want_ to be considered.

[0], not sure who to attribute: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/mar/08/viral-imag...

My understanding, to put it in AWS EC2 pricing terms, is that we do not pay the market "spot" rate for electricity (variable, often less than what you might pay elsewhere, but could spike up) - which is what Texas allowed. Typically we pay the "on demand" rate which is fixed. Large energy users probably negotiate "reserved" pricing.

My point being, we pay the market rate, those massive hikes are just built-in over a long period of time.

I generally agree with the “get over yourself” comment but would like to offer a different perspective. The ending suggestion here and in many other comments is “work on yourself more” which I disagree with as the primary path to take. Instead, work on others more.

Try to make the world around you a better place. Maybe you want to tutor below grade-level kids, tutor high performing kids, help with the homeless challenge in your community, volunteer with the humane society, volunteer with hospice, do some environmental projects, help out with a niche historical society, volunteer at the zoo, etc. The point being, do something (in meat space) for your community that you connect with, and you will come into contact with like-minded people who may or may not be “cool”, but they at least want to help out the world around them too. There’s that old saying “it is better to give than to receive.” If you aren’t already, give that a try. :)

My grandfather was an avid volunteer, far more busy in retirement than most working people. My dad once lamented in a family gathering that he (my dad) didn’t want to retire for fear of becoming bored. My grandfather just said in his special way that is hard to convey, “there’s a lot of good organizations that could use some help.”

All the best to you and your search!

I’m not an expert, but my light reading of the paper makes it seem like it isn’t “random noise” in the colloquial sense, but more like “there are properties to the randomness even though the images look like noise.”

The abstract seems to say that, but again, I could be misinterpreting: “Our findings show that it is important for the noise to capture certain structural properties of real data but that good performance can be achieved even with processes that are far from realistic.”

Agreed on the nice effort comment. The ones showing the scene from a distance took me some extra time to figure out what was "off". For me it is the whitecaps on the water (if present). Some of the pictures appear to show waves going in the opposite direction of their surroundings. One of those things that when you see it, you can't really unsee it.

I don’t follow the research here but I was pretty sure it was a joke at first because after the initial quote (preceded by the statement “ Consider the statements below. What do they describe? A trip on psychedelics? A dream?”):

> I felt I could reach through the screen to get to another place. Lasers became entire fans of light sweeping around, and then it felt as if the screen began to expand. I saw old stone buildings … like a castle … I was flying above it.

I was presented with 3 options, a Dodge Ram, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and some other truck. I was trying really hard to figure out what the statement had to do with vehicles until I scrolled down (on mobile) more to realize it was a poorly placed advertisement. Not sure why the internet thinks I want to buy a truck, but I imagine there could have been even more hilarious things that could have fit the context better.

I’m not outright disagreeing, but it seems your last statement contradicts the rest of the payday example. “If instead we start to examine causality we can start to figure out the root of the issue and how to address.”

The causality piece is exactly the issue, right? People who use payday loans have less savings, more likely to work in jobs where their hours are unstable, have other poor financial indicators (past use of a payday loan, for example). Black people may disproportionately fall into this category, but I would argue it is wrong to effectively punish all black people (or conversely give other ethnicities an easier time) simply because of their race.

Biases exist, no argument there. The dilemma is what we do with them.

Related to your point, George C Scott apparently didn’t want to film the opening scene of “Patton” because he thought the movie wouldn’t live up to the scene. It really gets at the heart of what the whole movie is about and I can’t imagine it without that opening. Apparently they filmed it at the end of filming.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patton_(film) (The opening scene under “production” - sorry on a mobile device)

> The rise of remote work is 100% misunderstood. Good software engineers can work anymore but I haven't met many engineers that can mentor well remotely.

Absolutely this. I love working remotely and will probably not go back to an office until at least the kids are out of school. But both being new and training new people are skills that are just _different_ from being in the office.

Open offices were not a good fit for me, but one valuable thing from a past job was sitting close to both my manager and their manager. That was a way to learn "Oh, that's how you talk to <client A, department B, etc>" without having to be told "this is how you talk to these people." Training a remote new person requires so much more intentionality that most people are not accustomed to.

I'm with you there. I (not a game dev) imagine that balance is hard to find, particularly when choosing the right moment to release. I remember playing "Age of Conan" (the mmo) when it was released and in my opinion while the graphics were good, the game-play was hilariously out of balance (or buggy). My younger self found exploiting the lopsided game-play very enjoyable, but ultimately didn't stick around for too long. If the balance was reversed (more polished game mechanics, less polished art) my friends and I probably would have made it a staple.

But to each their own! It's nice to see the variety available from movie-like experiences to pixel art with all ranges of game mechanics.

In the simple savings-and-loan case, banks loan from their deposits. So technically it is the bank's available capital, but the capital belongs to someone else. If the bank has $1 million in deposits, it might decide it can safely loan out $100k, which in some sense increases the money supply.

Fascinating read - I must confess I only made it through half at the moment.

I used to play Crusader Kings 2 and there was an event about a “Hole from Hell” which was essentially a bottomless pit. I always assumed that was just a made up thing to add variety to the game. Apparently it’s no so far fetched?

I would add some nuance to this view. For nearly every undergraduate course I agree - the ability of knowing where to look for resources in a particular subject matter, synthesizing the available information to solve a reasonably novel problem, and presenting the information in a coherent way is a skill/art that should be one of the primary goals of the education.

For advanced degrees, though, I'm not so sure. I expect someone which a masters or Ph.D. to actually be an expert in the subject matter, not just someone who is really good at figuring out how to solve problems. A big part of that is being able to internalize the information so well they you in effect become a resource that could be used by an undergraduate student. This internalization goes beyond rote memorization, but memorization is a big part of it too.

Just a disclaimer, though - I do not have an advanced degree, so maybe I expect too much from those who do? A big reason why I have no interest in pursuing one is that many people with a masters degree I find have little expertise to show for it, they could have just as easily learned the same information by self-study or being fortunate enough to find interesting work. (the hiring landscape is a separate topic)

I'm coming in late to the discussion, so there is a good chance you won't see this which is okay, it's a reminder for me to apply this advice to my own life.

I read a few years back (long since forgotten where) in an advice thread to new people that you want to be careful that as you spend more time in your career you want ensure your experience levels up too. And there is a difference between 2 years of experience versus 1 year of experience 2 times.

There is already a lot of great advice in other replies. What many of them are getting at is being honest with ourselves what our actual level of experience is, and shaping the environment to best help level up the skills we need to improve. It sounds like you have already done one very difficult thing - moving to a position that forces you to improve and see clearly where to make changes.

I can’t find the source of this quote, but it applies here: “the hallmark of an amateur is the focus on tools”. Obviously tools matter, but professionals know how to balance getting the best environment set up, and actually producing what they need to make.

I heard that quote when I was an aspiring musician (trombone). Once when I was complaining to an instructor that my horn just couldn’t produce the sound I wanted, he took it, played the passage beautifully, and said “sometimes it’s the fiddler, not the fiddle.” A humbling, eye-opening experience that has applied to all of my professional experiences.

I have looked into SO for Teams in the past, but was not able to convince myself that it was worth the effort to push for its adoption (from the bottom up). I would be curious to hear more about what the journey to success looked like for organizations that were able to do it successfully.

It seemed to me that it required a lot of process/habit changing that needs to be fully supported from management levels. Likely including a "ban" on project-based channels on things like Slack/Teams/etc. I imagined you would need to try to move all of the relevant project-based Q/A and chat onto this product so the necessary information is available. Then you need people to actively moderate and vote to help the SO search functionality bubble up the relevant topics. Basically, this isn't just a new tool, but a new way of interacting with teammates - if you want to get the utility from it. What else am I missing?

I should mention, I really like the concept, but not sure how to get over the adoption hurdle.

From what I understand there is a lot of variation in providers. As I understand SDGE's Net Metering policy(https://www.sdge.com/residential/solar/getting-started-with-...), you sell back power at retail prices only for the current month's billing cycle. Excess energy created within a billing cycle is "true-upped" at wholesale prices which can be applied to other month's billing cycles.

I would also be curious in how the Texas case works. Especially if the grid is down, would it be able to accept the energy you are producing?

I previously would have dismissed this sort of comment with the thought "surely they are missing something." But recently we were looking for simple cabinets and found some we liked on Wayfair but just seemed expensive to me. On a whim I checked Target and found the exact same thing - same model number, even the same marketing pictures for about 33% less. The only difference, as you say, was the snobbery in the description.

We have a Water Rower. They have a Bluetooth module you can install to get data to other devices (phone, etc).

The programs Aviron offers look cool, but I would never trade out a working rower for a new one just for the workout programs. Families like mine are probably part your target market, but I suspect our current rower will last 10+ years. If you could connect to existing rowing machines and have the programs display on a laptop or tablet, we would definitely give it a serious look!

Does anybody have good overview/resources to learn more about how the internet "pipes" are configured at a national level? I can understand conceptually how a government could disable internet connectivity to _outside_ the country by having some control over the connections that cross borders. _Inside_ the country you would need to have control over the internal routing mechanisms as well, assuming the DNS lookups could all happen in-country? (this is not my field/I don't know the correct terminology).

How would people with satellite internet connectivity be impacted (I assume there is some government entity able to turn off a satellite, but that probably only applies to a few countries in the world?)?

EDIT: I should have thought about this for a few more minutes before posting the original question - the shutting down ISPs is glaringly obvious in hindsight... I am still interested in hearing people's thoughts on satellite internet, though. HN occasionally talks about initiatives to have LEO satellites provide internet access. If the people running the satellite were outside of your jurisdiction, it would seem like these instances would be mitigated for many places in the world?

Haha, I think the HN submissions will be more along the lines of "How I spoofed a GPS signal to get my neighbor's automated lawn mower to cut my grass"

The person I immediately think of after reading this is Bret Victor and how I felt after watching his “Stop Drawing Dead Fish” presentation [1]. The presentation was so well thought out, and the concepts follow one another so clearly that you can’t help but think that you are the one having the insights as they are being presented. Plus, the tool be built to create the presentation seems to just feel like magic!

[1] http://worrydream.com/#!/StopDrawingDeadFish

I wonder if there is a way to incentivize the behavior of "I work at a big company and have the ability to help out a stranger with a problem"? Perhaps people who help others with these issues (which are public by nature of being discussed on reddit/twitter/etc) can put it as an item on their resume when looking to switch jobs - something like "I care about the community and people who use the products I help build. I advocated for [this person (with link to public forum)] which ultimately resulted in [this solution (with link to release note if possible)]."

Of course there is a discussion to have about incentivizing the _wrong_ behavior (the need to create publicity around issues that shouldn't exist in the first place / only people with "clout" become the ones who get their issues resolved).

We used it for our assembly course in 2013. A new professor joined the department the year after I took the class and he taught something else, so from then it depended who was teaching the course that year. It was a small teaching university (we had 5 CS grads my year) that was part of the math department (it has since moved to the school of engineering).

I never touched any form of assembly after that course so I don’t think it made a big difference one way or the other. My memory is hazy, but I think there might have been a personal connection between my professor and Knuth - they are roughly from the same generation.

Great advice, thank you for sharing!

I'll comment too that it also applies to things that can't be measured with number of users/readers/dollars in bank/etc. I'm not a naturally outgoing person and making new friends can feel like _work_. But if a relationship is something that you've decided to value, then (to paraphrase the article) the only way to make it happen is to commit, prioritize, and respond to feedback. That applies to friends, spouse, kids, etc.

I just had to go find that for myself! Here's the link to 4:10:45 when they start talking about it - https://youtu.be/13OkD0C_TWU?t=15045

Yeah, I think there are two sides of it. One is as you say, people need to keep an open mind and accept good ideas on their merits.

I try to limit my online discourse because I know I'm prone to knee-jerk reactions. A _very_ long time ago I wondered to myself why this mbostock person knew so much about d3. A little while later it clicked, haha!