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Afton

1,940 karma · joined August 23, 2007

programmer, parent, procrastinator.

afton-hn@howtoprocrastinate.com

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Afton··on The EdTech Revolution Has Failed
To be fair, it is less about "keeping top kids down" and more about "let's use our very scarce resources helping the bottom kids". Put that way it seems less malicious, and more like probably the right thing to do over all, while still being extremely frustrating if you are, or are the parent of, a 'top kid'. I know that in Seattle, I've been very frustrated with all the talk and promise of our school to provide enrichment to kids like mine who are able to learn quickly and are ready for more advanced learning opportunities, only to discover that it is haphazard, often in name only, and there isn't time or interest in providing more.

But it's not because of some drive for 'equity'. I've talked with teachers (as friends, not in a school setting). They're doing what they can with the resources they have.

Afton··on The window for great-grandmothers is closing
The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example).

Also no point. But honestly, if you want people to have kids earlier, you need to make them think that their life won't be bleak if they do.

Afton··on Vernor Vinge has died
Whipping Star has some amazing alien vs human discourse (at least, that's my memory from ~20 years ago!). It was the first time I found alien dialog that didn't sound like repackaged English.
Afton··on Library of Juggling
The really fun thing is to realize that juggling is a meta-hobby. I started out with juggling balls, a short time on rings, spent a long time on clubs, and now spend my time trying to apply some of that to juggling hoops. Plus there's kendama, yo-yo, diablo, poi, and contact juggling, all of which are also available for juggling (I've never seen someone juggle yo-yos, but kendama, diablo, and poi, it's all attested).

As someone who has always picked up and put down hobbies, juggling has stuck with me because it's easy for me to just shift slightly and now have a very different experience even though it's all "just juggling".

My history was teaching myself 3-ball cascade, reverse cascade and then figuring I was 'done' with juggling. When I went to teach my kids in, in an attempt to get them to understand "improvement by inches", I discovered that youtube now has slow-motion breakdowns of every trick you might ever want to do. I picked it back up more than 5 years ago now and still go to regular local meetups. (sadly, my kids didn't ever really get into it)

Afton··on Writing Is My Main Freedom. One Day My Work Disappeared (2021)
There are several philosophical approaches to the purpose of prison. 1. Revenge 2. to keep society safe from dangerous/anti-social people 3. to provide a safe space for rehabilitating people for re-integration.

I tend to view (1) as the worst possible option, even discounting the fact that we are completely 100% aware of the existence of false convictions. You are entitled to believe that revenge is a valid society choice, but I will definitely judge you for believing that.

Afton··on Moving from Blame to Accountability (2017)
I know American management isn't a monolith, but over the course of my career, I have gotten extremely good play by educating people about blameless RCAs both for myself and my chain below, and across chains. Once I make it clear that the goal is to understand how this happened, and how to make it not happen again (or at least how to think about the risk-vs-cost calculation), most people would get onboard.

I've on occasion also educated up the chain on why attacking someone is an anti-pattern. If you can get the higher-ups onboard, then attacks tend to be viewed as a problem in and of themselves. Or, and this is certainly possible, I'm incredibly naive and have just been very lucky.

Afton··on It's time to stop texting
I know this is off topic, but having spent a significant amount of time convincing people around me to use signal, once they remove this feature, literally 100% of the non-tech folks I've gotten onto signal will drop it and move back to SMS. It makes me so sad.
Afton··on Why are deep learning technologists so overconfident?
I'm certainly unconvinced that the first part of that statement is true. We've seen self-driving cars run into static obstacles. We still need to deal with emergent behaviour of groups of self-driving cars. There are still unpredictable environmental factors that we rely on humans to work out now.
Afton··on Launch HN: Be Golden (YC S22) – Measure and manage your inflammation levels
Stupid question(s) for a non-medical person who doesn't even know enough to be wrong.

I really thought "inflammation" is/was a generic term for a myriad of different causes and symptoms. Did something change and now we "know" that inflammation == c reactive protein? Or is this just one particular well-known marker of a common cluster of inflammation symptoms? Or am I just completely confused about the whole thing?

happy to take answers from OP or others.

Afton··on Associations of body mass index, fasting insulin and inflammation with mortality
I can't read the study directly (and it's not my field, which makes reading it directly challenging), but this is the abstract conclusion:

` Higher fasting insulin and higher c-reactive protein confound the association between BMI and the risk of all-cause mortality. The increase in mortality that has been attributed to higher BMI is more likely due to hyperinsulinemia and inflammation rather than obesity.`

Afton··on No More “Insight Porn”
Bashing on lottery tickets due to EV also really feels like it's really missing the point. Lottery tickets are a mechanism for enjoying a fantasy. Sure you could technically just pretend that you won $10^9, but there is a hard cliff from >0% to 0%. I buy lottery tickets (very very occasionally, but who cares!) because it helps me enjoy a fantasy about being radically independently wealthy.

There's no reason to hate on people for doing something that they enjoy, regardless of what the expected value is. For god's sake, I juggle! As a hobby! Can you imagine the expected return on THAT?

Afton··on American tech giants are making life tough for startups (2018)
In general, you won't have enough information to accurately model this yourself, IMO. You might increase your edge, but you're still basically getting lottery tickets.
Afton··on Leslie Lamport revolutionized computer science with math [video]
None, unless you think that people are somehow able to side-step this problem in a way that a computer can't mimic.
Afton··on Etsy Strike
I am assuming that. In most countries it's required that you can return non-consumable items in a sensible time-frame. Restocking fees vary in legality, but typically need to be disclosed before purchase.
Afton··on Etsy Strike
I mean, you could have bought them. Tried them out while in the store, then returned them if they weren't to your liking. But I'll admit that might be more overhead than you were hoping for. But it would also be a great way to communicate to the store that their policies are bad. "I'd like to return these. Nothing really wrong, just don't like them. Oh, and I'd like to try...I mean buy these headphones. ... Actually, I'd like to return these please [etc, etc]
Afton··on Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
Having grown up poor, I was going to challenge the statement that 'most Canadians own property', but it looks like it's ~70%.

I mean, I think hanging 30% of your population out to dry is a bad idea, but I can't argue that this isn't a tyranny of the majority situation (or maybe tyranny of those in power, of which I expect closer to 100% are property owners).

Afton··on White noise improves learning by modulating activity in midbrain regions (2014)
I found that earplugs + headphones with brown/grey noise absolutely made the universe go away. I don't use it now because my work has changed and I work in a single-person office, but I found this super effective at reducing distractions.
Afton··on Ask HN: How can we fix Wikipedia?
Can you provide some substantial ideas about what you would like to see different and what makes the current model "garbage"? Otherwise it's not clear what you're advocating for.
Afton··on Google Search Is Dying
It's easy to spot the badly astroturfed accounts. How would establish your baseline truth?

I'm not claiming it's impossible, but it's very easy to fool yourself in this territory. A good mark is the one who thinks they know the game.

Afton··on Impacts of lack of sleep
Yeah, this is like "people who are overweight: lose weight". Well gee I never thought of that before, I guess I'll go right out and do it. I certainly won't continue lying awake between 3-5am 2-4 times a week now that I know it's important. /s
Afton··on That’s how it works when you’re a woman on the internet
You could posit that this woman is in no danger whatsoever and it would still meet my budget for outrage. I guess we have different budgets.
Afton··on We have jetpacks and we do not care
> __on the ground__ in a 1g
Afton··on Improving end-to-end test reliability
It's about tradeoffs. On one end you have precision, speed, reliability, diagnosability. At the other end you have "realness".

Unit tests fall on the far left, workload tests/E2E tests/testing-in-production fall on the far right.

It turns out that there's no 'wrong' level, there's just different tradeoffs. I've worked at a lot of companies that embraced the realness of E2E tests, but then suffered from the maintenance/performance/diagnosability/instability of those tests. I have colleagues who worked at places that avoided E2E at all costs, and suffered because they would have a green test run, but user scenarios that a simple E2E test would have caught, were completely broken.

IMO there is a lot that can be done to improve E2E testing at most companies, but they definitely have the capacity to add value to your release/testing pipeline.

Afton··on Pfizer's oral Covid-19 antiviral cuts hospitalization, death by 85%
In order to make the drug more affordable? I mean... all of them? Maybe I'm not understanding your point?
Afton··on Apple threatened Facebook ban over slavery posts on Instagram
Ah revenge, the noblest of reasons for doing shitty things to people
Afton··on Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout
TBF, there's not really a notification mechanism for comment replies in HN, so if you're like me, and you just occasionally check in on your comments, it's easy to miss responses until ridiculously too late. I know I have done this in the past.
Afton··on Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout
That's a ridiculously broad brush to paint unions with, and your last sentence shows lack of good faith in the discussion. Good day.
Afton··on Vacation isn’t the answer to employee burnout
Why would you be miserable? Union dues? occasional union communication? I'm just trying to understand what hypothetical issue you feel would be super arduous.
Afton··on “Every time there is discussion on Real AI enhance images I remember this image”
https://twitter.com/timnitgebru/status/1274809417653866496?l...
Afton··on Beyond coupling and cohesion: strategies for un-fucking yourself
Or tests. I prefer my tests DAMPer.
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