Clanan

Before modifying an existing line of code, understand what it's purpose is/was. Even if it doesn't appear to have one, or make any sense, someone created it for a reason.

Also IDE/search tools for determining where a function is used are great for removing stale, unused cruft.

Off-topic but can you recommend any resources off-hand for improving in your preferred C++? I share your approach but have a heck of a time finding quality books and such. (Email in profile if preferred.)

I'm sorry you're going through this, but I think it's prudent to consider the converse of the situation you're desiring. What if CrowsourcedCriminalMugs.com did exist, and your face was erroneously added to it? Isn't this whole idea just a form of high-tech mob justice?

U.S. emissions have declined three years in a row. (Sounds like the capitalist approach might be working?) But by all means, instead of going after countries whose emissions are actually increasing, let's instead implement one of the most murderous political philosophies of all time. If these politicians were serious about addressing the issue, they wouldn't tie it to such a controversial measure.

> The single most crucial aspect of the Green New Deal is its proposed job guarantee, a controversial policy that says that every American can have a job with the government if they want one. Data for Progress, a leftist advocacy group, claims that the Green New Deal could generate 10 million new jobs across the country over 10 years.

Let's deal with Climate Change by implementing socialism. Yes, I'm sure that will work. Reminds me of the regexp joke. Have a problem? Use a regexp! Now two problems.

I think a huge component of this is the ever-present stigma of mental health and counseling. People who are incredibly stressed and suffering mentally and physically should be able to visit a therapist as easily as they can a doctor. When they don't, or feel like they can't, they lose the chance to learn helpful coping mechanisms and life strategies which can have a drastic impact.

So the government should routinely measure hormone levels of almost everyone, and levy fines against employers which will inevitably be passed on to employees or consumers. No thanks.

NASA GISS surface temp data [0]. Feb 2016 to Feb 2018. It's a noteworthy occurrence (and not something the news cycle would pick up) since the focus is always on warming. It certainly doesn't refute the short-term trends present.

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Per my comment above, we actually just experienced the largest 2-year drop in temp in the last 100 years. The danger with a hugely complex system like "global warming" (i.e. world climate) is that it can be attributed to be the cause of anything.

Since everyone is arguing their beliefs without evidence, and throwing out random storms and climate events as counter-evidence, here are some actual facts:

1. Recent studies on current climate models show they consistently over-predict carbon impact on global warming (source: Nature, Nov 2017: Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C). The article shows that the previous carbon budget was off by a factor of 4 for the next few years, and always predicted higher temps. In other words, the models over-fit the data and thus lose predictive capabilities.

2. Increase/decrease in drought occurrence is inconclusive (Trenberth et al in Nature, 2013): "Two recent papers looked at the question of whether large-scale drought has been increasing under climate change. A study in Nature by Sheffield et al entitled ‘Little change in global drought over the past 60 years’ was published at almost the same time that ‘Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models’ by Dai appeared in Nature Climate Change (published online in August 2012)."

3. On storms, SREX p. 159: The present assessment regarding observed trends in tropical cyclone activity is essentially identical to the WMO assessment (Knutson et al., 2010): there is low confidence that any observed long-term (i.e., 40 years or more) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.

4. The greatest two-year cooling event of the last 100 years just occurred in Feb, per GISTEMP Team, 2018: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis data. Global avg temp dropped 0.56 deg C.

This is not a difficult experiment. If you keep a weapon, you should familiarize yourself with the relevant local laws. RTFM, as they say. If someone makes a threat against you that is not immediate, you should contact the police. Yes, you would be put on trial for deliberately going outside and shooting someone not on your property. Duh.

I think the key is what happens when they're ready for interaction. When she's done brushing or using the bathroom, do you put the phone down right away, or finish reading/playing? Similarly, if you're focusing on something else instead of playing the (boring) game, your kid will know it. Kids are very good at recognizing when mom and dad aren't paying attention. They'll learn your "attention hierarchy". Do it enough and they'll learn that phone > my game/idea/talk. Definitely a balancing act.

We've found it useful to just be honest with them. "Dad needs 5 or 10 minutes of Dad time, then we'll play."

I recommend finding books based on actual parenting research, rather than collaborative or consensus-based sources. Consensus does not mean truth. There are countless parenting myths bandied about that are based on nothing more than idle blog posts or simple social inertia. Parenting advice is especially susceptible to "feel good" myths which sound like common sense, but aren't actually true. (I've found that most "consensus" advice is just rationalization validating the giver's choices, e.g. saving for college, bedtime routines, etc.)

In my experience, pediatricians often have good advice on relevant books and topics.

I think the simplest solution is the correct one: because politics. Consider how many ideologues flip-flop over similar situations when "their" side is the victim. For example, Trump and Cambridge Analytics vs. Obama's campaign and Facebook. At the end of the day, it's people making these decisions and movements, and most people are not well-trained in ethics.

I'm sure I'm ignorant of other reasonable options, but this one is quite appealing as a small co, even if only used by one person. Just yesterday I was thinking about better ways to store easy-to-find answers to those dang tech issues that pop up once every six months. "How do I install pip manually on OS X with xyz constraints?"

Playborhood, by Mike Lanza, describes a related endeavor to transform one's yard into an inviting area for neighborhood kids. My wife and I have been discussing this quite a lot lately. How do we bring back neighborhood play so kids can get outside, meet each other, and just be kids?

Are you saying present discrimination can explain the wealth gap? my initial response assumed you meant historical discrimination explains the current wealth gap. Thus, if other non-white groups can start at a similar level and attain a higher outcome, then I would posit that other variables must play a role. But maybe you're saying present discrimination (not levied at other groups) can explain it.

> others have used one variable to levy their discrimination and it's always been race

There have been countless forms of discrimination, not all of them associated with race. After all, it's imperfect people dealing with imperfect people.

Other factors I think are also relevant to present-day wealth gaps: family norms/stability (e.g. single-parent prevalence), cultural expectations, education, location. Undoubtedly these are entwined with each other and with the variable of race.

That's an uncharitable read of my comment. (Or more likely my comment was clear as mud.) As you said, the above theory was that the current wealth gap can be explained by generations of discrimination. But if another non-white group can enter at a similar "difficulty" level and attain higher results, maybe the explanation is more complicated. I think then the focus would need to be on current (possibly discriminatory) policies and factors, rather than historical ones. Education, family unit, cultural factors, etc.

You're focusing on a single variable. The above poster is recommending a multivariate approach. If a similar minority group can start from a worse position (not even knowing the language!) and advance to a better position in a single generation, then your single variable is lacking. The response of "go back 400 years" does not explain away the discrepancy. The common-sense approach is to consider other factors too.

I don't think this is good advice. An amateur investigation of a complex topic is probably worse than trusting an expert who may or may not be trustworthy. You don't know what you don't know. Sure, you grabbed (what you think is) raw data. But what if the trend or timescale was too small? What if you asked the wrong question? What if the data was artificially adjusted, or should have been but wasn't? (As NOAA has been caught doing.) You don't know these things, i.e. what is/isn't important. Now you're certain of your results, which may be completely wrong. To me, this is the SV/nerd version of an uninformed ideologue. ("Research fast and break things!") Maybe it's better to expend that effort identifying whether your go-to experts are really trustworthy, instead.

> If we don’t want to be getting more in debt we should raise taxes on middle class people

Or... cut spending.

> It's now mostly "YC stamp of approval" that increases your brand and access to good investors on demo day.

I have experience with small business, although not with YC. Those benefits are MASSIVE and should not be underestimated.

I think the bigger lesson here is that we need to stop assuming real estate is a guaranteed return on investment. How long have we collectively held this assumption? I have no evidence for this but I assume it was pushed by realtors over time, similar to how they redefined "the American dream" to mean owning a home.

Your situation doesn't require the explanation of a zero-sum game. The simpler explanation is that you purchased a bad investment which yielded a negative return.

This is him getting off easy. If the congresspeople really wanted to grill him, they would have put him under oath.

What's ironic is that Trump didn't use CA to win the election. CA was used a bit in the primaries but after that the campaign only solicited a bid as a hedge in case the RNC didn't share its data. CA wasn't used for the general election.

On the other hand, the Obama campaign used sneaky Terms and Conditions to suck up friend lists and create a national social graph for the sole purpose of winning the General Election.

Please include citations and an explanation of a bold claim like that. How did the campaign break the law here? Otherwise you're just stoking partisan fires.

A huge consequence of the prioritization of clicks is the loss of quality reporting. Those shuttered newspapers who went the way of the dinosaurs carried with them hundreds of years of journalistic experience. A lot of it didn't transfer to modern news sites. Now we're paying the price with young, inexperienced "journalists" pumping out junk articles with poor sourcing, missing or wrong facts, etc. I can't find it now but one of the better modern journalists (Glenn Greenwald or Bob Woodward maybe?) had a great piece on this. He lamented how mainstream media is failing to maintain their journalistic standards because they're too biased and they haven't been taught how to be good journalists.

I think Google should focus heavily on this, but their PR doesn't mention it much. Quality journalists first, then quality tools.

I think this is good advice, not only because it generalizes the problem, but also because it avoids the politicization of the topic re: Cambridge. This shouldn't be viewed as a left vs. right problem.

According to ABC News, the Trump campaign considered using CA as a hedge bet in-case the RNC wouldn't share its data. The campaign ultimately rejected their bid for the general election [0].

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...

As for the parent, people love to cry about whataboutism, but it is useful to see how people respond when something is done by their favored politician versus an opponent.

That was their pitch. The campaign considered using them as a hedge against the RNC not providing its data, but ultimately did not use CA for the general election.

Source: ABC News https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-phased-out-use-o...