Test0129

I think you are trying to make a point where none needs to be made.

Lobbying has, for a very long time, been another term for bribery. Even as recently as the COVID crisis. Why do you think Pfizer got all that juicy government money? Go look at open secrets and see who they paid. If you want a real shocker, look at their top donors and then look at their voting record. Look at all the politicians that end up at Pfizer, Exxon, Northrop, Google, etc. Look at all the executives for those companies that, as if by some miracle, end up running MAJOR parts of our government.

You are correct in the literal sense lobbying was supposed to be about the everyman talking to their representative and convincing them to do right by them. However, now, the everyman has no voice. If you don't donate $X millions you won't even the time of day from most congressmen. It's corruption at it's core and an affront to democracy. It's disguised as "lobbying" because Citizens United allowed it to be. That's all.

I dont think this is the case at all. Especially on the math stack exchange I tend to go out of my way to link sources, books, pages, etc where I can find them. There have been times I've made an error not obvious but "simple" and have gotten beaten down to the point I dont even use it anymore. It's no different than stack overflow, where a power tripping mod will mark your question duped with something completely unrelated if the downvote brigade doesnt get to you first.

It didn't take long to find sources, lmgtfy

STEM and Autism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3620841/

Empathy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27246093/

Third one is probably extracted from the last two and colored by personal experience. I would tend to agree with the author though "appalling" is a little too strong. When I had a professor who was very obviously on the spectrum the class was often difficult due to either communication issues or assumptions about student skill level. It's not a universal truth, of course, but common enough in my Math and CS classes many of them were often frustrating to take. Stereotypes are often built in reality and while the author's language was strong I don't think the greater point they are making is necessarily wrong, nor unsupported by science as you seem to suggest.

> But for me, I am effectively paying some other person $40 to get dirty and bang his knuckles and whatnot while I sit in the AC and watch cable and dick around on my phone (which I enjoy much more) AND a lot of places will check and top up your other fluids and top off your tires and do an inspection to see if anything else will need work, which I don't know how to do and obviously they know what they are looking for.

While I understand the point you're trying to make for people wandering by:

I've done my own oil, brakes, etc for as long as I remember. As long as you're not working on a supercar an oil change should take you less than an hour. Ideally inside of 30 minutes. 99.9% of vehicles are simple: place oil bucket under car, open oil cap on engine, gently loosen the oil pan bolt, drain oil. While the oil is draining you can get a second bucket and undo the filter. Reverse the process being careful to not strip the oil pan bolt, fill it up with the manufacturer recommended amount, and you're done. At least in America most AutoZones, Pep Boys, O'Reilly's, etc will take your used oil off your hands for free. As for tire inspection, fill up, etc you should also be doing this yourself. It's another 10 minute job with a $5 tool. I'm of the opinion every home should own an air compressor. It is one of the most universally useful things a person can have.

Why is this important? Oil shops are rife with fraud. The quality of your oil can dramatically influence the life of your car. I've had quick lube places rip me off so many times, leave parts off, etc. For what? I saved 30 minutes but gained another expense. Most of the time unless the shop is very reputable "premium" oils aren't actually royal purple. It's just the same crap they put in everyone else's car. By not paying dealer/etc premiums I save hundreds of dollars and get far better quality oil and service doing it myself. This is a skill I picked up being extremely broke before I got into tech and I've dedicated a small portion of my life to being able to fix (most of) my own issues. To the point I only show up to a shop when I need work that requires an engine crane or transmission lift (I've done transmission work myself before but its worth it to make it someone else's problem).

Do your own oil. You do it once or twice a year, you understand your vehicle better, and you get better oil and filters for the money. Moreover, the average tech connects an ODB-2 alarm checker to your car and then writes you an invoice. Cars are not difficult. If spending 2-3 hours a year is too time-expensive for you I'm not sure what to tell you. I just hope you don't run into a situation far from home where a tow truck is 6 hours away and understanding your car could get you home safe and fast.

Ah yes, the "Russian Troll" conspiracy theory. Gonna get a lot of big mad downvotes for this one because people actually believe this nonsense.

The public has been able to be swayed by media for a very long time. The CIA in particular has been deeply involved in it [0]. For some reason this was deemed okay, or at the very least acceptable, by the public. The only difference between the CIA controlled media cited and social media is the lack of US government control.

I do appreciate the irony here. That every other election was so-called "free and fair" yet an absolute wildcard gets in for 2016 and the deepest level of coping by every agency in the union was witnessed. I am not a fan of Trump, but if elections are truly "free and fair" then 2016 was legitimate. If 2016 wasn't legitimate, then why would anyone have any reason to believe 2020 was legitimate? I'm not intending to start a conspiracy theory fight here - but rather raise the question that is trying to be asked. If "foreign actors" elected a president in 2016, then whose to say they didn't in 2020? Or 2008? Or 2004? Who can you believe? I'd argue you couldn't believe any agency who might have an interest in having you believe otherwise. Maybe our elections are actually selections and in 2016 the powers that be lost the information war.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

> People joke about the programmer in a dark corner plugging away and never talking to others, but that's actually pretty rare. In 20 years I've only worked with a handful of developers who don't want to socialize, collaborate, or solve problems together.

On the contrary I rarely meet engineers that want to collaborate all the time unless they don't fit the typical profile of an engineer (usually a transfer from another industry). Engineers, much like myself, like to work alone not because we are loners but because often times so-called "deep work" requires actual quiet time. I don't like meetings, I don't like to pair unless there is some mutual misunderstanding that needs to be resolved, and I like to control my small talk (because I have a tendency to talk a lot about CS). I'm not a shut in, I just have work to do. Pairing excessively, for example, is an antipattern. When I worked in an office I would regularly leave my headphones on even when I got coffee because if I didn't someone would inevitably find a way to pull me away when I needed to be doing thinking.

There is time and place for scuttlebutt and honestly the amount of work I have to do every day leaves very little time for it. I could also be an extreme case because being introverted generally, a large number of meetings physically exhausts me. I've estimated I can make it ~30 minutes in a meeting before I am checked out.

The more rules, people, and processes that are put in my way just reduce my effectiveness. This leads to more frustration than it solves. For example, all these company parties and get togethers, "fun" meetings, etc are annoying to me because I legitimately stress out when I can't complete my work on my own (internal) timetable.

Isn't this the reason our livers developed the ability to process ethanol anyway? Everyone's body produces some minute amount of alcohol just by eating the right combination of foods.

I guess ABS is just this process taken to a level where you no longer need to go to a bar. Just eat a loaf of bread and you're off to space.

The problem I have is that I dont have a Google account. So I basically can't even use the website except through the recommender.

Nothing I said was hubris. I literally work a 12x5 on call, sometimes 24xN when things get bad. I don't ever really get the chance to "clock out". I've spent a long time developing a very special set of skills not everyone has. I am paid well for it. I am not going to waste my time doing CSR work. I won't be good at it, it makes my schedule even more complicated, it provides no value to me nor what I am paid to do, etc. The hubris is that PHBs and spreadsheet jockeys think they understand my job better than I do. It's a tale as old as time: clearly the guy who sits in front of a computer all day drinking coffee must have an easy job and can take on more unrelated work.

Maybe I'm not truly talented and you're right (nice no true scotsman though). My paycheck and the fact I can leave a job tomorrow and get a new one for even more money says someone thinks I'm extremely valuable.

If you want the actual answer society pays people commensurate to their individual value. NBA stars make millions because of the level of entertainment they provide, and the value they bring to sponsors. I make a lot of money because not everyone can do my job and I provide an outsized value to tech companies. Despite many attempts to drive developer wages into the ground with code camps and other non-sense apparently it's a difficult enough job not everyone can do it. For comparison, garbage men make a LOT of money (at least where I am) because their job isn't easy and no one wants to do it.

No one wants to hear they're worth less than someone they perceive to be doing an "easier" job. Truth is, that's how society values people.

> It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.

It only sounds this way because I targeted the left here. I only did that because it’s Twitter. I would rather have the extremes removed from the platform regardless. It’s already enough of a mess as it is.

> Me thinks this feels more like vanity and laziness; the engineer is not to slum it with the call-center rabble.

Lol. It’s not that I have a 10 hour day already. Nor is it because I have a specialized, very expensive skill set that is not properly utilized. Nor is it that I already do 3 different jobs. Nor is it that I am already on 12x5 pagerduty rotation.

No, it is because I am filled with vanity and laziness. I don’t want to slum it with customer support.

Lol. On the contrary this is just yet another MBA spreadsheet jockey trying to “get their moneys worth” out of developers. We already do much more than nearly every other job title in this industry. Every task that isn’t immediately obvious it goes to someone else ends up on a devs desk. Just stop. Or pay me an extra 80k to handle CSR. Your choice.

> all they had to do is delete their tweet

He could've gotten a lighter sentence if he just accepted the plea deal! Do you understand how silly this sounds.

Moreover, they awarded Rachael Levine "Man of the Year" as a parody because they are a parody website that is right-leaning. Of all the things you could class as so-called "transphobia" this is what you choose? They never deserved to be banned. Additionally, I can go, right now, to Twitter and find a literally gold mine of rule breakers who lean far left that seem to never get touched. Strange, that.

I personally am excited for the reckoning. Twitter is absolute disaster and hopefully the left leaning bad actors get the bans they have deserved since 2016. I've read absolutely disgusting things, especially regarding white people ("white"-phobia in your terminology?) that should be banned and in many times investigated by the FBI. Hopefully we see those bans come down soon. There's a huge difference between Parler and what gets banned on Twitter. To the point you could consider Twitter a very good approximation of Parler for the left. It's time these bad actors get the bans they deserve.

> At least Facebook is a reasonably successful advertising business and social network, and VR headsets are an actual product that you can use for gaming, telepresence, etc..

They went whole-hog on the metaverse and their customers rejected it with a resounding "no". If they stop now they can probably make a full recovery. The fear is Zuckerberg is far too stupid to do that. In any other company the board would have terminated him several quarters ago. He is smart enough, however, that he allowed the board absolutely no power. So he is a Benevolent Dictator for Life and due to this it's entirely possible his own hubris will run Meta directly into the ground.

The greater point, I think, is that everywhere else in American where I deal with the government I am required to present some form of ID. They even give you a list of a dozen or more valid IDs you can use.

However, arguably the most important interface with the government, voting is a place where I don't even have to validate I am who I say I am.

Seems strange to me.

> what good reason is there to believe that a constitution conceived over 200 years ago (when the US had roughly 1% the people, ~1/3 the land, legal slavery, an early-industrial / agrarian economy, etc., etc., etc.) is useful today?

What good reason is there to believe a politician today could do better? Or are you simply trying to use slavery as a cudgel to get people to not argue with you? Politicians today are a ruling class that are worth hundreds times more than the average citizen, receive better benefits like healthcare, can use privileged information for financial gain, are often large land owners, etc. Nothing has changed - at all. If anything, it's probably gotten worse at scale.

> Even if we agree that "free speech" and "free association" are reasonable universal rights (and I think we do), what these concepts mean in practice must necessarily evolve as technology gives us new ways of speaking and associating - and we will _always_ have to deal with the difficult question of what to do when someone, through exercising these rights, deprives others (intentionally or unintentionally) of the ability to exercise theirs. This balance necessarily changes as our methods of exercising free speech and association change.

Political interpretation by the lunatics in a post-mcarthy world are the reason that people think the bill of rights should be flexible. "But the founding fathers never talked about the internet!" is a very pathetic excuse from a very pathetic ruling class that currently controls this country. Any violation of the freedom of speech no matter the medium is a deprivation of rights. We have chosen to interpret it differently. Once you start opening this can of worms up you get all sorts of problems with what is intentionality, what is association, does "free speech" include things I don't like, etc. Right now there are plenty of politicians on every side of the spectrum who'd love to ban everything they don't like.

What I guess I am saying is people are the problem. Greedy, slimy, humans. The world is no more complex at it's core than it was 200 odd years ago. We have made it complicated by spending time finding gotchas instead of treating the constitution as a series of unquestionable meta-laws. Fix the politicians. The document is fine. To use your analogy, allowing simple amendments would be like changing the entire PR review process because a handful of malicious engineers refuse to ever follow the rules. Just fire the engineers!

> There's a sort of obvious framing to the piece that the Constitution should be more fluid and easy to amend. I think 2022 is a very weird time to prioritize that. I'm not a doomer about US politics, but they're not in a very good state right now. Lepore talks about national abortion, immigration, and firearms policy and how they'd be impacted by a more readily-amended Constitution, but I think she should take a wider view and look at things like how speech and free association would be impacted.

The article is just a whine-fest about how "we could ban things I don't like and make law things I do!" Just from the perspective of a historian which doesnt mean they're immune to someones extreme biases.

> It's about how the modern Constitution has become "un-amendable", but it spends a big chunk of the middle of the piece demonstrating the Constitution was never really all that amendable: successful amendments are extraordinarily rare, especially when they're about big-ticket issues. Our biggest structural changes occurred after an enormous civil war.

Indeed, the greatest success of America is the unamenability of the constitution. Yes, in edge cases like slavery you would wish something could be done. However, nothing in said constitution explicitly permit slavery. Interpreted in the most charitable way slavery should've been unconstitutional from the get-go. At any rate, the constitution is about as close as we can come to a "ground truth". Other countries have constitutions that are more amenable. As a result, there's political chaos all the time as every politician does their own thing and undoes other things. Since these are ground truths all other laws can be forged from them. It appears this historian needs to go back to US Government 101. Nothing in the constitution explicitly forbids abortion, immigration, etc. In fact, the constitution should take no position on these issues. They are not "ground truth" rights that we are given for simply existing. If you head down that path, then suddenly we are codifying what will end up looking like the 10 commandments instead of a book of rights. The constitution is not a moral guide. It's a series of meta-laws from which all others can (should) be derived.

Interesting. I'd imagine here most of the apps people use for that (Cash app, Zelle, etc) are just frontends for Paypal.

> To my view, there's a world of difference between "You can't use PayPal as a payment processor for gun sales" and "You can't use PayPal to pay pals back for covering your range fees last Saturday."

Firearms are for absolutely no reason what-so-ever taboo on most payment processors. The AUP is broad enough to cover both because the pearl clutchers don't see a difference. The best part of this is "certain firearm parts or accessories" as if they had a qualified expert anywhere in their company that could identify a bolt from a slide. It's deliberately written to trap you, and now, extort you for $2,500.

This is neither shocking, nor new.

A decade ago I remember a friend who had a small business selling some niche collectors items. One day, he was scammed. The guy reported that the package was never delivered and, without even investigating, Paypal banned my friend's account and awarded the buyer their money back.

Paypal has always, and will always be a shit company. Charging people $2,500 for wrongthink is simply asinine. They must be betting BIG on either woke politics being mainstream for the long term, unbreakable bonds with their existing customers, or both. I can't even think of someone around me that uses paypal regularly.

I will be interested in reading the technical report on how they plan on implementing this because I'm sure it'll be silicon valley diarrhea. I am currently working out how to pay companies in a similar fashion to Paypal. I'm looking at Privacy.com but something is off about it to me for some reason. Once that is solved I'll get this ape off my back forever.

I wonder what happens if I just say "lol, not paying" to them. Would they put me in collections? It seems infeasible to even enforce this and it strikes me that clicking a button doesn't amount of a legal agreement.

Just because Khan Academy teaches it doesn't mean it's the most effective, most useful, or even correct method. They too are victims of needing money. Teaching what is currently being taught has been their bread and butter since the early days.

I can only speak from examples I've seen from young ones in my family "acing" early math and suddenly struggling with trivial stuff like Geometry, more advanced fractions, factoring, etc.

Common tricks like so-called "number bonds", "colored numbers", excessively complicated math for simple arithmetic by using shapes, preferring "regrouping" to carrying, etc.

All of these are valid, and with the correct level of sophistication a student can learn these tricks fast and use them correctly. The issue is you're dealing with kids who haven't gotten any sophistication yet. The reason things are initially taught rote is not because of some shibboleth of mathematics but rather mathematics can be useful without always knowing exactly why something works. There are some examples of common core problems floating around the internet that border on introductory number theory. The premise of it is ridiculous. Your child arrives to high school or college with a cobbled together book of poorly learned tricks that end up having profound influence over their ability to digest actual complicated math.

To drive the point home a "common core" version of calculus would have you learning real analysis long before you even understood a derivative. It's asinine.

> who in their right mind would want to "punish" schools for having under-performing students? If anything it's a sign those schools may need more investment.

The US government who issues funding via Title 1 using a formula. In this case they take on people who legitimately should be held back, they fail the standardized tests, the government says "we can't give you more money because you're failing" and the cycle continues. Ostensibly this system worked because schools that cant raise low income/low education people up dont deserve money. The problem occurs when they also can't hold people back until they are up to the standard.

We aren't doing enough, and I agree, these schools shouldn't be punished.

> An entire generation of students is at risk of forever being behind.

That ship sailed when Common Core was introduced. Teaching kids neat hacks instead of actual math will permanently stunt their progress.

This comment is getting downvoted because of poor wording. The accusations of racism are excessive and it's obvious these people have a pointless axe to grind.

I think what OP is trying to say is this:

1. There is a biological component to intelligence. This doesn't imply race. If it was possible to reach 200 IQ with hard work a lot more people would be there.

2. Breaking scores down by ethnicity may elucidate data that imply the poor level of education of this cohort in general may be leading to inappropriately reduced performance in schools. Anecdotally, I have family that teach at title 1 schools that deal with immigrants that have little command of English. The result is as expected, universally they do remarkably poorly on every test. Children of this cohort also do poorly. The schools, unfortunately, are punished severely. Not speaking English except at school has a dramatic effect on ones ability to learn if you have no command of the lingua franca. The cost to double classes and have special Spanish classes, for example, is not only expensive but does not prepare a child for existing in a world where everything is in English.

I think OP could've worded things better but regardless there is some truth to it. If we extrapolate test scores from title 1 schools to this population it calls into question: are we doing enough and should we inappropriately punish schools for taking this additional burden on?

It is clear immigration does not correlate to ability to learn. However, this cohort of amnesty recipients are a special case. I am convinced other comments cannot read, or willfully misread OP, in order to signal their virtue.

Oh good point. For some reason my mind was fixated on submarines lol.

> I've (literally) employed people who were working 3 jobs without any of the other employers knowing about one another. We were being scammed. This happened not just once, but with 2 people (1 full stack engineer who is a HN regular, and another was an account manager).

We've had several instances of foreign contracting companies forging identities and using paid actors (who sound and act American) in order to get into our company. Not only do these scams seem somewhat common they are also a massive security risk. We usually find out quickly because there is almost always an inconsistency in their employment history.

It does however make it irrelevant. If you never plan on selling and your mortgage rate is low then you're winning on inflationary terms.

> "going pro" is literally the reason why this community exists.

I'm just here for the free coffee.

I think humans gravitate towards what gives them attention. It's a very primitive thing of wanting to be in an in-group. Given that most people don't have enough money to cover a minor emergency I think a lot of hobbies were "side hustles" even long ago. It's truly a privilege to have ascended the hierarchy of needs such that you can do things for fun.

The difference is today the audience isnt a swap meet or local music scene. Its the internet. To differentiate yourself you have to be as boisterous as possible. The culture of advertising, grifting, etc have all been taken to their maximum.

I was under the impression that for non-surfaced subs the only way to communicate them was to fly close to the surface and lower a boom into the water. Is that not the case?