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Willish42on How I think about debt

> I recently read Graeber’s book “the Dawn of Everything” and it bent the truth so much every which way to get to his POV that I won’t read another book by him.

Do you mind elaborating on why this is the case? I've read and liked some of his other work (Bullshit Jobs is a great one) and I have Dawn of Everything on my reading list -- was it due to his politics in general or because of disingenuous interpretations of the evidence?

Willish42on Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

Fine, I'll bite. Here's the retraction statement, which I read in full. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117

Some key quotes (emphasis added via italics)

> Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research.

> While our data and statistical approach were appropriate for investigating whether officer characteristics are related to the race of civilians fatally shot by police, they are inadequate to address racial disparities in the probability of being shot. Given these issues and the continued use of our work in the public debate on this topic, we have decided to retract the article.

Here's a random hit I found on Google in less than 30 seconds: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/annual-report-shows-syst.... Note that this is PBS, not CNN or MSNBC or other "liberal" media sources.

Here's two recent-ish studies from Harvard, which were also published: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population-development/2019/11/...

Care to refute these, or do you just only believe data you've (mis-?)interpreted to match your existing world view?

It seems to me that, at a minimum, your assertion that "systemic racism doesn't exist" is a controversial one in conflict with the retraction statement above from that papers' authors, and by the general public at large. I also find it interesting that you've moved the goal post from "doesn't exist" to "doesn't exist anymore", and seem to have found one study to support your claim, which has been retracted and -- by the authors' own admission, is insufficient evidence for the claim you're asserting from their study.

I really don't agree with your assessment or disingenuous interpretation of the data on this issue. If you have any sort of scientific reason to convince me otherwise beyond "political correctness bad. you gotta read between the lines!", I'm all ears.

Willish42on Aboriginal Linux

Yeah... I'm not even Australian and this being some sort of indie OS build made by or for indigenous Australians was my first guess at what this was.

I had a similar concern but you stated it way better than I could've. Thanks for doing so

Naming is hard.

Willish42on Quacker News

OK fine, this might be one of the best use cases for LLMs that I've seen. The output is pretty witty and impressive for the low cost of some basic scraping infra and a really short but effective prompt (https://github.com/dfeldman/quackernews/blob/38893fdfbc047ac...)

Well done OP

Willish42on Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

> which, unlike "systemic racism", is actually real

If you truly think the concept of systemic racism does not exist, your warped perspective is probably beyond saving. The term itself dates back to the 60s and has a long history of academic and real-world relevance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism

With where political discourse in developed nations has gotten, I really shouldn't be surprised, but I'm still honestly a bit shocked that somebody with access to a computer and presumably an education compatible with working in technology and posting on HN actually doubts that systemic racism exists in a country that has centuries of slavery in its founding history and numerous statistically proven cases of disproportionate policing of certain races of individuals.

What an asinine comment! I don't think being this willfully ignorant is helping your cause here

Willish42on Google workers fired for protesting Israeli contract file NLRB complaint

> I don't buy the narrative that Google is cracking down on employee activism.

Seriously? As somebody who's followed this stuff closely there's loads of historical precedent here for assuming exactly that. Including with NLRB and retaliation from other "good kinds of protests".

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/02/google-la...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624631/alphabet-cognizan...

Willish42on Google lays off its Python team

Anecdotally, I've heard this is the case at more than one major tech firm, and will likely have caught on since many of the same companies already laid off many recruiters during "difficult decisions for the very harsh economic environment for hiring that we caused, are largely immune to, and are now using as cover to cut costs and increase stock prices via huge buybacks"

Willish42on The man who killed Google Search?

Thanks for the link. I also took the term as clearly being used to describe the dynamic between managers and the engineers / coding "class" within a company. At Google, those lines are admittedly probably a lot blurrier, but I think the term gets the author's point across in this context.

Like, if we can't allow some level of incisive criticism of extremely well paid tech executives, who have a massive influence on technology, in an article/blog describing feasible harm by said people to said industry, on the "talk about technology news" website, I honestly don't know what the point of forums, blogging, or the internet even is.

Willish42on Porting 8-bit Sonic 2 to the TI-84 CE

I couldn't agree more. I have rewatched the prequels and still enjoy them. Meant more that at the time I was young and wasn't aware of the backlash. Now I'm older and still don't care :)

The Prequels Strike Back [wiki link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prequels_Strike_Back:_A_Fa...) is a fun documentary to watch sometime on the subject too. Lucas actually did have some intentional writing and directorial stuff going on in the prequel trilogy that I definitely missed even as a fan.

Willish42on The man who killed Google Search?

> And in my next newsletter, I'm going to walk you through how a very specific kind of managerial mindset has poisoned Silicon Valley, making career failures unfathomably rich while your favorite tech products decay.

I look forward to this one as somebody with a personally vested interest!

More seriously, Ed Zitron's podcast Better Offline is great for those who enjoyed this article. I love his opinionated perspective even when I don't wholesale agree (though in this case I do), and I find him a breath of fresh air in tech journalism. I work in a ... similar company and find his perspective to be spot on about growth hacking degrading product health over time, and the baffling track record of many an SVP.

Willish42on Porting 8-bit Sonic 2 to the TI-84 CE

oh man, TI-BASIC was awesome!! My first programming language, and funny enough due to how the programs worked, a relatively useful trove of "open-source" code to learn from.

I remember essentially cramming several different modified games together to make a game centered around the plot for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace with literally not an ounce of awareness at the irony of doing so or the vitriol for that movie at the time. Fun times...

edit: This seems like a more robust setup than I assumed, a color screen and C libraries to write assembly (!!) Good for the author, an impressive project

Willish42on LCD displays still don't match the responsiveness of clunky CRT screens (2019)

I found the wallpaper used in the article picture, in case anybody else was curious (turns out it's a League of Legends fanart which I'm not too familiar with but was hoping this was a cool JRPG I hadn't tried yet or something) https://www.deviantart.com/zuqling/art/LoL-One-for-the-road-...

Edit: also the DigitalFoundry video referenced in the article is a much better watch imo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8BVTHxc4LM

Willish42on Apple's Phil Schiller Works 80 Hours a Week Overseeing App Store

I completely agree but I will say that as somebody who intellectually understands that principle, overwork and burnout are still insanely common and arguably even rewarded in some work cultures / tech in general, and I screw this up a lot.

Even people who understand this rule / philosophy end up violating it if they're not careful.

... and with that I think I'm probably going to sign off for the day. It's late.

Willish42on Peter principle

Some big tech organizations basically do this without the pay. Essentially in some FAANG corps, you have to prove having worked at L+1 while still at L to get promoted to L+1.

In my biased / personal experience, the veracity of such a bar kinda deteriorates over time and the short average tenure makes most promo processes corrupt B.S. when folks are more incentivized to just quit and join somewhere else for more money.

Also, this process and your suggestion at a "probation" tends to motivate working harder for the window being measured, regardless of how actually adept or well equipped the person is at the level for which they're trying to illustrate competence.

Willish42on Peter principle

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-there-so-many-bad-b...

link for the lazy

Willish42on Super Mario RPG is an endearing, perplexing relic

Reading about this game in the late 90s when the N64 was out, it had this insane allure and lore to it that other Nintendo games lacked outside of Zelda and maybe Pokemon. This game got me into emulation and retro gaming at a very young age and I'll always think back on it fondly.

I've heard good things about the remake and still find this to be one of the most accessible games in the RPG genre that I've ever played.

Willish42on When Glasses Land the Gig: Employers Still Choose Workers Who 'Look the Part'

This article was very uninformative for the subject / claim it's making. I found https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/05/glasses-e... to be a much better read, recently written, on essentially the same subject, for anyone who's interested.

TL;DR there's a fairly significant correlation with white collar work and corrective lenses.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5382686/ looks like an interesting, more robust study on statistical correlations between Myopia and IQ, but I haven't read the whole thing yet

Willish42on Joint Statement on AI Safety and Openness

Might be just me, but I'm getting transient page load failures for the page, might be getting a "hug of death".

https://web.archive.org/web/20231102190919/https://open.mozi...

Willish42on When idiot savants do climate economics

This and the suggested article after it [1] were easily the most depressing things I've read since Uninhabitable Earth many years ago

Every time I read the "real" scientific outlook on climate change it's so disturbing I tend to disocciate for a bit and then move on to thinking about something else. I suspect a great portion of people intelligent enough to see the writing on the wall go through similar cycles.

If anybody has suggestions as to how to navigate one's life while holding the knowledge that earth / wildlife as we know it is probably circling the drain, I'd love to hear it. Personally, I don't understand how anybody else is able to function through their life with this knowledge, beyond denial and ignorance...

[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-gre...

Willish42on Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

aha, so THIS must be the real reason people like Redfin can make money off of giving you a "digital realtor" rather than FSBO uploads alongside the MLS listings. Makes sense, monopoly / oligopoly working as intended. I knew there had to be a reason :/

Thanks for your reply

Willish42on Home schooling's rise from fringe to fastest-growing form of education

I'm probably way too late for this comment to not get buried, but in my experience 99% of homeschooled or "unschooled" kids growing up in the US around me had parents who were obsessed with avoiding secular education on things in basic biology (evolution) or history (slavery), OR had parents in the 90th+ percentile for household income and/or focus on education and STEM stuff (e.g. one parent took a part-time job teaching them at home to give them way-above-average skills compared to their peers entering HS or College). In all cases, the "better" outcomes were situational and largely correlated with income and access to opportunity rather than a homeschooling model actually being proven to be better.

AFAIK, most academic outcomes for home-schooled kids are actually worse when adjusted for income. This is at least true for private school vs. public school (https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/private-school...) but I suspect home school data is much more sparse

Willish42on Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

Dumb, uninformed question here, but are there not some sort of For Sale By Owner systems that cut into the huge percents in closing costs? Or is the issue that you have to pay the buyers' realtor fees too and that's unavoidable?

I'm trying to figure out why nobody's figured out "DIY MLS listing as a service without having to pay for a realtor". Maybe everyone who does this just gets a realtor's license or something.

Willish42on The Grug Brained Developer (2022)

Totally. Sometimes [Hanlon's Razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) applies too -- often times the easiest thing to do is pile on without refactoring anything. And what makes sense in the scope of one PR doesn't necessarily make sense holistically over several years of changes.

Most folks aren't incentivized or simply don't bother to think through things and try harder. The "this way looks more smart so I made it all complicated" thing definitely happens too, but in eng orgs like I'm part of where we go through design reviews to try and cull that sort of thinking, the other less-intentional version is still common enough to be a problem at scale.

Willish42on Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

> I think if you claim that this makes Apple evil then you would also need to argue that most of capitalism is evil.

I mean, surely a mixed bag, and I still participate in it regardless, but pretty much, yeah.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mining-children-trfn/...

https://www.culawreview.org/journal/child-labor-and-the-huma...

Willish42on The Grug Brained Developer (2022)

I'm reminded of that one quote from a letter of some author [paraphrasing, and I've seen it (mis-)attributed to Mark Twain and too many people to look the real quote up] "Apologies for the length, I did not have time to write a shorter letter".

EDIT: I ironically wrote way too long here. Grug say better:

> note, this good engineering advice but bad career advice: "yes" is magic word for more shiney rock and put in charge of large tribe of developer

People can write perfect, simple, DRY code if they have the time to and are incentivized to. In most cases you're rewarded for launching the thing and showing one's "technical prowess" with the amount of work / intellect / design skillz™ required to launch the thing. The natural conclusion of this is that everything becomes a bloated, over-engineered mess of kludge solutions that gets rewritten every 3-7 years.

I haven't seen any data on this but I'd guess the "rewrite half life" is correlated with turnover / average tenure, so even if people tried harder to write not-over-engineered code, it'd probably get rewritten anyway. As a perfectionist, this truly bothers me, but I find sometimes thinking harder / spending more time on the best _simple_ solution is rewarded less than building the complicated overengineered thing. I'm sure better organizations exist but I have yet to find one in 9 years as a SWE...

Open Source projects are actually the best counter-example to this that I can think of, but even then the best libraries sometimes get rewrites or new versions when they've changed hands from one maintainer to another, and I'll note that financial incentives are very different between open source and the types of enterprise-y cruft most people working full time as SWEs on HN probably see. It's like comparing a well crafted academic paper to a lazily written work email.

Willish42on Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

Yeah, Apple customers tend to also just "trust Apple" and get whatever the recommended product is for their price point. Half the reason I find this troubling is ewaste, the other half is I'm sick of having to try to explain RAM to my MIL and ask how many tabs they keep open when asked which computer she should buy. If they had a better baseline memory (16gb) or a simple inexpensive upgrade that's the second option in the lineup instead of the higher storage cost, it'd be a simple, one-sentence "get that one".

Even having to upgrade the RAM is a hassle when price comparing etc. They know this and it's - by design - misleading to the type of affluent less-tech-friendly users who prefer Apple products.

Willish42on Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

I'll admit "evil" is a stretch but I was thinking in terms of the amount of e-waste this causes due to insufficient RAM hurting the longevity of a $~2k+ computer

e.g. https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology-media-an...

Willish42on Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

Speculating, but I'd wager it's to clear out existing inventory by phasing out the old chips on other SKUs over time. E.g., you start with the expensive Macbook Pro models when you have fewer M3 chips in production, since those will sell slowly, and then you clear out your remaining M2 inventory in the Air lines while waiting for a "refresh" when M3 production is more ramped up.

I have no idea what Apple's sales are for the macbooks or if Airs sell more than Pros, etc., but they're definitely making profit this way to be this consistent in their approach.

Willish42on Apple unveils M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max

And yet _still_ 8GB of RAM as the baseline. It's probably as profitable as it is evil / misleading.

Willish42on Adding crushed rock to farmland pulls carbon out of the air

Consumption taxes do still tend to have disproportionate effects on those at the bottom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_tax#Savings_effect), but there's more logic to step 2 if gas prices are increased across the board than my initial post.

That does make some sense, thanks for replying and elaborating!