andrew_v4

I think there is a big ideological element to this. As a Rust outsider, I feel like it's the computer science embodiment of the current political discourse. There is something about the "one true cause" mentality, and the need to co-opt projects with other goals and steer them towards the cause.

Honestly, it is a really weird experience to have around a programming language, and to me is offputting for something that otherwise could have some very interesting merits.

I expect people wont agree with me, and I'm not arguing against the technical merits of the language, I'm just saying that it stands out because of the ideological following it has, and that is cause for concern if ideology is a big reason people try and push to integrate it in something as important as linux.

Your HN example makes me think: if I'm talking to my spouse or close friends, we obviously don't have a moderation policy, we know each other well and share values well enough that any debates we may have are (almost always) focused on substance and not on conduct.

In political discourse, and in debates on big platforms like Twitter, it's the opposite- most of the discussion is about people's or groups' conduct and substance takes a back seat. Because a heterogeneous group with different values is involved.

So for social media and online forums, the question is, how big and diverse can the audience get while still supporting civil, substance focused discussion? HN does a pretty good job, and also has some obvious biases, scared cows, and weak spots. Online newspaper article comments probably have one of the lowest quality of discourse for a given participant size. What forum is best, I'm not sure, but its instructive to look at it this way, because it reflects politics generally, if we want to address real issues while maximizing participation.

Does this apply to a phone call? To a zoom call with five people in it? Should trying to stop someone from doing something, even if abhorrent, in private, really be a priority? I can only see this ending badly. If there is a link to real world crimes, sure, intercepting a discussion is one method available to detect / deter / deny / disrupt, just like a wiretap. But (and maybe I misunderstand your comment) beginning with the idea that we should try and prevent conversations we find abhorrent from happening is, well, abhorrent.

I think GP is saying that threats or perjury are not just characterized by the expression of an idea but another underlying crime. Like if someone walks into a bank and says "give me all your money or else", it's still a crime, the speaking part of it is immaterial.

This was really interesting, but the headline doesnt really describe the article. The article talks about how food blogs are written for one entity - google - and all of the annoying or hostile things we see are basically Google's fault

I don't really see any argument in the article against "fixing" recipe sites, other than from the operators of the sites who want to keep their business as is. But to fix this problem of user - unfriendly sites (and it's a problem for much of the internet now), we need to go head to head with google and find a better way for people to share and find stuff they are interested in.

Ad sponsored content has turned the internet into a cesspool. I've thought before about the idea of a "good internet" that is manually indexed if necessary to only include actual content that people might want.

At my last employer, we were asked to install some kind of authentication app (that wanted permission to access all kinds of files, peripherals, etc on the phone)

I just told them I didn't have a compatible device - it's not so far fetched that people don't have an android or iphone.

In the end they provided a clumsy web based workaround to do the same thing.

Outside of tech, I can imagine many people, like the one in this story, are at a disadvantage because they don't know they can plausibly say they don't have a compatible phone, they don't know how to navigate a complicated workaround, and they may be afraid of losing their job.

Exactly. A commonly misunderstood aspect of freedom is that things you don't like or agree with may happen. This seems to be invoked (generally validly) when people argue against populism, but generally overlooked for most kinds of freedom.

This, i think, is where the US got it right, by making it clear that the people were granting rights to the government and not the other way around. My understanding is that the US government would have no standing to make laws limiting free speech (even if they wanted to try). There is an interesting discussion here: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/inte....

Hello from Montreal, a city that is booming where you can't go a block without hitting a giant hole in the road or a bridge that's about to collapse. Having proper lines painted is pretty far along our hierarchy of needs. That said, I can easily imagine machine readable markers leapfrogging most of the existing infrastructure deficit.

It's easier to get money for a futuristic sounding project than for routine shoring up of infrastructure so it doesn't keep falling apart. (Just like many codebases)

One difference I've found between MS and Google: MS is much more annoying about everything they do. (Hear me out)

I'd be surprised if there is any real difference in how either company respects your privacy (neither does). But for the most part, google seems to do its thing in the background and leave you alone. Microsoft is constantly popping things up asking you to rate this or that, flinging things you didn't ask for onto your screen, basically the spirit of clippy reborn into modern data collection practices. If I'm going to have my information exploited no matter what I do, I'd rather at least have it happen unobtrusively.

(To be fair, this is just my perception. I was in a g-suite shop for three years and now onto office 365 and I feel like it bothers me about stuff way more often the g-suite ever did)

Is there something specific about numpy here, or would it be any RNG?

I'm looking at some code that uses random.random() to randomly apply augmentations, I suspect that will have the same issue right?

Two personal counterexamples, whether right or wrong:

Management consulting

- you want to be perceived as hiring the best

- project work that is not known in advance, you need very versatile people

- looking for demonstrated desire to jump through the hoops and do the marginal work that makes you the "top"

Software Engineering

- some overlap with the reasons above

- adds to the moat: if they're happy working for FAANG et al, competitors are priced out of getting the best

- the economics of many technologies are now defined by whether they can return enough to pay people competitively vs big tech. E.g. there are lots of cool deep learning applications that are tougher to try when you need to pay 300k / year for someone really good to run with them

- I'm interested in the sibling post referencing moneyball, this would be very cool to see applied to software engineers