ap22213

I guess if you’re looking for a silver bullet, keep looking?

It may also be because women, as a group, have vastly higher purchasing power than men. And, dollars talk, as they say in the USA.

I tried to delete my account, but I don't know how. HN is a distraction anyway. I have a company to sell.

Maybe I'm bad at persuasion? I'm just saying this isn't about me.

I'm sorry, I looked back through my words, and didn't see any name calling. That's fine if you want to ban me. I'll go elsewhere. But, I think you're greatly confusing incivility and name-calling with honesty and pointedness. Am I really offending someone? really?

I want dang back. lol.

Why argue with me? If you just want to win, to beat me, I'll surrender. Just please do something positive today.

So, how about doing something productive today that helps solve the root problems? You won't be able to do it all on your own. Find 2-3 other people to collaborate with.

Sorry - was just using that as an example to illustrate that most people have some preferences about what they want and need in their environment. The purpose wasn't to demonize strip clubs or pot houses. Some people may prefer a strip club next door. To others, it may be a church or a parking lot or a factory that they don't want.

Some people don't want free markets to be a force in their lives - pushing up against their personal preferences. And, those people have as valid of a position as those that do, particularly when in a community of like minded people. It's ironic that libertarian minded people try to wash away this fact - some communities want central planning and zoning, and others don't.

There are zoning and planning because, well, people actually live in those places, and it's natural for people to want some control over their environment. Is that really such a bad thing?

It's like drugs, and prostitution, and all of the many things that seem so trendy to want to 'free' from government these days. On paper, the ideas look fantastic and efficient. That is, until a 24-hour strip club / pot dispensary opens across from your kid's elementary school.

Government sucks because it is by nature design by committee. It's inefficient and ugly. Yet, what's the alternative? Maybe AI at some point, but until then we have either collaborative government or authoritative.

But back to the article. One thing overlooked is the pressure on city officials from developers to get rezoning rules waived. And, there's often a lot of corruption in that process, also. For instance, most cities know that residential units cost more in services than other units. And, usually the taxes are structured (too low) such that the residential tax is insufficient to pay for the supplied services. The city planners know this and they account for it in their zoning plans. But, the developers later pressure cities to allow rapid expansion of residential. And, ultimately the plans become broken by too many new units.

S. Korea and Japan make some great films that are also globally profitable and influential. Seems like there's something else going on that is stifling China's film industry.

What is the point of these types of arguments and opinions if they don't have any evidence to back them? I don't give a shit if it's functional or object-oriented or procedural or whatever comes next. I just want a language that is proven, via empirical evidence and reproducibility, to solve my particular use case better than any others.

And, given all the use cases I have, I'd be amazed if one class of language can do it all. I'm guessing it's impossible.

It's way better for my engineering team to know how to use a bunch of different specialized tools, and how to use them together, than to focus on one type of tool.

If you're in a position to negotiate the terms of the option contract, then sure, you're right. But, someone with that kind of negotiation position isn't the article's target audience anyway.

Unusual options contracts usually have to be presented to, sold to, and approved by the board. So, unless you're extra special, you're going to get the boiler plate contract. And, the boiler plate contract has gotten much less attractive over the years - filled with enough clauses to make the options effectively worthless.

If you can assume that your CEO, the board, the acquiring company, and the lawyers are generous, and that the company will be unusually successful, then maybe it's worth it for the average employee to take options into consideration. But, that is a lot of assuming.

My only true mistakes were people mistakes: Being too cocky. Underestimating the capabilities of my seniors. Competing with my co-workers rather than cooperating. Not learning to communicate effectively.

Isn't that like someone in the 19th century predicting that automobiles will never happen because rail is so much more effective, comfortable, safe?

Convenience and flexibility always seem to win in the end.

People wouldn't mind as much if they had the same kinds and amounts of data on the their observers as their observers have on them.

I kind of work in this field, and it's easy to know a lot more about a stranger than they know about themselves. Given the law of large numbers, I can make lots of accurate predictions of a person's future behavior, and I'm not amazingly smart. I'm also careful to not spy on people because that's just creepy. But, I'm certain that there are people out there using similar types of data who are 1) way smarter than me, 2) creepy, and 3) devious.

(BTW, the data that I use has all PII removed, but it's trivial to identify individuals, if one is motivated)

Yeah, when I think of big, I automatically think trillions. But, I'm jaded. lol

I was hoping for something that maybe looked like a set of hierarchical clusters. Where I could drill down level by level.

icantdrive55, you appear [dead]. (Does that mean that I'm dead, or you're dead? I don't know.)

Anyway, your story is very similar to one of my experiences. I had a medical issue. So, I found a specialist from one of those "top specialist in your metro area" lists. I scheduled an appointment, waited a few months, went to the appointment, and I had one of the worst service experiences ever. I posted a review that explained my expectations and experience just to warn others. I was quickly contacted by the doctor's lawyers (even though I had posted the review 'anonymously') and extorted into altering the review.

Interesting stuff, and it was worth the read. I took some good ideas from it.

However, as I read it, I also wondered if his principles were used to test his principles.

I love this. To me, this is real 'smarts'.

It should be noted that libel laws are still in effect. That means that companies can and will pressure authors to remove reviews through extortion - i.e. threat of a libel suit. Even if the threat is baseless, most people will remove reviews just to avoid a legal headache.

Believe me, I was threatened more than once, but I was way too busy to deal with a lawsuit. But, it still pisses me off.

As an aside, it's kind of f'd up that a company can even sue for libel. These were original common laws - i.e. person vs. person. Now, companies are 'people'. I am not a lawyer, so I don't understand the nuance. (which, btw, is also messed up: it's barely possible for non-specialists to understand the laws to which they're held accountable.) Rant Over.

Many of my friends and some relatives joined the armed forces in the early 90s. The world seemed relatively safe then, trending upwards, and it seemed like a stable path to a middle class life.

Then the never-ending wars came. And, many of these people now have serious injuries and most have PTSD. They came back changed.

Now, I would never let a relative join the armed forces. Maybe it was a heroic thing to do at one point; I don't know. But, nowadays they're exploited and used carelessly for missions of dubious purpose.

This was surprising:

"Among Gen Xers who have exceeded their parents’ income, those with college degrees are less likely to surpass their parents’ wealth, mostly due to student loan debt."

I remember reading years ago about how water utilities were replacing chlorine with chloramine because it was cheaper. From what I understand, chloramine is more corrosive and it erodes the lining in the lead pipes. Does anyone know if it's standard practice for water companies to do their quality sampling at the taps?

For me, 'expert' wine recommendations are rarely useful. But, crowdsourced reviews have been remarkably consistent. A vintage with a mean score of 4.1 of 5 (over, say, 100 reviews) is almost always better than a wine with a mean score of 3.4. But, it's still subjective. For instance, I like Zinfandels and Petite Sirahs, so reviews of Pinot Noirs are less useful to me.

The problem with premature optimization is that most of it has little effect on overall performance. Software performance almost always follows a Pareto distribution.

But, wtf do I know, I'm just some regular person.

I don't mean to minimize the effort that went into Git. But, have you ever looked at the source code? It's like someone dropped the kitchen sink into the global namespace. The whole code base is full of premature optimizations. And, there's a lot of low-level infrastructure code coupled in with the core logic.

I know abstraction is out of fashion these days, but it may have helped a little in organizing things. Abstraction, when used properly, can almost always make complicated things more simple.

Basically, if a regular person had created Git, and not a demigod, would it even have become what it is?

DVCS is fundamentally a simple concept. And, every use case should be possible with a series of elemental operations. Any 'advanced' use cases can and should just be 'macros'.

Retail and service jobs. I have a few friends who are single parents and make less than $12,000 in retail. Many want full time work, but it's rarely available.

Just go work somewhere else. Luckily for many of us, demand has been outpacing supply for years.

If the market was worse, then it wouldn't seem so strange. Lots of other professions require a portfolio of work.

My CTO likes to hire cheap. 90% of the time he passes over more experienced candidates for those with only 0-4 years of experience. He says it's because of the big cost savings.

But, internally, we think it's very short-sighted and a waste. Almost always, the less experienced candidate has to be guided. They rarely have sufficient experience to be full-stack, and over half of the time they are on the average learning curve. That means that they're only 0-50% on the way to mastery. And, that has the unintended consequence of dragging down the productivity of everyone.

Worse, they come in with very strong opinions and aren't pragmatists. They lack understanding of trade offs, because that flexibility comes only from years of this work.

I suspect that the CTO (and many like him) likes to hire people who know less than him (i.e. B players). Luckily, I don't report to the CTO.