chambers

It's more effort than courage. Saying vile things takes no effort for many people. Saying a difficult truth takes more effort.

In any case, his caution birthed a comment tree that's normally verboten.

I'd modify this take: modern liberalism was meant as a commitment, not as a truth. Something collectively agreed on as good, valuable and important, as opposed to something true like the "sky is blue".

The issue, as I think history will judge it, is the truth that precedes liberalism has been spent & forgotten. In the absence of the "why", commitment became truth: the perception/prism/the water people see themselves in and others, the world, etc. From there, as you said, the logic proceeds mechanically (fact: kids are blank slates, results: parents, teachers, environment are to be blamed[1]). Because we can't reason our way out of the truth even if our senses and experiences are screaming at us to stop.

It is a consuming, comfortable & reasonable truth, held tightly because the alternatives are seen as unreasonable. In this way, modern liberalism is useful as a defense mechanism.

[1] reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44226329

+1 thanks for the thread

Sun couldn’t handle the cold. Obviously in terms of the dotcom bubble burst, inobviously in terms of the company’s character. The things people loved about Sun (giving Java and NFS away, treating engineers as the point of the company, McNealy's loyalty to his people) were exactly the things that kept it from doing what it needed to survive. Very warm, very caring.

Oracle expressed the opposite. Within a year or two Larry killed OpenSolaris, let the MySQL, Hudson and OpenOffice communities fork away, sued Google over Java, and watched Gosling and most of the engineers who embodied Sun walk out.

The part that rankles the most, and undermines many a retrospective I think, is that Larry the lawnmower turned out to be a better steward of Java & MySQL than Sun was. Coldbloodedness is a survival trait.

> I'm not saying you can't worry about this

The relentless demand for justification is indistinguishable from a demand for others to stop doing things you don't like.

> Sometimes, though, it only takes 5 minutes IRL to realize that you only like the persons email - not the person, themselves.

A great point that’s also true in reverse.

PSF drama is pretty well known at this point, imho. The Tim Peters scandal was well covered on HN. Nothing the GP said surprised me

It's work of art and a work of science, I'd say. Programming language dev needs both, and I think Java has learned how to do both, at least compared to its messy early years.

On the note of science, I'll credit Java's maintainers for treating their language as a technology and not merely as a product. Many languages respect the real-world physics of computers to stay relevant. Few respect the "metaphysics" until weird bugs keep emerging in the compiler and ecosystem. Bugs that can't be solved with more building, engineering, or even design. Because those bugs are not defects; they come from the concepts & axioms of the language itself, not its implementation.

Yes, feature flags are conflated with remote configs (or its more useful variety: "dynamic configs"). The difference is subtle, hence why people are talking past each other.

Feature flags are gates for whether a piece of code runs; basically, an if-condition. Remote configs are a mechanism for changing runtime values without redeploying[1].

For example:

  # Feature flag — variant gate for rollout
  flag = sdk.check_gate(user, "checkout_flow")
  if flag == 'open':
      render_new_checkout()
  elif flag == 'warning':
      render_warning_checkout()
  else:
      render_old_checkout()

  # Raw remote config pulled — structured values for tuning behavior
  config = sdk.get_config(user, "checkout_settings") # if the config changes based on user or context, this "remote" config is considered "dynamic"
  timeout_ms   = config.get("timeout_ms", 5000)
  max_items    = config.get("max_items", 50)
  allowed_tlds = config.get("allowed_tlds", [".com", ".org"])

In practice, feature flags are implemented on top of dynamic configs[2] to manage the temporary lifecycle of a feature — aka, ship a new block of code, ramp its execution up to 100%, then delete the flag. Whereas dynamic configs are a deeper primitive meant for semi-permanent/safer operations like tuning rate limits or changing text copy on a marketing website.

As I've seen it: the forcing function that separates the concepts are experimentation platforms: when human-control of feature flags is shared (via dynamic configs) with automated & randomized assignments. That's how Statsig built their system and, in part, why they could sell for a billion. Whereas companies that ignored the difference, like LaunchDarkly, struggled outside of feature flags.

[1] https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/10/spotifys-new-exper...

[2] https://docs.statsig.com/dynamic-config/overview https://blog.x.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2...

One small edit: many also look to the Internet to meet their needs, beyond just fantasy or desire. Their lashing out comes after the disappointment: when the internet simply cannot fill the hole in them the way the common goods once did.

Humane, as a secular and universally applied sentiment, is a bit of a modern idea, once backed by common goods; shared institutions, third places, extended families, good economy, religion, etc. With those common goods fading, I see people more and more lashing out against each other; particularly in a frictionless environ that incites/outlets fantasy desires. The war of all against all from the safety of our screens; at least for the growing numbers who live their lives on the upper-case Internet.

Lower-case internet is ok as a tool for making spaces. But I reckon humane-ness, or really, virtue, is a habit built from within. And the habits the Internet rewards are generally the wrong ones.

Thank you kindly, Peter.

My partner is a H1B tech worker employed by Meta; not working on AI/ML.

Given the Chinese government opposition to the Manus acquisition, is there any risk they could encounter for their upcoming H1B visa stamp in China?

Statsig's core value is their experimentation platform— the automation of Data Science.

Big Tech teams want to ship features fast, but measuring impact is messy. It usually requires experiments and traditionally every experiment needed one Data Scientist (DS) to ensure statistical validity, i.e., "can we trust these numbers?". Ensuring validity means DS has to perform multiple repetitive but specialized tasks throughout the experiment process: debugging bad experiment setups, navigating legacy infra, generating & emailing graphs, compensating for errors and biases in post-analysis, etc. It's a slog for folks involved. Even then, cases still arise where Team A reports wonderful results & ships their feature while unknowingly tanking Team B's revenue— a situation discovered only months later when a DS is tasked to trace the cause.

Experimentation platforms like Statsig exist to lower the high cost of experimenting. To show a feature's potential impact before shipping, while reducing frustrations along the way. Most platforms will eliminate common statistical errors or issues at each stage of the experiment process, with appropriate controls for each user role. Engs setup experiments via SDK/UI with nudges and warnings for misconfigurations. DS can focus on higher-value work like metric design. PMs view shared dashboards and get automatic coordination emails with other teams if their feature is seen as breaking. People still fight but earlier on and in the same "room" with fewer questions about what's real versus what's noise.

Separating real results from random noise is the meaning of "statsig" / "statistically significant". I think it's similar to how companies define their own metrics (their sense of reality) while the platform manages the underlying statistical and data complexity. The ideal outcome is less DS needed, less crufty tooling to work around, less statistics learning, and crucially, more trust & shared oversight. But it comes at considerable, unsaid cost as well.

Is Statsig worth $1B to OpenAI? Maybe. There's an art & science to product development, and Facebook's experimentation platform was central to their science. But it could be premature. I personally think experimentation as an ideology best fits optimization spaces that previously achieved strong product-market fit ages ago. However, it's been years since I've worked in the "Experimentation" domain. I've glossed over a few key details in my answer and anyone is welcome to correct me.

Hats off to Statsig. They built a stellar product. Superior to many of their industry competitors like Optimizely. Back when I was on an internal Experimentation platform, we were impressed how they balanced dev velocity & stat rigor https://www.statsig.com/updates These guys ship.

Business-wise, I think getting acquired was the right choice. Experimentation is too small & treacherous to build a great business, and the broader Product Analytics space is also overcrowded. Amplitude (YC 2012), to date, only has a 1.4B market cap.

Joining the hottest name next door gives Statsig a lot more room to explore. I look forward to their evolution.

Off-topic, irrelevant question: does anyone need a local first version of Airtable? That uses SQLite under-the-hood and plugs into files and data with syncing across computers.

I’m curious (as a solo dev) if there’s a market for such a product.

My read was that Garry Tan implied "you sacrificed a lot of money in order to grandstand". I felt that was a knee-jerk dismissal of a founding employee's legitimate concern.

https://x.com/ahmaurya/status/1948491614160122308 Garry Tan posted "sounds like a tweet that cost $20M" which he later deleted.

Smells like a strong bias against employees in favor of management and founders.

Yeah, this tracks.

If the OP consulted with Turso on this blogpost, then Turso probably believes the reported behavior is indeed a failure or a flaw, which they think a local db should be responsible for.

The confusion is that Limbo, their solution to this presumed problem, is not mentioned in the article which means that everyone has to figure out where this post is coming from.

I think you're right. I'll add on: there's a lot of thinking that does not need writing, and there's a lot of writing that needs no thinking. Deng Xiaoping and other greats wrote pretty minimally for their own thinking, if at all. Whereas many of us not-so-greats seem to knee-jerk comment without a single thought.

It makes sense for our age. Amid a thousand distractions, typing on the keyboard gives the illusion of getting a grip. Note-taking on my computer gives the illusion of a second brain. Ululating on the internet gives the illusion of sharing thoughts.

Instead of "writing is thinking", I prefer "thought precedes speech" https://inframethodology.cbs.dk/?p=1127; it fits the small human mind better though I've yet to learn it properly.

You should look up the term "zero cost abstractions".

It's the organizing principle of the second generation of Rust's leadership[1]. Formally, it means "zero runtime cost"[2], but the now-former maintainers operated as though it meant Rust could get rid of all cost. The belief was that they can have a language that's faster than C, safer than Ada, more ergonomic than Java, more memory safe than Go, by either making the compiler do more work, or working more on the compiler. In practice, I think this belief caused massive complexity in the compiler, trade-off dishonesty in the community, and bad evangelism in domains unsuited for memory safety (e.g. games programming)

[1] Graydon, the original author of Rust, was against this idea.

[2] The term originates from C++ as "zero overhead" which was smaller in scope, and not a governing principle of the C++ language.

I was in Beijing last year. Many, many EVs on the road, far more than the Bay Area. About half of China's Market is EV's now[1]

The Chinese Government backed up their mandate with money. Lots of money, allocated well, over a long period of time. In the absence of that sustained political will, I think this initiative would have succumbed the infighting and finger-pointing that the article above describes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...

I think this article is AI generated. I only skimmed so I could easily be wrong, but it smells too simple and too confident. The author is using AI quite a bit in other places as well https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9855568

Ah, I didn't meant to imply you did something wrong. I thought you were right to share.

Rather, I saw the start of a flamewar below (not caused by you) and I figured I'd say my piece. But it came out wrong and you got flagged undeservingly.

Sorry about that :\

I was also raised by a loving catholic mother, who let me go my way, out of the church. I eventually found my way back in, and feel similar to you as you do now.

IMHO, the GP has a right to share his experience here as we do ours. A thread on the election of a pope, with a subthread on the beauty of church, is a fair venue for sharing. There's no need for prejudice, disguised as policing, on either side.

Agoda has worked well for me.

In lieu of an e-ink monitor, I use a hotkey to toggle "Grayscale" filtering on my Mac.

It's taking some of the addictiveness out of my screen viewing.

^ This is the real advice. Approach a conflict as a choice the child needs to make, and the options the parents need to give. Be flexible but hard where it counts.

Children need grounding. "I need to win arguments with my own kids" is a vanity, that gives up a lot of the ground kids need for growing up.

I dug into this out of curiosity a few years ago. I thought 2.8 UI redesign was all thanks to Ton, but it turned out it wasn’t.

Ton was actually against a UI overhaul for decades. There’s a video where power-users and Ton were vocally dismissing the need for a better UI, using GIMP-like arguments. There was at least one failed UI redesign in the early 2010s which I think Ton was quite involved with.

But something happened, the nature of which I don’t know. Then, Ton became hands-off and allowed the UI overhaul to take place, which I recalled made actual UX designers work with engineers.

My memory is foggy and I don’t have sources readily available. But I’m hoping someone will fill in the gaps or correct my understanding of events long past.

"No sides in science" is a silly idea. Of course, scholars have biases. They're human. Humans like to group up and gang up against other.

Specific to Bible Scholarship, I wager the two big sides are scholars who have faith (i.e., Nicene Creed) and scholars who have little. Bruce Metzger who had some faith, and Bart Ehrman who has none. RSV/ESV which says Jesus is the "Son of God" in Mark 1, and NRSVue which deletes "Son of God" from Mark 1.

It's quite a fault line.

> SQLite is really a terrible example of anything other than what you can accomplish when you pour enormous resources into a single C library.

That's quite a sweeping, even caustic, indictment.

Can you explain this statement more?