robotsonic

In defence of the author, they have used a standard ESRI webapp/story map template.

What blows my mind is that I knew it was going to be this before clicking through entirely based on your comment.

The service provided by ESRI is handy for those with minimal knowledge to make something decent, but it's also easy for people to get carried away and use all the features. This is like the modern equivalent to marching ants, I guess.

>>I'm not really top percentile in anything save my ability to communicate.

Being top-percentile in communication is nothing to brush off. It's about finding where to use your top-percentile skills that can be the challenge.

I could be in the top 1% of people who grow green tomatoes, but if I'm not using that skill for something, does it matter? Maybe skill-for-the-sake-of-skill does matter on some level, but maybe I should find a way to use my mastery for something.

On a (much) smaller scale, there is ARGUS-IS [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

Nice site. It has some good content on there. One thing that I disliked from a design standpoint, was the fact I couldn't open stories in a new tab. I suspect I'm not the only person who likes to scroll through and open interesting stories in new tabs to be read at my leisure.

Having been in a similar boat, what I find amazing is how there are words I say with an American accent 99% of the time, but in the context of a South African reference, will say it with a South African pronunciation. Tomato is one of these words. I say tomato like any other North American, but when I am referring to a tomato breedie, well suddenly, I say it like a South African. What I find most odd, is that I don't feel weird when I say it in context, but if I try and say it out of context, it seems so forced.

I think part of it is not just the look, but also the content. The 'old' internet wasn't as concerned with how to monetize content, it was just people sharing stuff they like/dislike. Certainly, that still exists, but you can imagine BuzzFeed et al. turning this content into "10 real foods that will disgust you, number 7 will blow your mind".

I use the Logitech MX Master, which allows you to turn on and off the clicking. You can even program one of the buttons to turn it on and off. When I write that out, it seems like a dumb feature, but boy do I use it a lot.

As somebody who flies UAVs for a living, I can say that whenever the laws squeeze tighter, it doesn't really seem to make a difference on the recreational side, but the number of hoops that need to be jumped through on the commercial side go up. For every recreational/bad-actor that does something dumb, I know that I will be punished by the overseeing bodies and made to explain why I won't do [irresponsible thing | illegal thing], plus will have more people in the public with a bad perception of my work, despite the amount of safety precautions I take.

What I find interesting is when people will point to their plastic screen cover covered in small scratches as proof of why they need it. Generally, those same scratches would not have been present on the actual glass screen and are only proof that their screen protector is of inferior quality.

I'm also unsure if the order of operations is: 1) I treat my phones poorly, thus I should get a screen cover. OR 2) I have a screen cover, so now I can treat my phone poorly.

1) I'm pretty sure this is how various levels of public service work. Pay below market rate, but offer extremely good job security. As a result, many people stick around and form long-term relationships. Where I can see this going poorly is when personal disputes bleed into work situations. I've worked with people whom I have disliked working with, but loved hanging out with, and vice-versa. As long as there is respect for the reason you are there (i.e. to work), it's not so bad.

2) I've never worked anywhere with free food, so I don't know if that would change things, but have worked at places with a full-service cafeteria, a lunch/break room, and no break/lunch room. The place that only had the lunch room seemed to have the most socialization, with all levels/types of staff bringing their lunch and chatting as a group. Even people who didn't bring a lunch would still pop in. Surprisingly, no real cliques ever formed (even people who came, sat and never said a word seemed very welcome).

The cafeteria workplace seemed to only attract those who needed to purchase food. Though, it did seem like more of a social place around morning coffee break (again, mostly people purchasing coffee).

The place without a lunchroom pretty much had everyone either eating at their desks or leaving for lunch. I found this pretty abysmal and I'd classify myself as an introvert. Compared to the lunchroom situation, I certainly knew less about what everyone actually did in their jobs, so it really was a net loss even in terms of productivity.

3) That's a hard one. I think it's okay for people to be left out if they choose to, but I think if your culture relies on cliques, then it will eventually drive out anyone who doesn't fit (and I'm sure at some places, that's seen as a positive).

They didn't rig the lottery, they figured out how to beat the odds. The former makes it sound like they colluded to change the game, when all they did was play by the rules, albeit in an extreme manner.

As far as I know, they are used quite heavily in golf and tennis equipment.

Hockey sticks tend to be carbon fiber.

<s>I think the baseball wood/aluminum debate can't handle another metal </s>

Snowboards and such do benefit from being able to bend. I could see it more in alpine snowboard equipment, but again, I'm not sure that carbon fiber wouldn't be the better bet.

I see the similar behaviour with measurement on scales though. There is this need to make it EXACTLY 2.50 pounds. If it is 2.52, well that just unacceptable, and the seesaw of removing and adding begins. I'll admit, I occasionally fall into this trap until I consider what the consequences are (pretty much nothing in terms of what I'm baking, but a decent waste of time).

On the first class of failure, sometimes people take it a bit too far. I've watched people stress about how they level off their 1/4 tsp because if it's too heaped, it will be too much, or if there is a divot, it will be too little. As a percent error, there really isn't a real difference. Just the differences in brands and batches of ingredients will cause more error in your recipes than a slight miss-measure.

There's definitely a need to measure well, but that third class of failure you mentioned is probably better to pay attention to. If you know your ingredients and operating conditions, you'll definitely fair better.

On the topic of measuring, I do wish more new recipe books went back to using weights. Baking with a scale is so much easier/faster/less clean up. It surprises me how many people I know who think it is too much work to use a scale until they see me do it and how little effort it really is.

So by your definition, a non-liberal would answer:

1. No, you can't have an abortion for any reason (rape, abuse, etc.). OR do you mean you can have one, as long as you can afford it.

2. You can't have rehab for any reason it's your fault for doing something dumb. OR is it that you can go to rehab only if you can afford it.

3. You can't have healthcare for any reason. OR is it that you can have healthcare if you can afford it. OR is it only free if you aren't overweight, sit too much, stand too much, floss twice daily and only ever eat fruits and veggies.

4. Financial assistance should only be accessible to the rich. Or is it meant to be accessible to the poor, but they must pay for it?

Certainly, most people, even gasp liberals, tend to ride some middle ground.

The last time I did a first aid course, they really pushed the idea of just water and bandages. They cautioned against the use of other ointments as well as alcohol and peroxide as they can dry out the wound, prolonging healing. It certainly went against everything I feel like I would normally do, but it makes sense.

I'd be curious if this is a recent* change in methods, or a recent* push to ensure people are doing it.

*recent being the few years between when I've taken first aid courses.

I do only do updates on wifi, however, internet is both expensive and data caps are quite low where I live. I'd rather watch one more Netflix show than download an app I don't often use four times a month.

I agree with the comment below about this being an argument for delta updates.

I agree that there are certainly benefits to auto-updates, but where I tend to dislike them (especially on the phone), is where I have infrequently used apps.

To stick with the Uber example, I don't live in a city with Uber, but have it on my phone for when I am. Why do I need to be burdened with using my data to constantly update an app I use once a year. This applies to a lot of apps (airlines, games, etc.). Games are really the worst offender as they tend to be quite large. Where release notes are provided in the app store, I will update if it is related to a critical security vulnerability, or something legitimate, but find it hard to rationalize constantly downloading 100+MB apps doing this for minor bug fixes that impact 0.001% of an apps user base.

At first, I agreed, but then realized there's two issues with the argument I can think of:

1) to get to the warmer temperatures, you need to pass through the room temperature stage first. Things might change quickly, but not THAT quickly, meaning whatever is lurking in the soil can cause havoc/mutate/etc. before hitting it's upper temperature limits.

2) The areas where permafrost is generally found see summer temperatures generally at or below 'room temperature' now.

I do agree, that their tests could have been more thorough and included future scenario temperatures, but may underestimate the problem by not allowing mutation time.

I don't buy the 'it costs too much' excuse. How much does it cost to go:

  <H2> Testing </H2>
  ...
  <H2> FOR REAL </H2>
  ...

It's not perfect, but at least the test alerts and the real alerts are not mixed together.

Agree with this. It's a great feature other than in messaging apps. In those, I wish there was an equally useful feature to get back to the bottom.

I've noticed that most people find the feature accidentally, but then once they realize it's an option, use it extensively.

>Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last.

This result seems a bit unsurprising. People who work at Google would already be in the top n-th percent in terms of STEM expertise. If everyone you hire is 'above average' then being a bit better than that has marginal gains and other factors would lead to your success. I'd be curious to see how this plays out at smaller firms where they cannot afford to hire the top-end STEM expertise.

I agree with the need for more analysis.

This site seems to take a MadLibs style of 'product that exists' for 'company type that exists'. Surely there are legitimate results from that, but not without a lot more work.

While I generally applaud their plan to try something new, I wonder why this is more feasible than say, using high-resolution satellite imagery? At 30 cm pixel resolution, it's certainly possible to see the hedges that demarcate the property lines. A possible advantage I could see is if the area is notoriously cloudy, a UAV will be able to fly below most of that cloud cover. As a commercial UAV operator myself, I also suspect they will receive resistance from certain landowners whose land they are flying over, where the satellite route removes a lot of this friction.

Fair enough. It would seem that a feedback loop exists where managers who promote staff to be managers because they are bad at their jobs, would create more managers who are likely to promote staff to be managers because they are bad at their jobs, which would create...

That's a whole other problem [1]. Most bad managers I've met were actually quite good at the jobs of the people they are managing. Managing requires a whole other set of skills though.

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

Reminds me of the bike shed effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality