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sandino

293 karma · joined July 16, 2019

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sandino··on The Cloud
I'm sorry who is this person and what authority do they have?

His "homepage" is a raw directory dump with a high-contrast black background (the preferred color scheme of 10x engineers).

Isn't that enough authority for you?

BTW if anyone knows of more nuanced explorations of Cloud v. DIY tradeoffs -- we all know there's a tipping point in favor of the latter, somewhere -- please do share.

sandino··on Bolsonaro rejects 'Captain Chainsaw' label; data shows deforestation 'exploded'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
sandino··on Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo
No one is saying that Google is engaging in "systematic" harassment here.

But it may very well be that they are willfully (or simply incompetently) turning a blind eye in this one particular case.

sandino··on Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests and What Hiring Managers Can Do
It really won't take that long to freshen up your your white board skills so that [pass that next round of whiteboard hazing]

Actually it does (and that's part of the whole point of the massive burnout crisis caused by these tests). By and large -- they've become so distorted (either by intentionally asking candidates to solve ridiculously hard problems; or by having these goals set, or simply having the tasks so carelessly so as to achieve the same effect) that they've basically lost any grounding in reality.

The only way to soften the blow (that is, to significantly reduce the chance of immediate rejection) is to cram -- that is, to in effect make it your part-time job (for a little while) specifically "practicing for" (that is, memorizing the expected outcomes of) these tests.

Which of course defeats the entire purpose of the "test". As one would think these companies would be smart enough to know.

Yes I know many people are ready to say, "But when Iinterview I just do this simple FizzBuzz-oid thing I came up with that anyone who claims to have a CS degree should be ale to solve." What I mean is -- the last time I had to go through this ritual -- about 50 percent of the time these tests (or simply the environment in which they were conducted) were seriously off-base in one form or another.

And in more than a few cases I wish I could forget, ridiculously so.

sandino··on Vineyard of Silicon Valley VC hit with $4m in penalties after bulldozing wetland
They should have a fine and be required to fully restore the land they destroyed.

No, they shouldn't simply be fined and required to restore the land.

In addition to all of this -- they should be put in jail.

That's the only way these people will begin to get the message.

sandino··on Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo
The only support I received as the victim of my manager’s abuse was encouragement to take advantage of medical leave.

This statement is quite telling: first HR goes to lengths to deny that there's any seriously wrong. Then they pretty blatantly acknowledge that yes, things are so fucked up that you'll likely want to take medical leave.

sandino··on Sergey Brin’s Resume (1996)
"Too academic... during the phone screening he kept going on about non-euclidean geometries and eigenvectors and stuff. His C++ skills look pretty good, but we need someone with strong skills in Oracle, Visual Basic and ClearCase ... and with at least 5-10 years of industry experience."
sandino··on Brief thoughts on getting hired as a senior coder
All of section (6) smacks of ... some kind of attitude problem. Yes, the system if frequently broken (but more often slow and stilted) but still -- the moment you start intentionally playing head games with people -- it's like, why bother?

Hard to have sympathy with this guy, as a result.

sandino··on Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher on AI
Who also has nothing of value to say about AI, for chrissakes.
sandino··on Just 10% of fossil fuel subsidy cash 'could pay for green transition'
Okay, so human beings would be negatively impacted (to some degree).

But how would you assess impact on the climate crisis (per se)?

sandino··on Amazon deforestation accelerating to unrecoverable 'tipping point'
So are "driving without seat belts", "buying a house in a flood plane without insurance", "smoking tobacco".

All 3 have been curbed quite dramatically with a combination of regulation, graduated penalties and education. Yes there are gaps in enforcement, and these behaviors haven't been completely eradicated of course -- but dramatically curbed, nonetheless.

There's no reason the same can't happen with the current (wildly excessive) habit of read meat consumption.

sandino··on Why Did Music Visualizers Disappear?
"Because they make you think about the music. And when you're thinking about the music, you aren't hearing it"

-- Alan Watts, more or less

sandino··on US diplomats' brains were shrunk by sonic attacks at Cuban embassy, study finds
Rather than simply having "shrunk" these brains -- according to at least on other summary article, the team's findings were rather less conclusive:

But the medical team that performed the scans said the findings were not conclusive. They do not match what is normally seen in brain injuries and the severity of symptoms did not vary with the extent of the brain differences spotted.

“It’s a unique presentation that we have not seen before,” said Ragini Verma, a professor of biomedical imaging on the team at the University of Pennsylvania. “What caused it? I’m completely unequipped to answer that.”

Independent experts agreed the findings were inconclusive and said it was still unclear whether the diplomats were victims of any attack or had suffered related brain injuries. The apparent abnormalities might have pre-dated the attacks, they said, and could have more mundane explanations such as anxiety or depression. One said the study did not meet the usual standards for publication.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/23/brain-scans-...

sandino··on Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination
So "somewhat positive" = "negative" actually"?

That's what I was getting at - apparently it's negativity-driven, all the way down.

sandino··on Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination
This isn’t everyone or even a majority, but it’s quite a few.

In other words: not only is there no hard data behind this view; there isn't any (from a gut perspective) that much of a correlation -- but it's a strong opinion, strongly held nonetheless.

sandino··on [dead]
Truly, and I say that quite seriously, this is one of the great civil rights issues of our time.

Can we do something about it?

Boycott companies (and there are many) that apparently profit from all of this misery and exploitation? In addition to recruiting celebrities to start speaking up about the issue and all that obvious stuff (which sounds superficial, but seems to work in other contexts).

sandino··on Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination
I know the rationale. Then again if it's just one 1 person out of 6 (including 3 other persons who gave "very positive" reviews) then maybe that one person is just being ... negative. As the modern interviewing culture (not so subtly) incentivizes them to be.
sandino··on Google pays $11M to job-seekers who alleged age discrimination
The recruiter told me I had 3 really positive reviews and 2 somewhat positive and 1 negative review.

And apparently at Google - the negatives carry the day.

sandino··on 'It's a crisis': Facebook kitchen staff work multiple jobs to get by
Another way of looking at the issue is - we can also make a lot of progress if we set certain standards for those companies that are clearly able to pay more.
sandino··on 'It's a crisis': Facebook kitchen staff work multiple jobs to get by
So what you're saying basically is -- because (some of) the restaurant industry pays even worse than tech --

That the tech industry's pay levels are, ergo, no problem at all?

sandino··on Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile
Of course this isn't true - Bandera plainly did not oppose cooperation with the Germans - he cooperated with them very enthusiastically, both before and after his arrest. And he did not spend "almost all of WW2" in concentration camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UNRA_sl.jpg

sandino··on Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2016/08/bandera...