shockeychap

Prohibiting the use of the hand check also took the teeth out of defense and made it a more offensive game. I think that’s a big part of why Michael and Larry and Magic were so much more exciting to watch even though the team scoring was much lower than today.

While I don’t disagree about the grandstanding and theatrics ruining the NBA, I take issue with those who complain that better players are just getting away with fouls and cheating. Basketball, despite the rules around fouls and illegal contact, is a very physical and tough game. Being tough enough to work through some of the contact (both legal and illegal) is very important to being a high level player. I think it’s reductive and petty to effectively say that they’re just better because they hit more and harder. Even Michael Jordan had to work hard at toughening up to get past Detroit in the late 80s and early 90s.

I can't read this because of the paywall. ("Free registration" is just paying with my email and information.)

Is it me, or does it seem like "invasive pear tree" has become a big story this spring, seemingly out of nowhere. Maybe I just don't follow news around this, but this spring there have been both local and national stories about municipalities dealing with these trees. I'm not saying it's not a story, just that I wasn't aware of it before and am wondering if it reached some kind of critical mass as a problem just this year.

As one who has watched loved ones zombie-scroll through Reels on Facebook, this is not a victory of any kind for the world at large. It's just another step in the ongoing march toward widespread dysfunction.

- You can only build single-family units (no apartments, no duplexes, etc.) - Each lot must be at least a half acre - You must have at least one (or two) parking spots per lot. - You must have multiple stairwells and an elevator for any multi-floor shared units.

And on. And on. And on. Zoning and building restrictions are an absolute gauntlet in many places. For an extreme example, check this out: https://reason.com/video/2018/12/27/san-francisco-mission-ho... (He did eventually succeed, but the cost and effort was tremendous.)

I don't know why, but this pseudo-argument made me chuckle.

It works reliably and predictably in all weather conditions. It is able to produce enough energy to meet all of our needs.

None of the other options satisfies both of these things. Some satisfy neither.

This feels a bit like arguing over the arrangement of the furniture as the house burns. The web is a hot mess of garbage SEO, ads, incendiary clickbait, and political echochambers. THIS is the thing that warrants fixing first?

I believe it's supposed to be "U.S. Democrats", not "us Democrats".

That's fair to say, and I don't deny being a little hostile toward snobbery and pretension. I always have been. However, I also don't think [its primary audience] is quite right. I think [its primary audience's self image] is a little more correct.

I have to question how "surprising" the significance of dirt composition is. The characteristics of dirt and mud (and the tires themselves) will affect all aspects of how the truck behaves and handles. How is it surprising that one who enjoys the activity would be deeply invested in the very ground on which everything happens?

If the article actually was trying to spread any kind of real appreciation for monster trucking or why they're so much fun, I would be all for it. However, it reads like some outsider describing observations of an untouched tribe in the jungles of South America. No matter how much they write of their interesting findings, they're not trying to convince any of us to give up modern life and join the tribe.

"isn't just brainless amusement for inbred yokels"

The article never made reference to "inbred yokels". It didn't have to. It can couch its descriptions in the language of coastal elites who supposedly know more of wine and polo than they do of simple things like truck rallies. And while it's ostensibly explaining how "sophisticated" the sport is, the readers will fully understand the "isn't just brainless amusement for inbred yokels" part.

I wouldn't characterize my response as one of outrage. But I do find it off-putting and pretentious.

"Monster truckers obsess over distinctions among types of dirt the way vintners obsess over terroir."

Are the author and publication trying to sound as condescending and uppity as possible? Honestly, this reads like the kind of thing that "Frasier" mocked so perfectly about upscale sophisticates living in a bubble.

I was never a big fan of monster truck rallies, but it's easy to understand what was so fun about them. Articles like this that deign to explain the finer points of monster truck rallies (while using esoteric references to wine sampling) for their audience of sophisticates tell me just how useless publications like the "The New Yorker" really are anymore.

I love this list, but there was one that seemed odd.

"Time passes at the same speed on top of a mountain and at the bottom of a valley"

Unless you're writing software used to track very intense scientific measurements requiring information about time down to the sub-nanosecond, I don't see how the effects of time dilation between a mountain and valley would ever have an effect on program logic.

Everything else about time can and will bite you at one time or another.

I realize this isn't a popular opinion, but it bothers me how those who depict the tragedy of an accident like this seem to do so in the service of painting a dangerous picture of atomic energy, and they do it by ignoring and overlooking other accidental deaths. The Manhattan Project moved blazingly fast, and people died in vehicle accidents, fires, electrocutions, and more. Every death was tragic and represented a life cut short. But it seems like much has been written of Louis Slotin's accident while very little is said of the many others who died more "conventionally".

This is part of the reason that many people have an exaggerated fear of nuclear power when, in fact, the accidental death rate from it (even when you include Chernobyl) is far less than that of petroleum, hydro, and even wind - in some cases by multiple orders of magnitude. It's one of the safest energy sources, but takes a front-seat as the villain of the play when it comes to most articles by media, especially legacy media.

Edit: They did approve the ad in follow-up. I still hate the faceless nature of these things and the absoluteness of their decisions with no recourse than to plea for another look.

My biggest problem is the use of "dark patterns" in the UX of POS systems.

Firstly, a tip should be something that is asked for AFTER the service has been provided, as it's meant to both reward and incentivize good service. Modern POS systems have broken this construct by prompting for a tip at places like Panera, Five Guys, Starbucks, and others before any service has been received.

Secondly, a tip should be directed to those who provided the service. Yet, in the POS systems described above, there's no way to know who is receiving the tip. Oftentimes even the manager doesn't know.

Lastly, IF the above is going to be violated, then, at the very least, a customer should be assured that the staff behind the counter will not see the tip amount right away. As it is, I'm made to worry that if I don't tip well, the staff will see it and adjust the service I get.

The whole process is guided by dark patterns that seek to leverage guilt and the threat of being perceived as a bad customer to extract higher tips in lieu of raising wages and adjusting prices to match.

> Maybe it's because I think Apple is slowly building a parallel advertising ecosystem that is slightly less intrusive for users but massively more lucrative for themselves.

No. It's probably just because Apple is slowly building a parallel advertising ecosystem that is slightly less intrusive for users but massively more lucrative for themselves.

I can agree with that in principle. The problem, though, is that all the mega corporations (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.) seem to have a singular hive mind and follow each other on things like this. As soon as Netflix eliminated the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" episode of Community, Hulu followed suit and did the same.

Example: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2020/07/dd-netflix-and-hulu-...

All of this erodes your actual freedom to "look elsewhere" as the places you have to look become fewer and harder to find, and are sometimes actively shut out by other platforms like EBay and Amazon.

So after the layoffs they would have 0 employees and 2 CEOs? Seems a little top-heavy.

I don't disagree that SF has a major problem with housing affordability. I also think that problem was self-imposed by the use of restrictive zoning and ordinances that made it nearly impossible to construct high-density housing of any kind. (Look at Bob Tillman's struggle as one example.) I also think this conduct by state and local governments are hypocritical, odious, and disgusting.

That said, I also don't see how these things can justify one's decisions to steal from others in the same place. At the very least, you're still free to go to another location where the rent isn't $1,500+/month with multiple roommates. There are honest ways to exercise your disgust and unwillingness to stay within the confines of a system that's stacked against you. Within a few hundred miles of SF are tons of options.

I’m not sure I understand the last statement. Are you saying they should have one sensor, or three? The problem wasn’t two sensors - that’s normal redundancy. The problem was that MCAS was only tied in with one of the AOA sensors, and wasn’t aware when there was a disagreement in readings from the two sensors.

> Just keep your popcorn warm.

Actual LOL on that one.

I kinda wish it did remove all querystrings. The vast majority of querystrings are nothing more than tracking and marketing garbage, and I can handle the rare situation where one is needed manually. Stripping from a known list of values just means that marketers will start using random identifiers with clever ingestion code, making this mechanism less useful over time.

You’ve seen a lot of things. So can you provide sources for any of these things? Most importantly, where did this happen and when?

> Hell, I've seen complaints get dropped -- despite videos proof attached to the complaint -- that show cops slamming a kid against a wall and threatening to beat the kid up. Because the person getting slammed against a wall didn't know the badge number.

If there was video evidence of a cop slamming a kid against a wall, why was this not used to identify the officer? This seems like a pretty outrageous claim that demands specifics - where and when did this happen - and citation of sources.

EDIT: Fixed grammar

> Honestly, most of the paper is over my head—both the lattice-reduction math and the quantum physics.

Yeah, that alone is impressive. Schneier led a group that wrote Twofish, which was one of the AES finalists before losing Rijndael.

The quote below is from a 1995 interview with Steve Jobs. Forgive the length, but the whole thing is quite poignant and there wasn’t much to be trimmed. This particular interview confirmed my own experiences with esoteric processes that people do just because that’s how it’s always been done, and the opportunities that exist because of it.

————————

You know, throughout my years in business I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: “Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.” Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business. That’s what I found.

I’ll give you an example. When we were building our Apple computers in a garage, we knew exactly what they cost. When we got into a factory in the Apple II days, the accountants had this notion of a standard cost, where you kind of set a standard cost and at the end of the quarter, you would adjust it with a variance. I kept asking: why do we do this? The answer was, “That’s just the way it’s done.”

After about six months of digging into this, I realized that the reason they did this is that they didn’t have good enough controls to know how much it’s going to cost. So you guess. And then you fix your guess at the end of the quarter. And the reason you don’t know how much it costs is because your information systems aren’t good enough. But nobody said it that way.

So later on, when we designed this automated factory for the Macintosh, we were able to get rid of a lot of these antiquated concepts and know exactly what something cost.

So in business a lot of things are folklore. They are done because they were done yesterday. And the day before. What it means is, if you are willing to ask a lot of questions and think about things and work really hard, you can learn business pretty fast. It’s not the hardest thing in the world. It’s not rocket science.

My #1 wish for Excel is named aliases in a formula so that I don't end up with repetitive incomprehensible formulas that are impossible to follow because I'm using the same VLOOKUP in three different places for a calculation.

My #2 wish is a way for it to automatically break down and indent nested function calls for readability. The color coded brackets help, but only a little.