undecisive

In other words, the definition of a word depends on its real-world usage; dictionaries attempt to capture common usages, but no definition of a word can be considered the "true" definition more than any other used and understood application of the word.

So in this case, calling these definitions "imposters" or "not-abstractions" is absolutely wrong. That said, I like the attempt to introduce names for different flavours of abstraction to make discussion easier. That's definitely useful. Just wish it wasn't off the back of incorrectly telling people that their use of the language is incorrect.

> I'm having trouble finding where anyone said this

I'm indicating the general tone. I'll be more careful not to misuse quote marks in this comment and use [] to denote paraphrases!

When I itemise the traps people can fall into, and then get the response of "No. I'm very clear with demands on my time" it ignores the vast swathes of people that don't have this luxury. Now maybe this commenter just felt I was talking about them directly; I did, after all, phrase the though process in the third person. (Now YOU have a choice, do YOU continue donating... etc)

But given this is a comment in the public domain, this seems unlikely. More likely is that the commenter is dismissing the problem, because it doesn't apply to them.

In general, I think we're mostly on the same page here:

> I don't think anyone is claiming that the common case is the developer who stands up for themselves, has healthy boundaries, and doesn't let internet-hate scare them. Most developers fall into this trap, including a past version of myself.

Exactly. Me too. The problem is, having addressed it to some extent, some people choose to believe that it's no longer a problem. Often it manifests as kind of a "I fixed myself, so why haven't you?" mentality.

> people can change their attitude in order to have a healthier relationship with their OSS projects, and can develop the assertiveness necessary to enforce their boundaries

Putting the idea of access to therapy aside, you and I can agree that it is absolutely beneficial for people to work on this aspect of themselves, as a general rule.

However, while it is right to say [This is not a healthy stance to take] but we should be careful not to imply [It's your fault you are being weak] or that the recipient is the problem, not the toxic individuals.

And while that isn't overtly being said in these comments, that's still the implication I take from them, even trying to re-read it charitably.

The statement "Mental dysfunction" in my mind has absolutely no negative connotations. As far as I'm concerned, most people on the planet have some form of mental dysfunction. And in this case, I am genuinely and totally agreeing that this outlook on life is not necessarily the product of a fully healthy mind - and that's ok.

What I did take exception to was the idea that every Open Source Software developer has access (via money, time, social skills... whatever) to a therapist, and that it is acceptable for the rest of the community to offload the blame onto those developers. In other words, I do not accept the false dichotomy of "Be exploited" vs "Get a grip".

> I wish more OSS developers would take steps to make their relationship with their work healthier. There's no shame in falling back on these unhealthy reactions to entitled demands, but it's certainly not a good thing.

Couldn't put it better myself!

Also, looking at the way their payment and submission system works, it is quite literally "buy now, pray later"

Seriously though, you do have to wonder who it is they think they're praying to. Also, if the love of money is the root of all evil, is the love of blockchain the root of all foolishness?

That's great for you, and the other commenter who said the same. I'm pleased you feel comfortable enough with that.

> Any social obligation that people imagine you have (or in your case perhaps more importantly that you imagine you have), is just that: imaginary. If you can't stand the idea of some stranger on the planet not liking you because you refuse to spend your time fixing their pet bugs, that would be a good topic to bring up with your therapist.

I mean, I'll ignore the elitism in this statement, and presume you meant this sarcastically. But the idea that you associate this kind of unassertiveness with mental dysfunction is probably not a million miles wrong.

However, it is not an unusual mental dysfunction, and one that many more software developers suffer from than the general populace. Assuming that your bravado is matched in your offline life, that would put you in a very small percentage of programmers.

And declaring that as a source of shame rather than an opportunity for support only serves to further entrench the stigma and impostor syndrome. Which then leads to further unassertiveness and self-worth issues. Which then leads to more people feeling they are not worth being paid for their time. Which leads to more people on the internet making them feel shame.

Which means I can agree with you wholeheartedly when you say:

> You are under literally zero obligation to fix or update anything

... and at the same time be pleased to see people attempting to improve the situation for those thousands of developers who, in their own heads, do not feel that zero obligation as a daily reality. I may not agree it's the right approach. I may not even agree that it will work. But I'm not going to dismiss the premise, just because it's not how I personally feel.

> And of course, just because something you did crosses some arbitrary line of popularity doesn't mean the universe suddenly decides you are entitled to compensation for it. If that's how you hoped things would go, then you should have started a business to sell it in the first place.

This on the other hand is just plain naivety. The idea that every small side project would even support the costs of a business is not just assertiveness, it's delusional. Would you buy a shell like fish? A json query language like jq? A context summerizer for your shell like starship? An ad blocker? A file manager? And would you pay more than a payment processor or business bank account would take in fees?

Something can be used by millions and make hundreds of dollarbucks in aggregate, and yet be practically worthless individually.

Which is, again, one of the stated goals of Tea. I'm pretty sure it won't be a through-the-roof success, but again, happy to see people trying new ways to tackle the problem. You know. Beyond telling people to go get therapy.

That's great for you, and the other commenter who said the same. I'm pleased you feel comfortable enough with that.

Would I be right in thinking that you have spent a significant amount of time being a full-time contractor?

Either way, I'll wager that makes you the 1%, not the typical. The typical developer works a full-time job and does a little project on the side. Their boss may or may not know about it, and if they do, they are happy so long as work on the project does not impact their full-time job responsibilities.

But this presumption of "I feel comfortable with X and therefore nobody else needs help with this" is terribly damaging, and the fact that these over-confident voices shout about how weak and inexperienced and dumb everyone else is for falling into that trap, only serves to cement the impostor syndrome and erode self worth.

People usually cannot be shamed into becoming more confident and assertive. People need to be supported into becoming more confident and assertive. And a project that helps people feel supported cannot be a bad thing imo.

>> tech giants accrued fortunes on the backs of people they’ve never thanked, paid or even met.

> I don't like the accusations of unfairness being levied against open source users (among which I would also include myself)

There's the problem. Unless you happen to be a tech giant, you are not the entity this project is trying to shame.

A year down the line, 20 companies are using your code. Two years down the line, 100 companies are using your code.

Now you have a choice: Do you continue donating your time, servers, emotions and experience to making someone else money?

If you choose yes, know that typically at least one of those companies will be hounding you for bugfixes or out-of-scope demands. We have seen how much the internet can vilify people who refuse to do this kind of free work. If your turnaround for a fix on your globally used code is anything more than minutes, you will be hated. At least, until it's fixed, then you'll go back to being ignored.

If you choose no, well you have two choices: Change the license and yank the rug out from under people, or pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to someone else - who might pass it on to a scammer who breaks the whole internet. Either way, the internet will vilify you for twice as long for your choice.

Many people, especially with programmer brain chemistry, end up going down the high-momentum-low-friction route of burning themselves out for the sake of conflict (and bad reputation) avoidance. Because it's very easy for you to say "sell your product", especially if that's something you're good at (or if you've never done it before and so presume it's something you're good at).

So once you see that, and you know that, and you see fellow developers stuck in the same hole and you see that you are well placed to do something - anything - to help change that, wouldn't you?

> there is no expectation of being paid. If one expects to be paid, one should sell their product.

Like most blasé statements, this statement doesn't help anyone. Not least because that's exactly what Tea seems to be trying to help people to do. Whether they succeed or not, no idea - but I wouldn't be bashing the concept this early on.

Firstly, let me say that I hate the idea of take-home tests. I don't consider myself particularly woke, but it seems obvious that forcing people to find a two hour slot in their personal lives to produce their best code for a throwaway project, which may not even get them the job... that's going to discriminate against parents of small children and those caring for loved ones. Statistically speaking, females and BAME applicants will suffer more.

So if you feel you have to offer this, always allow a path for people to opt out (WITHOUT them giving you a reason. Just don't.) And as an applicant, if you feel this part of the process is going to be difficult for you due to your circumstances, always ask the question.

How they treat your request will be one of the best benchmarks you can get of whether the company's equality and compassion policies have teeth, or whether it's just lip service.

That said, for some people it does work. It makes it easier to determine a person's skill level. It weeds out those who can't code or don't have any experience of best practices.

So when I had to quickly find myself a new job recently, I was asked to do a couple of take-home projects. Knowing that the roles all had an element of knowledge transfer and mentoring, I set up a screen recorder (with audio) and narrated my solution.

It felt completely weird. It was totally unnecessary. But it meant I could watch it back with fresh eyes, and see whether I justified my decisions well, whether I explained myself cogently, and what I would do in the future.

So no, don't be insulted by the process. Use it to your advantage.

Think of it in terms of human languages.

C and C++ (and many - but not all - compiled languages) get compiled into Native program, so they get compiled into instructions that talk the computer's language, and when they get run they talk directly to your computer... albeit with a thick accent. So a linux machine can only talk to your machine via the linux kernel, a windows machine talks with a windows accent, macs... you get the idea.

Because of this thick accent, programs cannot be shared between different operating systems (though there are some amazing projects out there that either do some accent translation, or more recently, do clever things to avoid any accent at all. There are almost always limitations to what can be done here though.)

That's not to say that sometimes, they don't need help. These "helpers" (or Shared Libraries - aka DLLs or .so files) might be absolutely necessary for a certain program to run, because the developers don't want to reinvent the wheel. So as someone else pointed out, even with native programs you sometimes need to download extra bits to get them running. But as you've noted, this is a lot more rare, and it doesn't usually change HOW you run the program, merely what needs to be installed first.

PHP, Ruby, Bash etc are Interpreted - so they need a special program that does the talking to the machine (again, via the kernel). This means they don't need to be compiled, which makes them quicker for developers to write, and easier to run on windows / linux / mac using the same codebase. But like with a human interpreter, it generally takes at least 2x as much energy to get the message across, which usually means a sometimes significant slowdown.

Note that this is not the same as having a Shared Library - and in fact these programs sometimes do use Shared Libraries directly. With interpreted languages, the interpreter starts first, it gathers together some core resources and ideas that it will need to be able to do its interpretation, and then it will load the human-readable program. Some shared libraries will be loaded by the interpreter, and some will be loaded later once the interpreter has seen the code.

Java is in a special category. It is both interpreted and compiled - that is to say, it compiles to something that looks a bit like a native program, but it still has this interpretive layer that gathers together core resources and ideas that the compiled program can then use - we call this part of the interpreter a VM, or Virtual Machine. It then loads a program that is very much not human-readable into that VM, which then does all the translating.

The theory is, Java could be the best of both worlds. It can have speed closer to a compiled language (and in fact, can sometimes be a little faster in places, as the VM contains some nifty tricks to move things around on certain machines) and yet the compiled languages can be run on any machine that has the Java Runtime installed (I believe they coined the phrase "Write once, run everywhere" which very soon got corrupted to "Write once, test everywhere" because the first few versions of the Java VM were spectacularly buggy)

As for that dislike of Java, I will point out that I spent 5 years writing Java programs. Once I was no longer forced to write Java programs, I stopped, and haven't touched it for at least 10 years. Because while Java could be the best of both worlds, it wasn't then. And it might be much better now... maybe. I cannot forgive it for the years of my life that it stole; and am now very happy in the arms of pretty much any other language.

Might be worth pointing out the word politics is, for many, a pejorative. In that worldview, this statement is more akin to "Good thievery" or "Good fraud" in which the implication is obvious that it is describing ways of being better at that act, not that you are working towards any moral aims.

But yes, the word "Good" is clearly intended as poetic counterpoint to the "Bad" in behaviour.

Again, not exactly the best oscilloscope in the world, but amazing considering the price ($29).

Unfortunately, the agency that runs the scheme won't allow me to visit my bed-bound mother without "evidence" of a clear test, despite the fact that the system only checks that a new test id is given, not whether you actually used the test, or what the result was (you're expected to be truthful on that form - you're not allowed to just be truthful when you enter the building).

Which completely defeats the point.

I did an LFT on Tuesday, and registered it - but hit the wrong box, said I was positive, clicked send, panicked, didn't notice that there was a link to fix it, tried to use the back button, etc.

Long story short, I ended up registering another LFT just so that I could mark myself as non-contagious - but that wasn't enough for the Test and Trace system. The next day I was hounded by text messages, and then called by an operative at the end of the day.

I told them the mistake, and they told me there's nothing their system could do - I needed to call 119 (they didn't tell me which phone system options I needed - It's a horrendous phone system) and get them to mark it as a mistake.

But before I abruptly ended the call with this operative, she told me that until I do this, I'm not allowed out of my house because my phone number was being monitored. I was not polite about the end of that call (I was not rude, mind - not her fault they she has a script to follow - but I was a bit angry)

And once I finaly got bounced around 119 and found the right person to talk to, she said: "Well, self isolation rules end tomorrow - so don't worry about it".

I picked the right time to make this mistake, apparently. But yeah, software has far too much control and extra-legal real-life consequences.

As far as I understand (which is little more than this twitter thread) the flush command should only return a success response once any data has been written to non-volatile storage.

If the storage still requires power after that point to maintain the data, that storage area is volatile, no?

So if the device has returned success (and I'm not going to claim that they've ensured that it was the device returning success and not the adapter, or that they even verified what the response was - those seem like valid questions) presumably the power wind-down should not be an issue?

That said, I presumed by "disconnect the cable" the test involved some extension cable from the motherboard straight to drive to make it easier to disconnect - would that therefore make it a valid test of the NVMe?

I mean... ignoring the bitwise arithmentic (which this only obvious to people used to doing binary operations) this is the kind of maths that an 11yo could do.

That said, the patented solution is a little more complex. But not by much.

Which makes me curious: what other patents have we violated in our day-to-day without even knowing it?

It might be worth pointing out that you are dismissing a comment discussing a page that is (likely) making a criticism of the HN rules by implying - without good reason - that it is instead a criticism of the community, and not a critique of the site rules and the kinds of content it promotes.

Unless you're only meaning the "don't sneer" part - which is difficult to police among intellectuals, and if it's only policed at HN-directed criticism, is probably bad form.

In short: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

But if we are being honest with ourselves, HN is very much a featherweight unicorn in an ocean of lumbering behemoths. And that's part of the attraction for this particular crowd.

Would be interested in other high-profile rare cases, like HN.

Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about?

I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)

The upshot is, so long as your postgres + rails app isn't doing some kind of DB write with every request, and doesn't do much - or ideally anything - with Redis, and you want 200ms time-to-first-byte globally (or at least, in multiple locations across the world) then you can easily get better performance with Fly.io than most other solutions.

It's a really clever solution, and one day I'd love to work on a project that fulfils all of those constraints. Haven't found one yet though.

> Thacker writes in the introduction, in which he claims that Ventavia unblinded patients, not that “inadvertent unblinding may have occurred”. There’s a huge difference between the two.

The definition of unblinding does not require someone to actually see it.

If a doctor fixes your eyesight, and you refuse to open your eyes afterwards, have you been unblinded?

https://www.noclor.nhs.uk/active-research/unblinding : "Unblinding, sometimes referred to as code-break, is the process by which the treatment/allocation details are made available either purposefully (i.e according to the code-break procedures) or accidently."

If this information was made available - whether or not that information can be proven to be accessed - then an unblinding has occurred.

So to say that they "unblinded" some patients is not wrong. And if the person who found this out should have been blind to the data, then an unblinding access definitely did occur.

And if you're saying that they should have been more precise about this because people in the audience might not be in healthcare and might not know the technical definitions, I'll refer you to the header on the BMJ website: "Intended for healthcare professionals"

> The framing Thacker went with is that the Pfizer vaccine's safety and efficacy are in question due to falsified trials.

That isn't antivax spin. That's just using the correct terminology.

And also, that isn't the framing he went with:

"Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight."

In nice big letters.

Compare that to Gorski's framing:

"Last week, The BMJ published an “exposé” by Paul Thacker alleging patient unblinding, data falsification, and other wrongdoing by a company running three sites for the massive clinical trial of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. It was a highly biased story embraced by antivaxxers, with a deceptively framed narrative and claims not placed into proper context, leading me to look into the broader question: What the heck happened to The BMJ?"

Exposé in quotation marks. "Embraced by antivaxxers" (not that he is claiming Thacker is one, of course, but blaming the article writer for the kind of people who reads it seems perverse at the least)

Then second paragraph of the introduction: "investigative journalist turned anti-GMO muckraking crank Paul Thacker"

Oof.

(Btw, I'm intentionally not looking Thacker up - don't care who he is or what ad-hominems actually contain truth. Seems like a fools game to me)

So given that, what was Gorski's problem with Thacker's framing?

"Notice the framing. Contrary to Bourla’s statement, the narrative goes, “several” (three, actually, as it turns out) sites in Texas run by Ventavia were supposedly flouting clinical trial safety"

Oh, and that he used the word "Whistleblower" to describe the whistleblower. And that can be misleading, because calling them that (aside from giving them all-important legal protection) might be considered positive in people's eyes.

Thacker using the word "several" which means "more than 3" is definitely wrong, unless he has evidence that the bad science is more widespread than just the three institutes he centers his report on.

And maybe there was a little sloppiness in the language, a little exaggeration in the effects or a little lack of detail in the way he amalgamated his data.

But it's still quite a long article that clearly shows "Ventavia is potentially an irresponsible steward of pharmaceutical trials and Pfizer needs to have greater level of oversight over such contractors".

Or, as Thacker _actually_ put it, poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.

It smacks of "Yes, some sloppy science was done here, but you can't prove it changed the results? Can you? Can you prove it? Huh? No? Well then shut your dirty mouth!"

Yes, this was supposed to be a blind study but participants had pages detailing whether they had the placebo or not in their notes. Did anyone actually read those pages? Nobody knows. Did you read those pages? Did you? I bet they didn't! I bet NOBODY reads the participants notes! Nobody ready them, it's all fine, and they yanked those pages out within a few somethings (We'll gloss over how someone might have found this out, and whether they were likely to be privy to the information already)

Yes, there were a bunch of used needles discarded in normal binbags rather than in a sharps box, but that doesn't PROVE that they were poorly trained! Oh no. It was probably just a bad day. Did it change the outcome? You can't prove it did! Don't tell me about it unless you're sure!

No, there's no evidence that THESE issues were reported, but look! Other issues were reported! The management had previously discussed how bad they were at the science! If they knew they were bad, they wouldn't continue to be bad would they! And if things were reported, and other things weren't, that's not likely is it... that's just confusing... CONFUUUUUUSSIIIIINNNGG

Yes, they had to take corrective action, but at least they took corrective action! There couldn't have been THAT many people affected, could there? Do you know? I don't know. I bet there weren't many. A handful maybe. Probably just an old couple who were discarded early on for licking the other participants faces. It's inconsequential. Definitely not a problem. No problems here! Move on!

It's almost comical.

It also really bugs me that rather than saying "The article says", throughout they say "Thacker says". They've made it a personal vendetta against an evil person making things up, like they're not even trying to be balanced about it.

That said, I love the summary: "In the end, we’re left with a lot of smoke, but no clear fire." Hmm.. if only there was a well known saying about this. No ... something ... without ... oh, I don't know. Seems legit.

> Footnotes

> Provenance and peer review: commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

While it is an article, it has (in theory) been peer reviewed.

Compare that to this article:

> Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally reviewed.

I will point out though, I would rather be undignified and call out bad arguments, than saying it takes a "certain type of person" to show bad arguments.

Prove me wrong. Show me the arguments that actually do make sense. I'd love to have a good reason not to sit on the fence, these spikes ain't doing my piles any good.

But quite frankly, my dignity doesn't care.

> We have very strong prior knowledge that diseases arise naturally

Correct. We also have very strong prior knowledge that existing diseases can be manipulated and produced by means of unnatural selection.

We also have strong prior knowledge that this particular lab have done a fair amount of that. With coronaviruses. With bats. 5 minutes with wikipedia would tell you that.

It's a bit like saying "We have very strong prior knowledge that coins can land heads-up, so this coin could never be showing tails".

> not observations that caused the hypothesis to be proposed in the first place

Please cite your sources. Otherwise, you're just showing bias against the people proposing the theory in the first place.

And let's be fair, conspiracy theorists are more often wrong than right, so I understand your distrust of them.

But also let's be fair:

- if it was true that Covid-19 originated in that lab, I don't think anyone is saying "oh no, China would never cover something like this up"

- the geographical coincidence is a compelling coincidence.

> Solid reasoning needs observations to precede a hypothesis, not the other way around.

This is dodgy ground, and shows a serious misunderstanding of the applicability - and even the process - of the scientific method. Observations like "viruses rarely jump between species like this" and "virology labs can produce viruses" are valid outcomes of pre-hypothesis research. Tests such as "If the WHO try to investigate, the Chinese government will attempt to restrict investigators" might be problematic (write it up in your analysis!), but are nonetheless valid. There are very few easily measured predictions in this.

If you want to go scientific method on this, by all means share your hypotheses and tests. "Lots of clever people have said this" or "I trust this source more than that source" is not a valid test when the waters are so muddied.

So no, this is not false objectivity at all. This is your opinion masquerading as fact. In all the data gathering I've done, I've seen nothing to compel me to take one opinion over another. If you want to actually try, using real arguments, please feel free.

"A virus whose whole job it is to mutate and infect mutated and infected people."

I think most reasonably sensible people would consider these to be fairly equal in terms of unlikeliness or simplicity. So yes, Occam's razor does not apply, but not because of your particular bias against one of the options.

> that is not supported by any observation

It's supported by at least 3 observations, which is that a leading virology lab known to manipulate bat-based coronaviruses was less than 30mins drive from the potential wet market source, and that China has a history of covering up controversial facts, and that China did at least their usual amount of hindrance for investigators.

I have absolutely no preference for one theory over the other. Or neither. I have no special evidence, and speculation at this point seems pretty pointless.

And unless you do, telling people they're stupid because of their preference is only going to cement their belief in a coverup. So maybe we should quit screaming at people and just say "you do you".

(Just to clarify: Feel free to work against sinophobia... that's perfectly valid. But again, dismissing critical thought on a topic out of hand does nothing but hand the Sinophobes an own-goal)

The problem is that individuals and small businesses would rather interpret the law in a way that isn't going to get them in trouble, even if it is over-reaching. There has been a level of paranoia stirred up, caused by other companies interpreting the law badly.

It's like staying away from all bodies of water because someone sometime drowned while swimming in the sea. It's a vast overreaction, but it works.

In short, we have lots of armchair lawyers giving idiot-in-a-hurry interpretations, and everyone is doing it wrong because everyone is scared of doing it wrong.

It doesn't matter what the banners were intended for.

If the site allows you to visit it, is it working incorrectly?

If a site works correctly, but would work even better with a cookie, is that cookie essential?

Obviously this isn't the way the lawmakers intended the law to be interpreted, but it is probably considered a valid interpretation of the law.