wgerard

Hah, this is amazing! This reminds me of how I used to (and still do, sometimes) read third-party code.

For an OS class in college, we had to modify fork (and re-build the kernel) to track how many times a particular process had been forked (and probably some other statistics I'm forgetting at the moment).

I remember going through a very similar process for the first time - injecting white space below chunks of code, writing out my own comments, and then using that to figure out how to modify fork. Looking at the author's fork.c comments gave me a feeling of nostalgia.

The useful part of course is going through yourself and writing your own comments, but it can be really helpful to start with something like this (and then write your own version of the comments).

I'm really struggling to think of creative and abstract jobs that meet all of the following criteria:

1) Take place in a typical corporate setting--which is the context here, nobody's asking studio musicians to do stand-ups.

2) Have 0 artifacts of progress being made. Even brand design goes through iterations.

3) Are so abstract that it's impossible to distill your thought process into a small summary each day

If it's really impossible to summarize what you did all day, I'm going to question if you were actually doing anything at all.

You should really know what you're doing all day. If you can't even summarize what you were doing all day, that sounds like a bad thing. The evidence is your story about what you actually did.

Here's a perfectly great update that didn't result in a quick win:

"I spent all day debugging that null pointer issue like we discussed. I thought maybe it was because the API was sending nulls across, but I looked at the logs and couldn't find any instance of that happening. I thought maybe it was a type coercion issue too, but I wrote a few tests to rule that out and it turned out not to be the case. Then I remembered reading about a memory corruption issue that sometimes happens in our runtime version, so I spent the rest of the day reading about the situations where that occurs and figuring out if it applies to us, but didn't get enough time to finish that up completely."

I don't work there, but it seems pretty clear to me.

Morning slack message (which isn't the same thing as a standup): "Hey, I'm going to do X,Y,Z today but I'm also going to run a few errands after lunch so I'll be MIA from 12-2 CET but available after until 6 CET".

"Work when you want" doesn't have to mean "I have no idea when you'll be available today".

> You began by suggesting that the cities I mentioned weren't in the Midwest

Because I agree the midwest has a low CoL. But people are moving to cities like LA, which don't. Even cities like Denver are starting to experience large CoL increases, so I'm not even really sure what your point is.

> My point, now as then, was that places such as the cities I mentioned are increasingly attracting the best tech sector job applicants

What are you basing this on? It seems silly to assume that the population growth in these cities is entirely tech-driven.

> New Yorkers ought to take the time to ask why that is

Why?

> Ask yourself, why are places like Nashville growing so much?

Why do low cap stocks sometimes grow explosively compared to high cap stocks?

Answer: When you're smaller, it's easier to grow at faster rates.

> I don't know many people who move back to NYC.

I do, so I guess we're at an impasse here.

> If New York companies want to attract the best job applicants, then they ought to think about what else they can offer

Large salaries, obviously. Opportunities, if you want that. Tim Hockey lives in the NYC area, not Omaha.

> If the influx in Nashville is from Louisiana, that's still important, because it represents an influx that previously would have gone to some other city where there are attractive jobs.

Your original comment:

> Everyone's moving to more comfortable places with lower costs of living.

Moving from Louisiana to Nashville (or from NYC to Seattle) doesn't encompass that statement, so yeah, it does matter.

> Because, if NYC doesn't compete, then it loses the best job applicants to places like Nashville.

Or, NYC attracts good job applicants and Nashville can as well. This doesn't have to be some weird hyper-competitive thing where NYC < Nashville because Amazon isn't coming to NYC.

People aren't leaving NYC - the city's still growing in population despite being, again, by far the largest city in the country. NYC's doing fine. NYC will be continue to be fine without Amazon. Nashville can be fine too.

I'm not trashing your city, I don't know why you feel the need to trash mine.

> Gee, I don't remember mentioning "LA/Seattle/etc." by name. Unlike some other cities that I mentioned by name. Did you see the part where I mentioned cities by name?

You mentioned some cities by name that have growing populations, with the implication being that they're moving FROM the city TO those places.

If the the influx in Nashville is from Louisiana, then who cares? What does that have to do with NYC or people chasing lower CoL areas?

> Great, now compare that to the growth rates of Dallas or Nashville or etc.

Great! Let's see how they continue to grow once they reach NYC's size. Adding 3% to a city as large as NYC is significantly different from adding 3% to Omaha.

For example, Nashville's population is about where NYC was at right around the civil war. Sounds like we'll have to wait a bit.

> I mean, you could focus on whether the word "midwest" is accurate

It's actually pretty important, because the crux of your argument is that they're moving to places with much a lower CoL. If people are moving from NYC to LA/Seattle/etc., your argument doesn't really hold much water.

> or you could take my point that there is a reason why people are moving out of places like NYC in favor of less dense cities that don't smell like urine.

Where are you getting that information from? As far as I can tell, NYC has had about a 6% population growth since 2010. It actually matches the US overall population growth pretty well, which is pretty impressive for what is far and away the most populated city in the country.

Ohio is definitely considered the midwest.

> At some point, New Yorkers ought to ask themselves why everyone wants to move to these nice midwestern cities.

Not sure why you chose the midwest as a qualifier here - out of all the cities you listed, only Omaha would be considered a midwestern city.

Out of the 15 fastest growing cities according to the Census, almost none of them are in the midwest [1] (Only one really: Columbus). Admittedly it's over a short time span.

Also: #5 is LA, a city I don't think anyone would consider to be low cost of living.

The real story is that the south (+ Texas, depending on what you consider Texas) seems to be growing rapidly, not the midwest.

1: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/estimate...

One term encourages the idea that they're people first-and-foremost, with the adjective used to describe a particular subset of people.

The other removes the emphasis on them being people and is pretty depersonalizing.

As you can imagine, it's much worse when it's a historically marginalized group--as an example, fewer people will care if you say "blondes" vs. "blonde-haired people".

Eh, I don't think it's stupid it's just not going to solve homelessness. I'll preface this by admitting that I'm not well-versed with the problem (other than what I see), so this could be off-base and I'll feel stupid for having written this.

Understanding the who/when/where of homelessness isn't stupid - Epidemiology is a well-respected field built around just that (for health and diseases, obviously). Certainly part of solving the problem is understanding the distribution of the problem.

Does anyone currently track that information with any appreciable amount of accuracy? If so, I could definitely see this as being pointless. If not, sounds like really useful information to know.

Obviously lots of questions and suspicion here makes sense, like why it's a private company and not an NGO, why they can't anonymously track this information, etc. but "tracking whereabouts" is also a feature of many epidemiological studies.

> i dont understand, no one is forcing you as an individual to use any of these services or buy any of these devices

Not to be too contrarian or tin-foil-y, but this is a bit simplistic view of modern advertising platforms.

These companies absolutely have troves of information about you, even if you've never interacted with them directly. Your social circle indirectly shares information about you, retailers share information about you, etc. Regardless of whether you use a platform like Facebook, it has a profile of who you are.

Saying you're not forced to use their services or devices is only trivially true: Sure, you're not forced to use it directly, but you might as well be given that they're collecting your information regardless.

And sure, you're not forced to buy from retailers who share your information or have acquaintances that use Gmail, but it's in the same way that you're not forced to buy produce that Monsanto has touched in some way - basically, good luck.

> This may be true socially, at least in some situations, but not legally or morally

Is that true? I just did some very cursory research, but: https://blog.lawinfo.com/2017/09/06/human-error-causes-94-pe...

> I find it curious that we are going to hold autonomous vehicles to a perhaps impossibly high standard while we also hold people to barely any standards at all.

This is all US-centric obviously, but my 2c: We can blame individuals for bad behavior, it's harder for us to reason about complex systems breaking and that scares us.

When an accident happens currently, we immediately rush to judgement: You're a bad driver, you were going too fast, there's order in the universe and you made a conscious choice to disrupt that. We'll really reach sometimes too (I've heard this in real life): You had a stroke and lost control of your car? The crash is still your fault, you should've lived a healthier lifestyle. Or it's your spouse's fault, they should've noticed you were acting funny and not let you drive the car.

When people screw up, it's almost always someone's fault even if we have to really reach for it. We rarely consider the system that led to the failure and absolve the individual. When computers screw up, it's unclear who to blame and it's much scarier as a result, so we hold computers to a much higher standard.

Just a clarifying point:

Optometrists are different from Ophthalmologists. Ophthalmologists are medical doctors (i.e. they have an MD), optometrists are not. Optometry also involves post-graduate training, and results in an OD (Doctorate of Optometry).

In the type of store you're talking about, it's much more likely you'll see an optometrist, not an ophthalmologist.

Interesting choice of examples IMO.

The US version of The Office is apparently by far the most watched show on Netflix (US). Even if you acknowledge it went on probably one or two seasons too long (which isn't an uncommon opinion, to be fair), 7 seasons is far longer than most BBC shows last.

And, as another poster noted, I would argue that a lot of people think the BBC version of Sherlock has definitely gone on way too long.

I think British TV has actually started taking influence from American TV over the past decade or so (or at least realized that Americans are watching and have started to cater to those audiences). Downton Abbey I feel also similarly went on probably a couple series too many.

If the performance art:

1) Qualifies as research, and

2) Is directly or indirectly funded by a federal research grant

then yes, it would.

I doubt much performance art qualifies, though.

From my other comment:

As the author stated, the goal was to:

> "to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research"

"study" being the operative word, there.

Indirectly? Yes.

Boghossian is an employee of Portland State, an institution which almost certainly receives grant funding from the federal government for research. Some minute portion of his salary/office/supplies/etc. are paid for by said federal research grant money.

Regardless, the regulations apply to the entire institution and therefore any faculty members of said institution.

> If not, what made this part of their university life?

The fact that he likely included his academic affiliation on any papers he wrote, likely used university resources to conduct or discuss some part of the research (e.g. meeting rooms, his office, his office phone), is an employee of the university, etc.

I mean, come on - no IRB is going to let you claim a technicality like that. If you could skirt around research regulations by just claiming you were doing it "on your own" with no affiliation to the university, the IRB would be effectively pointless.

Are they performing research that receives support, directly or indirectly, from the United States federal government?

If not, the answer is no, though you can read the federal regulations yourself to prove me wrong:

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0...

> For medical research, sure.

Behavioral research too (which this certainly is). Anything involving humans, pretty much.

> I think the IRB process is backwards: researchers should determine whether their methodology is ethical (or within whatever other institutional regulations), and be tried only after a report is received, or an investigation is started

Err, I don't think that would work as well as you think. Plenty of studies fall into gray areas, especially in behavioral research, and it's not necessarily easy to reverse the damage once it's done.

The "Little Albert" study could very easily be argued as "ethical" or at least not harmful (almost certainly the behavior became extinct over time) by the researcher, but nonetheless the potential for lifelong harm is there and it would likely never be approved today.

Sometimes once you've done the damage, it's done. Research institutions would rather be safe than sorry with studies involving people, both for basic ethical considerations and reputation interests. Especially after the spat of very questionable studies done in the latter half of the 20th century.

This took me a minute and a second read, for anyone else who was similarly confused:

> The review board also determined that the hoax project met the definition for human-subjects research because it involved interacting with journal editors and reviewers

The university's basically saying that the project itself is the problem, not the individual articles themselves. As the author stated, the goal was to:

> "to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research"

which is a behavioral research meta-study involving humans (in this case, journal reviewers and editors). Of course, behavioral research involving humans almost always requires IRB approval.

I realize on a third reading this is stated pretty clearly ("the hoax project met.."), but took me a minute nonetheless.

This is going to sound condescending but I really don't mean it to be, I just couldn't think of a better way to phrase this:

Did you read the bottom half of the entry's summary or the entry itself? Specifically:

> In the 1950s and 1960s, states rejected Dodge repeatedly

> The general legal position today is that the business judgment that directors may exercise is expansive. Management decisions will not be challenged where one can point to any rational link to benefiting the corporation as a whole.

and quotes from a number of law journals:

> Dodge is often misread or mistaught as setting a legal rule of shareholder wealth maximization. This was not and is not the law.

> the rule of wealth maximization for shareholders is virtually impossible to enforce as a practical matter. The rule is aspirational, except in odd cases.

Missing a final could easily be a life-altering event, so I don't think it really makes sense in this case.

As long as it's a rare occurrence, I don't really see the problem here.

> All other things being equal, isn't it good for shareholders if the stock stays on the NYSE?

Shareholders would MUCH rather you have a plan to get back above $1/share. If this is your basement flooding, a reverse split is trying to soak it up with paper towels: It might work temporarily, but eventually you're gonna run out. Shareholders want to know you have a plan to fix the leak, or at least have a plan to call the plumber to fix it.

> 29 days isn't a lot of time, and even if the company quickly pivoted, they can't be sure about how the market will react.

29 days is to trigger the delisting process. NYSE will then contact them about their plan to become compliant (which gives them an extra 10 days to respond), and basically puts them on the equivalent of a PIP (and carries many of the same implications that PIPs do). They're then held to certain financial milestones, which can result in delisting if they don't meet them.

Depending on the company, the whole process can be pretty long - see, for example, HMNY which I think triggered the delisting process officially in June of this year, but obviously is still listed on NASDAQ. If Blue Apron does get delisted, it won't be until well into next year.

> Even if the company believes they can increase their valuation within 29 days, why not have a backup plan also?

Because it's not a plan. It doesn't improve the fundamentals of the company at all. It's an admission that you have no idea how to create more value and are merely buying time. Unless you truly believe that Blue Apron is on a great trajectory and just needs a few years for the market to catch up on that idea, a reverse stock split should anger you as a shareholder.

A backup plan is to take on debt, to replace every single executive, or to seek acquisition. A reverse stock split could be part of a larger plan, but it's not a plan itself. It's a tactic.

Paraphrasing from another answer:

You can do that, but shareholders can also do the following in response:

1) Demand a change in leadership, a sale, or any number of significant changes.

2) Bail out en masse and sell, lowering the price even further. Few investors want to jump aboard what appears to be a sinking ship.

Eventually you'll hit the minimum market cap requirement as well, at which point a reverse stock split won't save you from being delisted.

Reverse stock splits simply to avoid being delisted is telling investors "we have no idea how to change direction so we're just gonna kick the can down the road for a bit". They can work sometimes, mostly for:

1) Large, established companies (e.g. AIG). Investors are more willing to believe that this is just a bad stretch for an otherwise valuable company.

2) Inherently risky and volatile industries, like Biotech. Investors are willing to roll the dice a bit more with Biotech because it is entirely possible for a "worthless" company to become very valuable very quickly (e.g. by discovering a new drug, being approved for trials, etc.).

Blue Apron isn't a large company, and it's very unlikely they figure out some magic formula that makes their company significantly more valuable overnight.

EDIT: For a recent example of a company reverse splitting to avoid delisting, check out Helios and Matheson (MoviePass). Even after the reverse split, they're trading for pennies a share. They're almost certainly going to be delisted in the near future.

It's a bit more difficult to trade shares, and brokerages will often have restrictions on trading OTC stocks for retail investors.

It's also just generally a milestone that the company is really not doing well, so investors tend to sell and recover what they can.