edw

14 ms·

91.
by edw 7y ago
Any movement that gains traction will be corrupted. The moment companies want to hire people who tick a box, they pull on a supply chain of certification authorities (which includes, most perniciously in my opinion, grad schools) that codif
92.
by edw 7y ago
Why people have downvoted you is beyond me. There’s a lot of truth about investing and life in your comment.
93.
by edw 7y ago
Such TED-talk bullshit. There were multiple railway gauges. https://www.american-rails.com/civil.html
94.
by edw 7y ago
Or, in other words, nothing like a sparkline. This visualization is useful for gauge-like displays. Sparklines suck at communicating scale or proportion or context if the context is anything other than recent historical values. I could see
95.
by edw 7y ago
Yes. And there’s also the issue that even if someone would choose to work for free, incremental bodies in an org tend to increase the org’s complexity.
96.
by edw 7y ago
Take note, propagandists: If you keep your crude ad hominem wordplay to a minimum, you may find more success in manipulating opinion.
97.
by edw 7y ago
Much of my previous life: — ut? — Ugh what? [ Stare at screen for what feels like an hour. ] — nvm
98.
by edw 7y ago
Yes, they do have a team that uses "AI" and/or "ML" to identify properties. How effective that team has been or the extent to which that team's existence makes them a tech company are entirely different questio
99.
by edw 7y ago
I don't agree with your conclusions, but that didn't stop me from upvoting your comment. You touch on all sorts of important issues management should consider while deciding whether to adopt an oddball programming language or tech
100.
by edw 7y ago
You've reminded me of an observation I made recently about Star Wars: the behavior of Han Solo (pre-Greedo-shoots-first-bs) and Darth Vader aren't that different. It's the context that matters. If you're small and scrapp
101.
by edw 7y ago
Ever try dividing a meter or liter into thirds?
102.
by edw 7y ago
What are these tasks that were traditionally performed in customary units in the U.S. — and continue to be done in them — but are more suited to SI units? An important obstacle to my psychological well-being as an engineer is the failure
103.
by edw 7y ago
Aside from the occasional crashed Mars lander, technical people in the U.S. get along quite fine thinking in the units best suited to the task at hand. I develop film in my apartment, and I use metric units while developing black and white
104.
by edw 7y ago
No, I think this is a fine metaphor. If an engineer can understand a problem, identify a solution, and then implement, document, deploy, and support it in production for project after project, it’s completely legit to say they’re good engin
105.
by edw 8y ago
A thought experiment: What if HN changed nothing except that it never displayed point counts for posts, comments, or users? I think it would tamp down gadfly behavior. It may also, however, do the same to behavior that we want to encourage.
106.
by edw 8y ago
I don't understand the point of making a comment if one has no interest in reading replies.
107.
by edw 8y ago
Right on. I'm a photographer as well as a programmer, and I've largely stopped sharing photos on Instagram because I don't want to measure my work based on the number of likes each receives, and I don't want the people I
108.
by edw 8y ago
Has it occurred to anyone else that the HN karma system is a performance measurement technique that undermines the goals of HN? I've stopped commenting, largely because for any comment I might make, I can imagine the cynical karma-harv
109.
by edw 8y ago
It is irksome that people lay all of the horrors of the world at the door of “Capitalism” when people have been scamming, exploiting, and generally screwing each other over since the beginning of time. Capitalism is something that emerged i
110.
by edw 8y ago
Yes but can you run Emacs inside it?
111.
by edw 8y ago
I remember with fondness a professor of mine who drove mad some of my classmates by basically only grading papers on demand, due undoubtedly to some of what you’be mentioned undoubtedly. Classes may be what students take when they go to col
112.
by edw 8y ago
I’ll take your word for it, but the ads for Sandals resort I saw on tv twenty years ago sure seem a lot like what I observe walking through NYU’s campus every day.
113.
by edw 8y ago
American colleges more resemble four-year all-inclusive resorts than they do rigorous institutions of higher learning. Serving someone well doesn’t necessarily mean making them happy. Students — people who by enrolling at an institution in
114.
by edw 8y ago
And how do the people you do this to feel about it? The idea of enthusiastically applying sales techniques to interactions with one’s coworkers feels appalling. A group of colleagues is ideally a marketplace of ideas and, yes, one needs to
115.
by edw 8y ago
This practice has a very bad look, and my heart is with the freelancers. But I also know human psychology is fickle and there is a functionally identical way to pay freelancers that would generate far less ire: The client quotes the freel
116.
by edw 8y ago
The article never outlines what the alluded-to downsides are (p-hacking, spurious correlations) which makes me wonder if the article’s sourcing leaned too heavily on advocates of this theory-free approach, which was the subject of a Wired c
117.
by edw 8y ago
Since you mentioned the Greeks, anyone with the slightest interest in Ancient Greece should read “A War Like No Other” by Victor Davis Hanson. It’s a fascinating account of the Peloponnesian War. There’s a chapter on siege warfare.
118.
by edw 9y ago
Guilty as charged. Does mapping right option to hyper aggravate my sins?
119.
by edw 9y ago
I'm with you; you're talking to a more than twenty-five year user of Emacs here. I do try, however, to be no less circumspect of my own actions than I am of others'. Is saving my pinkie from cramping worth losing the ability
120.
by edw 9y ago
This may be 90% cargo culting, 10% reality. One of my former co-workers desperately wanted to be perceived as an Excel ninja, and had heard that people who had achieved guru-level Excel mastery would remove their F1 keys, and so one day p

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