ergothus

34 ms·

241.
by ergothus 7y ago
Free speech is a fascinating debate to me. When I was younger, I was a free speech absolutist. I believed in rationality and that if you couldn't defend/oppose ideas then your position had no strength. Censorship was a sign of w
242.
by ergothus 7y ago
> about making sure that it's kept in sync with changes to the rest At one of my workplaces we had an application that was without a formal supporter and everyone hated to touch it. After I was assigned to dive in to fix a bug, I d
243.
by ergothus 7y ago
> I'm skeptical that all people at these levels are that driven by their compensation. All of your arguments make sense...except that we see people at these levels take actions to increase their compensation so frequently, even at
244.
by ergothus 7y ago
> if Google thinks its company is significantly undervalued, in which case buybacks are smart Honest questions here, as my stock understanding is fairly limited: Why does a company care if it's "undervalued"? How does a
245.
by ergothus 7y ago
Doesn't that fall apart over time? The consultant quickly becomes the monopoly provider, and the large amount of previously investment means that the customer can't afford to switch to another provider (since anything from the p
246.
by ergothus 7y ago
One argument in favor of UBI I found particularly thought-provoking (paraphrasing): "UBI isn't anti-capitalist, UBI enables capitalism. By providing the basic requirements for living, it allows everyone to actually participate in
247.
by ergothus 7y ago
This is definitely a problem, particularly for those that aren't in tech cities with endless jobs, but the alternatives discussed in this article are all....not great. * Work as a consultant - I'm biased here from my own bad exper
248.
by ergothus 7y ago
> Make it so bad that people stop driving. ...that only works if there are viable alternatives (see "public transit" portion of proposal" > make it so bad that people move closer to work. Do you really believe it's
249.
by ergothus 7y ago
> so they can't attract enough good talent. ...and they have no real way to evaluate the talent they DO attract, so they're doubly-screwed.
250.
by ergothus 7y ago
There's a problem involved when you don't have a subject matter expert. consider: here on HN commenters will often deride decisions made "anyone in the field with half a brain should know...". But if you don't have
251.
by ergothus 7y ago
> For some reason NYT seems immune to this criticism though. Not from where I've been sitting: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+NYT+b... You could argue NYT took a while to get called out, but
252.
by ergothus 7y ago
> Another hypothesis that equally well explains the data As noted in other comments, this DID check for causation and found employee happiness led the benefits, not the other way around.
253.
by ergothus 7y ago
> There is no incentive for their bosses to walk an extra mile to keep them happ, especially when pressing them a bit more yields an extra bit of performance, so they mostly aren't happy about their jobs That's the theory - but
254.
by ergothus 7y ago
> I'm not convinced those companies are making the most rational choice Neither am I - they're just making the common choice.
255.
by ergothus 7y ago
I've seen these arguments repeatedly, yet I only see this mattering to those companies where employees have a relative level of power and choice (e.g. non-game industry programmers, etc). Elsewhere, the attitude appears to have remain
256.
by ergothus 7y ago
> long before blu-ray hit the scene When the dust settled, perhaps, but I recall when the issue first came up in 2000 and just about every discussion argued technical merits...and where the porn industry was looking. Anecdotal data, but
257.
by ergothus 7y ago
Right?! I think there's lots of honest debate to be had about how superficial we are, but honestly, my reaction to this is "That worked? wow!" This is exactly why I have problems with all the "AI / self-driving c
258.
by ergothus 7y ago
I don't know about formal studies, but I've read many an article (insert appropriate "reading for the articles" joke here) talking about how demand for porn influenced early adoption of most new forms of media: printing,
259.
by ergothus 7y ago
> we still need to target es5 4 years later, This is a dramatic improvement over the 10 year lifespan of IE6 with es3. Once the need to target es5 drops, the next level gets even shorter - I don't think we'll get less than 2 y
260.
by ergothus 7y ago
That's my point. "the people's Congressmen owe it to be present to listen" - Why do they owe it? (more specifically, why is it bad not to?) . Either (1) because if you aren't present the communication is stilted a
261.
by ergothus 7y ago
> "It just comes down to the fact that I think it’s disrespectful for someone to be asking questions over a microphone or a speakerphone when individuals are actually taking the time out of their day to come and testify in person,&q
262.
by ergothus 7y ago
While others will be sarcastic (perhaps rightfully so), I think it's fair to actually point this out. Bethesda clearly doesn't do a lot of checks. Consider some of their Fallout 76 gaffes - including have no public test server.
263.
by ergothus 7y ago
> In 2014 they were all fired. Their strategy for testing Windows is now three fold: - Devs are expected to test their own code now I was at a company that did the same (at roughly the same time) - this was a terrible mistake. But it&#x
264.
by ergothus 7y ago
This advice is good, but never addresses the issues of: - cost - impact to work - fear of retaliation (Oh, that's illegal? Show me how that will be dealt with in ways that don't negatively impact my job/family/bank acco
265.
by ergothus 7y ago
One thing about human life that is remarkable is the dramatic range of climates we can survive in, compared to other species. Makes us forget that it is entirely possible to have climates that we CAN'T survive in (and even more that w
266.
by ergothus 7y ago
All true - my complaint here was that the article went from "Here's a correlation that might indicate causation" to "This is the cause". Science journalism, I know, but still, if we don't call it out, will it
267.
by ergothus 7y ago
> Bureaucracy isn't necessarily bad I didn't mean to imply it was! What it is, however, is resistant to change. Often that's a feature, not a bug. I've often generalized things as "govt is good at reliable, bad
268.
by ergothus 7y ago
> The research team discovered that the aging, senescent cells stopped producing a class of chemicals called nucleotides, which are the building blocks of DNA. When they took young cells and forced them to stop producing nucleotides, the
269.
by ergothus 7y ago
> If built correctly it's genuinely difficult to mess things up. ...but that also implies that it can built in such a way that it's genuinely difficult to improve, too, right? I worked in state government for a while, and I no
270.
by ergothus 7y ago
I knew of tadpoles, and I knew fish eggs, but somehow I guess I just imagined fish hatching as tiny fish.

More ›