totemandtoken

11 ms·

91.
by totemandtoken 6y ago
I didn't mean "hacker" as opposing engineering. Think of it this way - a hacker will give you an MVP. An engineer will take an MVP and turn it into true-blue infrastructure or if that can't be done, give you a technical
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Mechanical engineer who worked as an energy engineer before getting his CS degree speaking here, but I'd tentatively say yes. I don't have a whole lot of experience using my CS degree yet but the main difference between a software
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Thanks god some else hates this as much as I do. As someone who probably is intellectualizing some latent mental illness, I find a lot more value in just adopting a pessimistic view on life. I get that I'm extreme in this regard, but h
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Possibly, but that strikes me as the path of most resistance. You are competing to create a more efficient market than one engineered by thousands of employees over a long period of time. I really doubt that one individual or even a handful
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
I posted this the other day on a the "What are you working on?" thread, but: >> I'm making something I call "newsbetting" - you get an article stripped of title, author, or source information and you have to b
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
I'm making something I call "newsbetting" - you get an article stripped of title, author, or source information and you have to bet on whether the article is right or left wing based on the content. It's definitely not r
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
"We vote on values, we bet on beliefs" - Robin Hanson. Voting tells us what we value but that doesn't mean what is good for us. It also treats all content as somewhat equivalent, which isn't true. A call to (maybe violen
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
This point should be upvoted more. Decentralized moderation means decentralized pain. You can run standard philosophic thought experiments about "utility monsters" but at the end of the day a lot of online content causes real harm
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Philosophize this is great. If you were a fan of McLuhan, you should read L.M. Sarcasas. His blog ( https://thefrailestthing.com/ ) was how I was introduced to McLuhan, Postman, and other philosophers of media and technology.
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
I respectfully disagree. The writing on the Shield was good but kind of amateur compared to the Wire. I really want to like Kurt Sutter, and often I do, but he doesn't hold a candle to Simon and the rest of the writers on the Wire. The
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
This is a beautiful site done in such an original way. I just tried it on my favorite Vonnegut book: http://prosecraft.io/library/kurt-vonnegut/mother-night/
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
So funnily enough, my bachelor's was in mechanical engineering and I'm currently pursuing a master's in computer science after having worked in industry for a few years. While I think I agree with your point, I'm going t
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Man, I really hope things turn up for you. Just on the basis of your attitude, it sounds like you deserve it. Depression's a bitch and I know burnout all too well, but it sounds like you have a good idea about the work it needs to over
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
I recommend trying to familiarize yourself with the main fields in philosophy first (aesthetics, ethics, postmodernism, whatever) and major contributors. I did this mostly through podcasts. Pick a few philosophers from you favorite field an
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
I love philosophize this. Stephen West, the host, has a really interesting story too. Man was just bagging groceries and sick of his life, and that's how he got into philosophy.
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
This should be upvoted more, very well said. I usually frame it in terms of incentives but yes, you are absolutely correct, there is a power play involved.
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
The funny thing is the author acknowledges what a real solution would be - distributed fact checking, in which we can't say one institution or panel of experts has a monopoly on arbitration of the Truth™. If it were done in a way that
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Reminds me a lot of this talk from the Pinboard guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vt8zqhHe_c Or this talk from the Bandcamp guy about financial sustainability: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaUkS-lr-ZM
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
It's sad that so much well-written code is proprietary. I'm currently doing a masters in CS as a career change from mechanical engineering and what surprises me is how little time we spend learning to read code. It would be nice t
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
This comment (I think, from my limited experience) really does capture all the context around my question really well. Of course not all old code is immediately well-written by mere virtue of its survival - a lot of it is, as mentioned here
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Somewhat related question you might be able to answer - what are good examples of really resilient code bases a junior developer can look at to learn? Old code still in production just sounds antifragile to me and that's the sort of co
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
As the joke goes, "There does exist a 10x engineer, but unfortunately it's in binary"
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Damn fine write up. Favorited this one, good job!
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Obviously, to echo everyone else's sentiments, I'm grateful for dang and tbh the hn community at large. But one thing I keep thinking back to is the abysmal discussion of the Event Horizon Telescope black hole pictures. I think th
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
This is gorgeous! I'm going to have to spend more time with this. Very interesting approach
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
>>Proceeds to read aloud the 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Reminds me a lot of this old open source project called Orb Swarm[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orb_Swarm
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
Another solarpunk influence is Ursula Le Guin. The issue is that Le Guin is a one-of-a-kind, amazingly good writer and most solarpunk writers...aren't that.
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
A lot of the other comments are describing teachers who went on to have successful or talented students, much like the parent. Consider the inverse case, which probably sounds out of left field to you - the cult leader. Many cults start out
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by totemandtoken 6y ago
My deepest condolences, very sorry to hear that

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