ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

If they were indeed a perfect replica that fact wouldn't matter. They wouldn't know if they were a replica, you wouldn't, and only a 3rd party could ever tell you they weren't the person you love. At that point learning whether or not this person standing in front of you is a replica can only harm either party. Would you really subject yourselves to that information if it could only hurt someone you objectively love? It's not a light choice to be considered selfishly in a vacuum, because even if they are a replica they're still perfect and a person you genuinely do love. Why on earth would you want to learn something that would make you not love them, that would alienate them from their entire sense of self? Even if is the truth, nobody stands to gain from the information. So long as neither of you can tell the difference, the truth doesn't doesn't matter. Pretty sure this exact subject comes up in like 2 or 3 episodes of Rick and Morty.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

I'd prefer if someone who knew how to finish story without killing off the protagonist wrote this novel he's never going to write. It worked ONCE, one time. When Ned Stark was executed it was genuinely surprising and that first book was good enough to inspire many to finish the whole saga. By the end second novel I got the impression he was just trying to recycle the same story, peppering-in bits he picked up from writing workshops. Trying desperately to make new characters people might care about after killing-off anyone interesting. He has no idea how to finish a story other than an abrupt death. Woah, but wait but now Caitlin's a zombie or some shit... Yeah, no. Last you'll ever hear of that. I didn't realize what was going on until I went to an open mic comedy night. There was a shocking number of comedians who could draw you into a joke with a compelling hook, but only precious who could follow up with a real joke. The thought occurred to me, "This is Martin. A comedian who can't figure out how a joke works." He wrote 1 good book but never grew as an author. Now he's rich and old and I don't blame him if couldn't be bothered to give a shit. Oy, what am I even talking about now? Eh, I think a spiritual successor could take GoT a lot further than he ever will.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

I dropped graduate research into adversarial algorithms and generative adversarial networks when I realized instead of being paid beans to do something genuinely interesting I could get paid 6 figures to make business software and do whatever I want with my free time. Like so many other potential promising academic software engineers, I had a family to raise and a life to live. No kidding science needs more research software engineers, but that isn't going to change until science can pay software engineers at least a basic minimal income. When that changes I'll considering picking up where I left off.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

Studies like this will only be compounded by those attempting to quantify how harmful removing an entire nation's children from school for almost 2 years, to socially isolate them from their community while mongering fear of other people fared against their psychological well being. How many hacker news users were aggressively throwing shade at anyone who deign so much as offer an iota of dissent against the status quo's reaction to mandates? Funny how a dubious analog to shoving your head in the sand became a conduit of intolerance for people with beliefs that differ from our own. I was shocked how quickly everyone glommed onto a narrative so easily appropriated by special groups with direct conflicts of economic interests, while aggressively shaming anyone who stepped out of line to point that out or ask whether one policy or another was effective, or harmful. I have read about a lot of dumb things humanity has done throughout history, but our reaction to covid is probably the dumbest I'm likely to see in my lifetime. More studies like this to come, rest assured.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

I used a Palm, a phone about the dimensions of a business card, 1 slammer-pog thick, and loved it. The battery life was dismal, I had to disable most of the software which ran in the background, the camera was crap, but I loved that phone. Then my stupid provider implemented a list of approved devices and now I'm schlepping around a big piece of garbage with a cracked screen. I want my small phone back, so bad.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

What about the possibility guy was going to be asked to leave regardless of recent events, but the executive team decided the least they could do after he put in good time is allow him to collect some PTO on parental leave before handing him the official pink slip? I don't know what Twitter's benefits are but I imagine they have an, "unlimited leave" policy. Could be they've disagreed for a while and an argument came to an affront similar to, "Look man, I'm going to take leave to spend time with my new child, then we'll decide if it's the right move for me to return." Frankly this is a pretty boring conspiracy regardless, people leave jobs all the time. All I have to say is I hope dude enjoys a nice Summer with his family without worrying about this dumb product that for the most part narcissists use to trick themselves into thinking anybody gives a shit about what they have to say.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

Man I'm making a big assumption here but for someone who hasn't experienced a plane crashing into their home you seem to have a lot of angst for something that doesn't affect you in the scheme of things. Are you self aware enough to ask yourself if you're foisting your own baggage onto the shoulders of people and things you view as outsiders? Let me be the voice of reason here, my man. You're the only person that has the power to make you chill the fuck out. If you want to represent whatever tribe you hail from as better than conservatives, the elderly, or small planes I guess, you gotta change your attitude. The only thing launching into a weird tirade about airplanes, lead, and the elderly over an article about a guy landing a plane makes you seem kinda narcissistic, entitled, and maybe even a little bit mentally ill yourself. Your life would only get better the second you decide living in a haze of anger over shit you can't change is no means to an end. If you're so focused on that anger, you're not focused on the things you can change to make your world better. Please, chill out, go pick up trash in the park or something. I promise it'll make you feel better.

ManBlanket

4년 전discuss

I'm sure you're great. Nothing against you, but please don't do that. Just write what you mean if you can't handle some people misinterpreting a sarcastic remark. Let's think about this for a second. What's the point of sarcasm? If you have to tell people you're being sarcastic, are you still being sarcastic? Not sure what territory, "/s" blunders into, but I'm confident it's not sarcasm. It's something else that seems kinda... dumb... like on a fundamental level. Did people think themselves above saying, "jk"? Mostly I've just seen, "/s" beg the question of why someone would go and ruin a good sarcasm, or whether the thing they labeled as such was ever sarcasm to begin with. Like the parent comment here for example, it's not sarcasm. There's no biting irony, mockery, or criticism. It's just a silly non-sequitur joke remark. You'd have to be like legitimately autistic or something to not see that, and at that point, "/s" is just a drop in a bucket. I mean hot-take here, sorry, but let's think twice before adopting social queues from reddit.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

It's your first job out of college. To be honest you aren't a good developer yet. That might sound harsh but it's actually totally okay. I don't care how great your grades in college were, new grads don't understand how to build maintainable enterprise projects. They don't have ample experience to draw on when it comes to how best to solve a problem, because most of it time it's the first they've seen of that problem. Thrashing and failing is just part of the career. Having a nice long think over a post mortem is how you learn and grow. What really matters is whether you have a good attitude, if you can reflect and build on your mistakes, if you're pleasant to work with, and if you can gracefully give and receive feedback. You're not a great dev yet... and that's fine, because you're working on it.

The problem seems to be with your boss's expectations. So if I understand this right they gave a junior developer soul dominion over a CV project with evolving requirements and a tight deadline? That your manager isn't really reviewing your code and offering feedback on a daily basis? That you don't have a dedicated mentor? Of course you're thrashing. To give you a project and expect otherwise is stupid.

Look, I'm a firm believer in giving good people the support and tools they need to succeed, because I've never really seen it fail. People who want to do good will. I've mentored lots of junior devs and they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. The one weakness I can't abide is if they're too full of themselves to accept feedback or hard to work with. If that's not you then you'll keep getting better. Look, you might think you like that job and maybe today was an exception, but you don't really have a basis of comparison and what you described sounds kinda wack. I can tell you with 100% certainty if your colleagues don't have realistic expectations you're going to have a bad time. The blame fest is coming. There are a ton of chill teams out there that would appreciate your time. Might not be as flashy as CV, but at the end of the day building Rube Goldberg machine business software is pretty dang similar. What matters is if you enjoy coming to work.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

To what end then is it useful to drum up public fear of rabies in bats, if what actually leads to deaths seems to be economical problems? People only react stupidly to fear mongering. If you want a delightful read, the Merlin Tuttle Bat Conservancy has collected stories about how Fauchi's baseless, "idk, probably bats" reasoning has led to the extermination of entire populations. https://www.merlintuttle.org/

If you truly must live your life in fear of dying, look no further than heart disease and car accidents.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

Your point is totally valid, most high end careers are overtly hostile toward raising a family. I think it's a different tangentially related issue than that of this study. There's a difference between intelligent and ambitious individuals. Granted there's a certain intelligence filter in the capacity for a student to memorize and temporarily retain information, completing a medical residence is much more an act of attrition and perseverance than critical thinking. The tests administered in this study were puzzles like letter matrices and verbal analogies. I'm sure anybody can come up with plenty of anecdotes to the contrary. Under achievers who might smash these logical puzzles but bother with hardly more than what they need to tow the career line. Personally, I studied math and computer science, some of the cleverest people I know were pure math majors. Needless to say, most of which ended up on a different career path. On the other hand I known doctors and executives who, to put it nicely, lack a little spice when it comes to critical thinking. Career accolades have much more to do with a person's capacity to persevere and their priorities in life than with their intelligence.

That said I totally agree with your contention that careers need to be more accommodating of human behavior. The cynic in me has little hope anything of this nature will come from capitalist entities or governments. That said the optimist knows these societal constructs are composed of human beings, and are therefore capable of learning and improving.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

Maybe they were trying to do a little something for the creators, so they stop complaining about the rampant abuse of Youtube's automated copyright systems. Seeing as YT is completely unwilling to curb copyright strike trolling, or if a queef accidentally sounds like a Danny Elfman score, the good people at YT can stuff that thumb button and call it a day's work. Yay.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

I was entertained until this undoubtedly vaccinated hero used Covid as an excuse for not taking an in-person exam, despite writing this article in November of 2021. It's okay if you don't want to do something, but stop exploiting Covid. If you're still doing this it sounds ridiculous. Get over it.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

... Or you can just use Firefox. I'm not kidding. ><

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

At least Bonzai Buddy was cute. Also I thought I was the only weirdo who sorta kept track of my not-using-chrome streak. If we met for lunch I'm sure everyone else at the table would find themselves staring off into space as our conversation became increasingly difficult to relate to.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

I was enjoying this article right up until he started shaking his fist at the heavens. As it meandered into rambling he undermined what was shaping up to be a good read. Losing me with foregone conclusion his roommate's hesitance to go all-in on masks was the reason she got, "long-covid".

Seems he glommed onto the mask because it was something an individual can control in the face of an ultimately nihilistic reality, over which one has little influence. Like buying toilet paper despite assurances there is no shortage, myopic assertions on the observable sure seems to make people feel better. Speaking of shortages, the criticisms of n95's stemmed from a legitimate shortfall among medical personnel, despite questionable value to panic-buying consumers. "The Science" I'm sure he cites behind this rationale has been pretty clear regarding how Covid spreads. Prolonged close indoor personal contact. Wearing the n95 at the grocery store or while walking the dog poses little benefit because those situations pose little risk. Given serological investigation puts the rates of asymptomatic infection anywhere between 10 to 40:1, his roomie is more likely to have contracted it from him than from her unwillingness to wear a mask. Possibly while sitting at the dinner table with our author, rolling her eyes as he urgently espoused the virtues of the public N95. We'll never know for certain, but he'll surely continue to conversely reason her disagreement on the matter led to that, "stupid" conclusion.

Given the clarity of hindsight, global epidemiological statistics remaining largely unaffected by public mask policy starts to makes sense. After all if his reasoning behind the mask had an air of truth to it you'd be able to observe at least some impact on infection rates before and after mandates. Yet for the most part communities all followed a the similar bell-shaped trajectory, regardless of policy or political orientation. I see a lot of people pretending this isn't the case, that there isn't two years of data suggesting otherwise, meanwhile the rest are quietly bartering with their gods the others will get over it and move on with their lives. It's really a shame his article blundered into Covid territory, because he was starting to say something worthwhile. Like most conversations Covid, the substance evaporated as we were left with largely emotional appeals. Shame we can't talk about politicized risks pragmatically, trying to fit them into a wider context of facts and numbers. Like, why am I even talking about Covid when upwards of 8M people, largely children under 5, die every year from respiratory diseases caused by pollution? Sure seems the world has other problems. Maybe, like politics and religion, the topic just isn't suited for polite company.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

Publication bias might suggest otherwise.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

They don't care if a few eggs are broken, chalk it up to the price of progress for eliminating the overhead of vetting requests. Money in the bank. Maybe flooding Google with fraudulent requests would force them to take the issue of seriously. The moment overhead of litigation stemming from fraudulent requests exceeds that of legitimate requests they'll fix that problem. For that reason perhaps some individuals collaborating to build network of bots which systematically flag everything indiscriminately with DMCA takedown requests would be justified.

As of now it's pretty easy for Google to ignore the issue. One of many reasons corporations achieving the size of Alphabet inevitably becomes anti-consumer. They don't hear claims of fraud over the din of golden coins dropping into their accounts. I'd wager if Google Ads and Youtube were independent corporation they'd take supporting their customers and fraud a lot more seriously.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

Sounds like a wonderful tool for fundamental CS courses and projects. I remember assignments like creating a Cesar Cipher using Java, being distracted by tangential stuff like what the static keyword means and importing libraries. That language was a lot to take in, just tuning-out the noise from what I needed to learn. Something like half the class did not take the second course. Most of the thrash had little to do with the assignments themselves. Being able to toggle between a visual representation of the program and the code helps students' comprehension of the core concepts immensely. That much is obvious when you work with kids on Lego robotics projects. I could imagine a tool set like that, with the flexibility to build something like a console blackjack game. It would quickly become a standard for teaching secondary school programming courses. Hopefully someone else will take up that torch before my own kids are looking at learning how to program.

ManBlanket

5년 전discuss

The way this article is written makes it seem the focus of the bill is preventing the promotion of Amazon Basics. Personally it strikes me as a bit of a straw-man. The article seems acutely focused on this small aspect of the larger policy. Like the author is hoping the reader will throw the baby out with the bath water, in an evasive way. (Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post)

Personally I am finding it increasingly difficult to read the Post without noticing bias. I would encourage comparing this article to Klobuchar's own description of the bill before coming to your own conclusion. https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/2/sen...

It would seem the portion of the bill in question regards, "exclusionary conduct". Like if Amazon refused to list retailers that compete with its own Amazon Basics brand, akin to a grocery store refusing to sell Rice Crispies because it competes with their own Crisp Ricies. Not necessarily precluding them from offering the products.

Even then that's only a small bullet point in a much larger bill. Most of the intent seems to be focused on increasing the capacity and resources for pursuing cases pertaining to anti-competitive mergers and acquisitions by these companies. The potential for exclusionary conduct becomes particularly concerning given the current trend of a few corporations gobbling up everything in their path that even remotely competes with their products.

Thing is it doesn't matter if a product is a good idea which solves a niche problem if it's involved with these massive companies. If that product doesn't make a billion dollars then it finds itself in the Google Graveyard. Personally I don't want to see new and innovative things have a bad deal forced upon them, only to merge into a morass of vanilla ice cream because they didn't make ALL the money.

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