hmwhy · HackerTrans

geçen yıldiscuss

If you pay closer attention, you can see that some of the designs rely on very deliberate placements of circles; for example, eyes of the monkey and owl, and the nose of the whale.

Those are just the obvious ones that I can immediately spot — there was probably a lot of careful consideration into the placement of circles in order to facilitate good looking arcs and circles that bring the animals to "life".

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I think there is a lot to learn from what you said, but I just want to remind everyone else reading your comment that it is anecdotal.

I have experience with both research in physics and chemistry in multidisciplinary teams, and my experience is the exact opposite to yours in terms of competition and the willingness to help others. Heck, the last time I released some results on arXiv a group that is notoriously unfriendly suddenly reached out and was all friendly. It turns out that after discussing with us about our results they released a half-finished draft on something similar that they have been working on, and presumably tried to stay ahead/dilute the significance of our results by getting it published in a peer-reviewed journal first. Also, during the time we were doing our work, nobody responded when we were asking if we could access data or algorithms. I don't blame anyone and we're definitely not entitled to anyone's help, but that's just a counter example and obviously depends on how well you know the field, everyone else in the field, reputation, etc.

I personally enjoyed using LaTeX for writing manuscripts for physics-oriented topics, but I don't mind Word for chemistry manuscripts. In fact, I would argue that writing chemistry manuscripts in LaTeX sucks for most chemists (maybe except for theoretical and some physical chemists) simply because editing chemical structures, reactions, equipment setup and process diagrams is easy with an embedded chemical editor object in a Word document.

I'm not familiar with how they work internally at publishers when getting manuscripts ready for publishing, but most journals require you to use a Word template with ready-to-use style rules and adhere to certain easy-to-follow formatting rules for everything else. Remembering my early days of using LaTeX (when I was already familiar with using Word for manuscripts), I could say the same about how cumbersome it is to do certain things in LaTeX without even talking about chemical structures. Particularly when it comes to journals that charge subscription fees, I'm not sure why you seem to suggest that it's on the authors to get the manuscript "camera ready". If nothing else, I have seen just as many crap-looking papers formatted with LaTeX than those with Word, and the same can be said about good-looking papers. So... I guess it just depends on the authors themselves and/or the editors.

For much the same reasons as what I have said about competition, I think your last comment is just as biased against your own experience than everything else in my opinion.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Maybe my response was emotional, but if everyone is going to pile on and down vote, it would be nice to at least get an explanation -- even if it's just an emotional disagreement it's still great and appreciated.

I couldn't care less about my karma, it just feels like I am getting punished simply for expressing my point of view here in a way that's not any more or less emotional than the GP.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I agree with most of your points, and I want the current government gone, but would you mind elaborating on the following?

> ... but having written this and other anti-government sentiment, it’s entirely possible that they stop me at the border. [2]

> [2] https://covid19.homeaffairs.gov.au/leaving-australia

It seems like a bit of a disingenuous stretch to push your points across.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I second these.

For anyone reading GP's comment, my take is that some expats do hate their home country.

It's insanity that some people think that strict lockdown rules are an invasion of freedom.

I'll tell you what's an invasion of freedeom: selfish, infected people partying and infecting everyone else sticking the the rules and toughing in out.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

> You can’t automate the creation of software because the requirements are not known.

It seems like the entire article is based on this sentiment. I read the article but I'm not sure what the point it's trying to make is.

Even in this thread everyone appears to have a different idea of what automation is in the first place, and the author is basically suggesting that we will never have something close to the level of a sentient AI identifying requirements to produce a piece of code with no human involvement...?

I'm not well-versed in AI, and I'm not sure anyone on this planet is qualified to make a claim that we will never get even "close" to that point, but it seems reasonable that most of the things listed can be reduced to simple data and automated with well defined functions that transform them along the way:

    * Specific tasks and activities
    * Captures different data
    * Can see or not see certain data
    * Security — What can and can’t specific users do
    * Different goals
    * Individual responsibilities
    * Processes
    * Reports and visuals of data to decide

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I second this, especially e-mail or calling.

In retrospect, my urge to post and share something on social media is just an urge to satiate my ego and be noticed. I think the reality is that most people don't really care about the majority of what someone else has to say, so making something personal and intentional is your best bet (and a great litmus test for whether or not future communication on a given topic will be worthwhile).

Edit: typo.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Could you elaborate more on what and why document annotation is in a "sad" state? Even with a regular PDF file there are many ways you can annotate it: highlighting, adding text box, adding comments, drawing shapes, freehand writing -- without resorting to third-party software. So either your need for offline annotation is pretty advanced, or that you are yet to update your OS/software to take advantage of those.

As for the online part you may be conflating your point about offline annotation. Fermat's Library is about annotation sharing: implementing this functionality without any sort of identity management appears to me that it would basically be asking for trouble (imagine you could send e-mails to anyone without logging into anything).

It's easy to casually throw around phrases like "log in to a proprietary service" to criticise something. Perhaps that sentiment is understandable, but it doesn't really move the conversation forward or lead to better solutions. In this case I think it's just simply missing the point: at least at this point in time Fermat's Library's mission doesn't appear to be about grabbing your identity for profit. So unless there is something particularly fishy about what they are doing, that sort of criticism seems unfounded.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Uh, I'm not an economist, but what you said doesn't make much sense to me -- isn't "the market clearing price" effectively the same as "people are paid the value of their work"? If the value that a software engineer can potentially produce is lower, then wouldn't the corresponding market clearing price would simply be lower for that person?

Maybe in a world where every software engineer is genetically engineered to have the same output then what you said about market efficiency would make sense, but this isn't that world.

The thing you said about price discrimination is not even related to what the OP said, and you simplified the problem a lot by reducing the problem simple monetary terms. The example you gave about expats is particularly flawed, because it's not unusual that expats are paid more for other values that they bring outside of the work they perform (for instance, academic institutions think of that as prestige in some Asian countries). We were all born unequal, if the market were so efficient there wouldn't be so many unjust things happening around the world.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I see your point and I agree that there is often room for intuition for most real-world problems, but I'm not sure that you have a valid argument there: not everyone clicking does them mindlessly, and some people see a beautiful world through pixels.

At the end of the day, I guess the two are not mutually exclusive in the current context.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

And, in the meantime, Roblox is promoted in the App Store.

For context, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620102

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

My hypotheses are:

1. Some companies found a way to promote this type of blog articles past a certain threshold to stay on the front page long enough for... profits?

2. The demography of HN has changed substantially in recent times so that copypasta articles that don't add anything new to existing, better sources are actually valuable to them.

Edit: typo.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Thank you very much for taking the time to address my comment, it has given me some food for thought.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Maybe I'm joining the large amount of comments at the bottom for once, but this article is not just about someone who ended up being a teacher due to serendipity — he committed crimes to get there.

I'm all for supporting people with disability, and there is no doubt that it requires courage to admit to being a fraud after so many years — but being dyslexic shouldn't be an excuse for anyone to commit crimes and get away with it (please read what he actually did if you haven't — it wasn't a simple case of cheating).

I have personally seen a lot of academic misconducts that went unpunished that makes cheating in exams seem seem mundane. Fake results that academics don't own up to/just blame their students when proven wrong; made-up results so that a thesis would look better; lying about publications to get scholarships, etc. Nobody ever gets punished and some would eventually go on to hold important positions.

Reading the "supportive" comments in this thread is pretty demoralising for me.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

> I think company founders are often great, idealistic people. People who genuinely want to make the world better.

I used to think like that, but I now think that's a skewed view of the world that I used so that I could feel better about it.

I don't have any doubts that some founders "genuinely want to make the world better", but I now believe that they are just the minority. Most founders are just after the fame and money—some are even adept at putting on a facade so that you would happily give them money. There is nothing wrong with that, it's just not the world that I would like to live in.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I feel that you have something that you feel is important but just stopped short of saying it. If that's the case, would you mind elaborating on it?

I am interested because I am one of those people whose "reaction will probably be the same". I think I do appreciate cultural and historical differences between different groups of people, but I don't understand how having a more interesting story behind [insert injustice] would lead to a better outcome for everyone.

These days I tend to avoid real life discussions about these issues with people because whenever someone pulls out the "you don't understand their culture and history" card it's pretty much the end of a conversation or just an argument between beliefs.

> learning something about a group of humanity very different from the Western experience

Just want to note that I think there are lots of people from non-Western backgrounds, or have a very good understand of both Western and non-Western cultures here.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Maybe I am wrong, but I would assume that the most sensible place to start with is the MDN Web Docs[0] in this case instead of looking for blog posts.

Throwing out blanket statements is dangerous for new comers, which seems to be the target audience of this article according to its title. For example, collapsing margin isn't always bad and unpredictable, it just seems that way if you didn't take the time to understand the fundamentals behind and go for "what works".

That's not too different to telling CS students to not worry about learning the memory and time complexities of different algorithms and just use [insert "best" algorithm] because it works most of the time.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Based on the way the article is written, I assume that software engineering was not new to the author when he first started writing CSS. It seems strange to me to write an article like this because it's just an indication that the author chose to dive in without understanding the fundamentals first.

I'm honestly just trying to understand how articles like this get promoted to the front page of Hacker News more and more often. I imagine that writing an article about [insert related field of mathematics] before diving into [insert field of physics] every week would not land me on the front page of Hacker News every week.

Edit: "basic field" -> "related field".

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but it feels like there is a new trend in celebrating this type of articles that does nothing but repeat already-known concepts without references, adds nothing new, and basically just there to pollute search engine results in the hope of self-promotion. If MDN Web Docs are not enough, there are better sources like YDKJS.

hmwhy

5 yıl öncediscuss

I'm not sure the metal state that you are referring to really makes a difference in terms of deadline estimation. The way I see it is that, in the grand scheme of things, if you are consistently missing the targets then either you get fired or, if the problem is systemic, the company folds.

In other words, if you are not getting fired and the company isn't folding, and that neither is happening anytime soon, then everything is just "business as usual" and missing a deadline here and there is just part of the natural statistical fluctuations that everyone have come to accept according to some unwritten rules.

I would go as far as drawing parallels between "being in the zone" for a software engineer and "meeting sales targets" for a salesperson. In that sense, not being in the zone every now and then is just as reasonable (or unreasonable, depending on your employer) as missing sales targets every now and then.