CodeMage

It's because the alternatives are still worse. And now they'll lose those jobs and have to face those alternatives.

Of course those of us who perceive this as an injustice will complain. The complaint is not directed at Amazon only, it's at the injustice of systemic oppression of the working class.

From my experience so far, the typical attitude of an average Nextdoor "neighbor" towards the homeless is not: "This is a problem, we have to do something for these poor people." Rather, it's: "This is a problem, I don't want it near me."

I don't know about Ballard, but people on Nextdoor in the Eastside neighborhoods have a penchant for NIMBYism and, as a side effect, truly do tend to exaggerate things.

I'm not saying we should just ignore homelessness, but exaggerated complaints on Nextdoor are definitely not the way to address the underlying problems.

>How else could any human or organization function if not by acting in ways they believe are right?

Being convinced that you're always right is not the same as doing the right thing or acting the right way.

>The nation isn't perfect, but does anyone really believe that, on net, America hasn't been a force for good in the world? What is your benchmark?

Hoo, boy. No, America hasn't been "a force for good in the world", because that's a really naive, simplistic idea. America has done many things in (and to) the world. Some of them have been good for certain groups of people at certain times.

I don't understand how people still believe the US is an exceptionally democratic country even after learning about how democracy is implemented here. The whole thing with Electoral College and two-party system is just the tip of the iceberg. For me, it was the revelation about the existence of riders [0] that was the final nail in the coffin of my belief in democracy.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_%28legislation%29

That's a really bad analogy and detracts a lot from your point. Big religions that reach old age are merely stable, but that doesn't necessarily make them peaceful or benign. My guess is that you're probably looking at it through the lens of living in United States.

It's just that "trust, but verify" is shorter and more memorable.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had that reaction. Don't get me wrong, I liked the first half of the article a lot. The exploration and discussion of coevolution principle in technology was very interesting. But the way the "software revolution" was described is extremely naive. The following are some points that stood out.

And of course, that communication is free and instantaneous regardless of its distance.

No, it isn't. It might be near-instantaneous in best case, but it sure as hell isn't free.

The gig economy worker and the digital nomad are two examples of lifestyles that are native to this new paradigm. Each just has to press a button to start making money. Each works when and from wherever they want. And each gets paid in direct proportion to their output.

This totally ignores the plethora of very real and very nasty issues plaguing the gig economy.

In practice, it means the factory no longer needs to run as slow as its slowest gear. Each gear can spin as fast as it fancies, and be rewarded according to it.

That's not how things work out in practice. The "gears" don't "spin" in isolation, so the "slowest gear" still affects the whole "factory". Worse, the competitive nature of our society turns this whole scenario into a race to the bottom.

Some will say that this measurability also comes at the cost of our privacy. But you rarely need your government-issued ID to do things online — something less true of the physical world. Software is anonymous by default.

Do we live in the same world? Sure, software itself is conceptually uninterested in identity -- which isn't the same thing as being anonymous -- but I think we've all had plenty of evidence demonstrating how software facilitates erosion of privacy.

You may not need to ask for permission to distribute your content anymore, but you do need permission to get paid. If the payment gatekeepers don’t like you, you’re outta luck.

Again, this is simplistic and naive. Cryptocurrencies cannot magically abstract away the real world. The "payment gatekeepers" are not just banks and credit card companies. There's also your government and your client's government and all the stuff that comes with them.

In short, while I agree we should be excited about technology, we really have to do a much better job of making sure it helps us.

"His name is Robert Paulson."

This piqued my curiosity. Can you give an example?

Stack Overflow is an excellent resource when you access it from a search engine. If you're looking for a particular bit of programming knowledge and you type your query into your search engine of choice, chances are excellent that Stack Overflow results will be plentiful on the first page and that more than one will be relevant and helpful.

Stack Overflow is good enough when you have a very concrete problem that nobody before has asked about before. For example, if you don't know how to do X in the framework Y, you can expect one of the following: 1) someone who did it before will tell you how, 2) someone who had the same problem and found that it actually has no solution will tell you that, or 3) nobody will answer.

Stack Overflow is absolutely terrible when you're trying to learn something new just because you want to learn it or you're asking for advice of any kind. If you're trying to become a better programmer, Stack Overflow is categorically not the tool for the job. The less practical your question , the more it's likely to receive votes to be closed.

My favorite example is a question that outlined a thing you can normally do in .NET and Java because they are executing bytecode and can do certain checks before deciding whether to allow the code to execute or not. The question then proceeded to ask whether there are any pre-existing solutions to do so when working with native code or whether you would have to do it yourself. It received a downvote and a vote to close within 2 minutes of being posted. The voter posted a comment recommending Software Engineering Stack Exchange as a better site. The same question posted on Software Engineering Stack Exchange got a bunch of comments, only one of which actually addressed a question to a certain degree, the rest being ideas on how to change the requirements, snarky sniping of other comments, one idea that was already outlined in the question, and one snarky recommendation to "brush up on your understanding of [concept]" where the [concept] is not the primary concern in question.

I wish I could say that last anecdote is an exception, but it's simply the most egregious example of what's prevalent on Stack Overflow and programming-related Stack Exchange sites. Interestingly enough, I haven't seen it on any non-programming Stack Exchange site, so it's definitely something in our culture as an industry.

I thought that was Valley of Morgul, not Mandos sleep? I could have sword Mandos sleep was something that could strike a high-level char not-quite-but-sort-of randomly, ostensibly to prevent spamdying. Sort of a "take some time to cool off, buddy" thing.

> Re: losing more than a whole level after dying: that and the other 'hard' things about the game really drew me in.

> I crave games where there are real risks, something substantial to lose. For most free games, that is going to be mean time.

I guess that's the key difference right there. I found the punishments excessive and, to make things worse, the ping was leading me straight into those punishment situations. I like having real risks, too -- that's why I think the latest changes in Conan Exiles are actually pretty good -- but I guess I disagree about how hard the punishment should be.

Ironically, I felt that way back when I had oodles and oodles of free time. Now that I'm married and have a kid, I have even less of that, so you can imagine that I'm quite leery of going back to a game that threatens to punish me by taking away huge amounts of something I have so little of ;)

At any rate, I might try it again. Few games have ever scratched that itch for me.

EDIT: To clarify, it's not the safety that I need in a game. One of the best moments I still remember was when I had to run away from a BN who surprised me while I was trying to do Malardil. Safety is overrated. Losing more than a full level because I'm running from a big bad PK player and I mobrip? That's depressing ;)

* The game wanted to motivate PVP, but it did so by punishing PVE players horribly: at higher levels, dying to a mob meant losing more than one whole level, which was hard to get back.

* If you played anything but a tank, ping mattered too damn much. I like scouts/thieves. My ping stank. My experience wasn't very happy ;)

* Mandos sleep. Need I say more? Whose idea was that? I'm lucky I never got it, but it's inexcusably bad game design.

* I understand that playing evil races is supposed to be inherently harder, but it was too damn hard. My favorite moments were when the "darkies" (I apologize, but that was the slang for evil races back then) would come raid Bree and Fornost. Yes, it was terrifying for us pukes, but I loved it.

I have contemplated going back many, many times, but the first pain point I mentioned always keeps me back. I just can't dedicate that much time to a game that rewards so little and punishes so much. But I miss it a lot, too :)

I tried some other MUDs later, but most of them have smaller worlds, not so intricate or well-described. I just couldn't get that same magic of exploring that I did from MUME.

I still visit ElvenRunes once or twice a year, to see how you guys are doing ;)

See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393433

The choice of not doing business with someone ceases to be a meaningful choice when it's the only viable alternative. One could argue that Amazon is not the only viable alternative and that argument is, strictly speaking, correct. However, this isn't a binary situation -- one day we have plenty of equally viable alternatives and the next day it's just Amazon -- but rather a continuum.

TL;DR: Amazon pulling stuff from their store is only a bad thing when taken together with not having a meaningful alternative. The latter is a bigger problem than the former.

In case you were being sarcastic, it is simple if you don't take it out of context. It requires a certain understanding of derivatives, but a reader who doesn't understand them won't make it to the point you're quoting.

- dog = pas (we don't distinguish between "a dog" and "the dog")

- declensions (singular): pas, psa, psu, psa, psu, psom, psu

- declensions (plural): psi, pasa, psima, pse, psi, psima, psima

- but that's not all, the number can change the declension: 1 pas; 2, 3, 4 psa; 5+ pasa

It's my language and I love it, but the grammar is a nightmare. I think it might be one of the easiest languages to learn to read and write, but good luck learning what it all means ;)

Specifically, when you look at that numbered list describing your code-writing practices, the numbers 1 and 3 stand out as hyperbolic. People will* take that stuff out of context and pass it around. Hell, people are already having a hard time staying reasonable in this very discussion thread.

I can't speak for anyone else, but don't take my comments personally. You guys made your own product and ran with it, which is more than I can say for myself, and I respect you for that. I also agree with what you're trying to say. However, I stand by my criticism of the hyperbole, because I've seen people who take that stuff too literally and proceed to write crap.

I agree with that. And yet, Minecraft is possibly the worst example:

- It's an exception to the general wisdom that games do have to worry about performance in order to deliver fun. Just because Minecraft became popular despite it's abysmal performance, doesn't mean games can get away with that in general.

- Notch never expected Minecraft to become that popular. In a sense, Minecraft was an accident.

- Minecraft's performance was so bad, a lot of people had to install a mod called OptiFine just to be able to play it on their hardware.

Except that's not the argument in the comment you're reacting to. Here's what the comment actually said:

> Anyone with a reasonable amount of experience is often able to look ahead - well before any code is written - and see how performance could be better if road A is taken instead of road B.

In other words, some optimizations come with no significant cost. As a banal, perhaps exaggerated example, if you're writing code that needs to store data in a collection and you know that it's going to perform random access to that data on a regular basis, you're not likely to pick a linked list over some kind of array.

What @abraae is criticizing is the practice of asserting "best practices" that are likely to be taken out of context, widely propagated and misinterpreted.

Knuth's famous assertion "premature optimization is the root of all evil" is an excellent example. People love quoting it, but few seem to take into account the context, to the point that it has been largely forgotten. Here's the quote in its context:

Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%.

To be clear, it's not Knuth's fault that people are taking his very rational and sensible advice and reducing it to "yeah, you should totally disregard performance when first writing your code". This is not about pointing fingers and assigning blame, it's about being responsible when offering advice. Knuth's advice was reasonable and nuanced, and it still got taken out of context and reduced to something different and arguably harmful. Now look at Gabriel's advice, which is arguably a lot easier to take out of its context and misinterpret, and imagine the consequences it could have.

That is what @abraae is reacting to.

EDIT: There's another thing that really, really bothers me about your reply:

> Rule #1 of any business: Sales cures all.

This, right here, is what I personally feel is wrong with software nowadays. It's how we end up with poorly written, bloated, bug-ridden, unstable, unreliable, insecure crap that we end up using anyway, because there's no better alternative.