204 karma · joined February 7, 2019
You can actually use that as a negotiating point. Let's say a new route is opened causing traffic to bypass a normally high traffic point. The advertiser might still price per potential impression per dollar when the reality is significantly different.
Not to nitpick but it's important for people to do their homework on this and realize that those selling the ad space are going to price on the higher end of potential impressions.
Because I let users know I'm not going to spam them with that shit at those that enacted that law can go to hell for every site I visit having it. It's a good thing but really annoying. There has to be a better, more interesting way.
When I had an office as a graduate student and then consultant, adjunct faculty, and other positions, I was almost never in my office.
I simply could not focus on work there the same way as elsewhere. I'm a highly social extrovert and in order to get things done that don't involve directly interacting with people, I "introvert myself". If someone comes to chat with me they snap me out of that mode and it's almost impossible for me to get back in.
I find libraries, coffee shops, empty offices to be the best places for me.
But remote != digital nomadism despite the 2 being able to go together.
I'm glad I never worked at a restaurant where pay is supplemented by tips. That's an unacceptable practice.
At Starbucks, tips were in excess to wages, so anything people gave were a really nice bonus.
Tipping should be done out of generosity. Do you value that person, their time, the level of quality they bring you?
If you look at Japan, tipping is not a thing. In some places it might even be considered an insult to tip because that level of quality is a deeply engrained part of the culture, not something to be rewarded extra for.
However, I see it as a way to show my appreciation, my gratitude.
Yes, I believe that people who have the means to tip who don't, yet greedily eat up high quality service and goods, are being stingy in the worst sense. Just from my experience at Starbucks, it seemed like those who tipped most frequently were the people who might not really been able to afford it.
An extra dollar from 100 customers, for whom that is less than 1% of 1% of their net worth means $20 for a 5 person shift. That extra $20 usually is gas money, college supplies, or a couple bucks to spend for something fun.
However, we completely and utterly lack empathy. So many people DON'T know what it's like to be on the other side of the counter and they completely forget that those people are thinking and feeling humans like they are. That those people have dreams and ambitions just like they do. That they are working because they have SOME goal. There is more depth to the person than the apron they wear, the smile they put on, the job they do. We forget that. We view them as objects and we devalue their existence.
But those who do tip, those who don't necessarily have the means to but still do, they have not forgotten. Perhaps it's because their situation isn't too far removed.
I think Steinbeck said it well:
"If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones."
Materials scientist and polymer scientists here:
Just because it depolymerizes doesn't mean it does so into happy stuff. Photodegradation is the process of degrading with the application of photons (typically in the visible to UV range). Many things, especially plastic things, degrade in the sunlight, some faster than others. But then, when it degrades, when those monomers (single repeat used to make a polymer) split up, what did you just release into the environment?
If you want to understand this process more, here's a good and accessible read: [Photodegradation and photostabilization of polymers, especially polystyrene: review](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4320144/)
I love TNG (and SW) but have to point out that their ideas in many places aren't new.
Example: Silicon based lifeforms
It's in the same column as carbon so we can have similar bonding structure and properties, so why not silicon-based life instead of carbon-based?
Here it is: http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5769a61e91058425008...
James provides many meaningful thoughts, and even gave a disclaimer that this is something he's still thinking through more.
One of those meaningful thoughts I felt was particularly provocative was this:
> I also learned that being a successful non-conformist is easier when you have security.
It's easy for the rich kid from a well-connected family to be a nonconformist and still succeed at what they hope to do in life. Take a poor kid, who is also well-connected but not necessarily to those comparable to the rich kid. Poor kid might have a lot of social capital among their community such that they can get things done, but compare that to rich kid who can always fall back on a family friend hiring them for a junior management position where they'll get paid orders of magnitude more than the poor kid... Now imagine that poor kid with low to no security being a nonconformist.
For them, that could go one of two ways:
1. Ostracized from community for going against the grain/not getting in line
2. They get lucky and some aspect of nonconformity brings them great success and even wealth
Which of those two do you think happens more frequently?
So, I politely disagree. While it does seem that he's sharing some raw thoughts, there are some good clear items in there to think about.
Try opening an ad-monetized app that requires network connection to load the ads. Make sure cellular date for that app is off. You'll get ads. Unless something has changed in the past few weeks, you should see ads load despite the fact that they should not in this scenario.
This means the Wi-Fi isn't off, isn't even in a respectful hibernate state, it's on but telling you it's off. It's your child telling you "yes mommy/daddy I'll do it right" and then cuts corners knowing you're going to trust them.
In the past few weeks my iPhone X has been having a strange Wi-Fi bug where it says it's on in the top corner of the screen, but in settings it says it's off. I didn't turn it off. When I go to turn it off, it's frozen and I have to restart settings. I'm highly suspicious it's related to Apple's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth default hibernate code or implementation of that code.
Apple screwed the pooch on this one. They should allow us to toggle the hibernate mode or long press to choose whether to go into hibernate or actually turn off, not force us to use it in a misleading way.
I've trained myself to always turn it off in settings, it's annoying, but it fits apple's product motto:
It just works.
Files closed with the application no longer reopen, UI elements are gone, and, worse yet, you can't completely customize all of the possible keyboard shortcuts any more, you can't even find access to them.
To my understanding, this was for 2 reasons (excuses):
1. Some OS changes Apple made*
2. To push people to subscribe to office 365 and "gain" that functionality
* I paid full price for both 2011 and 2016 (and the corresponding windows office copies). 2011 still works on the most recent macOS with all of the functionality. So, claiming that Apple did something to make the feature of automatically reopening the documents you had open when you quit broken is bull. Their old version still does that on the new OS just fine (despite that little pop up claiming the software is incompatible...it still works, why not use it?)
After buying MS Office with removed functionality, I will sadly not be buying office again. Nor will I be subscribing to office 365, nor will I be supporting it in any corporate ecosystem. The files from the old versions are perfectly fine and when they no longer are, Libre office and (almost embarrassingly) Google docs will have to do.
I'm definitely not the only one bailing. My father has been off for many years and, as a principal engineer at a Silicon Valley medical device company he helps others see that we don't need to let Microsoft maintain a stranglehold on us.
But, I was happy buying the new versions of office year after year until these most recent changes. Excel 2005 was one of their best versions. That was my subscription model: I pay full price every couple years you put out a new version and, in return, you give me a good, solid product that built off the prior one (or at least stayed damn near as useful) while providing support to that product through updates and bug fixes.
Subscription services are already gaining groans from people and we don't need another subscription in our lives.
But, to wrap up, back to the point: even though excel (and the other MS Office software) were incredibly versatile already, you still had the option to install the Analysis ToolPak if you needed to work with complex statistics or engineering analysis or even write your own plugins or macros for it, instead of those features overburdening the software and overwhelming the users by "covering all the use cases".
As it stands now, if you want to add all of the episodes from a show that you have listened to for the past 14 years that somehow was not subscribed to on your device, you have to go to the show and subscribe, go to available episodes and tap on the + next to every.single.episode and even then sometimes episodes get lost.
You can set the custom settings to download all available, but it won't download the episodes of a subscribed podcast if you haven't explicitly added them (tap that + sign)
Also, can we just set the screen podcast app opens on to our own choice? I literally have to go through an extra menu just to see my show listing. Yes, I've created a "station" for the shows but that's immensely inconvenient if I want to listen to one show continuously without having to navigate to the shows page (guess I have to create a station for every show...)
I don't think the Apple funded shows will be bad. This article really seems to be creating a mountain out of nothing. Hopefully, this means that some lucky podcaster or media group makes $$$ off of a deal with Apple.
A quote:
> If you fly within the United States or enter secure federal buildings and military bases, you will need a valid passport or other federally approved document, such as a REAL ID driver license or identification card, beginning October 1, 2020.
So, we need a passport to go between states, or a REAL ID...
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2015/02/27/ex-delta...
I'm an advocate for security screening. I'm even fine with a bag swab or pat down. I've been flying all 30 years of my life to many parts of the globe.
What's going on in this article, if true, is not ok, it is not productive, and it is spreading a culture of fear and surveillance TO OUR OWN CITIZENS.
We are not China, Russia, or any other country that would create such a situation, but we are letting it happen.
I don't think people are against the accepted forms of surveillance you are mentioning, I think we're against the excessive stuff that's been going on.
The last presentation was a company with a scalable automated canning and sterilizing machine that was simply beautiful from an engineering standpoint.
Since we don't fully understand nutrients and how stuff like high pressure sterilization, heating, and other methods affect bioavailability, impact protein structure, and create other changes, it's all down to trying and learning as we go.
What's great about pressure is that it can deactivate and destroy some of the harmful organisms in food, but my curious concern is what does that do to the cellular material we want intact for our body, how does that affect the protein structure (for those not familiar, protein structure and folding is absolutely crucial for functionality).
Irradiation concerns me more than pressure because if you're not careful, you could be breaking bonds that you don't want to be breaking.
All in all it's a fascinating topic and important to everyone who eats.
That sounds patently ridiculous.
The culture comes from the top. It's super easy for them to allow people lower down to take the fall for something they pressured subordinates to do.
Shoot, just look at Wells Fargo last year.
The higher ups said that those lower needed to boost account signups, so, suddenly people found themselves signed up with accounts they had never signed up for.
But we blame those lower for following an order, even if it's an implied order, because they were the ones who did the deed. It was so hard to link Al Capone to murder they had to get him for tax evasion.
He called the shots, but others took the shots.
So, when you say that it's ridiculous to target those execs who are setting the standards which are causing these problems, these deaths, you got some screw loose up there friend, because those execs are getting paid hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars, while those doing what they are told so that they can keep their job are just trying to eat and pay rent.
Or is there some other reason?
I had moved away for a couple years and when I came back they were a mess.
Yes, we could put more money other places, but the roads would be a decent place to put some money to have a lasting impact.
Better public transit with expanded routes would be pretty nice too. It still blows me away that some higher city public officials make a quarter million or more.
They're suppose to be public servants yet they forget what it's like to live on the lower rungs.
I don't know if he's picked up more people or still solo, but Brightridge is a beautiful open world with much to explore. While everyone else was making candy crush and Mario knockoffs, he was building that.
I even played the likes of Infinity Blade and it felt... underwhelming.
BrightRidge really leveraged the technology available.
However, my biggest challenge with it, and I've experienced this with other similar software, is how it handles text along a path.
After struggling with this for some time I just took a somewhat brute force approach and made hidden arcs that achieved the target text curvature, despite that arc not being part of the circle.
That's the great thing. There might be an entire market of options out there for an idea, but if they don't get something like reliability right, then that's the easiest foot in the door.
"While human sexuality is a delicate subject, I deeply believe it should be discussed (vide my Dating for Nerds series) rather than shunned as a taboo topic. Some discussion about ethics and implications of using such data were covered in What I learned from building an AI that generates porn by David Mack."
Until it becomes socially acceptable to talk openly about, we need more people going out on a limb and being open in this way.
So, while it is true that not renting would mean not getting that $3000 a month, it really comes out to chump change when you consider how the price of the property has rapidly risen.
The community college I went to has a special program with Stanford where the faculty of the CC will, on a VERY rare occasion, nominate a student they feel is mature, smart, and driven enough to a research program they collaborate on.
From my knowledge, every student who has gone into this program has gotten into Stanford.
My transfer application was rejected 2 years in a row, so I was very honored when, during the fall in which I had moved to NY for the school I accepted admissions to, I received an email inviting me to the program.
I was also a bit frustrated, as you can imagine. So, my response was along the lines of "thank you so much for this opportunity, but I'm not so sure commuting 5000 miles each week is practical. Please let another qualified applicant take my place."
A little more context: I had been at the CC for 6 years. The first 2 I almost flunked out, but I turned that around into getting A's and being on the dean's list every quarter. However, averaging 2 years of failed grades meant it would take insanely long to get into the high 3.x's. But my history showed a complete turnaround and ambitious drive towards a goal.
The fall a year later I received another email inviting me to the program. The CC faculty were so used to having me around they just assumed I was still on campus (several wrote me recommendation letters and I'm pretty sure I told them I was transferring).
I responded in a similar fashion as I did the year prior, and then I proceeded to start the PhD program early at my university.
My family doesn't have lots of money or connections. I was never a stellar student (until that 3rd year at the CC and beyond) but I excelled at whatever I set my sights on. I'm glad I went where I did. I did some really awesome things, met some phenomenal people, and united with my better half. However, same as the job search, I've always wondered if my potential place was taken by someone who cheated, made themselves look legit especially when they weren't, or otherwise finagled their way in.
I know I couldn't do it. That's why I stopped playing sports competitively. The cheating was ridiculous and it was worse that the refs stood by it. I want to be excellent and deserve that spot, not mediocre but dressed to look excellent and getting that spot.
If those getting into top schools include cheaters, the likes of which have come to light in the past weeks, then those people are going to get the credibility from having that institution associated with them, the network from being there, and so much more that benefits them and validates the lived lie.