Hacker News Reader

"Sink or swim" advice is laden with survivorship bias.

>> EAV (Entity Attribute Value) tables—use a specialist product intended for handling such schema-less data instead.

> What if you have to use the data in some complex join-heavy query? Make a copy of the data needed in the relational database and hope that the data doesn't get unsynchronised?

No, he's saying that schema-less, arbitrarily-extended information has no business in a relational system at all.

amp108on Ask HN: What is your personal experience with alternative medicine?

People poke fun at other people who avoid gluten without having a legitimate condition that justifies it. I don't know if psoriasis does or not, but I know a friend of mine whose mother was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Once he started avoiding gluten, his health (and demeanor) changed until he was almost a completely different (and much happier) person.

amp108on What Do Happy Teens Do?

Leave a pen in a pair of jeans and wind up with ink spots on everything.

amp108on What Do Happy Teens Do?

I resent the smug tone of this post. I have ADHD; I am neither lazy nor stupid, but cooking is an ordeal for me. I cannot follow cooking instructions, at least not reliably. I'll look at the list of ingredients and get the amounts wrong (mix up one line for the line below/above it), or do the steps out of order. I've forgotten to put the flavor packet in the pot when making Hamburger Helper. I've put chocolate chips into a cookie dough mix too early, meticulously picked them out, then dumped them right back in again.

Congratulations for you that cooking is simple and easy. It isn't for everybody.

amp108on How to Recover from Romantic Heartbreak?

You're making a logical error. The article isn't saying that pain is an inevitable result of losing a source of happiness, only that this kind of pain is an indication that something impacted your happiness. If you're having difficulty making the distinction, consider that everyone who lives in Ohio lives in the USA, but not everyone in the USA lives in Ohio.

amp108on How to read an RFC

I already know the difference between "MUST", "MUST NOT", "MAY", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "Obsoletes", et al, but I still feel like there's an RFC code that I haven't cracked.

amp108on For the first time in 15 years, a new Alzheimer’s drug looks promising

> It looks like it was "too hard" so standards are being lowered.

Not at all. It turns out one of the standards was not relevant to the target population. As you quoted: "This is because in early cases of Alzheimer’s, patients may have the biological indicators of the disease without actually showing symptoms."

There's no point in trying to alleviate symptoms where there are no symptoms. If I develop a drug that removes tumors that eventually caused headaches, is it somehow lowering standards if it removes tumors before a headache appears?

amp108on How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

We're not talking about movies with a giant snake.

amp108on 20 Reasons We Know the Earth Is Spherical

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

> My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -- Isaac Asimov

amp108on The Physics of a Firefighter's Window Catch

Likewise impressed, but the fireman's own body transmitted much of the force to the window frame. So it's less the equivalent of launching someone into the air, and more like hanging on to someone while you are launched into the air by harness.

amp108on Opening of Romeo and Juliet Recited in the Accent of Shakespeare’s Time [video]

> Reading is just consumption. You don't have to do any critical thinking

If that were true, you would believe anything and everything you read. I doubt that, barring Trump tweets, I will read a more ignorant statement all week.

amp108on The Growing Emptiness of the “Star Wars” Universe

I don't know what makes the storyline "bad", necessarily, but I really don't understand the acting charge, especially against the original 1977 release.

Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, Peter Cushing, Harrison Ford--none of these are slackers. Anthony Daniels might not have much range, but he fit perfectly in the scope required of him. Mark Hamill was convincing as Luke.

The only weak link to me, bless her soul, might have been Carrie Fisher. And maybe a few bit-players. But the bulk of the show was carried by capable, if not excellent, actors.

amp108on Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

I don't know which specific novels you're referring to, but the first sentence/paragraph/chapter of a novel often need to have a different tone from the rest. The opening of a novel sets the scene and sets the tone and raises expectations for the rest of the story in a way that a strictly narrative opening wouldn't. In other words, these "literary"-style openings are no more and no less clichéd than any other.

amp108on Read first pages of novels, and reveal the author and title if you're hooked

The two are very different. A book is mostly prose, in black and white, by the author. A cover is graphic design elements (and even the text is treated as a design element on the cover), most often in color, created by someone else.

amp108on The Importance of Deep Work and the 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

Just to clarify, that's Cornell College, not Cornell University.

amp108on How many deaths make a disaster newsworthy?

With regard to famine: the word "news" means "new things". It is literally the plural of "new". Famines are typically long-term events that have built up over time. Famine in (parts of) Africa? Old story. Famine in New York? New, and therefore "news".

amp108on Thinking of yourself as an insomniac may be a part of the problem

> Remember that you've got through every single day after a bad night's sleep before just fine.

Not everyone has gotten through every day just fine, though. Drowsiness increases the chance of automobile accidents, decreases working memory, and, over time, contributes to stress-related diseases.

amp108on Why people have trouble reading neutral faces

While it is possible that this is the case, I doubt that it is equally likely. Parents who fight for that long would have to be bad at reading faces, and abnormally bad at speaking, to accidentally misread each other through an entire argument.

amp108on Strange and maddening rules

"Closed as duplicate" is such a frustrating experience with SO, especially since the canonical answer for the original post so often has so little to do with the supposed "duplicate" post, other than a superficial similarity in how the question is posed.

E.g.:

Q1: I'm trying to do x and it isn't working. A1: You're missing a comma in the list on line 7.

Q2: I'm trying to do x (and I've checked all of my commas), and it isn't working. A2: Closed as duplicate of Q1.

amp108on How I Write SQL, Part 1: Naming Conventions (2014)

I looked for pluralization in the standard, and couldn't find it. Of course, I only glanced over the Table of Content.

amp108on Walking While Black

> I'm not trying to marginalize his message that skin color is the cause. But it's certainly not the only cause. The root of the problem lies with the police, and society, villifying anyone who isn't diurnal.

I had similar problems when my hair was long, but I really don't think it's comparable to what black people face. Being white, my problems went away when I cut my hair, nighttime walks or no. And black people get harassed day and night, so I think anti-nocturnalism is a small, small part of the problem, not the root.

amp108on Can a State University Fire a Professor for Being an Ass on Twitter?

> Did she? Did many people really called that crisis hotline because of her, and to the point of making it "unavailable"?

The article implies that it did. Even if it didn't, saying that it's okay is like saying it's okay to drive recklessly, as long as you don't hit anyone; it's not.

> And was that resource so needed in the first place

Ask that to someone who uses it. Mental health is a real problem for some students, but I guess some people don't care about that.

> And that's what I called by not giving chances and Old Testament mentality.

I don't know what "Old Testament" has anything to do with it. She flaunted the fact that she wouldn't face consequences (or so she be believed), so it looks like consequences are how she thinks, too.

> Perhaps some people enjoy their society being the #1 in incarcerations in the world...

This entire paragraph is blowing smoke.

> What happened to a scolding, and a promise to not do that kind of thing again?

That kind of thing is for children. This woman is an adult, and should already know what adult behavior is like. And if you're so concerned about unemployment, realize that there is someone else out there looking for a teaching job, who knows how to act like a grown-up, who will happily fill the opening.

amp108on Southwest 1380: think about the flight attendants

Those statistics are over one's entire lifetime, though, a lifetime full of potential accidents. How do they translate to a per-trip chance?

amp108on Can a State University Fire a Professor for Being an Ass on Twitter?

> Because in the end, nothing too great happened

She fake-doxxed another school's crisis hotline, made that resource unavailable to students who needed it; she embarrassed her school and forced the administration to issue a statement when they had better things to do.

> Or that they don't deserve second and third chances.

If she's fired, she has as many chances as she wants to apply to a school that wants to risk having to clean up after her irresponsible bullshit.

amp108on Can a State University Fire a Professor for Being an Ass on Twitter?

She also told people to contact her, and gave out the schools counseling hotline number instead of her real one. She deliberately messed with the school and dragged them into her personal conflict. Why shouldn't they fire her, if they can, in that case?

amp108on Can a State University Fire a Professor for Being an Ass on Twitter?

She presented the school's student counseling number as her own contact #. That could and should land her in hot water with her employers, state employee or not.

amp108on The Myth of 'Learning Styles'

Are there styles which are not tied to the type of sense input? I know that I sometimes learn some things by rote, going through a linear process, and subsequently discover patterns in it. Other times, I need to know the abstract principles behind a procedure before I can work in the details. Anecdotally, that suggests that there are two different ways of conceptualizing tasks (i.e., something close to "learning styles"), and also suggests that different tasks require different learning styles.

Is there any research into this meaning of learning styles, as opposed to tied to sensory modes?

amp108on Scientists Fix Genetic Risk Factor for Alzheimer’s Disease in Human Brain Cells

My mother has Alzheimer's, and I have the ApoE4 gene. Knowing is better.

The only other options are (a) knowing after it's too late to do anything, or (b) knowing at the exact moment science makes a discovery. Since we can't know (b) ahead of time, we're left with either knowing ahead of time, or too late.

Knowing sucks, but it sucks less than any other option.

amp108on Apple is making a show based on Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ books

Intolerance and any other anthology, Koyaanisqatsi, Last Year at Marienbad, Magnolia and other ensemble pieces, and many more.