biocomputation

> I see your point but a perfect safety record doesn't preclude overreacting to fairly minor infractions.

But is it overreacting?

All systems of regulations are imperfect, but FAA regulations are the product of decades of work by very, very smart people. As a whole, FAA regulations are hugely concerned with what seem like 'minor infractions' because 'minor infractions' are often enough to start a chain of events that leads to major accidents. This is especially true as experience increases because experienced people are so much less likely to make major mistakes that they have to be concerned with the small chinks in the armor of safety.

> Thanks for your response but my tenure on hn is probably the least relevant part of the discussion.

Using the word 'sock puppet' implies that you are speaking for someone else and that you might have a hidden agenda. Thus, your tenure on HN is indeed relevant in this case.

<< Welcome to America, where effort and talent win over "I was here first"

This is an utterly vacuous and false statement. There are mountains of empirical evidence to prove it if you could spend a few minutes in your favorite search engine.

It's not greedy to protect the area you're from; it's human nature. I'm sorry, but Amazon's tens of thousands of out-of-town employees don't need to live in Seattle. Most of them could work remotely or find jobs at other companies.

Interesting argument strategy. You pose something that will never happen in Seattle (a million employees of two-person startups) with something that actually has happened (Amazon).

If you're a transplant who works for Amazon, then it's because of a choice. You came from somewhere where you lived in a community with people you knew and who knew you. You don't need to be in Seattle.

People who are from Seattle need to live in Seattle. A lot of us don't want to leave our families or watch while our communities (or surrounding) communities are destroyed by waves of outsiders who know nothing about the area and who are only here for career/money.

Is that so hard to understand? How much should we have to accommodate? How many people? Should we sit idly by while people drive us out of our own neighborhoods?

Sorry, that's not going to happen.

This book totally changed my life:

https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Tactics-Pricing-New-Internat...

This isn't about age, and I'm not sure why you're even framing it that way.

The crowding, costs, and congestion in Seattle have increased very significantly with Amazon. There have been very ugly social side effects as well.

Amazon's employees, most of whom are out-of-towners, don't need to live in Seattle as much as the people whom they're displacing. Basically, a lot of the Amazon transplants could work remotely or find jobs in other cities.

This was all entirely avoidable.

People who have been in an area for a long time have every right to fight back against overwhelming changes that have incredibly serious long-term implications for their quality of life.

It's a sign of your argument's inherent weakness that you equate people's heartfelt sentiments about feeling overwhelmed by cost-of-living increases, and the resulting destruction of their communities, with Donald Trump's agenda.

Gentrification disproportionately affects communities of color. This is quite exactly what's happening in Seattle.

<< TIL that people own the neighborhoods they live in by virtue of being there first, without any form of payment, deed, title, or record of ownership.

I hear this argument a lot and it's really like saying "only people who own property should be allowed to vote". You're saying that only property owners belong in the community.

That's just sad and wrong - not to mention racist in the context of this discussion - and it truly exemplifies the attitude that myself and many other natives are pushing back against.

This attitude, which I see in so many tech workers, is why Amazon has gotten such a cold reception from many people in Seattle.

Sadly, it's not!

You could always refuse to participate in the social and economic destruction of communities by simply not working at places that have a disproportionate impact on the surrounding community.

Yes, it's that easy!

<< A world where people are forced to leave their community of origin because rich tech workers can outbid them for housing is another kind of dystopian hellhole.

Fixed that for you.

<< skill/background/age/race/gender to partake in the new orgy.

The word for that is injustice.

TIL software engineers think it's okay to participate in the economic and social destruction of neighborhoods in which people have lived for decades.

Thanks for posting this. I remain horrified at the changes that Amazon has pushed on Seattle.

Seattle native who feels the exact same way about Seattle as you do about Philadelphia.

<< This feels like getting all the disadvantages but none of the advantages.

I couldn't have said it better. It's funny because I'm totally cool with having an account provided it does things like gives me access to software, drivers, tools, backups, whatever. But yeah, I'm not going for it if it's just an excuse to vacuum up data. It's gotten to the point where I actively avoid companies/products that just don't get the message.

To this point, I switched from Google to Microsoft a few years ago because I really got sick of feeling like my personal data was just making them richer in exchange for nothing. Email and web apps aren't worth the loss of privacy.

At first Bing search was a bit weird, but then it turned out that it worked just as well as Google for most things, and better for some.

Part of it is because several of my family members have worked there, and, for the record, I totally agree with your characterization about them being blatantly about money. I feel like Microsoft is a bit more trustworthy because they haven't yet abused my personal information. I get the sense that things are slowly changing for the worse, and if it goes a bit further, I'll just switch to Clang and ditch Windows too.

I definitely don't trust Google, Amazon, or Facebook at all. I'm only on Facebook a few times a month, and only from my computer. Never from my phone. No way in hell I'd ever install the FB surveillance app. FB is on probation with the FTC until when? 2030? They're an evil bunch of jackasses.

IMHO, Amazon is the most sociopathic of the big four/five. They don't invade my privacy (because I don't let them), but I think they're pretty evil. I mean, Google is sort of soft evil whereas Amazon is WalMart level evil.

<< You'll never get me to install one of those telemetry devices in the OBD port on my car for any company. I don't care how much money it will save me on my phone or insurance plan.

Totally agree. I don't feel like it would be 'saving' money either.

Yes, I absolutely include my phone, and most of the software I use, including FireFox.

I was actually feeling quite irritated this morning because I have to sign in to use Visual Studio - in order to have my settings. I don't know what stuff they collect, but it's not nothing because they can for sure track my sign ins.

You raise a great point about who we trust. I feel okay trusting Microsoft, but there's no way in hell I'd trust Google or Amazon.

I feel like it's a corporate surveillance device. Same goes for similar products by different manufacturers.

This blog is always worth a read.

I totally understand that this was not okay, but at least Mozilla apologized and is in the process of making things right. To the best of my knowledge, Mozilla is not a greedy, power-hungry org that serves its own interests first.

Every company makes mistakes. Mozilla are really, really, really trying to actually make the web/society a better place, and they deserve support from anyone who actually cares about these things. I get that stuff like this isn't cool, but at least they are responsive.

We are as close as we have ever been to a complete corporate takeover of the web, and now is not the time for those of who support Mozilla to turn against them or each other.

Neat tool - and a lot of hard, careful work no doubt.

In one of your articles, you say that your product isn't a 'grandma web site builder' or something to that effect. Any chance you could, in the future, perhaps use different language? Maybe something a little less derogatory to older folks?

I totally get that it wasn't your intent!

Agreed. I can't believe it even warrants a blog post.

The most convincing use case that I've seen was the 'Find stuff in Home Depot' example that was maybe shown at Google I/O 2017.

Pretty much everything else about AR seems like hot air.

<< A lot of those cities would give anything for Seattle's problems.

This is such a terrible non-argument.

If you go to a lot of those cities and ask people 'hey, do you want to be forced to move away from you home' or 'do you want to share the city with 50,000 new people in five years', or 'do you want your commute time to double', how do you think they would answer?

Honestly, as a Seattle native, it's been a mixed bag, but mostly bad.

<< Seattle refuses to add density- a common pattern on the west coast it seems.

This is utterly and preposterously false.

There are huge apartment and condominium complexes going up all over town. Ballard has been strip mined and turned into a virtual Las Vegas strip of luxury apartments. Capitol Hill has been strip mined and turned into block after block of luxury apartments.

I've visited the web sites of nearly all these buildings, and with the exception of projects by Capitol Hill Housing Authority, it's virtually all been built for people with high incomes.

The fact that so much housing has been built for solely for wealthy people is really, really, really central to the argument against gentrification.

Gentrification says "Hey, if your community doesn't have have money, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, we don't even have to erase it. You'll just be gone and no one will care."

This is an incredibly destructive ( often totally racist ) message, and it's really at the heart of the problems that arise with income inequality.

>> They're what happens when empathy dies and envy takes its place.

Well, forgive me for pointing this out, but what you wrote contains a fairly shocking lack of empathy.

Feeling bad or angry about being driven out of a neighborhood by an enormous wave of outsiders isn't about envy. The change hasn't even been incremental; the bulk of the changes have taken place in the last five years!

In the central district, entire communities that existed for decades are being destroyed. They are bulldozing people's communities to make room for people with more money.

How can you expect people to not feel angry?

>> but there are many more natives who are uncomfortable to some degree.

Seattle native who also grew up on Capitol Hill, and still lives here. As a home owner since the late 90s, the Amazon boom has dramatically increased my net worth.

But that said, I'd much rather have the house be worth $300k if it would mean the last 7 years hadn't happened. It's really been too much, too fast. I didn't buy a house here to get rich, I bought here because my family and friends are here.

The thing that really bugs me is the loss of community, and what exists where the sense of community used to be: crowding, the ever increasing spread of pockets of artificiality, pretentious restaurants, luxury cars swarming the hill, and outsiders absolutely as far as the eye can see.

Furthermore, if you look at the responses in this in comments on Reddit, or in comments on articles, you can see the response we get for saying that that the wholesale destruction of our community makes us uncomfortable: "shut up you fucking ingrate", or my favorite, from people who actually believe that they are liberal, "yeah, it sucks that people can't afford it, but I got mine".

We are talking about the wholesale, unchecked destruction of entire communities. Virtually all of my friends who don't own property are gone. We have neighbors from China who don't talk to anyone. Everyone is from someone else, and just here to consume or make it big or whatever. The property values are attracting people with real wealth and/or speculators, and if I wanted to live around Yuppie Gentrifiers, I would have moved to Madison Park.

There is very little sense of community left. I feel like Amazon should have made its own town somewhere else, and left us ours.

I've never been a fan of bootcamps because it seems like a lot of them refuse to follow the law with respect to licensing, and because I think they tend to make outlandish claims. These companies can afford the licensing costs, and I think the state has a valid interest in regulating any company that calls itself a school.

The lack of concern about licensing, along with the way these companies play fast loose with their employment statistics makes the whole industry seem very fly-by-night. It's really too bad because I really like the idea of a company that trains people who are interested in programming just enough to get their foot in the door somewhere.

American companies should do more to train American workers, and I feel like a $15k fee all but ensures that the student has some skin in the game. Might this make them viable candidates for apprenticeships at American tech companies?

I realize that on the job training is portable, but there has to be a way to work that out. Not only that, but that on the job training is as portable for programmers who come in with a CS degree as it is for programmers who come in from a bootcamp.

Many companies have a college credit benefit that has to be paid back if the employee leaves the company within a certain time. Wouldn't it be okay to have something like an apprentice position, where the salary was lower for 3 years, say half the usual as an incentive for the company, but the apprentice programmer would get real world experience, plus something good on their resume?

After three years, the programmer could stay or leave, but both parties would have most of their their benefit at that point. If the programmer stayed, they would start at the bottom of the pay scale. The company could fire at any time, but it wouldn't be in their interests to do so unless there were serious problems.

It's not perfect, but it could be a huge boon to tech companies and apprentices alike. Yes, some people would shake out, but that happens whether someone has a CS degree or not.

Anyone care to throw some darts at these ideas?

You have good comments.

<< To be sure, that won't work as easily for variable sized collections

In another response here I discuss the problems with iterations and notions of algebraic closure. Your remarks about 'variable sized collections' are exactly the sorts of problems that arise when your data flow language can't/doesn't directly represent all the elements of computation.

When that happens, things either 'leak out' of the data flow diagram, or they remain locked inside impenetrable abstractions. Both of these problems broadly underline a lot of the complaints that programmers have about visual programming tools/languages.

Stated simply, the complaints are:

"I can't declare a loop/recursion in this visual programming language. This sucks!"

Or:

"Implementing loops in visual programming sucks because I can implement the loop/recursion, but there's no debugger/stack so I can't inspect the loop/recursion at a particular iteration step/stack frame. This sucks!"