branweb

yeah I've always heard it was Crockford. Do you have a substantiating source you'd mind sharing, op?

I'm no media expert but this seems like a plausible explanation. Increasingly the American press seems to be less about "disclosing important news to people so they can judge what is happening in the world" as the article says and more about monetizing echo-chambers.

Aside from the legality, what does this say about whatever role the friend was doing (assuming this is true of course)? I've heard from friends who work at FAANG that it's fairly easy to hide in the bureaucracy and do no real work. I've also heard the opposite, but perhaps the widely varying experiences are to be expected at a large company.

I'm obviously not saying the work can't be exhausting.

you raise some valid points but I disagree with your conclusion. Tech is a gravy train compared to most jobs. I say this as someone who transitioned into it from a more physical blue-collar job and just went through the interview process recently. It sucked but "ruthless framework", etc. is hyperbole.

hmm the 50% number comes from https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-134/Accenture-A4-GWC..., which seems to get the figure from a 2016 study (https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/womenint...), which seems to get it from a 2008 study performed by https://coqual.org/, which describes itself as a d&i thinktank. Also the reason cited for leaving appears to come from a later, different survey? Just skimmed all this but article seems kinda sketchy.

I think maybe the quoted response should be ""If we wanted this, we WOULDN'T have hired an architect." That clarifies the meaning at least.

Doesn't make you feel any better about the original claim or about the fact that the abuses took place?

To your first point: I have a problem with the unsourced claim that there have been 1000 instances in the past 10 years, which I could not find a source to confirm. To your second about which term I would prefer, I don't set myself up as an authority. But if the op meant 1000 people, he should have said 1000 people. I think it would be clearer than "instance." When I first read that, I wasn't sure if it means "a person" or "a case when a tomato farmer got busted." If the latter, then it would have been way more than 1000 people affected.

Totally agree that "US internal issues" bring nothing valuable to this discussion. Also agree that truth matters. I don't think that can be said enough these days. My comment about the discussion of slavery/prison inmates was referencing the root post of this thread, and some of the other responses.

I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just trying to get some clarification on the original statement. The source I was able to dig up is from 8 years ago, and was reporting on incidents stretching back 23 years ago. The op mentioned 1000 instances in the past 10 years. I just want more info on what they meant.

It's not inconceivable that Uighur human rights abuses are being used for political purposes. Certainly a healthy dose of skepticism is not uncalled for. Yet the people who respond to such reports with outraged knee-jerk accusations of hypocrisy against the US because it had slavery in the 1860s or because it has forced labor in some prisons today--I don't understand that.

From the linked article: "The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands"

Maybe the article is mistaken? It seems like quite a bit more than just applying a one-child policy.

I dislike internet flamewars with glib calls for "source pls", but this seems like a pretty extraordinary claim to make with no substantiating evidence. Over 1000? According to who? I found this wapo article from 2012: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fair-food-program-he... It says the justice dept prosecuted 7 cases since 1997. It says over 1000 people were affected. Are you counting each person as an instance?

Don't forget forced sterilization: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c The attitude of someone who reacts to this with "what about the antebellum south!" is beyond my understanding.

Thanks for the links! I wonder if Andy (or anyone else) has addressed the lack of images in these notes. Some ideas are expressed much better visually, but I have yet to figure out a frictionless way of integrating things drawn in a notebook or tablet into notes written mostly on a laptop.

ah i see that and yeah after reviewing the concept of evergreen notes, I think your assumption is a safe one ...though the original post (pre-edit) was something like "oy using volume of notes written as a gatekeeper for knowledge work", which seems like a slightly different criticism of the statement.

what's the problem with it? Isn't a good metric going to be numeric, kinda of necessity?...also since these are his personal notes, shouldn't we assume the "you" there means himself? So who's he keeping outside the gate?

Was expecting to bypass this pretty quickly, but this is great! Lots of interesting ideas about how to gain and use knowledge effectively. Spaced repetition for habit formation, non-linear reading as the norm, needing a writing surface to think...good stuff.

Ah thanks for the suggestion. Yep that is a pretty nice solution. Grouping the ask to ask ("would anybody be available to answer a question") with the question avoids the tedium of prefacing your question with standalone messages, and still reads as fairly polite.

I agree it's better to just ask, but whenever I catch myself asking to ask, it's not due to laziness but rather to (perhaps misguided) politeness. Sometimes it feels a little abrupt to dm someone or bust into a team channel and just start asking questions (though perhaps that's irrational since it never bothers me when the roles are reversed). I think the site would be a little better if it addressed this motivation too.

ha this was wonderful, thank you! Tangent: his fox in sox one is epic.

yep I don't disagree with you. I can see how my comment reads like I'm casting blame solely on corporate lobbying, but it's obviously more complicated than that--money in politics, etc.

Maybe so but to me it seems achievable. Lot's of other countries have such a system. Why would it be so much harder to achieve here?

Also it seems to me we don't have much to lose. Our choices were: pay intuit or give our personal information to creditkarma to do god knows what with. Now we don't even have that.

That's encouraging!

Would this even matter if the tax-prep industry hadn't successfully lobbied against a free government-prepared return system?

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

Not the op but I wish downvoters would comment giving their reasons. I remember seeing something about this in the atlantic a while back, and it would be good to know if/why it's a bad argument.

The article concludes with this:

  Against  this background,  we  argue  that  preserving  employability  cannot  and  should  not  solely be the burden of the developers themselves. Companies should take their share of responsibility, encourage practices  that  welcome  developers  of  any  age  and  curb  those  negatively  affecting  older  developers.

Ok I don't disagree. But how is such a conclusion justified by googling a "age software developer" and seeing what pops up? Paper seems pretty thin.

hmm maybe I've misunderstood the parent comment or the PG essay. I read them like this:

Parent comment: I haven't felt censored, therefore there is no problem.

PG essay: This isn't a good argument for the absence of censorship, since some people adopt their opinions wholesale from the dominant orthodoxy of their times, making it logically impossible for them to say anything heterodox. Such people would therefore never feel censored.

Anyway, that's my take. How do you you see them as saying the same thing? I think the PG essay does talk about conventions changing, which you did a very good job of illustrating with your booth babe example...though in the essay, he seems more interested in good opiions that run counter to current conventions rather than bad ones that convention endorses (like booth babes).

I think there's some truth in what you say, but as a counterpoint, consider this essay Paul Graham wrote a few weeks back: http://www.paulgraham.com/orth.html . Namely this part:

  The more conventional-minded someone is, the more it seems to them that it's safe for everyone to express their opinions. It's safe for them to express their opinions, because the source of their opinions is whatever it's currently acceptable to believe. So it seems to them that it must be safe for everyone.

I like this approach and used something similar for a while myself. For me the main drawback was syncing between devices. I had to remember to commit and push on one device and then pull on another. Maybe not a big deal for lecture notes, but a little fussy for just adding a book to a "to read" list.

Also in time I found I never really used any version control features. Backing up to a remote was the only thing I needed.