dandersh

No the shooting shouldn't be about the discussion on "censorship". The discussion should be about the tendency to resort to extreme levels of violence to settle disputes and settle perceived wrongs.

As far as the attention question, I'm in the same boat. The more I've read about school shooters and the like the more apparent it is how much of an inspiration their predecessors (starting with Harris and Klebold) are. There is this obsession with "Why'd they do it" which leads to a level of attention that appears to be desirable.

Everyone tells you that to avoid responsibility for it being a cultural issue. I mean, do people seriously believe that there is little or no drug/alcohol abuse in urban areas because there's always stuff to do?

What explains the (sometimes heavy) alcohol consumption when fishing, hunting, working on cars, snowmobiling(!!!), off-road driving(!!!), etc.?

I'm really sorry for you to have to go through this. Struggling with social interactions and the fallout is not easy, and it does not sound like you have the support you need.

Have you tried talking to your wife and explaining that social situations are like other life experiences where some people enjoy/excel at them while others do not? Not everyone enjoys video games, sports, reading, etc. Not everyone is a social butterfly, and those who are not shouldn't have to feel embarrassed because of it.

Sure. As long as you:

Throughly and clearly defined shitty behavior that had wide agreement. Had an effective form of zero tolerance that was both deterrent and enforcement. Had a clear code of conduct that was neutral to all. Correctly identified players and prevented false positives. Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how popular they were. Was willing to remove anyone, no matter how profitable they were.

You know what else would make for a better community? Better citizens.

Every time someone says "this is about politics" or "they should leave politics out of it" what they mean is the politics they don't agree with. Same applies to the use of "identity politics".

Yea I don't see this working.

For starters the problem isn't the games, or the enforcement mechanisms, it's the gamers. There are plenty of other competitive activities with "randoms" that do not result in this type of behavior.

Another issue is that there will be those that get punished/removed that will play the victim and attribute it to politics, etc. You can see this beginning already in some of the comments in this thread about "dictating morality" and "silencing non-progressive behavior."

In my experience demands for working > 40 hours, nights, weekends, etc. almost always comes from management and planning failures.

What makes this scenario occur so often is that the business side wields too much power when it comes to culture, estimates, technical decision making, etc. For them you solve a problem by throwing more time at it and passing responsibility when possible (along with a few extra meetings, for good measure). Not only does this approach work poorly for development, but they are often the "final stop" in the product lifecycle, thus making it impossible to avoid taking responsibility, even for others work (like, say, for incomplete or nonexistent requirements).

Perhaps worst of all is that surviving these crunches makes things worse as the wrong lessons are learned and the process continues to repeat itself as those who push for change become disgruntled and leave.

Personally I've noticed a correlation between the pushing of "team culture" and toxic environments like this. The most egregious example of this was when it was suggested that I work unpaid on the weekend to "complete the sprint work as a TEAM."

While people are going to focus on his impact in physics and science in general, and rightfully so, I've experienced a greater impact from his life.

I had a close friend of mine who was wheel chair bound. For him Hawking demonstrated the possibility of people accepting him for who he was and enjoying his company irrespective of any perceived differences. He wanted to interact, have friends, build relationships, and this was something that was more expected as a result of Hawking's public profile.

Ultimately he served as not just a role model, but someone who expanded awareness that those in wheelchairs were people too.

It's not "classic" since the example used happened less than 10 years ago as well as also being applied to left-wing groups as well. [0]

What is classic about it is right wing media (especially in the talk radio era) hyperventilating and manufacturing a scandal where "conservatives" are the victims.

Furthermore individuals/groups claiming tax exempt status where none exists is one of the things that the IRS should be looking for as an agency.

[0]https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/05/audit-irs-scrutiny...

Completely agree about downvoting. It really does nothing for me as a user, as I am able to reply to something if I feel strongly enough about it. A great way to go about detoxifying social media is to limit negative interactions as much as possible.

Upvoting, on the other hand is valuable as it helps cut through the noise. A great example was the thread awhile back about WhatsApp encryption where the first comment was from Moxie.

"1. Students’ brains are broken by our existing system. We’ve been reworked purely for extrinsic reward and forgotten how to learn entirely. The most frequently asked questions we get are “is this required?” and “donwe get a certificate for this?” It’s sad"

That's because they are responding to the incentives that have been placed before them. Learning, when it happens, is done so in the pursuit of some form of achievement/validation (grades, test scores, etc.) Yes, properly evaluating learning capacity and knowledge accumulation is difficult, evidenced by the popularity of algorithm/fizzbuzz whiteboard problems. However the major issue is that culturally there is a lack of passion towards accepting ignorance and trying to learn ("We'll fix the problem with common sense"!), as well an open hostility by some towards those that are educated.

"9. 99% of people, when left long blocks of time alone to work on something without anyone to be accountable to, will watch Netflix."

This is caused partly (if not mostly) from issue number 1: Self direction and self control is absent from schooling. When no one is around to tell you what to do and yell at you when you don't do it, it's no surprise then that people lack the interest and discipline to pursue self-education when it is available to them.

Cute, but wrong. The basic architecture of Node has not changed, and the core modules are largely the same as they have been for years.

The question "How does Node work and how can I leverage it" (which is what GP is asking) is the same as it was a few years ago.

His FrontEnd Masters course demonstrates this to be false. He was straightforward about the language and acknowledged shortcomings around things like JSON decoders, for example.

Furthermore, last I checked the source code doesn't live inside Evan's head like a family recipe. The functional principles and clear Haskell influences won't die if Evan were to go away.

A few things here jump out to me...

Put your happiness and well-being first. It's easy for me to suggest that you take the new position and bank $$$ for 6-12 months and get out before the feelings of disappointment set in, but only you know whether this is something you want or am able to do. Do what you can to keep yourself out of a role that makes you not want to get up in the morning, or staring at the clock anxiously waiting to leave.

Don't feel bad about being able to find work for yourself, and don't feel bad if the role is not what you expected/wanted. Finding the right gig takes some skill of its own, and a lot of luck (or someone you know you can tell you what it's truly like there...)

It sounds like you are projecting from the roles/companies to yourself as a programmer and then as an individual. Never, ever conflate the competency of what you do with the type of person you are. You may write code a living, but the quality and performance of that code does not define who you are. No one is a perfect fit for every role and every company, and some roles and companies are plain toxic.

It sounds like you have stuck around at places too long. You've been exposed to the office politics, questioned/been questioned about your performance, realized it's not a good fit but have not moved on, etc. If it's not what you were expected, if it's not what you wanted, there's no shame in looking to move on. Imagine getting married to someone after going on a blind date. That's a lot like how jobs are acquired in IT, unfortunately.

It sounds as if you're getting opportunities for a job, and not to challenge yourself. You mentioned the money issues, the similarity between roles, etc. Sometimes this is outside of our control, but it wouldn't hurt to think of what you would like to do and prioritize that in new roles.

It took me a couple of classes of barely or never using books to start doing #1 in conjunction with the library/sharing of #2. It also helps if you can get an idea of the books in advance from someone who just took the course, giving you a chance to grab a library copy before they are all checked out.

In my experience I did get a couple of professors that weren't pleased when I didn't get the book(s).

One frustrating thing was professors assigning their own books. There were a couple of cases where much of the class was directly related to it, but otherwise it was for vanity/$$$.

I was speaking specifically to the perceived anti-male bias that was so strong that teachers wanted males to fail. That's an incredibly broad statement to make and one that goes further than yours here about general disfavor towards groups.

No, in fact I would say the opposite. For example, having a male 5th grade teacher whose primary "fun" interaction with students was through things like playing touch football, playing chess, etc. actives that overwhelmingly appeal to males.

Of those that struggled with coursework it was oftentimes males that received a disproportionate amount of attention from female teachers. While I would say at least part of it was usually due to lack of discipline, the disparity often existed and was noticeable.

And how do we discern if the environment is hostile, for example, if there is disagreement amongst men in a women's psych class? Do we decide based on whichever side is larger? Whichever side is louder?

And what if the perceived hostile environment is, in fact, not hostile? What if it is the result of being exposed to new ideas, new group dynamics, an inability to separate oneself from the group they are a member of, breakdown in communication/terminology, etc.?

What if actions taken to improve the environment for one group is felt to be hostile to a different group? Then what?

No, I think this problem is significantly harder than you believe.

1. You're young enough where any missteps aren't (yet) in a position to possibly hold you back. 2. You have acquired a useful and employable skill, which is often not the case for those who graduate HS. 3. This skill is primarily self-motivated and results oriented, meaning that you're likely to be able to get into a startup/smaller company demonstrating proficiency. 4. You're in a good spot, if not ahead of the game. If you can write code, you can get paid writing code. Never forget that.

My advice is:

Get your diploma/GED. This prevents further education(college, etc.) from being closed off, as well as allows you to demonstrate that you are disciplined: "Yea, I got really into programming, but I realized this education was important and I completed it"

Start networking via meetups, hackathons, etc. It never hurts to know people in the industry, and in your situation the advice and mentorship will be invaluable.

Never stop learning and growing. This is especially important in your situation because you're unencumbered by technical/business decisions made by others. When employed your growth/learning often takes a backset to the company/team, so take full advantage of your free time now. I used to think time spent just playing around with frameworks/libraries and not even building apps from it was wasted, but it was incredibly valuable for learning as I got to dig in as far as I wanted, not just "add feature X and move on."

I find this to be a poor and lazy defense in general, but even more so given the elitism and condecension Mencken had for the "half or more" of the population. People have to squint and misappropriate for other figures like Nietzsche, but not so for Mencken. There is a reason for that...I say this as someone who has works of both on their bookshelf.

Also it should be noted that some of the most damning material was found in his private journals describing people/organizations that he interacted with personally.

Wow, Dojo is still alive and kicking! I'm going to have to find some time to take it for a spin. I really like the idea of framework that looks to address a few needs, making framework selection easier and less reliant on "Oh Framework X is popular now? Let's use that and hire a bunch of devs for it..."

While Dojo is there, I'm surprised ExtJS is not. I haven't worked with it directly for quite a few years but I know it is still being supported. I seem to recall some backlash around licensing issues so maybe that's caused a dip in market/mindshare?

I liked Elm when I played with it, especially the similarities with Haskell. Unfortunately they had moved away from some of the Haskell like syntax shortly after I started with it, and I didn't feel like I fully understood how to use JSON properly.

Kind of surprised to not see Meteor on there. Haven't used it for awhile, and iirc there were concerns around security, deployment, MongoDB lock in (which I thought they were moving away from?) at the time. For smaller, personal use projects I felt I got moving quicker and easier with Meteor than anything else.

I'd love to see something like this for libraries and tooling. Really feels like a lot of worthy choices, and therefore a lot of high-level knowledge needed to understand which to choose and when.

Yea I'd say the big churn appears to be around tooling and paradigm thinking (state management, functional programming, etc.), the latter of which driven in part by the rapid expansion of the language itself.

What you're describing is the fault of those managing the pensions, specifically that they continually underfunded them while expecting unrealistically high returns.

Detroit? You mean when the city that was in bankruptcy due to a multitude of reasons (decades of mismanagement at both the local and state level, decline of auto sector, white flight, etc.)[0], and the "parasites" as you call them that agreed to a cut in their benefits that was pivotal to the bankruptcy going through?[1] I'd say that example (along with your language) makes it clear there's more ideology than fact involved in your argument...

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Detroit#Contributor... [1]http://michiganradio.org/post/detroit-bankruptcy-lesson-unde...

I had been working primarily remote (1-2 days in office for 6) alternating between standing and sitting in my recliner. Switched jobs where I was expected in office 5 days a week for 8+ hours. Friday night the first week I was there I tore a disc in my back. It wasn't until I left and took some time off that it fully healed and allowed me to strengthen my core.

Needless to say my current job is heavy remote with flexible time in the office that I took over a higher paying position.

It's more than reasonable to expect a manufacturer to not stress their (recently released) hardware to the point of it being damaged without significant throttling or flat out shutting it down.

But if it is that reasonable than surely there is a long list of electronic devices that do such a thing...

For years individuals and the tech press have reported about the forced obsolescence of Apple devices, with many detractors claiming otherwise. It would appear that instead of "eating crow" they've decided to double down and are now parroting how this is "manufactured" or "overhyped".

Let's be clear: Apple knew that they were pushing the hardware of older devices so hard as to lead to premature expiration. Instead of being forthcoming about this, or reducing the unreasonable load they were placing on older hardware, they used software to throttle the older devices causing many consumers to buy a new (often iPhone) device as a response.

This is especially greedy and deceptive and Apple has earned every last bit of negative coverage (and then some).

"If Apple hadn’t made this change those phones would have randomly turned off instead"

If Apple hadn't redlined the CPU to hit benchmarks the battery wouldn't have been in such a poor state to need to be shut down/throttled so early in its lifecycle.

They are 100% to blame this situation and have taken the least consumer focused choice up until this point.

While this is a valid point, I've found the biggest issue with "Agile" to be that business thinks that this is the primary (or only) input that needs to be heard from the tech side. They think that because they're tossing us the "Agile" carrot they have carte blanche elsewhere and it is a "get out of jail free" card for their absolutely terrible decisions...like demanding the use of a CMS like AEM when building a dynamic RIA because they may feel the need to change the text of a button down the road.

By being "Agile" the team can make up for the ignorant and time wasting technical decisions foisted upon by business.

This is wrong for a number of reasons...

The GOP just rammed through a huge tax cut/deficit ballooning bill because their financial overlords threatened to shut off the money spigot if they didn't deliver something of benefit to them.

Key votes were won not by "jobs" but by offering cash, either by expanding/reducing the cut to certain programs and financial kickbacks (Corker kickback).

The jobs promised often never arrive or stay if they do, but the checks always clear. This is the case as seen in examples as varied as the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act (which did no such thing) or "small government fiscal conservative" Curt Schilling bilking tens of millions of dollars out of Rhode Island taxpayers to prop up his failing video game company (38 studios) before it bottomed out.

Lobbying is not about "winning" but about access and connections. An entertaining explanation of this is offered up in "Turkmeniscam" by Ken Silverstein.

AT&T is a tech company, one that predates Alphabet by a century or so and is looking to operate across more of the US (this is where connections matter). Alphabet may not have a reason to get Martha Blackburn in their pocket, but you can bet AT&T does (and did).

When I awoke the morning after and started searching, I had multiple, often generic searches ("las vegas shooting") that returned 4chan threads in the first page or two. I think the issue is a little more unique and involved than you describe.