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derivativethrow

76 karma · joined March 29, 2020

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derivativethrow··on New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat
You suspect not, but you'd be wrong :) Those things do require a ticket. We can't install our own equipment, only IT is allowed to do that. Pretty strict about connecting peripherals and USBs too.
derivativethrow··on An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in
Have you read the GPT-3 paper? The authors are pretty forthright about how the GPT techniques likely won't scale much beyond 175B parameters.
derivativethrow··on New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat
How does that work at a large company that's already bureaucratic? Where I work, I still have to open tickets for everything. I still have to wait a long time for new equipment. How does a union make that worse if I have to wait for cogs to turn anyway?

I also would like more realistic examples of bureaucracy, because yours are frankly bullshit. Yeah yeah the MTA is bad sure, and I've interacted with unions before that exemplified their stereotypes. But if you really think employees would suddenly not be able to plug in a monitor or move it across the room because there's a union, I think you're completely incorrect.

derivativethrow··on New Facebook tool allows employers to suppress “unionize” in workplace chat
Switzerland. As an American, I wanted to move there after zipping around the country on their buses and trains.

That was such a good experience, even the tickrt app brought me joy.

derivativethrow··on The social obligation to be bad at things
> I could have done that, but I didn't - because I'm not sufficiently full of shit.

It sounds like you're disparaging the art (and in fact the artists for producing it) because you think it's not sufficiently technically difficult. It also sounds like you believe the artists are trying to present it as more than it is. But tell me if I've misunderstood you.

This is a very antagonistic attitude. You're approaching art with an adversarial mindset that only recognizes it if it's something nontrivial. I don't think anyone is trying to bullshit you - art is just subjective.

For many people, what's more important than the competence is the originality. Not even necessarily the originality of the thing itself, but of the meta surrounding it. In that sense, plain white canvas in a museum is actually pretty original. It's certainly less derivative than a lot of the highly competent also-rans who painted the same scenes in the same (highly proficient) styles in the same time period. Moreover, it made you think. You didn't have a positive reaction to it, but then (as any artist would tell you) art doesn't restrict itself to positivity :)

Now with that in mind, let's circle back to your other statement:

> You're supposed to have some kind of ability and that ability shouldn't have to be defended by pointless platitudes.

It seems like they do have an ability, it's just not an ability you respect because your definition of art is more narrow than theirs. And that's okay! No one is forced to deeply appreciate all forms of art. But the way you're disparaging this kind of modern art is a perfect example of the middlebrow dismissal that's already been brought up in this thread.

People are not full of shit just because you don't appreciate the (highly subjective) things they do. The triviality of many modern art pieces is part of a broader context which your criticism completely fails to capture.

derivativethrow··on Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main
That's fair. Do you think I am causing one with this comment?
derivativethrow··on Easily rename your Git default branch from master to main
I appreciate the cogency of your broader point, but please reconsider using the terminology "virtue signaling."

When one person accuses another of virtue signaling, even implicitly, there are typically only two possibilities:

1. They hold such a cynical worldview that it's reasonable and coherent to criticize someone else for attempting to publicly advocate for what they honestly believe to be right, or

2. They believe the other person is not being honest in their advocacy, and more importantly that they should call the person's integrity into question by opening that up for discussion.

When you label another individual's behavior as virtue signaling, you forcibly shift the focus of discussion on that person's behavior and identity rather than the thing they're advocating. This can have a chilling effect on people voicing their opinions with honesty and authenticity. Likewise if an idea if worth critiquing, it should merit criticism on its own without calling into question its advocates' motives.

I don't mean to pick on you in particular, I'm just calling out the use of the term.

derivativethrow··on Amazon sues former AWS marketing VP Brian Hall after he takes Google Cloud job
Two Sigma regularly pays people 12 - 24 months to do nothing after they leave in lieu of them taking an offer with anothing trading firm, if they were working in strategy or research roles.
derivativethrow··on Nicolas Bourbaki: The greatest mathematician who never was (2019)
What does this comment mean?
derivativethrow··on Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators
Read the SEC documentation on insider trading directly. Barring that, Matt Levine gives accessible (and entertaining) which is informative for a lay audience.
derivativethrow··on Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators
That is because the actual stipulation is for there to be a confidentiality or fiduciary agreement. As shorthand, "illicitly obtained" could therefore be replaced with, "illicitly appropriated."

On its own, material and nonpublic information is fine to trade with. Likewise not all insider trading is illegal; most of it is explicitly legal and mundane.

derivativethrow··on Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators
No, material and nonpublic is necessary but insufficient for the trading to be illegal. It must also break a confidentiality agreement, fiduciary duty or specific law pertaining to the way the information is released to the person and their duties thereof.

This is to say that it's illegal for congresspeople to trade on material, nonpublic information because there is now a law explicitly governing it. If they (or anyone) develop the material, nonpublic information through original research, it's not illegal.

Don't trust Wikipedia summaries for these things.

derivativethrow··on A simple way to get more value from metrics
That strikes me as a short tolerance for feeling something is ruined. He appropriately highlighted the real time estimate of the more involved work in a footnote. He didn't literally mean all of the work was one day, he's trying to convey a larger point about outsized engineering returns from comparatively small person-hours of work.

Were you able to move past this to read the rest of the article? Because it's a very good article.

derivativethrow··on A simple way to get more value from metrics
Given:

- the context that the author already has a very successful career as a well-known developer

- the humility he evidences in most posts on his blog

- the fact that he explicitly highlights the work of others in this post alongside his own

I really don't think Dan is doing this as any form of personal marketing. He has no need of personal marketing, his blog already has several million views per month and frequently shows up on HN as it is, and it isn't really his style.

derivativethrow··on A simple way to get more value from metrics
Dan Luu is not "fresh out of academia."
derivativethrow··on CMU Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Bots
The study hasn't been published, so what's the story doing here? Tell me when I can read an actual paper.
derivativethrow··on Facebook to shift permanently toward more remote work after coronavirus
These are the requirements for an existing employee to move to full-time remote, according to the all-hands today:

1. Level IC5 or higher (this is what most would call "senior").

2. Can't have performance less than meets expectations in last two reviews.

3. Permission from team and manager.

derivativethrow··on Ask HN: People who rejected a FAANG offer. Why?
No it isn't, I just like calculus/analysis. I don't work in trading, my job is developing simulations in operations research.
derivativethrow··on Ask HN: People who rejected a FAANG offer. Why?
It's probably getting downvoted because it's not actually relevant. I'm not sure why there are so many comments here talking about refusing to interview or "rejecting" recruiter advances. The OP was very specific in wanting to hear from people who rejected an offer for another offer.

Instead a lot of these comments are from people who seem to have an axe to grind against the companies themselves. It's fine to have ethical or practical disagreements with FAANG companies, but it's not relevant to the OP's question about why someone would go as far as receiving an offer and then decline to accept it.

derivativethrow··on Ask HN: People who rejected a FAANG offer. Why?
I was offered significantly more money from a non-FAANG than any of my (three) FAANG offers were willing to give me, with better liquidity. At the end of the day, that's all I cared about. I'm very happy with where I landed, and have no plans to leave in the near future. My present company has an academic engineering culture that prioritizes outcomes over process, while encouraging curiosity and autonomy.
derivativethrow··on Show HN: Make your site’s pages faster than instant in one minute
Note: The author monetizes this by selling web traffic from the Chrome extension.
derivativethrow··on Ask HN: What programming skills are required by HFT or Trading firms
Which firms are broadly considered to the top ones?
derivativethrow··on Your mobile data sold, without your knowledge
I’m aware of what the central limit theorem is, but I’m confused as to what you mean here. Do you mind clarifying? It sounds like you’re saying the CLT leads to deanonymization. I don’t see how the two are related.
derivativethrow··on Holocene Extinction
This is an incorrect interpretation of the report. Or at least, the way it's stated is misleading. We have not "gotten rid of" 60% of wildlife on Earth. What has actually happened is (since the 1970s), the average reduction per species is 60%. Some species lost more than 60%, some (far) less.

This is still bad news, but I feel it's important to point out that we haven't (for example), lost 60% of all species on the planet.

derivativethrow··on Netflix now supports TLS 1.3
To give you an answer focused on the crypto itself, because the way they explained the TLS properties doesn't make this clear:

1. Integrity is redundant with authentication, so really you could say they're ensuring confidentiality + authentication. You can't authenticate a thing without implicitly obtaining assurance of integrity. It's a strictly stronger property.

2. Confidentiality is (usually) insecure and unreliable without authentication. Without authentication you have no PKI for a key exchange to symmetric encryption, so you can't even do TLS in the first place. And if you don't have a carefully applied MAC or a native AEAD mode, your symmetric mode isn't that secure either.

So really what you're asking reduces to the question of why they need the most sophisticated TLS scheme for encrypting their streams. If they want the most secure TLS scheme for confidentiality, TLS 1.3 is the way to do it. They explained one particular facet of why this is the case, re: perfect forward secrecy.

derivativethrow··on Shirt Without Stripes
If that's the case that's a big problem, because human children are trivially capable of both formulating and understanding uncommon sentences which still make sense.

It might be hard to come up with examples on the spot, but in everyday life you will routinely come across things you need to refer to by negation which are relatively uncommon.

derivativethrow··on Shirt Without Stripes
Consider the query, "non-glass skyscrapers", which suffers from the same problem.

What do you call a skyscraper like that if you want to refer to it? They exist, but you can't find them using that search term on Google.