1,185 karma · joined September 11, 2012
How does the discovery described in this paper help engineer something the world has never seen before?
As an engineer, I'm always looking for some new thing to make. What does this paper make more possible to make that was less possible to make before?
Of all the scientific fields, computer science is the one that is mostly closely related to fields where theory is most worthless. If you have a computer science theory, then write some damn code to prove it. Then share your code. Others can then run it and replicate those results. At the "theory" phase, the idea is worthless.
The point is to show your work. You film yourself setting up the experiment to prove that you actually did the experiment. You also film yourself collecting the results, proving that you actually got the results you claim.
The only kind of science that consists of "just writing the paper" is math. Math will be exempt from this requirement. Fake math is not an epidemic
From now on, all scientists who want to publish science, they publish their work in the form of a video. They film themselves doing the science and then put that video on YouTube, or maybe some science specific version of youtube. Other people can then watch the video and determine for themselves if the science is valid or not.
Its much harder to fake science if there is a video involved. Its too easy to make fake science if all you have to do you "prove" it is write some words.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:YBC_7289_sketch.svg
It's just a bunch of numbers scribbled onto a tablet. For all we know it could just be some guy writing down the number of sheep he is willing to sell to his neighbor or something. To say this tablet proves the Mesopotamian knew about Pythagorean's theorem is quite a stretch.
To the people who want to believe, there is nothing that can be said. Believe what you want.
Also, this tablet has no provenance. According to the wikipedia page on this tablet, it says "It is unknown where in Mesopotamia YBC 7289 comes from" Basically it just magically appeared one day. For all we know it could be faked. In any other field, this artifact would be ruled inauthentic. But in this field, for some reason it just doesn't matter.
Some people's definition of "evidence" is different from my own. If somebody really wants to believe something, then just about anything qualifies as evidence. This is why UFO people consider literally every single fuzzy video as undeniable proof that aliens exist.
There was a point in time when I was very interested in ancient civilizations from Mesopotamia, but in more recent years I an way less interested in it. The scholarship in that field is just terrible. In my opinion, a lot of the stuff is on par with alien "investigators" and stuff like that, yet for some reason the general public sees the field as totally legit.
Those terms are all specific to political discussions. The Dunning Kruger effect is known across every single cross section of the internet, and it is absolutely everywhere.
Well, the text of the law states that the probability of Nazis coming up "approaches 100%". This is to say the law was made after an observation of how common the argument was. In my experience, the Dunning-Kruger argument has the same probability on the modern internet.
I really hate this attitude. This is a very common belief held by non-technical people. They believe that it is impossible to have perfect security, and that every single piece of software ever built is either already hacked, or waiting to be hacked by future hackers.
I truly believe one day a cryptographic voting system will be rolled out, but it's a long way away, not because for technical reasons, but for cultural reasons.
Also, if you ask a depressed person why they are depressed, they may not know exactly why they are depressed. I spent my entire high school years depressed. It wasn't until a few years after I graduated college before I realized the reason why I was depressed: it was because I had abusive parents. If you had asked me in high school why I'm depressed I would have said something like "I'm a bad person but I have no reason why". At the time I thought my parents treated me like I was a bad person was secondary to the actual problem.
If you really want insight on what makes the human mind depressed, then ask people who have overcame their depression. The first step to overcoming depression is to discover what is making you depressed. If someone is still depressed, they probably don't know what is making them depressed, and so their "data" is just noise.
The problem with the psychology field is that it has an obsession with "data". Everything has to be on a pie chart of a line graph or something like that. Every "study" has to be on a grand scale and then averaged together to make a single conclusion.
The problem is that the human mind of not replicatable. You can perform a "study" on a sample of people and get a result, and then replicate that exact same study on the exact same sample of people at a later time, and still get a different result. In order for the scientific method to be applicable, you have to be able to get the exact same result each time you replicate the study. This is not possible in psychology.
But that would never happen. The whole point of ivy league is that they are exclusive. Companies get to feel special when they hire an ivy league grad so they can feel special for having one of the special chosen ones. If everyone gets to have an ivy league degree, then the ivy league degree becomes worthless.
Now as an adult, I work from home, so I wake up and go to sleep whenever I want. If I want to wake up at 3PM and go to bed at 5AM, I can do that with no consequence. It's amazing. These days I occasionally have to wake up early, but when I do, I have no problem doing so. I think it's because if I'm waking up early these days, it's because I'm doing something special that I want to do, like traveling. This makes be think think the reason why I had such trouble waking up as a teenager was because I just hated school so much.
I got curious once and looked up what it's like to study there and discovered the "great books" curriculum. These days I'm in my 40s and have a successful computer science career, so there is nothing to gain from enrolling in this program, but if I were to ever enroll in school again, it would probably be this program or one like it.
When I was in school, what I really hated most about it was how common it was for professors to make the class about them. In a program like St. Johns, the curriculum is set in stone, and so there is very little room for the professor to inject himself into the class. When I was in undergrad in the early 2000s, if you disagreed with the professor, you'd be seen as being disrespectful or disruptive and your grade would suffer. I have a feeling that wouldn't be a problem at St. Johns.
Why would somebody criticize a scientific paper for something other than to point out some kind of scientific malfeasance?
If the paper is written in such a hard to understand manner, then its not possible to make any response at all. That's the point.
I've noticed this too. The reason why I think this happens is because if you're an employed scientist, then the system is set up in such a way that you HAVE to publish, or else you lose your job. If someone criticizes your paper, and it gets pulled from publication, then thats the same as having never published anything in the first place. Therefore, the technique to survival is to write your paper in such a way that repels criticism as much as possible. The easiest way to do this is to write it in such a way that makes it hard to read, but not in such a way that makes it obvious it's gibberish.
Not in my area. Where I live, there are about 4 or 5 housing developments, and every time I drive by them, I never see any progress. Occasionally I may see one truck and maybe 3 or 4 people working, but most of the time, I see no one. In the year I've lived here, I have notices zero progress on all new construction that I know of.
First off, the overwhelming majority of developers are senior developers. If it takes X years to transition from a junior to a senior, then that means every single developer is a senior, except for those who started within the last X years. I think a lot of articles like this make the mistake of assuming that senior developers make up a small percentage of the entire developer population.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the average age of a software developer is very young. The very first generation of developers are only now starting tor retire and leave behind job openings. Other industries, for example doctors, don't have this problem. There is a rate of doctors who graduate medical school, and a rate of doctors who retire, and that rate differential determines the ease of getting hired right after medical school. The retirement rate of developers is extremely small. In 2018 I did an onsite interview at Google, and I was blown away by how young everybody was. I was 35 at the time, but it seemed the average age of people that I saw there seemed to be about 22 years old. Eventually, after a decade or so, the retirement rate will increase, and job openings for juniors will return, but it's still a long ways off.
One more thing. My personal experience is that it was easier to land a job as a junior developer back in 2010-2012 than it is to land a job today in 2020 now that I have 10 years of professional experience. It always bothers me to see people post about how its so easy to get a job if you're a senior developer, because I just don't see it. Its as hard today as it's ever been. Year after year I experience more difficulty finding a job than ever before. Every single interview I've done in my entire career since becoming a "senior" (sometime around 5 years into my career), never once have I felt like I'm being treated like I'm a valuable resource. For instance, with my last job hunting stint, I made it a policy to turn down all interviews where I was asked to do either a whiteboard problem, or a take home project. Without exception, every single company said "fine, bye". If senior developers are such a rare resource, you'd think at least one company would try to negotiate with me and try to make it work out, but no. Every single company was fine with letting me go after refusing to do the whiteboard/take-home. Even in 2010 when I was first starting out, I felt more respect coming from companies during the interview process.
I don't believe in this idea that there is a huge demand for senior developers, and extreme low demand for junior developers. It only makes sense that both would track the same level of demand. There is no fundamental difference between a junior developer and a senior developer. They are both developers. With the senior, you get a little bit more productivity, but the junior gives you productivity too. I would believe it if seniors had good demand, and juniors slight less, but still good demand. Or Senior developers low demand, and junior slightly worse demand. But I don't believe senior is high demand, and junior is low demand. That just doesn't make sense.
Not if the market is oversaturated. They may get multiple people to reach that 1% stage. Then none of them have much leverage.
It's not rare. It's very common for people to pass the interview process only to get ghosted after spending hours solving puzzles and answering screening questions. If you're the only person to pass, then that does give you leverage, but you're not likely the only person to pass. I pass interviews all the damn time, and get rejected all the time too.
> if you are good at your job, you are going to produce a lot of value for a company depending on how they use you -- you don't have to be a celebrity developer to bring value to a company
Being able to provide value to a company doesn't necessarily give you leverage, especially if there are many other people who are also able to provide value to the company.
> Politely but firmly ask for compensation in line with what you value your time at like "thanks so much for giving me a chance to join the team -- I'd love to accept the offer but I was really expecting
Just because you want to make lots of money doesn't mean you will make lots of money. If someone else will work for less, then the company is not obliged to pay you more just because you politely ask for it.
The proof is my own personal experience. If programmers were truly scarce, then every time a programmer passes a programming puzzle interview, then they'd be offered a job. I can't tell you how many interviews I've aced over the years only to be ghosted afterwards. If ghosting existed (which is very much does, and is quite common), then that means the market is oversaturated.
No it doesn't. My portfolio that I've been adding to for the past 10 years doesn't get me any offers at all. You get offers by networking and making buddies with high powered people.
That's what the 1MB blocksize limit is for.