jaawn

I don't think the assumption that long hours and little vacation maximize profits should be taken for granted, especially in a longer-term time frame. I've seen quite a lot of information in the past few years that shows that (especially for developers) long hours have diminishing returns on productivity, and may actually hurt productivity.

The data-driven management you're describing is based on the significant assumption that you are able to gather accurate data, and interpret that data accurately.

For example, if you are making a management decision based on how much time employees are spending on X, you are assuming that you actually know how much time is being spent on X and what the value of that time is.

Simply measuring data is not sufficient. You have to measure the right data in the right way for your stated purpose. Companies operating like Amazon does (apparently), are wildly over-confident in their data collection and interpretation abilities, in my opinion.

It would be nice if more managers agreed with the "what works for you" mindset, instead of "what works for the manager."

Luckily, the easy mental arithmetic is a main benefit of the metric system. I really doubt people would create "new inch" tapes. They would probably hang on to existing measuring tape for personal projects though.

While I think the rounding would work with lumber, I definitely don't think it would work with things like car engines. For such precisely-measured components, converting to a metric measurement with the correct significant figures should be fine.

Repair shops can maintain tools for both systems (they already have to). For converting, I mean the dimensions of a component, not tools and fasteners that need to work with tools. Those would likely take a "metric only going forward" approach.

Any manufacturing component which cannot easily be adjusted to a slightly different measurement is poorly designed, in my opinion. I would expect that much of these tools could be tweaked to produce things in metric measurements. If not, the dimensions can simply be converted and re-labeled. If something manufactures a square piece of metal that is 3" by 3", is it a huge deal to just document it as being 76.2mm by 76.2mm?

I think it might not be as bad as we imagine. All speedometers I've seen show both miles-per-hour and kilometers-per-hour, all thermostats I've seen have an option for switching to Celsius, all scales I've owned can display both pounds and kilograms (my current one even has an option for stones), all measuring cups I've seen in a long time have both systems displayed, etc. Even lumber wouldn't necessarily be a huge issue. After all, the "2 by 4" is actually 1.5" by 3.5", which equates to 38mm by 89mm. Would it be a huge deal to round that to 40mm by 90mm?

And, in any case, most people have a mobile phone now which can quickly do unit conversions. I really think it actually is feasible, if you could get the public behind it (good luck).

I couldn't find info on SSD yields, do you know where to find it? I found that HDD factories generally target 97+% yield. So, if SSD yields are much lower, you bring up a good point.

Actually, being the originator of the words in question, I do agree that you are "putting them in my mouth." At the very least, you seem to be inferring a lot of things which I did not imply or intend to imply.

The previous commenter is correct. I view all of these statements as clarification of a single argument and its originations. That argument involves no conspiracy theories, simply a suspicion of price fixing (that's not an outlandish suspicion, in my opinion. I mean...drive manufacturers have been found guilty of it before...)

I don't think it is a conspiracy that some enterprise drives come in odd form factors, you completely misread that part of what I said. My point was that, normally the most advanced enterprise drives come in strange (i.e. much larger) form factors. This is because they have not yet worked the size and power requirements down to fit the smaller form factor, which makes complete sense. However, this drive uses a standard form factor, which tells me it is not "bleeding edge." There are probably rack mount SSDs with much higher capacities than 16TB.

So, the reason it seems weird is that they have obviously passed that hurdle with the 16TB offering. They can now fit 16TBs of SSD storage in a standard form factor. It is odd because if they can fit 16TBs, and we assume that at scale, the variable costs are almost exclusively due to the capacity of the chips, why is there not a consumer drive even a factor of 4 smaller (i.e. 4TB) available? I understand there not being a 16TB drive...or a 12TB, 8TB, etc... available. But a factor of 16 seems oddly large.

I agree with most of this, which is why I stated in other comments that probably the best solution is a mixture of home-schooling and traditional public schooling environments.

What it has to do with the consumer market is that they have the ability to manufacture a drive in the same form factor as the consumer space, at a large enough scale to offer it for sale. That has a lot of implications for the capabilities of their manufacturing processes.

In the past (and I think still currently), the true "bleeding edge" of the SSD market is made up of drives that take up full rack units. So, if this 16TB SSD was in a funky form factor, or even just 3.5", it would make way more sense to me and be less fishy.

If it costs $100 to make an HDD, how are they selling 1TB drives for ~$50, and 3TB drives for ~$85? I sincerely doubt drive manufacturers are working with such terrible (i.e. negative) margins in the consumer space...

I don't see much justification for the "consumer tolerance" argument. It seems like most people are holding off on SSD purchases, or choosing lower capacities because they think the drives are too expensive.

Every piece of storage news I've seen for the past year or two reinforces my opinion that there is a great deal of price-fixing happening in the consumer storage market. The price trend of 2TB HDDs, for example, just does not make sense.

When I see that a company can now create SSDs with ~16x more capacity than the best consumer option, I feel like something fishy is going on that is artificially slowing the pace of larger capacity drives making it into the hands of consumers at a reasonable price.

It wasn't my claim that home-schooled students have difficulty acquiring social skills in general, it was that they miss out on a specific set of social skills, namely dealing with people who are different from them, whom they do not like, who have different opinions, etc... while maintaining productivity. Basically: learning to work together with a diverse set of peers and maybe to empathize with people who see the world differently, or to at least gain experience in coping with differences.

The study/quote supports this by giving a rough indication of how most public schools are diverse places. Obviously, this doesn't "prove" the entirety of my statements, it just offers a small amount of support in the area of public schools being either segregated or diverse.

Those types of things will definitely help, but it is a constant concern which is why I considered it difficult. A summer camp or community program which attracts all kinds of kids would be ideal, but it is a relatively short period of time compared with the 9 months of daily melting pot sessions in a typical public school. Additionally, if "summer camp" means a highly specific camp (like art camp, or theater camp, or Southern Baptist Christian camp), the benefits will be lesser. So, the difficulty is not in finding some amount of diversity, it is matching the level many public schools offer.

This was a good find, thanks.

However, one of the findings supports my case: "Public charter schools are much more likely than regular public schools to be racially unbalanced. Whereas 30 percent of regular public school students attended a racially unbalanced school (one with less than 20 percent or more than 80 percent minority enrollment), more than 60 percent of charter school students attended a racially unbalanced school. This measure considers the racial makeup within a particular school, rather than comparing the school to the county as a whole."

Based on this, regular public schools are more likely to be diverse or "balanced" than not. This paragraph glosses over it, but it shows that 70% of regular public school students attend a school which has a balanced mix of students from different backgrounds. The segregated public schools are the exception, not the norm, but that segregation increases when parent choice is introduced (i.e. with charter schools where only 40% of students are attending a balanced/diverse school).

It may not always teach you how to interact well with them, but it at can improve those interactions, and it at least provides exposure to those situations so you can be prepared for them later and relate to others who have been in similar situations.

I agree that the same issue, to different extents, applies to all non-public schools. I don't think the issue arises from being "at home" necessarily, I think it stems from the natural bias introduced by choosing activities/settings/groups to socialize in.

Home school doesn't inherently reduce "exposure" in a general sense, as you have illustrated. But it makes it easier to stick to your (or your parent's) comfort zone. If a parent is committed to not shying away from uncomfortable social situations, and enthusiastic about engaging people with different views, they can probably provide this exposure to their child. I am just saying that is definitely a challenge that should be acknowledged and accounted for. Based on many people's descriptions of home-schooling, this is a concern that is often overlooked unintentionally.

I have done this in several other comments/replies on this post, so I chose to omit that here to reduce redundancy.

I think our society is not this unfree provided you are willing to fight. Several government agencies have the power through fear to do something like this when they deem it necessary, and a very small dev team with no resources or company lawyers to back them up would be an easy target. Sure, fighting such a seizure might yield success, but it is a lot of time and energy and money to devote to a cause. This is the same reason why many people settle lawsuits out of court instead of seeing them through.

Simply "being social" is not what I'm referring to. Of course home-schooled children can still be social and have social skills. There is a specific subset of these skills which I am arguing that represent more of a challenge for them.

It is not impossible for them to still obtain these skills/exposure, simply more difficult. It also isn't life-ruining to be deficient in the specific skills I'm talking about. However, I personally think these specific skills are very important for the diverse, interconnected modern society we live in. It is an important concern to evaluate before advocating for 100% homeschooling, which is what started this whole debate.

I don't see how it is different. A "higher level of abstraction" means progressively higher-level versions of source code. Binary->machine/assembly code->C++ code for example. Each step involves reverse engineering. Simply disassembling/decompiling a binary is not really sufficient to be considered "reverse engineered". Someone needs to analyze the output of these tools to create reverse-engineered output which is ready to be modified/extended/investigated.

Where did you find data about the social stratification of public schools? I just attempted to find this information and found nothing...

Also, I don't think public school is the only way to get this exposure, but creating it elsewhere seems to be very difficult.

I don't think a similar socializing experience = homogenization.

I have been encouraged by a lot of my teachers throughout my life to "dream" and be curious. I have attended 3 elementary schools, 1 middle school, 3 high schools, 3 public universities, and 1 community college. There was at least one teacher at every school who encouraged "dreaming" for me.

All this talk of socialization is not meant to suggest that it is the main purpose of school, merely that there are specific types of social interactions that children encounter a lot of in public school, while very little in a home-schooled environment.

I don't believe this is true. I attended a total of 7 different schools in 4 different cities in 2 different states during my primary/secondary education. Only one of these schools was notably non-diverse. I was very often exposed to children of other cultures/attitudes/backgrounds, as well as other ages. It is possible that my experience is exceptionally different, but it doesn't seem like it.

I tried to find some research on this, but unfortunately everything I find is an aggregate across all schools, rather than diversity within each school.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. It is technically possible to recreate this exposure outside of school, but very difficult.

I have a feeling that the public schools in the 2nd century Roman Empire were significantly different from modern public schools, especially in the United States.

I think a more likely scenario might be that control of the project was seized, and the final release and statements were not from the developers, or they were issued by the developers under duress. It seems more like an agency wanted to shut it down because it worked too well.

All of these points go against both my personal experience and the results of research I've seen on these topics. I encourage you to find and post evidence for these claims.