linspace

I have an easier to understand analogy: China is the country that will try to solve an integral using Gaussian quadrature while USA will use some kind of Monte Carlo.

Too good for my pocket, without knowing how much costs. Obviously aimed at institutions.

The solution is obvious: cloud providers should mutually serve each other

> It appears that especially in the American/European continent, muscularity, the ability to exert physical violence, justified or not, is what is preferred, which tells you a bit about those societies, violence and fear appears to be a component of their culture, especially true in Americas compared to Western Europe for instance.

Because outside western culture the world is just peace and lollipops.

Let me give an alternative explanation: females in western societies can indulge in casual sex

> Why do we even bother to give any credence at all to company PR-provided explanations like this?

It's propaganda and it would be great if it didn't work, but it works at least partially. Someone who doesn't know anything about the subject will hear it and repeat it, someone will hear the repetition and give it credibility because it doesn't come directly from a company. I have heard the most stupid opinions from people that go directly against their interests. You don't need fancy algorithms to manipulate society, just perseverance.

> I'm from Spain so our working ethic is different from the Anglo-Saxon world.

People adapt to their environment. I don't think there is anything ethical involved. Most people have found that their best trade off is not caring too much about their careers, a byproduct of decades of incredibly low mobility inside the job market, because of high unemployment and the legal framework. This is not longer true for software, companies are hiring like crazy, salaries are going up and people are jumping ships.

> Trying to do a good job and finding interest in what I do is at least in part a self-defense mechanism

This. Gamification, but for real prizes.

> can't evaluate you fairly.

What's the meaning of fair? Several people admit you need to prepare, and then it seems you should not prepare too much? It looks like a date.

Ha! One could think that the psychological screening is meaningless... until you are involved in hiring people. Of course, 95% candidates will pass, otherwise humanity would be doomed

It would be quite absurd to dismiss a candidate based on the editor and yet I find it more important that a particular cloud provider, which quite often is a requirement.

> I'm too young to confirm but I assume we had something like this before social media took off.

The period after most people moved to big cities and before internet was widespread was the golden age of privacy.

The Emperor of Mankind [1], the most powerful psyker ever, still protecting humanity from the forces of Chaos 10000 years after his death.

[1] https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind

> Did this guy need to help NK for anything remotely like that sort of responsibility?

This is what keeps me wondering. I guess that a guy with a doctorate from Caltech and in the current technological context could be making a lot of money legally.

From outside it looks like he is some kind of crypto idealist.

Barcelona-Madrid vía the "Puente Aéreo" (air bridge, freely translated) is the closest I have seen. There are departures every half hour, you buy one ticket and can take any of them. Boarding is also very fast.

How on earth?

> The answer is perhaps surprising - SVG files can contain JavaScript, CSS and load external content

There you are

You are asking for the holy grail: aligning individual objectives with corporate objectives. The company that manages to do that will eat the world. It would be bigger than nuclear fussion or solving P vs NP.

The first thing to ask is how you measure recognition. Because there are plenty of people that get recognition but not a lot of pay. What you get paid depends more on what other companies are willing to pay you.

The second thing to ask is by whom do you want to get recognized? It's much easier to get recognition by your peers: they spend much more time with you and have the technical knowledge to appreciate your work, and get impacted by your work too. Getting recognized by your peers is important, mostly for your own happiness and sometimes it also permeates upwards (just a little).

I bet that you mean: getting recognized by your manager and getting more pay. Regarding the pay: statistically your are not going to accumulate raises every year. It's unmaintainable. Of course some people manage to do that but you need to be extremely lucky and work very hard. Switching companies is the best way of getting raises.

Regarding getting recognized by your manager: that depends a lot on your manager. Do you give your manager recognition? If the answer is no then it may be because you know little about her work or maybe she is a horrible manager. In the later case screw everything and switch companies, don't bother, run, run fast, life is too short and the job market is great. In the first case communicate more with your manager and understand her problems. Solving her problems is the best way to get recognition. Even trying to solve them and failing will get you recognition. If you are doing something that you think is impressive communicate with your manager and explain why is important. So to summarize my advice is: align your objectives with your manager and super-manager objectives.

I don't know the parent but people definitely stay longer when recognized, and even more important, they do a better job

Completely agree. I think GvR was too conservative. And yet he had lot of backslash, it's easy for me now to criticize several years later after the fact, I only have respect for the work done. I think it was in the mind of everyone the Perl 5/Perl 6 transition.

> that would massively undercut the core business

This happens a lot of times. The reality is that someone will do it for you. Sometimes they even grow bigger than you.

Aren't computers tool themselves? It's only natural people interested in computers are interested in tool making

Some points in that list are deeply rooted in human psychology. I will comment on some of them I have hit in the past:

> 10 points for not knowing (or not using) standard mathematical notation;

I personally hate non-standard notation so I switch to the standard when I know about it, but at first, when moving out of well known waters you may be using non-standard notation.

> 10 points for expressing fear that your ideas will be stolen;

Ha ha, I don't express fear, but who is not afraid a little?

> 10 points for stating that your ideas are of great financial, theoretical, or spiritual value;

A lot of papers I have read starts with this actually, not to mention PhD or MSc thesis.

> 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to established experts;

Most papers boast about how they beat the baseline that everyone uses. I do it myself although I try to be honest about the circumstances when this happens and when it's better the alternative.

> 30 points for not knowing how or where to submit their major discovery for publication;

Sometimes it happens

> 40 points for claiming to have a “proof” of an important result but not knowing what established mathematicians have done on the problem.

It has happened lot of times, since the beginning of time that some people rediscover previous results, sometimes famous people on famous and important results. To put an example the FFT, but there are a lot of them. And besides, who likes to read others people code?

I think the difference between a crackpot and other people is not accepting the mistake. It's curious it happens so much to engineers. I'm an engineer myself and if I learnt something during my studies is how little I actually know. I usually say that one thing STEM education gives you is the certainty that most of your ideas are wrong.

> who care about large legacy code bases

It's clear that Python's main strength is its vast libraries, priority number one is not breaking them. If it could be possible to speed up Python without breaking changes I would be surprised precisely because with so much large codebases speed and efficiency would translate directly to money.

Some people born with money don't like to think that the only thing that makes them special is the money they have, but didn't earn. Avoiding common endeavors, getting an engineering degree instead of being an artist or running a profitable company instead of a non-profit is a good way of not confronting the reality that in a competitive setting they would be crushed. I know it's a generalization as there are plenty of hard working people born in wealthy families that take advantage of it, as they should, without deluding themselves.

You can take something out from an interview: practice for other interviews, insight of how others interview (what did you think were good or bad questions, what annoyed you). I know it's not the best use of your time but it's better than a total waste

> it generally means your boss and your superboss have decided that it's time for you to go

The problem is that those are two highly correlated data points. Toxic bosses are eventually found but at that point they leave a track of dead bodies.

What I have seen sometimes is moving around disgruntled employees. It has its own problems but a lot of the times they are recovered and even become very productive again.

I love it although it feeds on so much programmers pain. I propose a new keyword myself for exception handling: "oh really?"

> he and his intrepid group of psychonauts had tried on themselves.

Unrelated, but couldn't help myself:

https://www.doublefine.com/games/psychonauts-2

There is something special about making things. If they are physical it's even better.

As you age it permeates every interest you had, because you already have taken the low hanging fruits. Not only computers, also books, movies, food and I bet even sex. Everything reminds you of something you have already lived. Every novelty is harder to find, and of course there are novelties, but they require an ever increasing amount of effort and time to find, and you have less and less time free. When you are a kid you are in a constant state of awe.

Computers... I don't care about a lot of the things I cared about. I cannot extract pleasure any longer for studying yet another random language. Now, if I want to truly get impressed learning Kotlin (to say something, fine language) doesn't cut it, I need quantum computing or dependent types or whatever. But it's much harder.

Why do you reply in the first place? Why don't you block unknown messages? Where are your servers right now? Who knows who am I and from where I'm replying to you? Do you feel tainted that I'm not using Safari to reply to you?