lizard

> Game text is usually not structured with any didactic value in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of furigana in Japanese in consideration of target audiences). A lot of game categories don't even require any reading beyond recognizing words (which is somewhere between kinder and 1st grade level reading skill)

> Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're typically spending a large amount of time doing other things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly common phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to skip over dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off gimmicks that rely on reading the text carefully for instructions or clues.

This is a consequence of modern gaming trends and by no means an issue with video games themselves.

There are a lot of game categories that provide or even require extensive reading. We don't have to accept _all_ games a beneficial; it's not like we use magazines and tabloids to teach reading comprehension either.

There are games where killing monsters isn't the primary goal, or even if it is a significant aspect of game play can be averted by finding alternative solutions, usually through the in-game lore.

Deus Ex was a great example where several bosses could be entirely side stepped by reading emails throughout the game (though to be fair, only a few of them actually required _reading_ the email as opposed to simply discovering it). Arcanum is another that if you pieced together enough of the backstory and paid attention to the dialog you could talk the final boss down. There are even more out there, as you mention, that offer hints to puzzles and gimmicks, some of which even present it as a riddle ensuring you read and understand the text rather than just found it.

Sure, a lot of people will skip these things and save-scum or post on message boards to get the answer, but that's not much different than CliffNotes everyone used.

If you want to use video games in school do the same thing we do for books: Select the games the offer quality reading and evaluate based on comprehension rather than completion. You can even require students submit save files to verify they took the reading path.

For me, there are 2 things:

1. I want more honesty and transparency in products and services. I'm tired of being sold something to "Connect with friends and the world around you" that are actually just a front to collect as much information about me as possible to for advertisers.

I'm not even opposed to targeted ads, but at this point have to assume that if a product is capable of collecting ever bit of data it can and selling it, it will. Even privacy policies and user agreements are meaningless because they all contain text of the effect that the provider can change the terms at any time.

I just want companies to be honest about what they are actually doing and what the cost to me really is.

2. I want ads to back the hell off.

I don't mean they need to go away entirely. There are times when I _want_ to learn about different products and find new things to solve problems I have.

But I'm tired of them them pushing to get as in my face as possible, of them beating me over the head with problems I don't have, and of them trying to manipulate me into giving them money instead of helping me find things that will actually help me.

It's as if product discovery isn't profitable; like companies are afraid to be honest about their products. So instead of making better products, they entire market just makes different colored cheap boxes with nothing inside and uses ads to manipulate as many people into buying them before they figure it out.

I block ads guilt free because at this point I honestly don't feel like I can trust any company that participates in this racket.

Personally though, I'm might just be willing to give up on products that depend on ad revenue. While I admit I do use some services based on ad-tech, I'm pretty quick to leave any site that complains about my ad-blocker and don't really feel like I'm missing anything. I could probably be convinced to leave most these other services behind if they started making a worse experience of it.

> I'm assuming the RFID reader is just showing up as a virtual keyboard in this kind of setup.

I'm not affiliated with this project but built a few variations of the same thing several years ago.

Essentially, yes, you can configure these scanners in a keyboard mode such that they type the student id with a return. Just set up a simple form with focus on a text field, and reset after each submission.

One iteration I worked on used some other groups web form that wasn't design with this case. I just set up my Pis to automatically launch Firefox on boot, and wrote user script to browse the site and launch the form.

This was all built into the image so if anything ever went wrong, just write the image to a new SD card and reboot.

You can set up the scanners as to scan cards passively as well, but (the way I did it anyways) they won't decode the id when configured this way. Or maybe it was just more fun to reverse engineer it.

Many years ago, before MFA was really a thing, I changed my email address to get away from the spam list I'd built up in my youth. Still, I had used the account for some personal communications and was concerned some people wouldn't catch immediately update their address books, so I set up a forwarding rule to my new address for anything that got through the spam filters.

The old account has been silent for years, to the point that if I'd forgotten whether I'd even deleted it or not. So imagine my surprise when in the span of a minute, I get several forwarded emails from Google stating that the account was recovered, a new device has signed in, password was changed, secret question changed, and recovery email changed.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, the account is dead and hasn't been linked to anything I've signed into for years. But that doesn't mean it was never linked to anything important and who knows what's still sitting in the archive or who's still in the contact list. So as soon as I saw the messages I jumped to figure out what happened.

But it turns out that all these security alerts from Google are just to "let you know about important changes to your Google Account and services" and if there's a problem just tell you to click a button to login and "Check activity"...which is difficult to do when all your security information has been changed before you have time to respond.

There are options to try old passwords and linked email addresses, but after several attempts all I got was "Unfortunately Google couldn't verify that <the account> belongs to you." and a link to "Recover your account"[1] that just tells you to try the recover options that have already been prompted for, and if all else fails "consider creating a replacement Google Account."

There is no contact information, no option to let anyone know you have a problem. The emails alerts are sent from the uncaring "no-reply" address while Googles "Contact Us" only gives a physical mailing address and directs you to the same help articles.

Now, again, the account is--has been--dead as far as I'm concerned. But considering the forwarding rule was still in place Google probably thinks differently. So now the account, and everything in it, belongs to someone else.

The moral of the story is not only do you need to practice good security now, you need to have done it your whole life, and go back to do it better when new security practices are adopted--before crooks do it for you.

1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7299973?hl=en

"Identity" in most psychological context generally refers to how a person perceives themselves. It's personal; there is no threshold. You can identify as The Greatest JavaScript Master of All Time and no one can do anything but disagree.

The way I read it, that's precisely the danger this essay is warning about.

When you start identifying as a "JavaScript Developer" you are making JavaScript development a part of who you are. Anything about JavaScript becomes personal. You expose yourself to attacks that aren't even being directed at you. The bigger you inflate your identity the more get hit, until eventually you can't hold a conversation without getting offended about something.

If you can keep these things out of your identity it is much easier to shrug off other opinions about them. You can stay objective and have meaningful conversations about the benefits and consequences of it. Because it's just a thing, it does its thing and gives you something to think about when it doesn't.

Identity is personal: Identity is what you choose to care about. Some things should become part of your identity. Studies find that in most successful relationships partners see each other as part of their own identity. But most things probably don't belong there.

Thanks for your clarifying where you're coming from. I read comments like

> All good things eventually come to an end, and you need to be ready for the inevitable.

> You're just not in a position to be able to change how people think about things. Your skillset is not with people, it's with code.

> You're still getting paid the same, but are having your responsibilities taken away. Most other people are overworked and underpaid, you're getting underworked and overpaid. So why complain?

and it sounds like 'The professional world sucks. Deal with it.'

But with a bit of context I think they can be read in a way that should resonate with more people here, perhaps 'The professional world sucks. If you think you're ready to go out and tackle that problem then get out there and do it.'

What I see from many of your comments, and why I think you're getting so much opposition, is that you are suggesting we should be satisfied simply being programmers while many people here on Hacker News want to be more than that.

The reality may be that many of us are just programmers and that the real struggle isn't with the project management but with our refusal to accept our role. I can't argue with that. We can't all be architects; someone has to lay the bricks and you can spare yourself some trouble, and even find some satisfaction, by accepting that from time to time someone will tell you to lay the bricks the other way. But I wouldn't demean people for wanting to do more.

Personally, I don't find programming very fulfilling. I don't get satisfaction from producing a sufficient quantity of code, but from solving sufficiently challenging problems. Coding a means-to-an-end for me, just a medium to express my thoughts and ideas like pen and paper to an artist. When my job became more about bullet-point features and timelines than the problems the system was supposed to solve I struggled. A lot. In fact I started looking for new problems to solve in lieu of the ones I had been working on, like why the project was struggling and how to convince the project managers they were just digging us deeper into technical debt.

Fortunately I'm being moved to another team as part of a restructuring in our organization and had the opportunity to explain my perspective to my new manager, who suggested I could be put on more of a leadership track. Will it happen? Will it be better? I don't know, but trying means I can see if my current employer wants to see what else I can offer and help me grow or if they just want me to sit down, shut up, and spit out some code.

Video Games can do 2 important things (beyond entertainment):

They push the limits of current technology. Video game developers are constantly trying to get betting graphics out of hardware and software. You just don't need the lastest GeForce video card to run a word processor. With modern hardware I can perform thousands of calculations instantaneously with no optimatizations what-so-ever. But if you try to play the latest AAA titles on a 5-year old computer, you're going to have a bad time.

They spread ideas. The average person doesn't care about voxels, but they do like that they can tear down and rebuild almost everything in Minecraft. This has inspired more games like Terraria and Guncraft putting their own spin desconstructable worlds. Not to mention the inspiration Notch has become for indie game developers everywhere.

Personally, this is why I like working on video games: when I work on a game idea I have to ask what it can bring to the table. Why should people play it? What will it contribute to their lives? to the world? It doesn't have to be revolutionary per se, it doesn't have to save lives, but it has to do something.

One of the things I find most fascinating about personality is that you will never find any set of identical people. Common traits, sure. Matching upbringing, yeah. Similar behaviors, of course. But you will never find 2 people who are exactly the same all the time. Our personalities are malleable and always adapting to the fit in with others around us, but never quite losing what they were before. Our Identity is a complex history of everyone we've ever come across and everything we've ever done.

And we should expect identity branching from individual to individual; even identical twins who may be practically the same can not occupy the same space at the same time, so there must be some divergence. But branching within an individual...How does that happen?

When it comes to analogies cognitive psychology and computer are no strangers: Perhaps its similar to dual-booting, virtualization, or just a multi-user system. If that human brain is capable of running multiple persons it may be subject to the same limits of resource sharing and allocation or just have ACLs which would explain branching.

We don't understand DID, MPD, or whatever we want to call it. It's unusual and there's no reason to believe our brains should develop in such a way. Not to sound de-humanizing but it needs to be studied, just like "normal" personalities need to be studied.

If people can live comfortable, healthy lives with multiple identities than I hope we can come to accept it, and sooner rather than later. But we also have to consider how it affects other people, for example another VICE article was posted to HN a while bask describing their perspective while a partner had a dissociative episode: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9144552

> Over the years I've concluded it must be because the way it's asked. People think there's something deeper in it than the most straightforward explanation. Or maybe they think they missed some critical detail and are afraid to ask.

I like your conclusion and I think it's something anyone involved with hiring practices should think about more.

I don't know if I'm the type of person a hedge fund would be looking for, but I would freeze on that question: My first thought would be, I wouldn't be willing to pay to play the game with "some guy" at all. But knowing that's probably not what you're getting at, instead I'm going to have to look for a solution to a problem I've never encountered.

But it goes deeper than that: If someone were to walk up to me and offer to play the game I just could say "No, thanks." and life goes on, a simple and low stress life decision. In a job interview I may be desperate, or at least hopeful, for the job; no thanks isn't going to cut it. You may not realize it, or intend it, but your warm up is asking how I face new challenges in life. No pressure.

Since the situation is new and hypothetical I've also got to consider the hypothetical details. These hypothetical details can branch widely and deeply, reaching into both the hypothetical world you've prompted and the reality that I'm being evaluated without knowing what you are looking for. E.g. Is it a loaded die? That would mean the question is loaded so, no that's a silly question; unless that's exactly the kind of thinking you're looking for, in which case it's an essential question.

Further, I know you already know the answer, and the trick if there is one, so the question might seem simple to you and you might not understand why I don't also just get it (which you admit). This means bad starts and bad questions can make me look bad which I definitely don't want (So, yes, I think there may be a critical detailed I missed, and I'm afraid to ask).

This probably isn't how you or other interviewers intend for candidates to respond to questions. One solution is for candidates to work on "interviewing skills" and get better at provided simple, canned answers. This makes sense if these interviewing skills part of the job but otherwise, in my opinion, distracts from exploring the candidate's talents and doesn't really give a good sense of company fit.

Alternatively, the interviewer could make their intentions and expectations clear for the candidate. For example, send the candidates your warm up questions a week in advance to let them prepare for the interview. When they get there ask them what they came up with and then probe them with deeper questions that get at what you really want to learn. Those who worked on your problems will be better prepared to talk about it.

I would like to see interviews try to draw out the skills the candidates possess and determine if they would benefit the company, rather then being a Company Exam. This might mean letting the candidate actually work with the team on a small problem, or just providing guidance and feedback to help them feel more comfortable talking with you rather than feeding you answers. For example, step them through the original dice game and then ask them to consider the variations.

EDIT: Fixed typos.

You might think of it like this:

DID: Alice is talking to Bob. At some point in the conversation Bob "dissociates" and is replaced by Charlie. Charlie is in the exact same place as Bob and sees all the things Bob was seeing, but Charlie wasn't here before so no idea where here is, how he got there, or who is talking to him. Alice doesn't know anything's wrong at first but Bob (now Charlie) seems uncomfortable and doesn't know things Bob does, like where they are, how they got there, or who she is. Sometime later the dissociative episode ends and Bob comes back in place of Charlie. Bob has no idea what transpired during the episode because Charlie was there instead, but recognizes Alice and remembers things they had done together.

In this case there is no difference in Bob's or Charlie's ability to perceive the world, nor are either of them perceiving something which Alice could not (barring other conditions). There are no hallucinations or delusions; Bob and Charlie appear to "know" different things, as if they were different people. Of note, Bob and Charlie identify differently but its debatable whether they are (or should be treated as) different persons, hence the change of name.

Schizophrenia: Alice is talking to Bob. Bob is talking to Charlie. Charlie isn't really there, but Bob is either unaware or doesn't mind. Bob's conversation with Charlie may be benign or it may involve plots to take over the world, in either case from Alice's perspective Bob experiencing something which isn't real.

This of course is just a possible scenario for schizophrenia, and if Bob is being treated for schizophrenia he may be better able to control or cope with Charlie. In schizophrenia cases Charlie does not exist to any third party observation; Bob is not identifying as Charlie nor is Charlie an alternate persona. Bob believes he is himself and that Charlie is communicating with him.

Lower level employees (should) expect to have a relationship of trust with their manager. The manager should trust that the employee is capable of doing the work the employee was hired to do and that the employee is comfortable raising issues with that work to them. The employee should trust that the manager respects their competence and will take every effort to maintain a suitable environment for them to do the work.

Middle management should also have this relationship with the upper managers. Upper management should trust the middle managers are capable of leading their team and will raise issue doing so with them. Middle management should trust that upper management respects their ability to understand the needs of their team and will take every effort to maintain a suitable environment for them to lead their team.

The role of middle management is to have relationships on both sides. If middle management is lonely this chain of trust is broken.

This is an undoubtedly challenging position to be in because they are required to maintain relationships on both sides and the trust of each relationship must go both ways. If middle management is unable to express their concerns to upper management, either because upper management doesn't trust the middle manager is raising a important concern or because the middle manager doesn't trust upper management will listen (or raising the issue will threaten their career), they do not have a relationship of trust. The same goes for middle managers and their employees.

But my job can suck too. I've have also been asked to find solutions to problems with variables outside of my control, or take on a project bigger than anything I've worked on before, or to do something outside my experience and knowledge. Two valuable lessons that have come from of these challenge for me have been 1) asking for help and 2) saying no. Both of these lessons are about communication, and communicating with other people is the best cure for loneliness.

This was an interesting read, and highly concerning for me. While I am formally educated in computer science I enjoy psychology studies and collect research articles about group behavior, which I use as a basis for building simulations. For my purposes it doesn't really matter if the research failed to account for all the variables or makes weakly supported conclusion. I'm not trying to publish my own research, I just enjoy the reading and inspiration for projects. But fabricated research is another matter. The data isn't just inconclusive, the conclusion is made up. It may be reasonable, it may even be true, but the suggestions from the article are false and so contribute to an inaccurate model to understand the world.

How can someone like me, who enjoys the research but doesn't want to make a career out of it, keep up with it? Where can I go to find good, to the best of our current understanding, research (in psychology or other fields)? How can I identify meaningful research from the fluff? What resources are available to help me learn when or if research I read is found to be questionable or fabricated?

Or is scientific research out of reach for the common man? If I can't find the time to read all the citations and critically evaluate each article, am I better off just staying away?

Identity has many different meanings depending on the context, just look at the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity

How it is being used in pg's Identity, I believe, is referring more to a Self-Concept (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-concept), or 'How one views one's self.' On the other, statements like "I've often been accused of being overly analytical" and "I already have OCD" refer more to Self-Knowledge, which the Self-Concept Wikipedia article suggests is distinct. The difference is in how we think about how things relate to ourselves, and is critical to what pg is saying.

For example, the article brings up an example in which a thread about programming degenerates into a religious-like war when programmers identify as a "X programmer". By incorporating X into their identity, or Self-Concept, they are saying 'X is part of who I am.' By incorporating X into their Self-Knowledge that would sound more like, 'X is something I know.'

The Self-Concept is dangerous because when someone else comes along and says something like "X sucks" the X-Programmer interprets it is "part of who I am sucks" as opposed to "something I know sucks." The latter is easy to dismiss (or discuss), but the former is personal and offensive.

pg warns that the more of these ideas we build into our Self-Concept the more exposed we become. By allowing more ideas into our Self-Concept we create new path ways for others to strike at our primitive, illogical, emotionally biased core. And its not that having that primitive core is bad, it's just that 'sophistication, logic, and rationalization' are slow and take a lot of energy. Presumable, that's why we have that primitive core, because people who try to rationalize threats to their well being are beaten, eaten, and humiliated; they can't react fast enough or keep it up long enough.

So don't try to hit the other extreme, you'll just wear yourself out. But be careful what you allow into your Self-Concept, because your Self-Concept isn't rational.

Cyclist are neither licensed or registered where I am, so there is no expectation they are familiar with traffic laws nor is there any way to hold them accountable when they do something hazardous (unless they are involved in an accident which incapacitates them). Traffic laws regarding bicycles didn't come up on my driver's test or in the educational material either so I had to look up the laws myself. The laws are difficult to find, difficult to read, and still pretty vague; no wonder even the sales associates at sports shops don't know them.

I don't live in a city so I'm not familiar with bicyclist in that environment, but in the town I live in, which has a strong outdoor recreation community and a University, cyclists also do not obey traffic laws.

This town's claim of being "bicycle friendly" is questionable, but you can get most places safely enough. There are bike lanes or shared lanes on many streets, double-wide sidewalks (which can be used by bicyclists) here and there, and a bike accessible trail system that winds around and through the town if you're willing go a bit out of your way. With a strong cyclist presence in town most drivers are fairly comfortable sharing the road. I've been bicycling around town for several years, both for recreation and to save $400/year on a parking permit for work, and never been involved in an accident.

But I still see cyclist riding up and down sidewalks in the downtown area (which has signs every few hundred feet stating that cycling is not permitted on sidewalks) or cutting off cars at busy intersections (even if the intersection is being directed by a traffic cop). I have even, no kidding, seen a cyclist run a red light in the oncoming traffic lane at night with no lights, reflectors, or a helmet.

Anecdotally, I picked up the nickname "Lizard" from friends well before I started using it online.

During my first year or so of college there were several people who admit to only having known me as "Lizard" as that was just how some friends introduced us. Facebook was still fairly new and small then so (I don't believe) there were many people trying to find "Lizard" on Facebook, but aside from a comment in my About (which would only help after they already found me) there was no reference to the only name some people knew me by.

I don't use the nickname offline much any more (though it's useful in busy restaurants to avoid confusion with other people who share my real name, and can prompt some interesting stories or conversations too) and I'm fairly certain the people I still interact with offline all know my real name.

Would/Should Facebook accept this nickname? Still? It doesn't really matter to me any more as I'd just assume be able to keep separate identities unless I want someone to know both. But for some people this nickname is synonymous with my real name and I will respond equivalently to either.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 with Mantano Reader Premium works pretty well for me.

Mantano Reader has S-pen support for annotating pages free hand. Annotation creates a copy of the page that is separate from the document which isn't ideal (I'd prefer a layer on the document), but works. It also has multi-color text highlighting and bookmarks for some other options to move around and keep notes.

I find the size and weight of the Galaxy Note 8.0 preferable to larger tablets, much better than a dense technical books, and easier to carry around than printed journal articles. I sometimes have to zoom in to read documents with 2 or 3 column layouts, but Mantano Reader handles that pretty fluidly.

The battery life has been more than satisfactory so far. On a busy day I'll use it to take notes or brainstorm in the morning, my girlfriend will draw on it in the evening, and I can still usually get a few hours reading at night.

It's not perfect and may not be suitable for everyone, but for me it was enough to get over that chasm between technology and the traditional way.

I was "rocking it" in secondary education, to the point that I was opted into a engineering-oriented college track despite declining to take the aptitude test. When I looked back on the time I spent working on my Computer Science degree I regret not taking time off. Even more so now that I've been working for a while (and re-entering eduction on my own terms).

But I went straight into college after high school because a) I was "college bound" and that's what college bound kids did, and b) I would not be eligible for my scholarship if I took time off. I was pretty broke at the time so I needed the scholarship (and couldn't afford a backpacking trip anyways).

I did fine in college but not as good as I could/should have. Like you, I thought a _lot_ about why and in particular I thought about why some people were doing better than me. This is what stood out to me:

When the professors introduced a new data structure these classmates would talk about how they wish they knew about it for a previous project or how it got them thinking about a different way to build something they were working on. The people who were doing better than me had a reason to learn.

I was just learning what the professors told me to learn. If they talked about a new data structure I learned about a new data structure. If they talked about when to use a data structure I learned when to use the data structure.

I was "gifted", "college bound", and all sorts of other labels that presumably light the path to success. But I didn't understand my "gift" and I figure most my early educators didn't either, because they just kept encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing. Which was basically nothing.

Moral of the story is don't let your kids' success blind you to the fact that they really need opportunities to explore themselves and their world. Whether they are "rocking it" or not, you should encourage them to seek these opportunities and help them get to them as much as possible.

>> I'm going to keep an eye on you as I see fit whilst you are in my shop. Surely you can see that as fair?

Unless something about my behavior stands out to you I can make a reasonable assumption that 1) you are not going to watch me the entire time and 2) the only record you are going to keep of my visit is the transaction receipt, and perhaps a note that one more person came into your shop today. Every web server platform I am familiar with already logs access requests, which I don't think anyone is arguing against and you are free to monitor and analyze as you wish.

If you must monitor individual visitor's behavior it seems most stores have already worked that one out too, for example membership programs. A new analogy may read

> I'm going to give you the option of signing up for a membership program. If you sign up I will offer you services tailored to your habits whilst you are in my shop.

Even if you require membership for your services the terms of the relationship (e.g. you will be tracked) are, usually, available prior to the socially-questionable activity (e.g. tracking).

But for your analytic package the analogy would be more like

> I'm going to install live cameras throughout the shop to record you whilst you are in my shop. I'm going to review the recordings, or send them to a third party, so I may identify you and analyze your behavior at my own discretion.

Even if a shop has a camera the only social contract I am aware of is that the tape may be reviewed in the event of criminal or suspicious behavior.