lostphilosopher

David Foster Wallace predicted not only that, but its rise and fall. http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527

Learning how to ask a good technical question is an extremely valuable skill in and of itself, and StackOverflow is one of the few ways you can learn to do it. Just as you've said - if you ask a coworker (or a real person in general) they'll work with you to dig the question out, but they aren't really teaching you how to ask it more efficiently in the first place. They aren't giving you specific feedback on your question.

StackOverflow on the other hand will often give you an actual critique of your question. That criticism can be really frustrating, but it's often good for you (it has been for me). Often the problem is a problem only because of how you perceive the problem space, or you're wrong about fundamentals. Other times you're not including important details because you didn't know they were important and just having that pointed out can help, or this problem is of a known form with a known solution - you just didn't know the "magic words."

There's even something to be said for forcing people to learn a bit about the community before jumping into it. As annoying as that is and as much as it is an on boarding obstacle - it helps people work together. The on boarding process for a driver's license sucks and puts up tons of barriers, but with good reason.

I don't disagree with anything you've said, or deny that super rude and unhelpful behavior occurs there, I just want to say that some of the "bugs" of StackOverflow are probably "features."

Yeah, giving away your game completely free has similar problems to being a maintainer of free open source software.

Agreed. A barometer of how well you're doing can be: how effective are you at persuading people when you need to? If you get in the "everyone around me is an idiot / don't know how computers work" head space you're probably lacking on communication skills. Being right is only half the battle - you often have to be able to convince others you are right.

The distinction between this and forms of communication often considered distasteful in technical circles is that you are - in fact - right (technical skill). It's not "sleazy" marketing if it really is "the world's best pizza!" :-)

I think the Fyre Festival fiasco is pretty strong evidence for the efficacy of "influencers."

In that case there was no real product to buy, the _only_ reason to try to buy the product was its advertising, more than 4,000 people did, and its advertising was almost exclusively via social media / influencers.

When the Switch was announced I thought it was trying to be too many things and wouldn't be able to do any of them well. I was right. However, what I underestimated is the Switch's ability to do each of those things _well enough_. My PS4 is a better console. My GBA was a better handheld. The Wii was a better party system. But the Switch is pretty good at all of those things, and since the "better" systems could only do one thing - the Switch has turned out to be pretty awesome!

If you're considering one, definitely think about a buying a second used dock, being able to pop it in a TV in another room with ease is pretty neat.

My biggest complaint is that in hand held mode I can only do turn-based games because otherwise it hurts my hands. (The joy cons cramp my thumbs.)

This is a good point. I've been hearing "deplatforming" as the word for what's happening and that seems more accurate than censoring. In part because if we call this censoring and then later the government actually does strictly ban this content - what do we call that?

It's not about the "CN" bit. People are talking about why the variable exists at all. Essentially the reason being ventured is that that relationship has a specific name and meaning in Chinese with no English equivalent beyond an exacting familial definition. Imagine trying to express "grandfather" in a language that doesn't have the concept. You might end up with "father's father."

(I know nothing about Chinese. Just reporting what's been said elsewhere.)

If you're in to that sort of thing sing Amazing Grace to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song (or vice versa).

I'd be interested in an answer to this too. We've seen a similar phenomenon in college costs - more government loan money available, higher tuition, repeat. Why would UBI not result in a general uptick in costs that would mean the "purchasing power" of the consumer is the same? I think providing the basic services themselves would be more effective and efficient, even with the bureaucratic overhead.

> "Every day was a hot new idea and yesterday’s priority was forgotten. Why bother making progress towards a goal that will change tomorrow?" ("Rob's" comment on the OP's article)

This to me is the single biggest killer of motivation / productivity. If you've got this problem, I agree with the video that even large monetary rewards won't salvage productivity.

Not a counter point to this article, but a counter point to the efficacy of monetary rewards.

> "Study showed that monetary incentives are great for routine, mechanical work. But how does it play when talking about cognitive, advanced tasks? Not well at all."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKKPQiRRag

Counter-counter point: If anyone ever points you to this for evidence _you_ shouldn't get a bonus/monetary reward system, ask if _they_ get a bonus/monetary reward system...

You're doing the Lord's work reustle.

Really irked that they bill themselves as a solution in the public safety (emergency response) space while objectively being detrimental in that domain.

There are better services out there.

Looks like this drew some downvotes, but it gets a +1 from me. Reliable realtime "censoring" in video chat platforms _not intended for sexual content_ would make informal video chat a lot more user friendly. I'd totally video chat with random strangers, that sounds fun. I'd join a video chat group hangout (Hacker New Live, haha) but I'd prefer everyone kept their pants on. Doubly so if I'm going to join this chat at work or in public.

This convo reminds me of a bit from The Red Green show (from memory):

> Harold: "Red! We found an old bomb in the lake! What do we do?!"

> Red: "Call the American Air Force."

> Harold: "We tried, but it's in the Canadian side of the lake, they can't help!"

> Red: "Then call the Canadian Air Force!"

> Harold: "It's after 5, he's gone home."

Thanks for the link! Haven't gone through all the historical data, but a data point that stood out: F-100 hit 1724.1 in '85. I suppose numbers like that could bring averages up in a hurry.

> "Ken Kozlowski, a former C-133 crew chief who served as chief mechanic and flight engineer on a privately owned Cargomaster that flew until 2008. Through monastic devotion to understanding every system on the C-133 and by developing his own maintenance procedures, Kozlowski kept the civilian Cargomaster flying as a bush airplane—and slamming onto remote Alaska gravel runways—nearly 40 years after the Air Force let it go."

My favorite part so far.

EDIT: Adding another interesting bit:

"Was the Cargomaster dangerous? Ten had crashed, and 61 men had been killed. In 1964, the C-133’s accident rate per 100,000 flying hours stood at 2.7, while the C-130’s was 1.9. The overall Air Force rate was 7.7."

7.7 is higher than I would have expected. I wonder what planes are pulling up the numbers? The article makes this plane sound like a mysterious and dangerous machine, but 2.7 is well below 7.7...

> You're assuming that "take on debt" means literally taking on debt that you don't pay back quickly.

No, I'm saying I don't want to have anything to "pay back" to anyone. _You_ are free to live differently, I just want the option to complete my transaction at the time and move on. Yes, paying back debts on time prevents bad outcomes, but so does not taking on the debt in the first place. And objectively it's a much more rock solid way of making sure your finances don't get out of whack. I've never met anyone who says "I'm bad with debt," but yet many American's have suffered bad consequences from debt.

> you funnel/proxy money you already have through a creditor

A service I don't want, get no value from, and increases the cost of the goods I consume because they aren't offering it for free.

> Building credit means you could put yourself thousands of dollars in debt... but you don't.

Not quite, you could actually be carrying debt you aren't able to pay back, but are able to make payments on. In fact - it's in the credit industry's best interest for you take out lots of loans that you _can't pay back_ but _can_ make payments on because the (often massive) interest is the money maker. Soon you'll have paid more in payments than you were actually lent. This has gotten so bad the government has had to get involved multiple times. I'm worried that credit scores are tools to create that situation, because of this alignment (think it about like this - are you the customer/priority? or is it the lenders?). Sort of like casinos wanting you to think you're "up" or close to a big score when in reality you're in the red. (And don't get me started on the opaqueness of the systems, lack of recourse for errors, and oh yeah - the security negligence that leads to large scale losses of sensitive data...)

> "You're not _really_ going into debt;"

Aw come on, if you have to put "really" in italics you already know I'm not gonna buy it. :-)

I get that I can have a good credit score, I get that lots of people don't mind having one. To each their own. I'm just annoyed that I can't opt out. That "not having a credit score" is increasingly not a choice I can make, nor can my children.

To be clear - I 100% understand why people who want to do credit checks like credit scores. It's not that they have no value, it's that they have too many down sides and it bothers me that it's increasingly difficult to "opt out."

I did the credit check - I didn't have a credit score, because I didn't want one. I had existing rental history, a drivers license, and W2s (all also required for the application). I don't think my identity was in question, but maybe it was? Regardless I rented at another place that didn't require a score, it all worked out.

Where this becomes "bad for society" is when the customer _has to_ take on debt for the sole purpose of building a credit score. Some of us would prefer not to utilize debt at all, but if we want to (for example) rent an apartment we may be _required_ to have a credit score. Even if we offer to pay the full term's rent up front. Source: Experience.

I had no idea something like this existed. A beautiful combination of cool, clever, and inspiring. Thanks for making me aware of it.

Disagree.

As soon as one person's actions can affect another person a system arises for resolving their inevitable conflicts and facilitating cooperation if required. What do you call that system? Many would call that "government." That does seem appropriate if the definition of government is:

> the political system by which a country or a community is administered and regulated.

Of course, "government" as manifested in multi-million person nations is significantly evolved from it's abstract underpinnings both etymologically and philosophically. Same is true of the notions of political, community, administered, and regulated. But all that evolution (both its pros and cons) falls out logically from the foundational relationship of two beings with agency trying to figure out how and if to restrain that agency when it conflicts with the other's.

EDIT: I see from a sibling you're referring to "Anarchism." That doesn't free anyone for the reality of government it just changes where the restraining lines get drawn. In practice, the lines predictably get drawn in favor of the powerful just as they do in more mainstream systems of government.

After having two phones fail due to the mini connector I switched to only wireless charging and I love it.

I understand the charging performance hit, but that's much more easily mitigated than sketchy cords/ports.

> "Dumb people are happier than smart people"

That seems counter intuitive, and everything I'm seeing on an initial search says the opposite. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985.

The aggregate conclusion I'm seeing is that smarts corresponds with a small bump in happiness.

The general answer: Your pattern is a single point of failure. If someone figures it out they can figure out your passwords to multiple sites.

The most likely threat is your password to one site leaks or gets fished and then the hackers recognizes it as pattern generated and reverse engineers the pattern. Then they just start trying that pattern on other sites.

Not doing this is good general advice. Your specific risk level varies based on the pattern you use.

RIP. I miss Pebble.

Very cool! Any plans for making it possible to create Android apps with this?

Churches also do this in an intergenerational fashion. My office does volunteer work, but my kids and my parents don't take part. That's a hard bit to replicate in other groups even if those groups are actively engaged in charity.