steve_g

It's not the core conceit. Black/white IQ differences were discussed in one chapter. The core conceit is that IQ is real, and it really matters for life outcomes.

That's astonishing that Amazon builds its own "switch gears" software, as the article calls it. I assume these are the Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS) that connect to battery power or generator power when there's a main power failure. It may be that they want to go back onto main power using their own criteria for stability.

"Away from campus community, BIPOC individuals are not as likely to have access to preventive services or quality health care."

Perhaps this is generally true. I don't know. But I doubt it's true for kids going to Cornell - one of the top 20 universities in the US.

Does anyone have a link to the paper she was fired over? I've spent some time searching with no luck.

I'd like to know what was technically controversial.

Well, she didn't get ignored. Instead, she got fired. If that was her goal, then she succeeded. If it wasn't, maybe she should have taken a different approach.

'Song for a New Day' by Sarah Pinsker is a Nebula award winning book about live music vs. virtual reality in a post-pandemic/bioterrorism world. It was written just before Covid took off, so it's interesting to see how well it predicted the 'feel' of the pandemic lifestyle.

https://www.amazon.com/Song-New-Day-Sarah-Pinsker/dp/1984802...

I recently learned that the programming language for the Navision ERP system (now Microsoft 365 Business Central) is a Pascal variant called AL.

It seems like this article solely blames Trump for this state of affairs. There's no agency given to the people who break off relationships based on political disagreement. It's all Trump's fault for being the most polarizing figure in the world today.

There's no question he's polarizing, but you can't blame him for every disagreement.

My suggestion - don't disown your family over Trump.

The Inner Ring - I think it's my favorite piece by Lewis.

https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/

I've always liked this novel for its depiction of people whose justification for tyranny is "improving society", regardless of how the members of society feel about being improved.

As a practical detail, I'm wondering if it always makes sense to wrap your predictor in a simple if-then based predictor. If your learned model makes bad predictions in certain specific cases, you can "cheat" with Boolean logic. This could also be useful when the business has a special case that doesn't follow the main patterns.

Any thoughts on that?

I think the US is better. Our last ethnicity-based concentration camps occurred 75 years ago, and have now been repudiated by all branches of government.

And we never used the prisoners as organ banks.

There are trade-offs, of course, but I'm generally not a fan of using implicit defaults for business applications (i.e., the application infers the default when there's no data).

If things go well, business data outlives business applications. After years or decades, it can be a major pain to figure out all the "secret" values that aren't actually in the data.

Coincidently, I've just been re-reading Neal Stephenson's Fall, which is a fun story about simulating uploaded minds (or brains, or whatever).

https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Dodge-Hell-Neal-Stephenson/dp/00...

The first part of the first statement is objective. The second part is an interpretation of evidence - but by whom? I'm old enough to remember when masks were not recommended by most public health experts (that is, I was born before March 2020).

I say this with as much neutrality as I can muster - I don't know who to believe about anything. It seems that everyone has an axe to grind, or their livelihood depends on the truth going in one direction, or they just hate the "other side" so much that they'll say anything. Who can you trust? I don't want to become an expert in multiple disciplines just so I can evaluate the daily news. For me, it's an epistemic crisis, and I don't see the way out.

It's clearly illegal now, so that would be a good reason to keep it on the down low. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, just that one might be useful here.

I don't agree with you on this. Let me ask you, are there connotations in the word choices that make you think of "whiteness" in a certain way? Do you think the infographic treats whiteness as: - something to celebrate? - a set of beliefs and attitudes with no associated value judgment? Neutral? - something to work on in yourself? Something to be a little ashamed about?

I think the infographic connotes a negative view of whiteness, and that translates to racist, IMO. -

I reject your rejection.

Cancel culture is terrible because the goal is to destroy people who hold unpopular beliefs. It not enough to refute the belief. The transgressor must be punished with the full fury that internet-enhanced social pressure can bring to bear. The goal is to punish and destroy.

Shaming and social opprobrium can work in a community where there's interaction between the parties. This also allows for grace and restoration. It doesn't work in the global twitter-verse.

Civilization is the ability to live in peace with people that aren't like you - you may disagree with them, disapprove of them, or dislike them, but you don't seek to destroy them. We seem to be losing it.

I don't think it's fair to say that people who make a different assessment of risks and/or have different risk tolerance than you are "incredibly selfish". Lockdown, social distancing, mask-wearing, and other related changes in behavior are all about trade-offs in the face of uncertainty.

Maybe you're right - but maybe you're wrong.

Inverted World by Christopher Priest.

An oldie, but a weirdie.

But sometimes it's OK to break the rules.

Read what EPA actually said. It's not unreasonable.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents...

Maybe it's not a big demographic on Hacker news (or non-US western countries either), but there's a lot of hand-shaking that goes in in churches. That was true in my church up until a few weeks ago.

Efficiency and human relationships don't necessarily go together. I agree with the author that delegating the contact for a meeting where you are asking for help comes off like you're not invested. It's just a perception; it might not reflect the reality of the situation. But that's how it strikes me.

I'd argue that you could probably just look up your calendar in whatever system your assistant uses.

But when you're writing business software to solve business problems, many more people have a "right" to an opinion. Usually the business people know a lot more about the problem domain than the programmer. They are also the ones who will use the solution.

I've been thinking that this is one of the key differences between software and bridges. When you design a bridge, very few people have a "right" to an opinion on the bolt sizing. But when you design an order entry system, the business users (and users of the downstream data) have a valid right to an opinion.

Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken has you 'build' a computer from basic logic gates to CPU/Memory to assembler, VM, etc. all the way to a running program.

https://www.nand2tetris.org/

I think 2.1 ug/l is 2100 parts per trillion (where "trillion" means 10E+12)

A ug is 10E-6 grams, a liter is about 10E+3 grams.

Sorry, I know that sucks. I've got chronic back pain, but I can keep it livable with Stuart McGill's Big-3. Google it.

Other folks have already recommended the Big-3 on this thread.

That line stuck out for me too.

Is MVC as a pattern really all that bad for the majority of web apps?

I'm curious about your heartburn with the "cone of uncertainty" from Code Complete. I think it's a very reasonable model for understanding software estimation uncertainty. What don't you like about it?