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Shenglong

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Product @ VW

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venturebeat.com 9y ago

Everwise raises $16M from Sequoia

Shenglong
4pts0
medium.com 9y ago

The product management job search

Shenglong
1pts0
www.shenglong.ca 10y ago

A quick summary of visas and working in the USA

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1pts0
techcrunch.com 10y ago

Pikazo photo manipulation

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1pts0
www.independent.co.uk 11y ago

Human embryos successfully modified via CRISPR/Cas9

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3pts0
news.sciencemag.org 11y ago

Texas Hold 'em poker solved by a computer

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3pts0
www.shenglong.ca 11y ago

The golden steps to success

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1pts0
www.technologyreview.com 12y ago

How to win at rock-paper-scissors

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www.shenglong.ca 12y ago

How to have a better time with alcohol

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1pts0
en.wikipedia.org 12y ago

The paradox of choice

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gizmodo.com 12y ago

Israel is putting lasers on commercial airliners

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3pts0
arstechnica.com 12y ago

Science confirms: Internet trolls are terrible people

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16pts8
www.theregister.co.uk 12y ago

Fusion finally outputs more energy than is input

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1pts1
techcrunch.com 12y ago

Blackphone: A Pro-Privacy Android-Based Smartphone

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1pts0
healthland.time.com 12y ago

Teachers Give Better Grades to More Attractive Students

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1pts0
www.shenglong.ca 12y ago

Customer Service as a Product

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1pts0
www.shenglong.ca 12y ago

My roommate, who will change the world

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1pts0
www.youtube.com 12y ago

Internet Explorer, The Anime

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4pts1
www.businessinsider.com 12y ago

Your Facebook network can predict breakups in the next 60 days

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2pts0
www.shenglong.ca 12y ago

Encouragement in education

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2pts1
www.technologyreview.com 12y ago

Anger spreads faster than joy on social networks

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38pts19
www.washington.edu 12y ago

Researcher controls colleague’s motions in first human brain-to-brain interface

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88pts27
www.uber.com 13y ago

Uber serves ice cream

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2pts0
www.cbc.ca 13y ago

Prairie dogs' language decoded by scientists

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11pts5
www.npr.org 13y ago

Samoa Air charges passengers by weight

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4pts0
techcrunch.com 13y ago

US Senate approves proposed Internet Sales Tax

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91pts128
news.ycombinator.com 13y ago

Ask HN: What's the best way to do a SV startup tour?

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5pts1
www.abc.net.au 13y ago

Canada prints the wrong maple leaf on its currency

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2pts0
techcrunch.com 13y ago

Google didn't kill the donkey

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2pts0
www.torontosun.com 13y ago

Release the Kraken

Shenglong
2pts0

I haven't posted in years, but felt the need to weigh in on a food topic that's dear to my heart:

With ground meat, the two things you're looking to develop with heat are flavor and texture (and safety). The problem is though, that while texture can be developed as a function of time, flavor can be harder to develop since it's mostly a product of the Maillard reaction (browning). Unfortunately, as you develop texture (heat up the meat), the muscle fibers contract and squeeze out water, which lowers the temperature of your cooking surface and mitigates Maillard development. This is exacerbated by using ground meat, which isn't as insulted as say, a steak would be, which means water comes out faster. This leaves two major ways to develop flavor: 1. Sear your meat before you grind it -- easy said, but a pain in general because it involves cutting and semi-freezing the meat chunks after searing, slowing down your cooking, or 2. Working in batches and trying to get your ground meat to brown before the heat causes the water to come out, which is slow.

Both of these options suck. For any aspiring home cook, I'd say the best thing you can do for your food is to buy a high heat source. Use a powerful induction stove on the highest setting, and you can brown your meat without batching it as the water evaporates faster than it can collect (up to a point).

Everwise | New York, NY | Onsite | Software Engineer, Architect | Onsite

We're a Sequoia-backed SaaS company, has developed a completely new model for talent development. Our mission is to help the world’s professionals reach their full potential by connecting them to the people and resources they need to thrive at each stage of their career.

About Engineering @ Everwise We're a small engineering team based in NYC. Day-to-day we leverage Agile, Ruby on Rails, AWS, React, Redis and Postgres. We're very adaptable and looking for someone who welcomes the opportunity to solve a broad range of problems using a wide array of technologies.

Responsibilities - Build and enhance the front-end of Everwise's web applications. - Turn mockups into working products. - Rapidly prototype new features and quickly iterate on what works and what doesn't. - Analyze site/page speed and help provide performance solutions.

Your Qualifications - Experience with client-side JavaScript and MVC frameworks (Backbone/Angular/Ember is a plus). - Experience with mobile optimization, HTML5 and CSS3. - Experience with object oriented server-side programming, Ruby on Rails a strong plus. - Understanding of unit and functional testing best practices (Rspec, Jasmine, Protractor, and Selenium are bonuses).

Benefits We offer a very competitive base salary and bonus potential. We also provide a full benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401K, paid time off (PTO), employee stock option plan and transit benefits.

We would consider relocating the right candidate to NYC. Feel free to apply at https://www.geteverwise.com/careers or shoot me an email (shenglong@).

Everwise | New York, NY | Full Time | ONSITE | Senior Software Engineer, Senior Front-end Engineer, Software Engineer In Test

We're a small engineering team based in NYC, who come from all walks of life. We have successful startup experience and embrace processes and technologies that amplify output.

Day-to-day we leverage Agile, Ruby on Rails, AWS, AngularJs, Redis and Postgres. We're very adaptable and looking for someone who welcomes the opportunity to solve a broad range of problems using a wide array of technologies.

We offer a very competitive base salary and bonus potential. We also provide a full benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401K, paid time off (PTO), employee stock option plan and transit benefits.

As a personal note - I joined about two months ago, and have had an amazing time here. We have a bunch of excitable people, play with an adorable office dog named Cooper, and everyone has a tremendous amount of fun. Our interview process is both fluid and fair.

Find out more/apply at https://www.geteverwise.com/jobs/ Or, feel free to email me a pitch at shenglong@geteverwise.com and I'll pass it along :)

Everwise | New York, NY | Full Time | ONSITE | Senior Software Engineer, Senior Front-end Engineer, Software Engineer In Test

We're a small engineering team based in NYC, who come from all walks of life. We have successful startup experience and embrace processes and technologies that amplify output.

Day-to-day we leverage Agile, Ruby on Rails, AWS, AngularJs, Redis and Postgres. We're very adaptable and looking for someone who welcomes the opportunity to solve a broad range of problems using a wide array of technologies.

We offer a very competitive base salary and bonus potential. We also provide a full benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401K, paid time off (PTO), employee stock option plan and transit benefits.

As a personal note - I joined about 6 weeks ago, and have had an amazing time here. We have an adorable office dog named Cooper, and everyone has a tremendous amount of fun. Our interview process is also both fluid and fair.

Find out more/apply at https://www.geteverwise.com/jobs/ Or, feel free to email me a pitch at shenglong@geteverwise.com and I'll pass it along :)

Not entirely the same thing, but somewhat related: I used to run the largest Ragnarok Online private server for its time, and this AMA is really nostalgic. Well, except how great their community seems to be.

All throughout running a server, I asked myself whether the community was unbecoming (not just towards us, but towards each other), or whether we (and the servers before us) were just doing a terrible job at fostering a positive environment. A few years after we shut down our server, I heard a rather famous League of Legends player had started a private RO server, and a few months later, heard that he flipped out and told the community to f--- off, shutting the server down.

It's hard for many people to imagine a community more "toxic" than in League, so I had just figured, perhaps the failure wasn't our fault. Reading the comments in this AMA really makes me think though, that there was actually a solution, and we had just failed in community management.

My words of wisdom here: lots of people focus on product development, but the community is often just as, if not more important; don't neglect it.

This is a pretty crass statement to make. If the focus is full-on navigability, I agree that contrast in the navigation bar is paramount. Yet, for many sites with simplified features, the emotional experience trumps the direct navigability of the site itself.

This is especially true for sites like Airbnb (as in the example) where in addition to emotional response, there is an immediate focus on activating users. The focus shifts from full navigability (logging in, become a host, etc) to searching for a listing.

There's a good amount of criticism as well as praise for her, and I'm not entirely sure your question is entirely fair.

The reality of it all is that transformations take time, especially when things at Yahoo had been so Scott Thompson'd. Marissa has been rebuilding a sinking ship from the inside out - where most people would've just tried to patch it up as it slowly sank, or sold it off for parts; I think that's what's admirable. I think that's why people defend her. She dared to defy the status quo. She dared to employ the same dedication as founders do day in and day out, and she demonstrated over and over again, the audacity to take risks.

I find it stranger that more people don't defend her. All of us should know that technology companies thrive or die from the inside; it's why startup founders spend such a disproportionate amount of time hiring great people. To anyone who actually bothered to pause and compare Yahoo's culture today to yesterday's, it would be obvious that Marissa's conviction and aptitude is heralding a new era of prosperity; the transformation is apparent - and even if not yet absolute, it is still miraculous.

Remember: people -> product -> profit

"Sub solen nihil novi este"

I've been backpacking around SE Asia for a few months now, and this sort of system has been active on an ad hoc basis for years in Chiang Mai, Thailand. There, it's expected that "red cars" (seemingly the only active taxis), will pick up other passengers.

They'll stop for passengers flagging them down, and check location before issuing a quote, if in fact they're on the way. While this made traveling really cheap, there were times where a 10-minute trip stretched into over half an hour. I'm interested to see whether these services will customize allowable wait times to the individual, or whether all ride-sharers have roughly the same tolerance for delays.

But, to say that any one company copied another in this case is a pretty stupid argument to make. I asked myself this question the first time I rode with Uber, and I'm sure many of you have as well. I would imagine that any good PM would've thoroughly investigated it; it's pretty obvious.

For all the Asians who flush - I would be very careful about trying this at home. It seems like it'll have the opposite effect of what's intended.

The alcohol breakdown chain reaction in the body (I'm not a chemist) is ethanol -> acetaldehyde -> acetic acid. The ethanol causes your to be "drunk", but the acetaldehyde has some arguably worse effects (headache, tiredness, flush). Asians typically process ethanol -> acetaldehyde way faster than others, but the acetaldehyde -> acetic acid can be really slow. If the yeast is mimicking ADH and not ALDH, you're just going to suffer even more.

Again, I'm not a chemist or a doctor, but from my preliminary internet research and anecdotal testing (though I have quite a few different data points), Famotadine (OTC), and higher levels of APO-Ranitidine (can be prescription) seems to slow the rate of ethanol -> acetaldehyde, balancing out the drunkness effect more, and giving you more time to process the acetaldehyde -> acetic acid. I typically go from maxing out at 2 drinks / 3 hour period, to about 11 drinks / 3 hour period on Ranitidine, given favorable conditions. I've had lower levels of success with Famotadine.

Interesting. Increased security, faster response times, and public image at such a cheap rate is probably a no-brainer for large tech companies like Facebook.

I feel like we're going to see more private funding for public positions in the (perhaps distant) future, but I suppose the obvious question is: at what point does private funding of public officials become theoretically troublesome? Some would call this the start to an unsettling change.

For me, what's frightening about this is how often I used to reflect on my own life, and at times, couldn't actually be sure whether I was useful or just overrated. People would tell me what a great job I did and praise the amount of time it must have taken, and while I'd smile nervously and modestly reject their attribution, I'd often be left silently thinking, "I don't think this was as difficult or took as long as you think it did." It took a while to just accept that I did my part.

While there is danger in exaggeration, I also warn that there is arguably more danger in being too modest, and understating your own importance and value of your work. I've met extremely talented individuals who were being paid less than a third of what they deserved because they believed that their "work will speak for itself" or because they "don't believe in self-promotion". There is a healthy balance to be struck; remember that just as marketing is essential to a successful product, promotion is important for the self.

There are better ways to do that than the ways listed here, though. For example, taking credit where credit is deserved is extremely useful, but ONLY when you're speaking to someone far removed, such as at a job interview. On a team, you'll get further by promoting and pushing through other peoples' accomplishments when they are too timid to do so. You'll earn respect from both parties, and you'll breed a more productive atmosphere which can only benefit you in the long term.

We will continue to invest in a generous rewards budget, but there will no longer be a pre-determined targeted distribution. Managers and leaders will have flexibility to allocate rewards in the manner that best reflects the performance of their teams and individuals, as long as they stay within their compensation budget.

Is this not in effect the same as a curve? Giving higher bonuses to one person means giving lower bonuses to another. Giving everyone the same bonus discourages high performers from staying (and also working on the same team). People who receive little to no bonuses take the hint to leave, just as if they had received a 4 or a 5. Considering only 10% of employees receive a 4, and 5% receive a 5, I'm thinking that effectively, there has been no change.

I wonder - have any of you who run large projects which are sensitive to time changes ever have to deal with DST? I ran a MMORPG, which had specific events at certain times of the day, on certain days of the week. Now imagine:

North America observes DST two weeks before Europe. DST ends for Australia two weeks before North America (time goes the other way). China does not observe DST. I won't even bother to get into the other countries.

Even disregarding the other issues that DST created (and trust me, there were lots), just syncing up players for events was a giant hassle. Yes, people should theoretically research and know how their time works, but expecting users to sync your events to their time without missing one or two is naive ignorance. Even with mitigations, my staff and I basically spent every DST start/end dealing with a plethora of IRs to the degree of, "why did you change the time?"

I would not miss DST at all.

(We did standardized time quite early on, and did announce in server-time)

It's not that bad once you read into it. It's not bad at all. Google displays my recommendations to my friends, and since I only really like/+1 things I would recommend, it seems natural, and maybe even convenient.

Unfortunately, the crux of the issue may lie in consumer protections. While you and I may know exactly what we're endorsing, the average consumer probably does not. The average consumer probably also does not understand that their friends also do not. Otherwise, we wouldn't see so many "FREE $500 COSTCO GIFTCARD - CLICK HERE" posts on Facebook.

TL;DR: While I haven't formed a cohesive opinion about this, the problem with endorsements lies in the average case--not in the best case.

Here's an investment banker joke I've been hearing oddly often recently: "How do you get a million dollars?" -> "Invest a billion dollars in the airline industry".

On a more serious note: there's a lot of talk on this page about the finance and logistics of starting a company like this - but I think the human factor is also worth mentioning. I fly a moderate amount, and whenever I have an hour or so to spare on a layover, I try to find interesting people to talk at the bar. While I've had varying levels of success, last layover at O'Hare, I spoke to a pilot who had been with a major airline for about a decade.

Having seen "Catch Me If You Can" and surmising that the situation must have changed, I asked him about his job. That was the most dismal response I've received from that question. We talked for about half an hour about how terribly pilots are treated, and how (maybe a bit of an exaggeration) a good number of beginner pilots for airlines are on food stamps because they're paid so poorly. I asked about benefits, and his response was, "just about every benefit you can think of is basically unusable." I asked him why he did it, and he told me that flying was like a drug.

Pilots are responsible for lives, and I'd feel a lot safer if my pilot was paid enough to survive. Yet, with dwindling margins and a thriftier consumer base, it's going to take a lot to disrupt this industry. In reality, I don't see anything major happening without some drastic innovation that cuts associated costs significantly in order to build up that margin.

I'm thinking this article is a little exaggerated. I applied to, and got into an Ivy, but had no sort of preparation at all. I was suspended over 20 times throughout my schooling, had 0 hours of community service, didn't find out that the SATs existed until my senior year, and my reference letters were from no-name teachers. Yes, some of the things described (working at a neuroscience lab) were true, but they were entirely my initiatives.

More importantly, even at school, I never saw anyone (limited scope, I'm sure) with this kind of description. All my friends seemed passionate about what they were interested in, and the majority were from middle-upper class families.

While I'm sure there are distinct cases of this sort of coddling, I would caution that this is likely more the exception than the rule.

Glass 13 years ago

The industrial design is solid, and though it is being manufactured in small batches, it has the build quality you might expect from something being mass-produced.

Not sure what to make of this statement. The design is beautiful, but I don't see why that would be an artifact of mass-production. The early prototypes for Glass were much sexier in terms of build integrity (optics, for example) than the current mass-produced models. One of the big challenges, in fact, was lowering expenses for mass-producibility. However, yes, the design is wonderfully intelligent. You'll notice some optical tricks when you look at Glass. For example, you'll see as if the frame takes up a portion of the sides, but in reality, there is circuitry hidden behind it--by looking at it you'd never know :)

The interface is not intuitive. It is actually very difficult to use the first time, for seemingly no reason. ... I would have expected more design attention to have been spent on interacting with the software.

I really feel this is a non-issue. Yes, you don't know how to use it when you first get it, but after a few instructions from a friend, I navigated the entire interface just fine for about an hour without needing additional help. Mostly, I just had to learn about the well-disguised touchpad. I've used a lot of silly software and hardware, and Glass is not one of them. It's a new product class, and it's going to have a new interface.

Glass doesn't communicate with you very much, and when it does, it doesn't use audio. It makes heavy use of the screen when possible. When navigating Glass, you can rarely speak selections. The only way to fully navigate the interface is to use the touchpad by holding your hand up near your face.

Navigation is definitely an issue. However, the Glass team planned on external devices being used to navigate Glass. Once Thalmic's MYO is fully operational, I don't think navigation will be much of a problem.

The battery life is dreadful. After ten minutes of use, the battery level reported went down by at least 8%. The owner told me that it would probably last about two hours with constant use. (This is hopefully a temporary handicap that will be improved in the future, but I find it hard to consider even this level of battery life good enough for a device that is sold.)

This is supposed to be fixed. Especially if you use video recording, the battery will drain really quickly. The idea by final product, is to have it last about 12 hours with passive use (kind of like a cell phone).

I feel like there should be secondary checks for things like this. When I was running a MMORPG, I was terrified of duplication bugs (dupes). In many ways, dupes have the same effect on a game economy as this type of theft has on the real economy: it can go unnoticed for a long time, and the victims are primarily the masses (money supply) until someone finds out.

Since we didn't have any network security professionals on our team, I was especially worried. What we realized though, was that we kept a detailed log of all item/money creations/deletions, where trades were just a creation/deletion pair. Thus, we wrote a script to learn what the most expensive items (and thus most costly, if duplicated) were at any given time, and match creations to deletions with a frequency increasing with item value. Whenever there was a discrepancy, we were alerted.

I suppose banks could do something similar. If they separate the money transfer system from the account creation system, they could add an additional layer of security. I haven't really thought out the details, but it makes sense at first glance. Perhaps they already do something like this?

The world is heading towards wearable computing, and honestly, Google has done a fantastic job hyping up Glass. When I first heard about Glass a while back, I told all my friends, thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. The majority of the girls (and about half the boys) who saw the concept told me something along the lines of, "Ewww, why would anyone wear that?" Now here, at the college level, a good majority think it's really awesome. The attitude is changing, and watching the younger generation for innovative product adoption is going to be key in determining success.

Think about initial smartphone adoption. You could've argued that they provided little benefit over a laptop for many features. The displays were small with low resolution, web connectivity was slow, websites weren't optimized for mobile, and the cameras were pieces of rubber duckies. But they were cool, and people found a use for them as technology improved. As techies, we should absolutely not be dismissing first-generation tech.

Yes, voice control is freaking awkward, but there are solutions to that. Thalmic Labs, for example, is coming out with the MYO (go watch the video) which would be perfect for interacting with Google Glass. Make a hand gesture to take a picture, instead of taking out your phone and positioning it? Seems like a natural fit to me.

I'm guessing Google Glass will converge around the $400-$700 price range, possibly with more than one model. Youth adoption will probably drive overall consumer adoption. As with a lot of new stuff like this, it's easy to say you don't need it. It's harder to say you don't want it after you have it.

Right. Business things, like hacking is mostly experience.

But much like hacking, I would argue, there are rockstar/ninja/superstar/10x/<insert other (deprecated?) term here> business people as well. A lot of it has to do with natural aptitude; just as how coding doesn't simply click for everyone, business things (which is mostly just dealing with people) simply doesn't either.

I'm caught in an interesting trap where a third of my friends are set to become doctors, a third investment bankers/consultants, and another third will be going into tech. I'm also in Canada.

When our medical school friends explain their debt, my IB friends get really excited and start cursing them for their luck. Here, apparently, in addition to student loans that don't accrue interest until 6 months after graduation, all medical students are apparently eligible for a $250,000 line of credit at PRIME. Yes, you heard me--PRIME. At this point, my tech friends start to ask why anyone would take debt.

Here in Canada, an emergency doctor would make about $250,000/year in Ontario for working what works out (in shifts) to be about 25 hours per week, after he has finished his residency. Assuming this is a similar situation in the states, I don't see why this is so outrageous at all.

Oh, and Doctor shortage? Really? It's medical schools that cap entrants, not the price. Take a look at all the qualified students who are rejected each year. I know a bunch.

Could you share some of the business details of running a porn site? I've always been curious, but there's not much reliable information. Something in this industry would probably be a smash hit business case.

- Supply chain: how do you source models? How do you negotiate fees? What is the average fee, and how do they charge?

- Are there inter-business politics? Like, will some models refuse to shoot scenes with other models?

- How do models work legally? Do you contract them or employ them if they've never done a shoot before?

- What are your profit margins like, and what are your breakeven numbers like?

- How often do you demand STI testing data? Are models worried about this?

- Are models your main source of COGS? What are your major expense items?

- What are the most challenging decisions you have to make on a daily basis?

- Is porn really a hyper-competitive market?

I've seen business cases from a ton of different industries, but adult entertainment has been completely secluded. Any information would be wonderful :)

There are many ways you can "politely disagree", and depending on how you do so, the results for any human transaction (regardless of whether it's at the airport) will be drastically different. You need to observe the person you're dealing with before making a move, and see what their perception of their own power is, how they balance emotion with logic, and take a guess as to the most effective form of getting your point across.

Here's a personal story (and sure, it could be an exception): I love martial-arts-weapons. I'm trained with the rope dart, meteor hammer, chain whip, twin hooks, etc. Anyway, I've been trying to learn the butterfly knife/balisong. Since they're illegal in Canada, I bought a practice balisong, which looks like a real knife, but just has a dull blade with holes in it so it can't be sharpened. I completely forgot I had it in my carry-on bag.

Security stopped me, several officers (airport security and police, if I'm not mistaken) gathered around after they closed off the line. I could easily have been polite here, and got myself kicked out or arrested. I could've said, "Sir, I know you're just doing your job, but this is perfectly legal and I have every right to keep it. As you can see, it isn't sharp." I could've gone on to quote my civil liberties, and explain how no one could mistake it for a real knife because it has holes. It'd be hard to argue that this wasn't polite--but really, where would it have gotten me?

Instead, I took deep exaggerated sigh, put my hands over my face and said "I'm so sorry--I completely forgot!" I explained exactly what it was for, and added on, "it's for tricks only". After showing them how to open it and proving it was blunt, I asked for it, and showed them a few tricks. Again, I apologized and explained how I never meant to bring it. A few well-placed smiles later, the security offered to mail it to my home address, and let me pass without any issues.

So once again, being "polite" isn't the whole story. Playing to the people you're dealing with is the key to getting things done.

You're probably correct that those 19/20 won't know at first what dihydrogen monoxide is. The pressing question is though, whether those 19 would/should call the water commission before either:

A. Thinking about it

B. Spelling the chemical formula out

C. Googling it

This has very little to do with being high-and-mighty. I don't believe the author's point was to illustrate how uneducated the general population is, but rather, highlight how little thinking/work the general population does before complaining/protesting/getting up in arms.