icxa

Then I am happy to say I am happy for their recent changes, this certainly wasn’t the case a few years ago when I wrote them off, and even more not the case 10 years ago when I was still in the industry. I think it should be promoted as an example that consumer pressure and expectations can cause companies to change for the better.

I will say I remain skeptical on exactly how they can go from the ammonia wash + chemical food flavoring process to using fresh beef and not have any discernible difference in taste or food safety, but kudos to them.

Full disclaimer: Info coming from a variety of sources: some documentaries which I know have their own inaccuracies, some my own personal experience in food service, and specifically working at McDonalds, and some having an ex-girlfriend of 3 years who was the district manager of another international large fast food burger chain, so by chance that gleaned me a lot of insight into the inner workings of fast food burger chains (he was previously a DM of several Golden Arches)

I haven't read this page recently (it certainly has changed much), but on skimming through, none of the terminology McDonalds uses on their website are meaningful in the sense that the standards there is no official definition and could not be distinguished between similar competitors that make similar claims besides simply what they say, and, more importantly, there is no regulated term between what constitutes beef being “pure” or “not pure” or otherwise put. It’s just some “thing” they say about their beef and we have to take them up on their word. Now if they said “we use USDA organic ground beef” that might have some teeth. It’s the same thing between a bag of candy telling you they no longer use artificial flavors and now use “natural” flavors.

Now the question of do I believe they have changed? Possibly. Do the burgers taste different? No, so common sense tells me you don’t drastically change your process like this and still get the same tasting burger from 20 years ago.

But I will actually do something uncommon here and admit I could be wrong, and have an outdated understanding of their process.

Because the meat you buy in the grocery store goes bad after a few days, and (here is where I think parent is being slightly intellectually dishonest) while it is true that the fast food companies certainly source their meats from authentic, standard-holding institutions, that's only the beginning. That isn't to say the rounds of processing and preservation that occurs afterwards. You can't just buy a McDonalds chicken nugget off the shelf. Sure the inputs are the same, but the outputs are vastly different, and that's where the perceived difference in quality comes from. Fast food optimizes for longentivity, ease of cooking so they can reduce the labor costs associated in preparing that meat, and eliminating sanitation issues so they reduce their total liability and loss around food borne illnesses so they can reduce the labor costs associated in preparing that meat for you. That is why McDonalds undergoes the painstaking process of sanitizing their meat with an ammonia wash (prompted by the 90's nationwide beef e-coli outbreaks that resulted in serious litigation against popular burger joints), then adding in artificial flavorings back in to make it taste like a burger again (furthermore this is how McDonalds achieves that "miraculous" feat often described here when this topic comes up of having their burgers taste the same and have the same consistent product everywhere for over 20 years).

Tl:dr; yes it is true, inputs are the same as what you get in the store, but the outputs are vastly different. You have to factor in additives and preservation process. There really is a simple "sniff" test/heuristic I have developed after my decades in food service, and it's not really a secret, but seems like some aren't in on it, and it goes like this: If it goes bad, it's good, if it doesn't go bad, it isn't good. (Good is obviously subjective here, so my criteria is obviously "real" food in the sense that it is minimally processed and preserved and minimal chemical additives)

"it becomes incumbent on the researcher to explain why no-one has noticed this before"

Farmer: huh, we'll I'll be damned. Who in the hell woulda thought to feed them seaweed."

Careful having extreme stances on things. Packaged water keeps many people alive during times of natural disasters or crises. Volunteers flock in and one of the first items brought in is bottled water. It was a lifeline for many people during the Flint water crisis. Finally it serves an overall utility of giving people another choice at the vending machine. It sounds silly to you and me as well, but it has a real impact on public health.

So why rust then? Rust does not have a specification and it is currently still under heavy development, with many changes to the language expected to come out in the years to come. As many have put it before me, all of rust is technically undefined behavior. Change my mind -- I like the language, but I prefer those that have specifications and have multiple implementations so that the behavior is verified.

I'm pretty up to date on the science myself, and I still consider myself anti-GMO for a host of reasons, little to do with the science. My objections are more philosophical.

two primary reasons: hubris and greed.

The hubris to think we know which varietals are the best and will continue to be the best. We may go all in on one species or variant and then turns out an unknown bacteria we have previously no clue about wipes out all of them. You never know, you need variety. Bacteria outnumber us all.

number two: greed. You worried about tech being consolidated into the big 5? how about this scientific research? you want our food, something we actually depend on, to be consolidated into 2-3 chemical companies? I don't.

Smaller reasons include: the power of being able to still survive on pure nature's means, and the freedom to do so. We don't realize it, but these things we do out here in the more advanced nations greatly impact the developing world, where a large portion of the world's population exists.

The counter-example to this is github, and obviously basecamp, however.

Have you ever worked in a large engineering organization full of engineers with varying degrees of experience all trying to accomplish the same goal?

I can't imagine anyone has ever tried to do engineering at scale (people wise) and did not find the value in static typing.

It's why startups eventually moved off RoR once they started scaling. It's why there is such a large push to type JavaScript (have you seen the rollbar article about the top 10 errors in JavaScript? All but one have to do with types: https://rollbar.com/blog/top-10-javascript-errors/), it's why Facebook created Hack, and outside of parentheses repulsion, it's probably why so few large projects have been written in a LISP or LISP descendant.

Python is great for small: small teams, small organizations, small projects with a few dedicated tasks, small scripting tasks. Most people aren't trying to take anything away from python here in the comments save a few irrational responses.

*again want to stress in my comment when I speak of scale I mean scaling people wise: more organizational structures in your company, more engineers, more collaboration between teams.

" In the short term, he writes, there are clearly challenges, but over the long haul, he argues that diversity has a range of benefits for a society, and that the fragmentation and distrust can be overcome. It’s not an easy process, but in the end it’s “well worth the effort.” Putnam cites the integration of institutions like the U.S. Army as proof that diversity can work."

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/robert-putnam-say...

The point about the army is a particularly interesting one because they certainly are experts in integration and conformity, which hits back to my point in my previous comment as well.

My spitball opinion on that: we had diversity in America during the beginning of the industrial age that we heavily relied on for it's host of benefits, innovation primarily as well, but it didn't create the conflict (conflict theory terms) we see today because you were expected to integrate (conform) to be "American", which was a shared set of values and beliefs. America is still today one of the few geopolitical distinctions today that is solely demarcated as such by subscribing to a fundamental set of beliefs, rather than by blood as you have in most other countries in the world, especially in Europe. America is chiefly an idea, and by believing in that ideal, you gain the entire inheritance.

This is something that is continually being eroded unfortunately, especially as we continually descend into more and more hyphenated subgroups of Americans, rather than just focusing on what makes us simply Americans, but something we should still strive for.

(And I know you will get downvoted for posting about Robert Putnam research here because it appears to come off as a knock against diversity, even though Putnam himself said his research actually affirms the benefits of diversity)

"A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom designs."

It's an excellent description in of it's own, but if I were to attempt to put it in other terms, it allows you to compose css components and classes out of other smaller, essentially one liner css classes, while maintaining a consistent styling and spacing across the different utilities, which you define up front using the config but also comes with good defaults out of the box.

It is excellent and now my preferred method for hacking up a new site. It also helps you think about your design system overall so now I find myself paying attention to things up front I would normally wouldn't and it ends up saving me time in the long run. It also pairs really well with the excellent Refactoring UI book.

Hi Liam, I think the comment captures the essence of what feedback I would have and I am not interested in providing anymore feedback, no offense I am busy, but appreciate your willingness to learn and grow, sounds like the company could have used a few more people like you at the time I interviewed (was 2 years ago now).

Charisma is certainly something I have never been told I lack. Maybe we are lucky and have the right people as well.

How hard is it to say "these are the types of things we want to do. anything must look like these types of things in terms of (insert x y and z criteria: size, scale, opportunity, profitability, growth, etc)

spoiler alert: it isn't hard and this is what we do at my startup that is currently experiencing hyper growth and is on multiple "unicorn" lists

Not to heap it on...but ok who am I kidding I am heaping it on: I had a terrible interview experience with them.

Basically there was a period on HN where every other post was about stupid hiring practices and how absurd some code interviews were. Well Gitlab embodied all of them.

They phone interview quizzed me on several "gotcha" questions, and finally I was asked to describe Prototypical inheritance (JS), in which I was knowledgeable about and gave a very detailed and technical answer, in my own words (so not some memorized wikipedia answer), and basically what I got back from the recruiter was in essence, "Nope that's not what this piece of paper I have in front of me says the answer is" that is that although I had answered the question technically correctly, it wasn't the type of answer they were looking for.

Anyways, not salty about it anymore because it seems like I dodged a real bullet.

We absolutely have a canon. You show me someone who has studied Dikjstra, Turing, Hoare, who has taken the time to pour over the Art of Computer Programming and Structures and Interpretations of Computer Programs, and poured over Ivan Sutherland, is familiar with the early days of IBM, Fairchild, Xerox PARC, and hundreds of other classics we consider to be "canon" that I am surely missing (just shooting from the hip here), and you'' be showing me, more likely than not, a damn good programmer. We have a canon, we just don't have the same studios, detail-oriented attention spans we once had, and the technology we have built is partly to blame.

Maybe related, you were once considered an ignorant brut in this country and others if you haven't read a library of literary classics, now we have kids growing up who barely know Shakespeare, or the rich body of the writing of the abolitionists or slave narratives (how many people you think in this country that even know 1/100th of what Henry Louis Gates Jr knows?) Do you think W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T Washington are common names anymore? I remember when everyone had the preamble of the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address burned into their minds, now we can't be expected to remember questions for a simple AWS Certification Exam, it's pathetic.

Yeah this is one of the biggest urban legends in sports. It's just not a thing.

A team won't pay a player just to keep them from going to their division rival or whatnot, it's a nice fairy tail for the ESPN talking heads to keep repeating and it generates a nice bit of juicy controversy, but it just isn't a thing.

Besides it doesn't pass the smell test. If you don't value the player or you think your chances of winning are better by spending that money elsewhere, why would it be a net benefit to your team to keep a player you don't want to pay just to stop him from going to another team? Do you think the Dallas Cowboys are really thinking to themselves "Man, we don't really value RBs like that, but we really got to stop Zeke from going to the Eagles"? Nonsense!

Likewise if Google really doesn't want an employee going somewhere else to put a damper on their dominance, if it really was the goal of that employee to prevent Google's dominance, don't you think there are infinitely many other avenues that person could take? If you are paying for the knowledge, what is to stop this individual from creating a pseudonym and committing to an open source AI library on a separate laptop on their free time? The answer is nothing, and in fact that happens all the time, or the employee is busy creating their side business unbeknownst to the company, leaves, and waits out their non-compete.

It's a silly conspiracy to think smart people will willfully stand by getting paid to do busy work and not pick up on what's really going on, and it doesn't make sense.

I think a more eloquent way is to say fundamentally creating long lasting software structures is more of an art rather than a science, and you can't just tell someone "go practice these 5 things and you'll be the next Picasso" you just have to do it a lot of times, over and over, learning from your mistakes.

There are no shortcuts. You have to build a ton of software, and make a lot of mistakes, and most importantly, learn from them. Then there's the other half of the equation and some people just have the creative mind to imagine the right framework, or tool or library or abstraction or architecture for the problem at hand.

I've experienced them all and across all various parts of the country. If you want to know what phone plan to get, just ask a trucker.

I think shipping jobs overseas has had a catastrophic impact on wages and jobs

On the flip side this is also what has contributed so much to global progress in terms of increased wages globally, increased standard of living, life expectancy, literacy levels, and every other measurable positive progress indicator. I'm conflicted as well.

You know, I am surprised I am saying this, but I think I do too.

Absurdity of this video aside, but I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions. There are some pretty good examples of unions being corrupt, there are examples where unions work. There are examples where like Amazon says, having a direct relationship with your employer is the best. Nuance is gone which is the biggest loss.

Just like there certainly are some cities or places you should actually worry about being randomly stabbed, there are some public open access networks that should raise your concerns.

That's how every infringement of our civil liberties has come into existence: It has one or two very limited justifiable cases, and everyone goes 100% all in on that and focuses on that, but not what we will lose. Everyone always dismisses it as a slippery slope fallacy but here we are, with our rights against illegal search and seizures almost completely chipped away. Asking an officer for a search warrant is almost a formality at this point. Cops routinely exercise civil asset forfeiture and make it impossible to regain the goods lost, the 3 letter agencies are downloading and analyzing anything we type online and building comprehensive profiles and behavior models and running our actions online against said models, etc, etc.

Wanna come work for us? We don't care if you have a game open on your laptop, just that you get your work done.

Single player was only the beginning (Although they did have Nox Quest later).

That was one of the best online battle-arena style games I have ever played even to this day. The ladder system was awesome. Games were fast paced, you could pop in and out as you pleased

how about the hubris that we could ever possibly know what the "best" genes are, save whatever is currently desired for our current, extremely limited viewpoint on what "best" is. It's like reaching a local maxima and thinking you found the peak, but in the grand scheme of an evolutionary timeline were a factor of 100x away from what the real "best" was

Search results revealed that Primark is a fast fashion retailer, so probably selling the low end junk.

This is attacking the wrong problem. The real problem is in Portland the mayor is the police chief, and he has directed that the police not arrest these thugs. In my neck of the woods if you had masked thugs directing traffic and beating old men at traffic lights and giving journalists brain bleeds, they'd be getting tased and thrown in prison, as they should be.