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imperfectcats

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Rails 7.1 Released 3 years ago

That's rather ironic, because I read your comment you linked to, and it is pure speculation.

The Goodreads dev said "the site was originally built as a giant pile of Rails spaghetti with views mixed with business logic and such and then a fuck ton of weird features built and left to sit there". I'm not sure why you think that is or ever was "the Rails way", but it seems more like the classic "move fast and break stuff" startup engineering than anything resembling rails to me.

Ditto - and the same with the claims of solar and wind companies because of - [Goodhart's Law - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

      - "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
But even if we take that view, how many deaths would nuclear have to have caused to break even with fossil fuels? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... puts nuclear at 0.03 and hydropower at 1.3. So it is ~50 times less than hydro. That's a lot of wiggle room!

Goodhart's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

Any ESG system that uses a calculated number composed of many areas will quickly fall prey to Goodhart's Law. With an E, an S and a G to work on, the areas for change are numerous enough that Goodhart's Law holds even in a non-cynical world.

When an edict that "We need to increase our X score this quarter" is handed down, the real, living people who have to improve the ESG rating are likely limited in what they can do. A combination of pre-existing contracts and commitments, difficulty in changing large systems and problems with multi-department co-ordination means that most changes will be small and isolated, i.e. things where one department or small team can implement the entire change.

The SaaS Org Chart 5 years ago

They don't do they?

By my count all the non-front end devs do back end, so Client Applications (2), Core Services/Platform (1) & Dev Ops/Infra (1)

OK, so you read that section and see it as "repeatedly said programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended"?

There is another section with programs Damore claimed would be more effective. I am confused why replacing programs equates to ending them. Unless the goal is only to have good intentions, shouldn't the effectiveness of programs matter?

Can you point me to the section that says that: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

Being as generous with the interpretation as possible, I guess suggesting new programs to replace existing ones could be interpreted as "programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended", as ending one and replacing it is kind of ending. Saying "repeatedly" seems a stretch though.

Can you explain what I'm missing that lead to your beliefs?

Is there a name for that, where whatever the limit is, people set things right at it? The same is true in progressive tax brackets, and the number of cancer cases that people get right when people are eligible for Medicare in the USA.

Seems like it is common enough to have a name.

Then that is tomorrow me's problem!

I honestly think a lot of thinking works that way, where we'll let tomorrow me worry about it. To be fair, a lot of the time it makes sense. The problems a solution creates are things we need to accept when alternative is worse (think global warming vs starvation circa 1770).

Purely economically motivated decisions are rare. We all have reasons beyond the financial to live wherever, including something as simple as our wife/husband wants to live there.

There is also an inertia bias. Life has to get pretty expensive for many people to want to undergo the hassle of moving cities / states, which includes leaving behind loved ones, and learning everything new (including leisure things like where you like to eat).

Going meta, NYC and California/The Bay Area make the bulk of their tax revenue from very few industries. The tipping point at which they lose a financially significant portion of their tax base, and the flow on affects of that for government workers and the multiplier downstream, has likely been reached.

It was never about pay, it was about all the other conditions. I am sure there is a model that provides some revenue that works for all concerned, but when you demand algorithm updates for a few, it is just plain silly.

This is modern political reporting - a binary focus on one single element that ignores the multitude of other things tacked on.

It is not (just) about paying. It is about a condition that demands Google reveal their algorithm. This is a common problem with modern legislation, where the awful, disgusting, dirty politics of the things hidden in legislation gets lost behind the "big ticket" dispute.

Here is the part Google objects to from their propaganda piece https://about.google/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/ under "Why does the revised Code not work for Google?":

14 days algorithm notification: It requires us to give news publishers special treatment—14 days’ notice of certain algorithms changes and ‘internal practices’. Even if we could comply, that would delay important updates for our users and give special treatment to news publishers in a way that would disadvantage everyone else.

I would argue it is even worse, as a SUBSET of publishers that the Australian government deems worthy qualify. Basically Rupert Murdoch, for my English speaking cousins in other countries, and their only real local competitor.

If this was ONLY about paying, it would be a negotiation. This is a bizarre law that aims to profit the people who are supposed to hold the government of my country accountable, and give a leg up to specific publishers. None of that bodes well for democracy in my country, and this is government getting in bed with specific businesses, the cynic in me believes to win the government more favourable reporting.

Made worse when you have lots of money and even more stakeholders.

Perhaps worst of all, when failure has no true cost, avoiding failure matters far less. The CDC won't go broke because they blew through $44 Mil. Most every other organisation would. That's one of the challenges of government, the lack of creative destruction.

the fact that the folks advancing

Too many arguments boil down to people, and motives, not facts. It is a bad idea to put the short term desire to see a foe vanquished over the long term cost of bad laws and policy.

Laws are not perfect, and I'm not convinced we want the basis of democracy to be closed source voting machines, or that even if we do, the checks and balances as they stand are currently 100% correct.

Try having kids:

You listen to these tracks too much:

- Rock-A-Bye Your Bear by The Wiggles

Which, to be fair, is my second favourite Wiggle song!

It works for most paywalls, NY Times being one I remember, so it is handy beyond one article.

Likely there are a bazzillion reasons you can't optimise the current browser to turn off JS, and what are the chances anyone has Opera, and would find running it in JS off mode problematic?

YMMV, but I think it is a lot easier to install a browser as a cheap, easy, JS free paywall buster than the alternatives.

I think these arguments assume welding is a low-skill job. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25166696 seems to explain why it isn't.

There are definitely some industries where the cost to get to the level where you make good money is too high, especially when you aren't sure when you start if you have the required talent to make a great living.

There will always be a shortage of great NBA centres - for reasons outside labour market functioning.

I think this sort of response to the interview misses the forest for the trees.

This is the best article on elections I have ever read. When I first read it I felt for the first time I understood how the game is scored. These two quotes stand out and are what matter:

Persuadable voters trust the parties on different issues. And there’s a pretty basic pattern — both here and in other countries — in which voters view center-left parties as empathetic. Center-left parties care about the environment, lowering poverty, improving race relations. And then, you know, center-right parties are seen as more “serious,” or more like the stern dad figure or something. They do better on getting the economy going or lowering unemployment or taxes or crime or immigration.

So I think Democrats need to talk about the issues they are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree. Which, in practice, means not talking about immigration.

That's the game for both sides: Talk about issues non-partisan voters trust and/or agree with your side on, and avoid the opposite.

Simple in theory. Impossibly hard in practice.

It is already worse than the GFC in 2009. UK GDP dipped 21.7% in Q2, NZ ~13%, and the US ~10%. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-health-economy

Where it ends is anyone's guess, and the worst part will be the second and third order effects it won't be super easy to predict. Things like pension/401K/Superannuation funds with high Commercial real estate exposure leading to reduced retirement income, state pension funds that suffer as big US cities see revenue plummet after the population moves, European cities with vastly worse economies - the UK with London hurts there the most - and the cyclical effect of Italian demand reducing French production, reducing French demand reducing Italian production, ad nauseam.

This will be a multi-speed problem, with some countries, cities, counties, suburbs & streets affected far more than others.

If it wasn't so tragic it would be a truly fascinating thing to watch unfold.

Cursed Elixir 6 years ago

I think having a tool to standardise formatting is huge, and a lot of what makes Elixir code easy to read is mix format.

That and the fact most of the community started out with similar ideas on good code, so there was less bikeshedding around formatting.

Costs go up when the process gets complicated, especially when the complications are increasingly tangential to the activity. YIMBYism, environmental impact, indigenous land rights, historical considerations (preserving sites with historical value) all play a part in increasing costs in the west in building physical things.

That is not an argument AGAINST these things. It may be a valid trade-off that we all accept. Or it may be a power grab by some department or group. It is tough to know generally speaking.

That is true in all areas where costs are rising wildly - medicine, education, cost of building real estate in pre-COVID bay area, cost of infrastructure. Whether you think the trade-offs are justified will depend on your mood affiliation as much as anything else.