logshipper

Also relevant Byrne Hobart post on how frequent flyer miles programs are worth more than the airlines themselves: https://archive.is/yUTay

I'm seeing a lot of comments here about how its the government's fault for relying on a private service for public communications.

The sentiment, while understandable (and not entirely unfair), assumes that the government has armies of technical folks available to maintain ActivityPub/RSS/$RandomHarryPotterSpell$. A Twitter account (well, before the Musk takeover anyway) offered:

a) The ability to disseminate information to essentially anyone with a mobile device and an internet connection. b) Low setup costs, maintenance overhead, and technical expertise needed.

As a taxpayer, I would like my government to be cost-effective in resource allocation - Pre-Musk Twitter was one such cost-effective way to maintain a 1-->many communications infrastructure. That said, I fully agree that they should explore alternatives in light of Musk's antics.

It is important to also remember that government can be slow when it comes to embracing tech. ActivityPub is only 5 years old, and that's a short-time by govt standards, RSS is effectively (and quite sadly) dead for the everyday folk. This may or may not surprise the readership here, but Ontario's healthcare system still uses faxes to transmit patient records: https://www.dww.com/articles/ontario-government-to-eliminate....

Math:

   - 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown

   - Numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/c/numberphile

   - Computerphile: https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile

   - PBS Spacetime: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime

   - Philosophy Tube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thephilosophytube

   - Folding Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoldingIdeas

   - ContraPoints: https://www.youtube.com/c/ContraPoints

   - Nerdwriter: https://www.youtube.com/user/Nerdwriter1

   - Patrick H Willems: https://www.youtube.com/c/patrickhwillems

   - Every Frame a Painting: https://www.youtube.com/c/everyframeapainting
   
   - https://www.youtube.com/c/LessonsfromtheScreenplay

I wanted to like this article - I couldn't. The author lost my respect right off the bat when they hand-waved recent trends in Ontario education as "Marxism" or derivatives thereof - a failing of intellectual rigour on the author's part [1].

I will not comment on the actual court judgment itself simply because I'm not super privy to conversations surrounding public schooling in Ontario. I will, however tackle one point the author brings up about "rote-like teaching and learning methodologies". I grew up in one such "rote-like" learning system, and I'm witness to how it _kills_ the beauty of math and sucks all joy out of it. I was privileged enough to find Khan Academy around my HS days and Sal's intuition-backed approach to math was a godsend in a place where we were told to redo the same problems till our "hands memorized the problems". Rote-learning is great for multiplication tables, but anything after that is begging your students to fear/despise math. We need creative ways of teaching math so students are actually interested in the subject, and I see far more of that in the west (I have worked part-time as a math tutor in Toronto) than the rote system I was subject to.

This romanticisation of rote-methods and painting all activism as Marxism leads me to believe the author is no better than those he/she seeks to criticize and is victim to the same intellectual trappings they accuse their opponents of. If I had a kid in the Ontario public system, I'd probably be wary of my kid learning anything from this teacher - my political beliefs notwithstanding.

[1] - I'm not denying the author their right to criticize the system (they probably have valid criticisms), but if they're going to do it in a self-important manner, I'd expect more intellectual rigour than calling anything moderately activist as "Marxism".

This is a good and thorough article. The author got down to brass tacks pretty quickly and brings up interesting hypothesis about $MSFT.

That said, I do have one gripe:

To oversimplify Notion to its demographics, it is Office 365 for people below age 35.

I recognize this is an oversimplification, but even so, it seems like a stretch. Notion is a decent product, and I have used it for a few small-scale team projects in uni (mainly for Kanban-related stuff) - but to call it a replacement for O365 is an exaggeration at best.

Yes, you can have pretty, nested documents in Notion and that's great, but a tabular database in Notion is by no means a replacement for Excel or even Google Sheets. The velocity that is afforded by Excel in terms of formulas is unmatched and there's a reason it has yet to be unseated as the kingpin of modern finance.

Most young people I know use a combination of Discord + Google Suite to collaborate. I am aware this is slightly anecdotal, but I am also having a hard time imagining myself as a founder and then asking my CFO to use Notion to prepare investor pitches.

Source: Am 23 :)

There's a very cool 3Blue1Brown video [0] that helps give you an intuitive feel for Bayes Theorem.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM

I don't think the author's American-ness disqualifies them from writing about China. On the contrary, it is their very experience as a Chinese American that helps me (an outsider) see things from a new and interesting perspective.

some seriously confused Chinese American

I don't recall where I read this (I think it may have been Rachel Cusk), but it is a writer's job to ask questions. And what better source of questions than confusion?

That said, I'd genuinely be interested to seek your recommendations on China from Chinese sources.

Easy resets for when you fall off.

I like this feature.

When the pandemic first hit, I realized how important routines and (associated) metrics would be in keeping me afloat in a tumultuous time. To that end, I built my own little CLI-based habit/checklist tracker and started analyzing trends and habits on a weekly and monthly basis.

It worked great at first, I had a privileged insight into my week and could therefore fine-tune parameters to optimize for certain metrics. However, as the pandemic dragged on, the drudgery of waking up from my bed and working from my desk (which is a foot away [0]) eventually caught up to me and I started burning out. Looking back, a relentless pursuit to optimize for certain KPIs was part of the reason. Having successfully mechanized a large of my life with little room for error (for fear of rebuke from those pretty charts in Tableau), I started dreading those weekly-check ins with myself, eventually dropping the habit altogether. My tracker went poof soon after that. After all, there will be no rebuke from a chart if there is no chart to begin with :))

A couple months later, I cleared the backend database, and started anew. I had also come to realize over this "break" that I should not tie my self-worth to some graphs [1], and if I was getting the important stuff done, I had little to worry about. My "system" since then has been working fairly well, I use Trello to keep track of stuff, and if something super alarming pops up, I investigate. If not, I let things flow.

I believe it would help your user retention massively if you could remind users you are not a drill sergeant, but are there to help. And part of helping them is to sometimes remind them that (bad) metrics are not a judgement of their character and its okay to let things slide. You can always start anew.

Good luck to y'all, I wish you well! :)

[0] - I am an undergrad living in off-campus housing. Real-estate is unfortunately an expensive luxury at my time in life.

[1] - I recommend Jenny Odell's book "How to do Nothing" to anyone feeling like they are on a never-ending treadmill. There are parts of it that I didn't like, but all in all, it was a good read.

I see comments talking about Stripe's "PR", not just in this thread, but also the one from a couple days ago [1]. I agree that Stripe's hiring practices, based on the information available, certainly warrant criticism.

But I also think it is important to distinguish between Stripe the product and Stripe the company (and subsequently its hiring practices). Based on what I've heard, developers love Stripe, and they are popular in YC too for obvious reasons. PG's essays have often mentioned the Collisons [2], and Patrick Collison is admired (presumably) universally for his smarts [3]. All the above mentioned praise stems primarily from two things:

a) Stripe having a well-functioning product

b) The Collisons being incredibly smart and driven individuals

Both of these factors in conjunction imply that Stripe will be heavily admired. The love for Stripe is therefore a manifestation of that implication, and I dont think there is some PR machine working tirelessly to polish the Stripe brand.

It is a fallacy to extrapolate the sentiment surrounding product and founders to assume that Stripe will automatically be a "good" company.

Needless to say, my heart goes out to those who had offers rescinded. As others have mentioned, an offer can set in motion events that are seemingly irreversible. I hope Stripe uses this as an opportunity to reflect on their hiring systems and fix them to be more waterproof.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29387264 [2] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html [3] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stripe-ceo-patrick-col...

Edit: fixed grammar

The humans preparing and serving the food are the only weak link in the chain, and they’re treated as such.

I worked nights at a McDonalds about 4 years back (first year of university) in Canada. You are spot-on about them treating humans as the weakest link.

For instance, I noticed that every carton in the freezer contains an illustration of the item inside (in addition to names in English and French). My understanding is that they simply do not trust their workforce to be able to read the contents of the carton and will gladly slap an image on top to remove any unpredictability from the process.

Seeing the comments here debating the semantics of taxes, now seems like a good time to mention Poe's Law. [0]

I personally took home the message that the "game" was satire and meant to contextualize Bezos' wealth. Saying that the cost of hiring 100k teachers for 4 years is a fraction of his wealth is a lot more (for the lack of a better term) impactful than saying Bezos is worth $xyz Billion. Of course, that does not mean that Jeff can write a check for $22.4B and we can address the issues with the public school system in the United States. It does, however, help drive home the point that some individuals in our society have such immense wealth that they could theoretically transform society.

I do not intend to comment on the nature of said wealth, but the game still makes good food for thought.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

[Meta] Looks like the article is from 2018, perhaps it would help to reflect that in the title?

Another really cool Pudding project was the "How bad is your Spotify?" [0]

[0] https://pudding.cool/2020/12/judge-my-spotify/

Disclaimer: I am not an Apple insider by any means, and this is all a hypothesis.

Their management of the bug bounty program seems like a reflection of their secretive (and perhaps sometimes siloed) internal culture. I'd argue that for any bug bounty program to be successful, there needs to be an inherent level of trust and very transparent lines of communication - seeing as though Apple lacks it internally (based on what I've read in reporting about the firm) it is not particularly surprising that their program happens to be run in the shadows as the OP describes.

I forget the exact term for it, but there is a "law" in management which postulates that the internal communication structures of teams are reflected in the final product that is shipped. The Apple bug bounty seems to be an example of just that.

Edit: Its called Conway's Law

I am somewhat interested in reading about plane crashes and such. Are there any books/resources you can recommend to me?

More recently, the New Yorker published "The Plague Year" [1] in Jan 2021. IIRC, this was the first time since the Hiroshima issue that they dedicated almost the entire magazine to a single article. I quite liked it, and it was even on the HN front page [2].

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-yea... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616014

I really respect that attitude.

I happen to be doing a security assessment on some products (PuTTY etc) at the firm (Fortune Global 100) where I am interning.

It baffled me to read a directive from management that said that we should shy away from open-source projects - I must confess that I was somewhat frustrated at the sheer ignorance in the memo but your comment allows me to see a silver-lining. I hope that one day I can rise up to management and make decisions based on greater nuance than simply saying "OSS bad and insecure".

DomainTools’ record for briansclub[.]com says the domain was abandoned or dormant for a period in 2019, only to be scooped up again by someone in May 2020 when it became a phishing site spoofing the real BriansClub.

Reminded me of the recent AskHN thread on the profitability of domain squatting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106113

I wonder if we'll see more of such criminal-scamming operations after the government sting operation that leveraged a compromised app: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/08/fbi-app-arre...

From what I understand, the labour/complexity in K8S lies not with the deployment, but with managing said deployment over the long term.

This is a real problem for system architects/security professionals that need to maintain a bird's eye view of the system - a job that gets increasingly complex with every additional microservice once you hit critical mass.

This is not to say that K8S does not work - they do, but for certain problems. The cargo-cult mentality, however, threatens to introduce complexity in systems where there is need for none.

Quite an interesting article!

I am curious as to how this "limited collection" of IR firms adds to or drains from the overall security ecosystem.

On one hand, having a limited number of firms allows for seamless knowledge transfer, and upholds a somewhat high standard of service - kind of like a licensing regime.

On the other hand, I wonder if this cartel limits innovation and keeps new entrants with new ideas and better service from entering the fray.

Maybe its a bit of both?

Most of them don't. I end up bullshitting them as much as possible and getting a B so I can focus on the courses I care about

I hear where you're coming from on this (and have been in similar shoes), but I suppose there is more nuance to it, mostly because professors and departments play such an important role in the experience.

The argument of liberal arts electives lending themselves to a richer education experience is a well-intentioned one, and does reap benefits if executed well by the professor, the department, TA's and so on. If not, well, it is just like you mentioned, one is inclined to BS their way out of a class to focus on things more important to them.

Speaking from my anecdotal experience, I have had to take three electives as part of my undergrad: microeconomics, macroeconomics, and a philosophy class on the philosophy of the mind. I have thoroughly enjoyed macro-econ and philosophy simply because the professors put in an incredible amount of work to inspire me to work hard and care about the subject. Micro-econ, on the other hand, was one giant mess and I did not show up to more than 3 lectures over the course of the semester.

I believe in the earnest that students stand to gain so much if some university departments and professors gave a crap about the experience that they are offering.

Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is a fantastic place not just for cycling, but also running and roller-blading. I have been there for a couple of runs - the lanes are clearly demarcated, and the track is a real treat to run on.

Users can post a TikTok video resume to the site rather than a traditional resume. The idea is for users to give an elevator pitch or work experience summary via the video in a unique way.

Genuine question. Can anyone tell me how recruiters intend to parse through thousands of videos without some level of automation or software-based filtering?

I understand that there are AI systems that can pick up keywords and sentiment, but we all know they are far from perfect. Plus we end up with all sorts of issues where some accents might be under-represented, leading to exclusion etc.

For all the flaws in text resume-based hiring, automated systems can, at least to _some_ extent, help sift through thousands of candidates.

I'm not saying that the present system is perfect, just that the proposed video-based system could be worse in terms of scale.

The story, in fact, was mostly bullshit. It was being "narrated" by Belfort (DiCaprio) all along, and the mere presence of some very obviously outlandish/fickle claims serve to establish the unreliability and narcissism of the narration.

For example, at the start of the movie, he talks of driving a red Ferrari, and immediately changes it to white [1].

Another example is the 400lb bench press [2].

I also saw an interpretation on how Scorsese sought to present money and opulence as the ultimate salvation. So it only made sense to write the gospel in a way that extended that narrative. [3]

Edit: Formatting

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/bvt20s/in_the...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxZ99H5_1Z8

I am operating under the assumption here that said articles can pertain to any topic, and not just diamonds. If that is not the case, I do apologize.

I am a huge fan of William Langewiesche's work (some of which, incidentally, has been for The Atlantic). He writes crisp, longform articles on a variety of topics, including but not limited to aviation [1], shipping [2], nuclear proliferation [3], the dark net [4], and private military contractors [5].

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-m...

[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w...

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/12/how-to-...

[4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/welcome-to-the-dark-...

[5] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/04/g4s-global-...

basically their worldview is that they're ripping off some first-world asshole who would be just as happy to destroy the scammers own country if it could make the cost of consumer goods slightly lower.

I happened to watch "The Battle of Algiers" last night and the scammers' sentiments reflect what the FLN commander Ben M'Hidi (insurgent/freedom-fighter depending on who you ask) had to say in response to questions about the civilian death toll:

Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?

Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.

I must mention here that I am not taking any ideological sides, and firmly believe that killing of innocent civilians, by any party whatsoever is plain wrong.

I suppose in any battle, ideological or otherwise, the actors involved come to justify their tactics as being in service of a greater, grander goal which also, at least in their minds, allows them to subvert responsibility and accountability.

You're right in that home is also a question of identity and belonging. It's just that while I would say that I am fairly well adjusted to Toronto (heck I started playing hockey on a frozen pond this past winter), there's always going to be this "vacuum" of sorts (just from the virtue of not having had any roots here whatsoever) that keeps me from feeling like I can say I am from here. Its a question of making peace with it, is all :)

I moved for university to Toronto, Canada (from India) when I was 18. Despite having lived here for (nearly) 4 years, and loving absolutely every single minute of it, I don't know if and how I will ever be truly claim myself as being "from" Toronto.

Everytime someone here asks me where am I from, I genuinely don't know how to answer them.

Do I say I'm from India? Well, I haven't gone back once in these 5 years, and I do feel more at home here in Toronto than I would in India, so I'm not sure that's fair. So do I then say I'm from Toronto? But that feels almost like cheating - I didn't have a childhood here, I have no stories to recall from school trips, so how can I lay claim to this beautiful city?

I am coming to accept that I truly belong from nowhere. That I have transient experiences that stretch from Delhi to Mumbai to Chandigarh to Toronto to Ottawa (interned there for a year). The inherent complexity of the question "where are you from?" affords it no wrong or right answers, and at least theoretically, I should not be ashamed to claim the place I resonate with the most, or claim no place at all.

PS: Looking at the comments, it does feel nice to know that I am not the only one that somehow continues to seek a sense of belonging.

I was having this exact conversation with a friend the other day. To engage in any form of (even remotely) political discourse on the internet is to step into a landmine once you consider the 20-year horizon. People are now being fired for things they said as teenagers [1], and while I am all for anti-racism and inclusiveness, have we forgotten that people grow and change with time? That we are products of our society and those societies often imbibe us with some blind spots that we later come to recognize?

The only way I can see out of this displaced and performative moralism is to not attach your name to anything that could be considered even remotely problematic in the future.

To get rid of old tweets, FB posts, anyone reading this might want to try the Jumbo app [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/media/teen-vogue... [2] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/jumbo-privacy-security/id14540...

Thanks for clarifying :)

I suppose it is not _entirely_ out of the realm of possibility, but I'd be willing to bet that they won't end up taking that "route".

I'm sorry, this is is dangerously close to conspiracy theory territory. I am by no means, an apologist for Google, but I seriously doubt they have the ability/resources, or even motivation to manage route planning at such a microscopic level.

I recognize that they have been caught with their pants down with things like altering search results [1], but making broad speculative claims like this about the real world without any substantiation whatsoever is unfair and alarmist.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-...