sillyquiet

no, its not. Not in any white collar professions, not in any blue collar jobs, not in the military, not in academia.

You are only safe when you don't have bosses and all responsibility and power rests on yourself.

but that argument depends on assuming we have a complete archaeological record, which we of course do not.

In other words that argument depends on the available evidence rather than speculation, like, you know, how science should be done.

Just because they don't mention this not-widely-accepted hypothesis you're going to dismiss it? Ok.

Anybody looking for information not filtered through science journalism wouldn't go wrong checking out the Twitter threads of two of the researchers:

https://twitter.com/KristerVasshus/status/161523653168960716...

https://twitter.com/Kristel_Zilmer/status/161546218260654080...

I also recommend Jackson Crawford's video on the subject as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_m2xcoU9Q0

He also had an in-depth interview with Krister Vasshus on his Patreon which will probably be on his You-Tube channel eventually.

Eat your own dogfood right?

See also the trailers for "Predator". Movie is still fantastic, but plays out so much better if you don't know the nature of the predator.

this is a 'haha Americans so dumb' myth that's been blown up - it's the result of a NY Times article that outline a private restaurant chain focus group result.

So tldr; some people in a private focus group questioned the value of a 1/3 pound burger over the same priced 1/4 pound burger. It's not indicative of any system numerical illiteracy.

I will add there were no actual data released - it's solely based on an anecdote from a A&W restaurant executive.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28745/did-aw-cu...

I gotta say that your distinction between 'hackers' and 'developers' is pretty ill-informed - just out of curiosity, have you primarily worked in start-ups?

Sprints when used correctly are invaluable to a development team. Source: My own experience as a junior dev and a lead dev on teams working in this methodology.

Note it's not useful in all (most?) scenarios or in all stages of a product's development.

When you are in support mode for a product that's stable, standing up something from scratch, working on a POC or experimenting with frameworks or libraries - it's not useful, use kanban or something else.

But when you are working on a/b tests or adding features to an existing product it's extremely useful.

When done correctly: You get a two-way promise between leadership and a dev team. The dev team commits to getting stuff done within that <sprint-length> time - therefore they must carefully decompose work where that makes sense. Leadership commits to LEAVING THE DEV TEAM ALONE for that <sprint-length> time - no priority changes, no "Product Manager Chad had a dream if we implement X we get 1000% more revenue!", none of that nonsense. This means for bigger efforts, you get <sprint-length> chunks of working code "done" at time. This in practice means the devs drive how much they can get done in a certain amount of time - if a PM wants an earlier date out the door, that's <x> fewer sprints of decomposed work that gets done.

The tricky thing here is the use of the term "correctly" above. Sprint-based methodology isn't a tool for management to dictate or predict performance and it's not a tool to micromanage tasking. If leadership DOES have this distorted view of it, then it is useless overhead to no benefit for anybody.

It's also not useful at all if only the dev teams practice it - everybody has to respect the commitments required to do sprint correctly - if they don't, use kanban or something else.

So... developers aren't productive?

This is a weird take.

My mother-in-law was a nurse at an orthopedic surgery center. She always said the major classes of patients she saw were:

1. old folks getting joint replacements 2. young athletes 3. middle aged construction workers or laborers

Speaking of cats and the Viking age, cats played a prominent and mixed role in early medieval Scandinavia: https://www.academia.edu/42251199/The_Warrior_and_the_Cat_A_...

Pull quotes from the summary: "Cat bones from many trading centres show cut marks from skinning and highlight the value of cat fur. In contrast, the occurrence of cats in male burials points rather to a function as exotic and prestigious pets. "

Way too early. From the dates, its more likely to be Roman sailors and/or Roman-affiliated traders.

Blind being the semi-toxic mess it is, I could see this being true, but I could also see this as an epic troll.

I know this is a joke, but pottery is kind of the road sign of archaeology. Pottery can tell all kinds of stories about technology levels, trade routes, cultural patterns, foods eaten and agriculture (from seed impressions and residues), the list goes on. Pottery is pretty important.

I kinda wish everybody here had forgotten about that option. Was prepared to get some serious heads down time.

Yeah, as much as I think the whole concept of social media influencers is sad and dumb, this smells like one of those 'dang kids and their <x>' articles that have cursed us since Aristotle.

As a Gen-Xer, I don't know how many times I read similar things growing up about my own generation, except it was metal or hair bands or glam rockers that garnered the worry.

I get nostalgic for some of the toys I had during the late 70s and 80s too, but really, I am super jealous, if that's the right word, of my kids for the toys available to them. Toys today are superior in nearly every way to toys from my childhood.

I would have KILLED for some of the robotics and electronics kits that are widespread today.

Whatcha mean useless? There's some serious SEM money behind that from AT&T/Warner/whatever. I am sure Google is enjoying the sales revenue.

Wow.

"We conclude that it is impossible to say that taking SSRI antidepressants is worthwhile, or even completely safe. People need all this information to make informed decisions about whether or not to take antidepressants."

I started a few years after you, around about 2003. There were certainly pockets of industry that still operated exactly the same as the article described, especially defense and aerospace.

Which makes sense, given working in embedded hardware (especially in classified contexts) back then came with a lot of the same limitations described in the article - software had to be delivered by sneaker-net, installation was burdensome, you couldn't just fire up the application for a quick bug fix at home, etc. Not to mention the inertia of having Always Done It That Way.

One of the things many people who've never had to wear armor for an extended period of time on a hot day don't realize is how horribly uncomfortable armor is, and how that discomfort can be a severe distraction under battlefield conditions.

Maybe! A well tailored and properly weight-distributed mail hauberk (which is also conformal) is surprisingly comfortable for extended period of time in all kinds of weather. (Source: my own experience in medieval re-enactment). What gets you in hot weather are the textiles - with mail its the necessary padding under the mail that will cause issues in hot weather.

the author's point that linen was more comfortable than 'rigid' armor was probably true, but I will point out that rigid armors were also individually tailored, balanced, and created for optimal weight distribution.

As an aside mail armor was a successful and popular armor for a millennium, from the Iron Age to the middle ages (and continued to be successful as an augment to plate and in other contexts like South Asia and India until probably the 16th century). It was probably contemporary to the linen armor of the article (In time, not geographically - it was used most heavily in iron-rich regions in central Europe at first).

Yeah exactly. Usenet wasn't what it was because of the technology, it was because the participants were mostly there to have 'professional' conversations, and the kinds of conversations that nerdy techie-minded people have over beers after work (wesley.crusher.die.die.die, etc).

The article mentions the need for the ramped-up steel producers to find an outlet post WWII, hence the rise in popularity of steel cabinetry.

I wonder if this also what led to the increase in other steel furniture like file cabinets, desks, chairs, etc in the 50s and 60s.

I don't know if anybody else ever sat at one, but the massive steel desks the government used in the 50s and 60s in offices and labs were built like tanks, and probably weighed as much.

I am not saying this isn't true, but EV's have a set of maintenance requirements too - there are still a lot of mechanical parts - tires, suspensions, doors, etc. Not to mention electronic maintenance but I guess dealerships would have to re-train, re-certify, and re-tool technicians for that

No OP's correct, the US surpassed the UK both in population and in GDP sometime around the middle of the 19th century.

yeah, this was really my point. A (maybe terrible) modern analogy is how concerned would we be with a civil war in say, South America, where a significant chunk of our lithium comes from? We would probably be concerned, but our economic and military clout means that we would always be the customer for whoever won that civil war.

Right right, you are absolutely correct, but I meant that the U.S. was inconsequential to Europe militarily.

Well yeah you are correct, and I wrote clumsily. That was meant to read 'although the U.S. was gaining steam economically, it was not of much consequence militarily'

I think the real answer and probably why the article is a bit light on actual anecdotes, is that Britain or its military at the time probably didn't think much of it all, especially from a military point of view. Plus they were super busy with imperial concerns, especially in the British Raj post-1857 rebellion.

The U.S., although gaining steam economically (pun intended), was still a backwater, rural, nation isolated by a whole lot of ocean (edit: I meant all this from a military point of view). I am sure the abolitionists in power in Parliament were interested in the outcome of the war from that point of view, but it was really of very little consequence to UK or Europe as a whole.