throwaway47861

> Statistical averages mean nothing to the millions of family barely making ends meet and not being able to pay for the kids' gyms and proper nutrition.

Again, that's not the point.

If that's not the point then any other discussion is tragically irrelevant.

The "global average is better" is a meaningless assertion. Everybody in the world has roughly one testicle. How useful is that piece of info?

And how useful is the "global average is getting better" to people who want to raise kids well-fed but currently cannot?

...but Westerners have a habit of classifying dissenting opinions as "just wrong" and dismissing/ignoring them.

Fully agreed. This is also extremely prevalent in any economic discussions here in HN where most of the first-world dwellers are cozying up their minds with the generic statement "it is all getting better on average" which I think is utter BS.

As a guy who has been to pretty poor parts of the world and lives in a country that touts any small bill that will benefit zero common folk -- but is always advertised as such for 30 years now -- I have to say, most first-world population is tragically misinformed on how are the average people around the world living.

How is anything you said related to the points defended -- and others debunked by -- by the article?

It was mostly talking about the amount per day needed to have proper nutrition. Why do you shift the goalposts to abstract terms like "it's improving faster"? Sure, if you are on the rock bottom, it's only up from there on, and obviously you want to go faster when distancing yourself from the bottom.

Zero relevance to the article.

The most optimistic opinions on where we would see autonomous car were on the 2020s.

Sure, keep moving timelines. It's what makes you money in the area. I am sure when around mid-2019 hits, it will suddenly be "most experts agree that the first feasible self-driving cars will arrive circa 2025".

You guys are hilarious.

I believe it's a good time for the publishing of a high-quality article detailing on how to build such mirroring servers with minimal budget.

Usually such machines don't need best CPUs around but they definitely do need ECC memory and serious NAS-like capabilities. So maybe older-gen Xeons? I am no expert though. Hopefully somebody publishes a blog post about it.

Since this is technically very illegal I'd be inclined to view your message as a bait to capture and jail one of the very first people who managed to mirror the whole thing.

No offense, just seems fishy.

On point, thank you. And pretty good evidence of neural network [re-]training, too.

You know, I couldn't give two shits about xenophobic and racist people like them, really. Let them do that and be happy.

As we say in my country however: "be stupid but get the fuck off the road".

Bad influences on young people from old and prejudiced (and bitter?) people is never good. We need a world with more open-minded people and societies like the Japanese aren't helping matters at all. But to be as objective as possible -- not sure our societies help matters either.

Agreed with every word. Thank you for the very good comment, much appreciated.

Related: have you seen Japanese wood joinery? Gods, that thing is next level!

Off-tangent incoming:

In my observations (and some bias; I am openly admitting it) which were sometimes reinforced by meeting real Japanese people, most Japanese are xenophobes, racists and very easily collectively agree not to speak about stuff they dislike / feel threatens some imaginary dominance / endanger their prejudices.

For all the glorification the country and its people get around the globe, and for all the romantic blemish their fatalistic and stoic philosophy receives, the Japanese I've encountered and observed remotely are pretty ordinary people with a lot of prejudice and hostility towards foreigners attached.

Not impressed. And this news comes as no surprise as well.

Guess people just love to glorify stuff that's very different from their own, with zero thought if that's actually a good thing?

One can easily get fed up and thus resort to a throwaway account. Hypocrisy is one way of looking at it. I'll not argue as to how you should be looking at it through my point of view.

If anything, I have numerous anecdotal evidence for my generalizations. But we all do, so that's not really a defensible position, I realize that. :)

My original objection is that many people in the thread, right here in HN, the place that should be where the modern intellectual elite hangs out, are no better than your random Google zealot who never misses the chance to piss on people for using Apple devices.

All of us should do better. I appreciate your criticism of my generalizations. While I think they are well-justified in the background of my life's experience, I am still not blind to the fact that they are prejudices as well.

How is your reply diminishing Apple's stance on privacy?

Yes, people do compare and choose based on their priorities (and wallets). That's how competition works, isn't it?

So again, I fail to see how your comment changes anything. Of course people compare products.

Yes. Insulting people on the basis of using Apple products should disqualify them from any discussion beyond drunk jokes on a table in the suburbs.

(Disclaimer #38274932: I am not defending Apple per se. I find them pretty shady in a number of aspects as well as Google. But what is happening in this thread is just shameful.)

Yes. I am using a throwaway exactly because of this close scrutiny like yours. Examples: I've known racists who are amazing engineers. The fact that they were awful racists didn't demean their engineering ability. That's why for some of my posts I prefer being anonymous. People like you would probably try and demean me because they disagree with me on something.

I am flawed like everybody else and I'll be the first to admit my own prejudices -- even if I am not ready to overcome them at the moment (which is a sad reality for most of us).

But the amount of nitpick and prejudice I am observing periodically on HN is alarming and I feel the need to call it out here and there.

You can take it as an insult or you can try and extract something from the criticism that can enrich you. It's your choice.

Also please note that I am not defending Apple per se. But I expect better criticisms on HN compared to what is rampant right here in this thread.

Can confirm. Currently working on several Elixir API apps, they are absolute joy to work on and you get tons of freedom on how exactly to structure them.

The "cruft" from the Phoenix framework is absolutely minimal -- mandatory 4-6 files per project at the most. And they're quite small, too.

Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years.

This is what I call living in a bubble, dear sir/madam.

I grew in a small town in Eastern Europe (~100k population) and me plus the local 50 or so programmers (using Apple II and 8086-based computers), in 1996, while we were in our teenage years, were painfully aware that games like chess and Go are brute-force-able with some elements of recognizing and memorizing viable strategies (and throwing out the unviable ones early on). And that was what, 15-19 year old late teenagers, and we knew it. So be sure that many people knew it -- they just never chose that area of expertise specifically.

This also says a lot about the quality of the average professors and textbooks, but let's not go off-topic, plus it's a huge discussion area.

Exactly what I was also aiming at; such mass exodus events signal either (a) that Rubin hired a bunch of greedy freeloaders that leave after the first signs of struggle, or (b) he is a dictator who's not pleasant to work with.

Both of these aren't promising.

I don't disagree.

What I am saying is that writing such articles is embarrassing and reads like a paid hype. Plus the guy really doesn't have much under his belt.

I and many other practical people dislike person cults. Especially such forced ones.

I think the hyped euphemisms are carefully crafted to make the people feel important if they buy something. It's a very regular psychological technique in marketing.

I am surprised nobody mentioned this guy's failure to deliver the Essential Phone in time (whether it's essential is a huge argument point by itself).

Cynically speaking, to me that's a paid article to keep hype around the persona since he's losing a lot of PR points lately.

I am not taking such a "visionary" seriously unless he manages to ship the one consumer-level product he promised.

And yes, many of his ideas are COMMON SENSE, I can't for the life of me understand the praise.

I've noticed that C and C++ have pretty fanatical and very narrow-minded fanbase. And I am talking about people of ages 50+ as well -- I was acquainted with several of them (in the real physical world) as well.

So IMO it's absolutely pointless trying to argue with them in the first place. They are set in their ways and while a good chunk of them are pretty strict and excellent in what they do, they are not open to any changes.

I would be the first to agree that Go and Rust aren't ready to start replacing drivers but IMO people should start trying! (Or invest in LLVM some more?)

C/C++'s faults aren't ever going away. They're too convenient in their target area. I am against the overly-used "disruption" term -- I happen to believe the USA tech blogosphere bastardized the term long ago -- but IMO the systems programming area is very, VERY overdue for disruption.

It's time.

Because they have no lives and posting emotional responses on the internet makes them feel important. Pretty simple.

And of course they'll rather challenge you to a duel with kitchen knives before admitting the real reason.

So yeah, emotional creatures. Most of the "humans" are more like "animals in human body form".

The article tries a little too hard to defend Rails. It has very legitimate scaling issues and they are well-documented.

The author is also way too pessimistic about newer stacks and is demonstrating a grumpy-old-fart-like attitude saying that "new stacks will find new ways to jam CPUs or I/O stacks". Might be true, might be not. It's not a fact.

I also get a vibe that the author exaggerates the problems with newer stacks. And it contains way too much assumptions in the case you switch stacks.

So he says that if you migrate to Phoenix or Node.JS, then:

(1) The load on the DB will not change. True, but Elixir has a cache directly inside the VM so the I/O costs for a _separate_ memcached server are almost fully eliminated right from the get go. (EDIT: in my not-so-big Elixir/Phoenix experience so far, Ecto is still faster than ActiveRecord; but I do still admit the DB load is pretty much the same.)

(2) 20k RPM doesn't mandate 50 engineers. I've been in a team managing an app with a 12k RPM with only two senior devs. We were just fine for the 2 years I've been there.

(3) New stacks slows down development. If you don't hire juniors, this is only true for the first 2-4 weeks. I've been fully onboarded in an umbrella Elixir app containing Phoenix and GraphQL endpoints, and a total of 6 apps, for 3 weeks. I surpassed my Rails development speed for 3 weeks. Very, very bogus assumption here.

Assuming that switching a stack means you do cargo-cult engineering is disrespectful. Sure he might have seen it 200 times, doesn't mean the whole world does it. As much as I love Elixir, I was honest with myself and had to write a few small microservices in Go, and I am glad that I did because it was a perfect fit.

I have a huge respect for Nate Berkopec and was following him closely for a while. He's a really awesome engineer. But that essay left me with a bitter taste of "my constultancy might be endangered, time to badmouth the new stacks". Why do I think so? Again, too many negative assumptions about the new stacks. No real argument, just negativity.

Does Phoenix pose its own WTF moments when you migrate from Rails (or any other framework)? Sure! It absolutely does. No tech stack is perfect. The end result however is increased developer productivity -- speaking about myself and apparently thousands more out there on the internet who claim the same -- and less server costs. And these both were measured over time.

If you want to use Rails, do so -- it is the perfect choice for a plethora of projects. But there is no need to badmouth alternatives especially if you don't have a case and your entire argument is comprised of negative assumptions about those alternatives.

I am disappointed with the author.

Meh, nice-written copy-paste apology I guess.

It changes nothing. In my eyes he has a stain for life. Exactly how it should be.

Too much vested interests, I don't see how that's not obvious.

This article is of USA origin, clearly. You guys are strange -- always be like "ohhh we're Homo Sapiens, let's be ashamed of ourselves and let's deny our nature until the end of time!". You're starting to rival the Japanese in self-shaming which really says something.

Can't you just shout "I wanna f_ck any way I like and none of you can do anything about it!" and move on with your life already? Like, forever?

People have all sorts of fantasies and they develop based on one's persona, needs and environment. If your dream is to be nailed in the butthole by a game warden, there are probably millions of people on this planet who not only won't mock you but they'll also indulge you (by being the real thing, or by roleplaying). Same goes for if you can't get a boner without your bed being filled with unicorn plushies, or scr_wing armpits, or whatever floats your boat.

Drop the shame. Enough. Just go down the street smiling at the thought that nobody is oppressing your sexual needs, because in 99% of the time that's the truth.

Do what I do. Don't ask them for the extra time. Make it a challenge for yourself to create the better solution in the allotted time budget. Or make it a side project (10-20% time).

I may be becoming too cynical or slightly old but I don't care if the businessmen are smart enough to recognize a good investment in quality. I am not interested in educating bean counters. I simply don't ask them and I leave them no choice. I invest in a future where I won't be cursing myself or them. They never know it and we're all better off.

Damn, and I thought I was a vengeful person.

Goes to show you once more how many people on positions of power have the emotional intelligence of a bully teenager but they can't be touched.

If the author reads here and is accepting feedback: please let go of these ancient and inefficient tropes called Resume and Cover Letter.

They're quaint, meaningless and "work" because of old people's habits and for no other reason. They have no real useful purpose.

"I am really enthusiastic about not ending up living in the streets" can be a good cover letter too, you see.

EDIT: The classic letters are a one-way tool. That's not okay. A 20-minute chat serves the same purpose and gives more info to both sides.

Would you be so kind to point out how would a liberal art knowledge would help people like me understanding the issues better?

I think I understand where my opponents stand, but I disagree with a part of them.

I've had this one coming. Serves me right to believe contrived example won't be nitpicked. :D