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So Facebook's point here is that their legal team is so utterly clownshoes that when receiving a warrant about burning a stillbirth they couldn't clue in that it might be about abortion. Their press release is designed to convince us that a local NE PD completely snowed this international corporate powerhouse.

What I take away from this all is that for every article about academic misconduct and p hacking there are 100 more where the peer review process (both before and during submission to a journal) caught the issues in time.

p-hacking isn't a mathematical error. It cannot be "caught" because it is not presented to referees--you slightly modify your hypotheses after you experiment based on results, or you throw out "outliers" that blow up your theory. These are things that don't even show up in a paper, they happen during the compilation of the paper.

How you could conclude that p-hacking is rare based on a completely unrelated experience is beyond me.

JupyterLab 3.0 6 years ago

I have used Python on OSX for years and it is and always will be a horrorshow. Using the system Python installation is a nonstarter for many reasons, chief among them is that I don't have any interest in using py2. So then you're using pyenv or homebrew, but your vim install still thinks that it should be using the system python. And whoops, you fixed that and now virtualenv is not finding your interpreter. And etc., etc.

OSX and its tooling are just ridiculous. I have no idea to this day how macs became the premier development environment.

As always xkcd has a comic for it: https://xkcd.com/1987/

My parents asked me for some money the other day, but I told them to pound sand--if they wanted my help they should have made me sign something before they gave me all that free room and board. Suckers!

Why does WoW allow you to run scripts in your chat window? Who needs that functionality?

The "chat" window in WoW is more like a shell interface/CLI than a pure chat window and it's been that way since the inception of WoW. The mod system is loosely dropped on top of it: basically add-ons in WoW amount to bash scripts.

It's a pretty hacky system that seems like it was made to add modding capability as quickly as possible during development. The fact that such an integral system has never been rewritten isn't hard to believe.

Modules and functions in Python have a __name__ attribute. If you've used Python for scripts, you've probably written `if __name__ == "__main__":` at some point, which is the module name for executed scripts, whereas imported modules get their proper name.

Similarly, Python basically keeps track of "proper" names for proper functions, but can't/won't do so for lambdas.

This makes it seem like the tutor is teaching things to the student right before they need it for an exam

On the contrary, I found it really precise. JIT processes in manufacturing are about providing the correct inputs at the time they're needed. If your desire is mastery over the material, a teacher who can predict or extemporize tutorials on the subject as you need them is invaluable.

Of course I know effort is probably not a valid criteria but still, it's sometimes hard not to see what appears to be low-effort generative art as barely more than the random dot/line/rectangle exercise most programmers do early in their learning.

You aren't making art because art does require effort. You have to put some thought into the product you want and then work towards it and make the thing that feels right to you.

If you never have an emotional connection to your work, it's no wonder you don't feel like you haven't made art, because you haven't.

This isn't to be mean. You could easily begin to make art, by creating your works with an eye towards purpose or feeling and demanding that what you make satisfies you. Then you'll be making art. But pointless generative stuff is just doodling, as you think. It'd be the same with a pen and paper as it is with code.

[dead] 8 years ago

I think most of the other services offered this way can really be circumvented by differentiating yourself as better than the gig workers.

Do you have any evidence to back up this thought, or are you postulating that the world should be this way?

If you're looking for evidence to the contrary, the article on which you commented has some anecdotes about how it is no longer possible to circumvent these services.

The post isn't about "Teamwork is important". The title is about "the arrogant engineer". You've elided the thing that made someone angry and then questioned them why they're angry about it. This is not good argumentation.

Unfortunately, I have to ask them a very unforgiving question: why does your company deserve more money?

This is so stupid--do VCs ever ask this question in the first place? No. By the time your board is asking this question, they've already decided you don't deserve more money. Any random justifications they make up about "deserving" is a complete distraction from the fact that these choices never have a logical basis.

In fact, they're mostly meant as a way for HR to have a paper trail to fire people. That's the only real reason for them to exist, and any good that managers do with them is incidental.

Veblen goods 8 years ago

I simply cannot even imagine having a hobby that would have me spend thousands of dollars. I would sooner switch hobbies.

Your imagination needs work. Being on HN, I'd assume that you have at least one hobby that necessitates a significant amount of electronics (gaming console + TV, monitor + PC, laptop). Any one of these (if you actually care about the hobby) will run you thousands of dollars.

You'll probably dodge at this moment and say how necessary or important or utilitarian all those things are, but that's just because you like your hobbies and don't like other people's.

[dead] 8 years ago

I agree that American culture is the problem. The way we oppress black people every day and force them into these ugly situations where they're forced to choose between criminality and inhumanity, it's no wonder that this happened to Tupac and thousands of other black men.

I agree that the things you said happened, but I believe that the success of the company is incidental to who ran it. There are millions and millions of factors involved in Facebook's success and to drop all the accolades at the feet of the CEO seems insane.

Has wine gone bad? 8 years ago

the difference (and ability to describe the difference) between a Sauvingon Blanc and Chardonnay isn't difficult. I think anyone off the street can taste the difference between a chocolate stout, a hefeweizen and a pale lager.

I'd like to observe that when you wanted to claim that wines were indistinguishable, you picked two wines that were quite similar. When you wanted to claim beers were distinguishable, you picked chocolate stout vs hefeweizen, which is clearly not the same sort of example.

I've been asked to work for military industry companies before. And I have always declined for ethical reasons. But as I sit here and think about it, I wonder if its a good thing that a person like myself (that believes I'm on the ethical high-ground) decline these types of jobs. > Someone is going to take the job. Perhaps someone less skilled than myself, perhaps someone less ethical than myself ? What is the result of that ?

Whenever I find myself in this line of thought, I always remember: I am not that special. The impact that anyone has on a workplace is small and mostly inconsequential--more important is group momentum and culture. The likelihood that you'd do bad in a bad workplace is much higher than that you'd be able to stand fast and do good--the world just does not work that way.

A lot of the text you already read is robot-generated. More than half the words in this comment were generated via autocorrect or auto complete in some fashion. It's still useful and thoughtful though.

Just to be clear, I don't find these things reassuring, it just makes me think you don't care about communicating very much. Please accept that some people find machine-generated communication to be gross and don't want to be subjected to it, whether or not you understand.

Most of the theories I've seen about the women-in-tech gap don't resonate with my experience because there was a very obvious 'women-in-tech' gap in about... 5th grade? in my (typical, I think) American elementary school.

I think your experiences are typical, thanks for sharing.

I'm curious what theory-of-the-gap you've found that you like more than the ones you've seen? You were (intentionally or not) a little cagey about your ultimate position. :)

For my part, I usually see that young girls are the ones who are pressured the most to stay out of STEM. I'm sure that by the time they got to 10, the little girls in your class already "knew" that afterschool computer games weren't really "for girls". Kids are very impressionable to even off-handed comments, and they will self-censor if they think they don't belong.

Anyways, it's all to say that I think there's no secret--if you actually make little girls believe they can do math or code, they'll do it. It's just that as a society we spend a lot of time telling them they can't.