zeraholladay

I am in a similar situation as you, but in a lot of ways you're asking more sophisticated questions than me. FWIW, I've been building a little toy lisp-scheme like scripting language as a learning tool: https://github.com/zeraholladay/lispm/tree/main. It's been a lot of fun and I've really enjoyed exploring parts of CS that my career hasn't really taken me to.

It's (the original comment) a pretty myopic comment because the same point can be made about the institutions that perpetuate $FOO.

I think a lot of developers naively rely on "software design" principles. They often can't state their reasons for adopting these principles and assume these principles are self-evident. This can be a problem when these principles conflict with external priorities, or when a complex "principled" design is used instead of an obvious, intuitive design. There's also a certain amount of trendiness to software design, so trends can be applied haphazardly.

That being said, I've also seen plenty of "scientific code" that's totally incomprehensible even to the point where the scientist who wrote the code can't debug it. So there's an extreme in the other direction.

but the time and effort cost of the people producing the videos. Hackers seem to conveniently always forget about these people.

FWIW, I tend to find the opposite. Maybe the people I know are just more vocal about things that make them look good to others.

A pure consumer is not worth anything to YouTube or any other platform if they're not paying or can't be advertised to. They're just a cost with no benefit.

I disagree but I understand what you're getting at. In the case of YouTube, you may be correct (or more correct than me). I'm thinking of platforms like Strava or dating apps where an active user population is part of the attraction to upsell features to paying customers.

I think with ISPs there's an obvious upfront material cost for building infrastructure. In that sense I'm very much the consumer. Obviously, there's substantial infra cost too with social media platforms like YouTube. However, the consumer-producer dichotomy isn't as clear with social media platforms since the user base is the product. That is, the value of a social media platform comes first from the masses of people using it and second the design, the infrastructure, etc. This is why I think reciprocity (in the psychological sense) is so important for social media companies because the product can just walk out the door.

My understanding is that content creators see very little or next to none of the ad revenue. The content creators are the reason people are using YouTube. So I prefer to support them through Patreon. Second, I've heard that the vast, vast majority of content creators make next to nothing through YouTube -- these content creators are paying the opportunity cost to "make it big" or simply enjoy making content or using YouTube as a promotional vehicle for other services. I'm not trying to define a moral equivalence of why it's right to directly support content creators but not YouTube (Google is making enough money off me so that I have a clear conscience), but for the price of their ad free service I'd like to see a more equitable distribution.

Think we agree that blocking ad blockers is in YouTube's immediate, short-term interest. However, I'm not sure it's in their long-term interest because it goes against the principle of reciprocation.

Regarding reciprocation, a lot of platforms offer a free tier and then offer additional features for paid subscribers. There's the principle of reciprocation at play: they give me something for free and that then makes me more likely to pay for additional features. But I'm only willing to pay for features, not to have an annoyance, like ads, removed. The conditions I'd have to agree to feel coerced ... like making an agreement with Darth Vader: "pray YouTube doesn't alter the deal further by now only blocking 50% of ads for a paid subscriber." What do I, as an end user, get out of this other than feeling hostile towards YouTube?

It's my computational device and my internet connection. I think there's a very complex argument to be made but this isn't the forum for it.

Aesthetics are rooted in civilization, time, and class. It's very difficult to say if these works by Johns will survive 500 years from now given that famous bronze statues were melted down to make bullets. However, if you have time you should try to understand what's happened to fine art in the past 200 years if for no other reason than it's interesting and to challenge your views on aesthetics. Not all of it will last another 100 years, so that gives you an idea where things currently stand too.

    export CDPATH=.:~/projects
    export PS1="$(uname -n)$ "
    alias ltr='ls -ltr'

    $ ll file.txt
    -rw-r--r--  1 zera  staff  0 Jan  7 20:28 file.txt
    Ctrl-p, Ctrl-a, Ctrl-d, Ctrl-d, r,m
    $ rm file.txt

    $ rm *.txt

Ensure you overwrite a file (or aren't):

    $ cp -i ~/file.config /etc/

Sorry, my bad. Deleted the post.

I've worked in a "tech" department with mostly older folks as the youngest person. It was frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I heard "nobody knows how to do that." There were plenty of older COBOL programs, in 10 years they'll be called Java programmers. The COBOL programmers maintained a legacy business application, which was a mammoth beast of obscure rules and uncharted/unknown results. But the system worked and made the company money. Point is, there are still opportunities for older developers although they might not be ideal. Frankly, it was a soul crushing job and I can't believe I'm defending it even in this context.

That's good about your dad tho. I don't know if I'd be able to make that kind of change if I'm ever in his position.

I've been wondering if the perspective won't shift as the current generation of developers ages. When will HN be the old farts site; will perspective's shift then? More of a hypothetical question.

Second, and this is a broad statement, society is currently in a phase of devaluing the older mind. We're too quick to assume older minds cannot learn as easily, and older minds accept this as fact in a self-fulfilling way. The reality of the situation is that we're living longer, so we'll need to make valuable contributions later in our lives. Tech definitely isn't a mistress for 50+ year-olds, but that's a problem with our culture and not technology.

Thanks, you're awesome! This was exactly what I needed. I'm switching jobs and receiving a monthly figure to buy insurance. It's very easy to use, looks clean and PDQ. Great work.

I don't know if it even qualifies as "schmuck bait." The Prof's actions are ethically objectionable (and personally disgusting to me) since he actively solicited unethical behavior from gullible students. Frankly, it's not a challenge to bring out the worst qualities in people, especially scared undergrads.

Copy a string in one line:

   while (*dst++ = *src++);

Yes. I've heard of multiple studies concluding employers hire those candidates that are the most "like" them.

I read a book called "Money Ball" last year. One of the lessons I took away is that a successful baseball team can be created from undervalued stats (i.e. irrational beliefs in value cause inefficiencies). This trend you described forms teams of walkers xor home-runners, for example. I don't know why I believe this (I'm subject to my own criticism), but I strongly believe teams with multiple talents outperform teams with one talent (generalists vs niche).

Probably none of the above. I've heard the interviewer makes up their mind to hire you in the first few seconds of meeting you. Psychology is a strange, strange thing ... but reality is better than fiction.

Personally, I would be more inclined to hire a person picking the "throw it in a hash and look it up" solution over any more complex solution. My reasoning is that bad programmers tend to get lost in nuance, or don't understand a problem. Good programmers tend to reason through the proportionate value of a problem. I'm not saying nuance is always a bad thing, but it's probably not what your company is developing unless you work for a math department.

Yeah, but you could say the same thing about the Nazi party and the civil rights movement in the United States. That statement is vacuous since I seriously doubt anyone reading this thought Reddit might be made of non-people. What's your point?

EDIT: While I agree with your sentiment and my comment could be interpreted has harsh depending on the tone of voice, I've said this kind of thing before (x is made of people) and always wished I had clarified it more. So please think of it as more of an invitation rather than a challenge.

I'm not sure what you mean by informed abstainers, but if you mean informed abstainers of Reddit then I can speak for myself.

I see Reddit as a self-aggrandizing media outlet. Members generally accept liberal values as status quo. Meaningful discussion imitates base prime time political discourse.

Some of my specific gripes are:

1. Racism on Reddit is an acceptable subtext, as long as the subtext is funny. 2. Sexism on Reddit is acceptable as long as your mother, wife, or daughter are not directly considered. 3. Israel is wrong on Reddit.

I know I'm painting a pretty nasty picture of a lot of people, and I apologize to those who don't deserve it, but I've seen group think plenty of times before in my life and Reddit is it.

That's really funny on multiple levels.

First, the virus should have been less interesting.

Second, the true goal of the virus might not be the actual attack but rather, like the scenes from the Bourne movies spying on Pamela Landy from the rooftop across the street, the realization that someone knows exactly what you're doing and they're more sophisticated than you. Further, it indicates there's a hole in your organization from which information is leaking or might be leaking (even worse if you can't find something that doesn't exist). I've followed enough of the Wikileaks controversy regarding their internal disputes to conclude the weakest link in many organizations is their structure and individual members. The true goal might be psychological.

As a person who used AOL back in the day, how did AOL get themselves in this branding mess in the first place? I know they lost my business 11 to 12 years ago to DSL provided by SBC (now part of AT&T) but I also couldn't wait to see them go. We called SBC Send Big Check at the time, because DSL was damn expensive. MORAL OF THE STORY: don't trash your brand for a quick buck, consumers remember that stuff.

Consider the difference between math and engineering (at the undergrad level). Math majors learn to solve solved problems, since the solutions are instructive; that is, they could accept a solution as truth but proving it is true has a greater value. However, engineers need to accept a lot of mathematical truths since the occupation applies these truths.

Either way, both of these systems are instructive. You should be able to reverse a process and discover its discrete parts, if that's your goal.

It doesn't work that way (inspire by Voltaire):

$ make life easier

Your life has been made easier: 70,500,000,000 dollars has been deposited into your bank account.

"There's plenty of challenge for anyone who wants to find it."

There are problems that haven't been solved yet and problems that can't be solved. Most problems can't be solved, since the majority of (our) problems are psychological (i.e. there are no axioms, assumptions, systems, etc to define this class of problem) -- the rest are impossible.

The problems that haven't yet been solved are actually interesting tho. The knowledge systems for these classes of problems are heuristic; i.e. a process of discovery and experience. The intention is often not to keep everything difficult but to keep everything knowable, which is contrary to the "don't make me think" principle of design.

Thank you. That was great. Insightful and funny.

I think the author's point is that an unfound and irrefutable truth is not interesting. If a person holds a belief and is unwilling to accept evidence to the contrary, then that person is not interested in truth. If a person holds a belief and has made no attempt to verify it with evidence, then that person is human ... but I, for one, am suspicious of their motives proportionally to their conviction.

The reality of the situation is that if you want to work for a large corporation, then you're stuck playing their games. I've had a recruiter ask for references upfront. They don't always check them, but references are required for their software. Also, the other commenter noted that the recruiter is likely using your references to build a list of contacts. A list of line managers is more valuable to a recruiter than a list of technicians since the line managers make hiring decisions and serve as contacts for additional sales.

People with nothing to lose. A good friend, who was a psychiatric nurse, taught me never argue or fight with a person with nothing to lose. There are more than a few in the wold, unfortunately.

More common is anonymous people on the net who threaten to do so. My point is a bot is predictable, but humans are emotional and irrational. Further, you can't always tell the difference between the snakes and the monsters in an anonymous environment (notice I'm not anonymous). Thus, I'd be more willing to argue with a bot.

Makes me suspicious if anyone on the net would pass the Voigt-Kampff test.

I might be more willing to argue with a bot than some people, since the bot ain't going to track me down an shoot me.

Abstract Expressionism was the first art movement I really fell in love with, mostly because it wasn't a household name and sounded cool. For those of you who don't know anything about it, here are some links to a few well known artist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rothko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kline

It's important to keep in mind that these paintings are not about technical quality. The argument, "my kid could have done that," is not relevant since your kid didn't do it -- you may as well argue you teenager could have written TS Eliot poems since she knows the vocabulary. These paintings are about energy, form and scale, often lack of form or contrasting forms. They also tend to photograph poorly, so try to appreciate them in person.