Forwarded from Jammish's new festive spooky disabled gay af random memes
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Trump says Venezuela's Maduro captured after strikes
As someone old enough to have seen the US invade too many countries, I'm struck by the lack of effort put into justifying this sort of military action these days. There is going to be a lot of debate over whether this specific operation was legal and I have no idea where the courts or history will ultimately land on that decision. But the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far.
slg, 5 hours ago
As someone old enough to have seen the US invade too many countries, I'm struck by the lack of effort put into justifying this sort of military action these days. There is going to be a lot of debate over whether this specific operation was legal and I have no idea where the courts or history will ultimately land on that decision. But the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far.
slg, 5 hours ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
People in this thread are missing another key component in the decline of StackOverflow - the more experienced you become, the less useful it is.
The harder the problem, the less engagement it gets. People who spend hours working on your issue are rewarded with a single upvote. Meanwhile, "how do I concat a string" gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes.
The incentive/reward structure punished experienced folks with challenging/novel questions.
Pair that with the toxic moderation and trigger-happy close-votes, you get a zombie community with little new useful content.
Alupis, 12 hours ago
People in this thread are missing another key component in the decline of StackOverflow - the more experienced you become, the less useful it is.
The harder the problem, the less engagement it gets. People who spend hours working on your issue are rewarded with a single upvote. Meanwhile, "how do I concat a string" gets dozens or hundreds of upvotes.
The incentive/reward structure punished experienced folks with challenging/novel questions.
Pair that with the toxic moderation and trigger-happy close-votes, you get a zombie community with little new useful content.
Alupis, 12 hours ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: The suck is why we're here
> Because I don’t write a daily blog to crank out a post every day. If that was the point, I’d have switched to AI long ago already. I write a daily blog to make sure I remember how to think.
I feel like this will get missed by the general public. What’s the point in generating writing or generating art if it gives next to zero feelings of accomplishment?
I could generate some weird 70s sci fi art, make an Instagram profile around that, barrage the algorithm with my posts and rack up likes. The likes will give that instant dopamine but it will never fill that need of accomplishing something.
I like LLMs to get me to reword something, since I struggle with that. But just like in programming I focus it on a specific sentence or two. Otherwise why am I doing it?
yakattak, 14 hours ago
> Because I don’t write a daily blog to crank out a post every day. If that was the point, I’d have switched to AI long ago already. I write a daily blog to make sure I remember how to think.
I feel like this will get missed by the general public. What’s the point in generating writing or generating art if it gives next to zero feelings of accomplishment?
I could generate some weird 70s sci fi art, make an Instagram profile around that, barrage the algorithm with my posts and rack up likes. The likes will give that instant dopamine but it will never fill that need of accomplishing something.
I like LLMs to get me to reword something, since I struggle with that. But just like in programming I focus it on a specific sentence or two. Otherwise why am I doing it?
yakattak, 14 hours ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Web development is fun again
What you consider fun isn't universal. Some folks don't want to just tinker for half an hour, some folks enjoy getting a particular result that meets specific goals. Some folks don't find the mechanics of putting lines of code together as fun as what the code does when it runs. That might sound like paid work to you, but it can be gratifying for not-you.
lmorchard, 1 day ago
What you consider fun isn't universal. Some folks don't want to just tinker for half an hour, some folks enjoy getting a particular result that meets specific goals. Some folks don't find the mechanics of putting lines of code together as fun as what the code does when it runs. That might sound like paid work to you, but it can be gratifying for not-you.
lmorchard, 1 day ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
> The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turning on their computers, and spending the next 10min chatting and drinking coffee
One of my early tasks as a junior engineer involved some automation work in a warehouse. It got assigned to me, the junior, because it involved a lot of time working in the warehouse instead of at a comfortable desk.
I assumed I’d be welcomed and appreciated for helping make their work more efficient, but the reality was not that simple. The more efficient I made the technical part of the job, the more time they had to spend doing the manual labor part of the job to keep up. So the more I reduced cycle times, the less time they had to sit around and chat.
Mind you, the original process was extremely slow and non-parallel so they had a lot of time to wait. The job was still very easy. I spent weeks doing it myself to test and optimize and to this day it’s the easiest manual labor job I’ve ever worked. Yet I as the anti-hero for ruining the good thing they had going.
Aurornis, 1 day ago
> The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turning on their computers, and spending the next 10min chatting and drinking coffee
One of my early tasks as a junior engineer involved some automation work in a warehouse. It got assigned to me, the junior, because it involved a lot of time working in the warehouse instead of at a comfortable desk.
I assumed I’d be welcomed and appreciated for helping make their work more efficient, but the reality was not that simple. The more efficient I made the technical part of the job, the more time they had to spend doing the manual labor part of the job to keep up. So the more I reduced cycle times, the less time they had to sit around and chat.
Mind you, the original process was extremely slow and non-parallel so they had a lot of time to wait. The job was still very easy. I spent weeks doing it myself to test and optimize and to this day it’s the easiest manual labor job I’ve ever worked. Yet I as the anti-hero for ruining the good thing they had going.
Aurornis, 1 day ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Try to take my position: The best promotion advice I ever got
Ah, the classic "work even harder and do things you're not paid for with zero guarantee that someone will appreciate what you're doing while the company reaps the benefits". What a novel thought, I am so glad I clicked the article, especially since the author isn't even speaking from experience so he has nothing to back up his blogpost with.
ManlyBread, 9 hours ago
Ah, the classic "work even harder and do things you're not paid for with zero guarantee that someone will appreciate what you're doing while the company reaps the benefits". What a novel thought, I am so glad I clicked the article, especially since the author isn't even speaking from experience so he has nothing to back up his blogpost with.
ManlyBread, 9 hours ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: Sergey Brin's Unretirement
I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like, when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or complaints I make get immediate attention and responses.
All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me or doing performance reviews, and I can just not do work at any moment I don't feel like it or have something better to do that day, like go to my private island or take my private jet to burning man etc (or as it turns out do a talk at Stanford). All while you have so much money that the price of anything from clothes to cars to houses is just some arbitrary number that has no meaning to you it is so absolutely tiny number... not that you actually buy anything yourself any more, mainly your team of personal staff deal with that grubby reality.
As for the rest of us, well we need to pay the bills while playing "the game" and politics and cowtowing to keep the money coming.
mattlondon, 7 hours ago
I too would very happily do just the bits of my job that I like, when and how I want, and have any requests or comments or complaints I make get immediate attention and responses.
All in the knowledge that no one is going to be time-tracking me or doing performance reviews, and I can just not do work at any moment I don't feel like it or have something better to do that day, like go to my private island or take my private jet to burning man etc (or as it turns out do a talk at Stanford). All while you have so much money that the price of anything from clothes to cars to houses is just some arbitrary number that has no meaning to you it is so absolutely tiny number... not that you actually buy anything yourself any more, mainly your team of personal staff deal with that grubby reality.
As for the rest of us, well we need to pay the bills while playing "the game" and politics and cowtowing to keep the money coming.
mattlondon, 7 hours ago
Forwarded from HN Best Comments
Re: How will the miracle happen today?
It's a choice. I go to the supermarket twice a week, not shopping for much. I switched the store I use three, four months ago, but I can already talk about some of the employees at the store I visit. Louis is back where he grew up right now because his 97-year-old grandfather died. Among other things, he feels lucky grandpa's passing came after the new year because of his time-off allotment. Nikki had great holidays, mostly because her adult daughter was here for a week. Nadine ("Shh.") has decided she's going to retire at the end of the month but hasn't yet told anyone at the store.
Raffy, the UPS delivery guy I see maybe five times a year? He's doing well, finally feeling things slowing down some after the holidays. His fiancé will finish her graduate degree this spring, then they're going to decide if they want to stay here or move back to the state where they were born. They like it here, but think job opportunities will be better back home.
I'm sure many here are familiar with "This is Water," the commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. Many often cite his line, "Everybody worships," his observation that we all hold aspects of life in reverence, whether religious things or otherwise. It's a valid, pithy point, but I always thought the key part to his speech comes later and has been widely overlooked:
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
He delivered that speech in 2005. Before the modern smartphone. All those people I mentioned earlier were strangers. That's no longer the case because all of us chose to interrupt what we were doing and open up a little to someone unfamiliar. It's a choice. Or, as Bob Dylan once sang,
Freedom, just around the corner from you
But with truth so far off, what good will it do
NaOH, 12 hours ago
It's a choice. I go to the supermarket twice a week, not shopping for much. I switched the store I use three, four months ago, but I can already talk about some of the employees at the store I visit. Louis is back where he grew up right now because his 97-year-old grandfather died. Among other things, he feels lucky grandpa's passing came after the new year because of his time-off allotment. Nikki had great holidays, mostly because her adult daughter was here for a week. Nadine ("Shh.") has decided she's going to retire at the end of the month but hasn't yet told anyone at the store.
Raffy, the UPS delivery guy I see maybe five times a year? He's doing well, finally feeling things slowing down some after the holidays. His fiancé will finish her graduate degree this spring, then they're going to decide if they want to stay here or move back to the state where they were born. They like it here, but think job opportunities will be better back home.
I'm sure many here are familiar with "This is Water," the commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. Many often cite his line, "Everybody worships," his observation that we all hold aspects of life in reverence, whether religious things or otherwise. It's a valid, pithy point, but I always thought the key part to his speech comes later and has been widely overlooked:
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
He delivered that speech in 2005. Before the modern smartphone. All those people I mentioned earlier were strangers. That's no longer the case because all of us chose to interrupt what we were doing and open up a little to someone unfamiliar. It's a choice. Or, as Bob Dylan once sang,
Freedom, just around the corner from you
But with truth so far off, what good will it do
NaOH, 12 hours ago