asciident

CS and DS people are getting more applied and gaining domain expertise, and can do a lot of economics work now. Academic economists, especially those who primarily do data science / big data, seem to basically be doing Masters-level data science projects for their Ph.D. The hard part in their Ph.D.s is collecting the data, which used to be a very manual job that relied on connections, but more of them are getting them or imputing them from public sources so it's not that impressive anymore.

Speaking as someone who has attended 3 economics Ph.D. defenses in the past two years.

3% is actually not bad for what it gets you: fraud detection, not having to lug cash to the bank every day, reduction of theft and employee mistakes, better recordkeeping for taxes, a way to handle refunds, and cleanliness. Small merchants often use Venmo where I am, and they save 3% in exchange for that awkward dance of sending payments.

I'm generally wary of suggestions to overhaul a working long-lasting sociotechnical system. Everything that has been around for decades is patches on patches.

The the world wide web, ipv4, IRC, the US constitution, the telephone system, email, were all developed in older times, and as times change, they develop flaws which need (ugly) patches. That's a sign that they're successful, that no one company has come and replaced it and then killed it when things got inconvenient.

Think about the opposite situations: Google Groups replaced Usenet, and now it's completely dead; Google Reader took a lot of marketshare from RSS and almost killed it when they shut it down.

So let's not hastily destroy the only online communication system we have left, that's not controlled by a mega tech company.

It's an obligatory warning, otherwise people (even here on HN) will decry your methods as mainly due to privilege, and irreproducible for the average perso.

Agreed, Apple is far worse on being monopolistic and draconian, but people give them a pass because they have cool design. Everything they're doing with iMessage, the iOS and Mac App Stores, AirPods, Safari, etc. are all extend and embrace, without the trepidation that Microsoft has had.

Because each person still uses about 10 full wardrobes in their lifetime, 100,000 prepared meals, a few dozen smartphones and other electronics, a mountain of disposibles like diapers and napkins and takeout containers and masks. People need a lot of resources for even a modest standard of living.

Even more awkward is when you're having a conversation with someone who is trying even harder to get you to talk about yourself, while you're trying to do some of the same. Then it's a competition to see who can say the least before asking "and what about you?"

What does it say about people using it for research?

I don't see how that's a better example, and you missed the point. Your example is about someone doing something unethical as part of their job. My example was about someone doing something unrelated to their job duties. That's the entire point I'm making, that things done outside of job duties do not reflect the competency of the job.

If you read the grandparent post, it's about making a judgment about whether one is effective at their job.

That seems like a dangerous line of thought. Imagine a software engineer (maybe one who writes code for airplanes or medical equipment) writes some sloppy code late one night and puts it on their open source github, and the commit log is "this code rocks."

You could make the same argument that As a software engineer, you have to be able to identify and write high quality software to be effective at your job. So should your employer fire you for writing this code outside of your regular job duties?

What about if a friend shows you their code, and you say "that looks good" but it turns out that this code is vulnerable to a key security issue? Should you get fired from your security job?

I think we'd agree not, and more broadly, that making a statement or doing a task related to your job but outside of your job's responsibilities should not be sufficient to fire you from your job. Especially when it's clear you are not representing your employer, by using pseudonym.

I would be thrilled if kitchen-only joints replaced sit-down restaurants. I have about 20 sit-downs within walking distance, only about 5 are easy for takeout, none which serve higher-end food. If there were a few higher-end food options ($20 lunch instead of $10 lunch, $30 dinner instead of $15 dinners), especially without having to deal with tipping, I would carry out and eat at home a lot more. I have my own silverware, wine bottles, and napkins.

I think to be more precise, the headline should read:

"Minimum wage workers can not afford renting a two-bedroom home at fair market rent using 30% of their income"

That feels drastically different than the current headline.

Why do you think your analogy is better than the parent post? The parent post makes more sense to me. People to go stores, and the stores charge a markup. In your analogy, the mode of transportation charges the markup, which in the app store case would be the ISP charging a markup.