grishas

Thermodynamics can only be invoked when we know enough about the systems involved to make effective decisions.

Our present knowledge of how food is turned into both used and stored energy is extremely rudimentary... there's a ton of chemical processes occurring, all with various different levels of efficiencies and failsafes.

Take two humans of identical weight. Now feed them exactly the same thing. I guarantee you will not have the same outcome for both.

We are not at a place in science where human bodies are like car engines. We don't know how fuel gets combusted. We don't even know how to tell if someone is a 4-cylinder or a V8.

So, given that the user manual is basically a blank page-- how can you just claim user error? That is a gross exaggeration that trivializes the plight of many.

Pretty much all research has shown that the best way to improve poverty is to give people money, and not some sort of good that you've decided is better (goats, chickens, cows, whatever). Unfortunately, giving away money just doesn't sell. :(

"It wasn't exactly optional" was that there was an implied request that everyone would attend. It went on everyone's calendars and was during work hours, not after.

I'm not arguing alcohol should be removed from office functions. I'm saying [a] they shouldn't be the focus and [b] maybe we don't need to have fridges of beer where it is acceptable to grab one and go back to your desk.

My wife's company (a nationwide outdoor retailer) does have alcohol occasionally at events, but those are semi-regular BBQs at the end of the day, and are absolutely optional. My friends work in healthcare where there is zero alcohol. Other friends work in the government, also zero alcohol. My mother works for a shipping company, also no alcohol on premises. In fact, outside of tech no-one I know has alcohol kept on premises.

IMO, The tech industry has a huge alcohol problem in general. It's not uncommon for even largeish companies to have beer kegs and frequent happy hours.

Just recently we had a team event that revolved around alcohol, a mixology class. Although attendance wasn't mandatory, it wasn't exactly optional either. So there was a lot of awkwardness considering a number of people on our team were non-drinking muslims, 1 person was pregnant, and several others just don't drink. This creates an exclusionary sort of culture, and as one of my coworkers said it "I don't really want to be forced to go to the bar with my middle aged male colleagues". If you think about it, it does seem a bit creepy.

Other industries have moved on from this sort of model. Sure, there still can be alcohol at events and the occasional BBQ with beer or happy hour, but they have strict policies about returning to work after consuming alcohol, and alcohol is not the main focus of the event.

I take full advantage of the beer keg at our office, but if it went away I certainly wouldn't be upset. I'd just do what I used to do, and go to the bar after work with coworkers who want to go.

Nitpick mode: on

  cat article.txt | wc
    134    6494   39992

So almost 6500 words and only 1 map and 1 photo. You'd think if you were writing about Houston's parks you might, you know, show them to us?

Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco.

We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big).

As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts.

We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately.

Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind.

One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is over $10 these days.

They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.

Ah, food studies. The breeding ground of bad science. I am not saying this is bad science, but a quick glance shows this to be survey data.

The problem with the data is that people who eat "healthy" probably care more about their health. Even if the food has a negative effect, they could have other tendencies (exercise) that outweigh any negatives.

Plus they probably eat more carefully, in general, drink less, etc. So... correlation != causation yada yada

A better study would be to take unhealthy people and now introduce the fruits and veg and see what happens.

So by default your name and DNA are not visible to anyone. You'd have to make your profile public in order for other people to see any information about you. All it shows in the relative finder is that there is a match. The person just follows the "contact" link and sends you a message. They don't really expire, so you can just sit on them until you feel like responding/granting access-- at which point they can then see your name. At that point they can't see your DNA either-- you have to go through another process to grant them access to your DNA. All in all it's a pretty good system.

This is on the mark.

I know many academics who spent a lot of time throughout their school career writing code to get their research done.

They looked at this as a necessary evil, and as such learned the bare amount minimum to get by. They are smart people and were able to make the code help them solve their research problem. But they are busy thinking about their research so usually their algorithms are fairly simple + straightforward (lots of nested loops and n^2 sort of things).

The main problem, in my experience, is that many of the research problems are actually fairly simple (algorithmically) and most research departments have access to fairly powerful computing facilities. Coupled, this means you can brute force a lot of solutions-- there is no real push for understanding of the algorithmic complexity.

As well, most academics are on a much MUCH longer timeline than your average business or startup. Did your algorithm break 1 month into processing your simulation? Fine, fix it and run it for another month. Or just take what you had and publish it anyways.

Just as academics look down upon the technical side of things, we are just as much to blame for idolizing the academics. Science (even in math and engineering) is a lot more 'sloppy' then we like to imagine. There are oodles of papers out there that are just downright incorrect-- and not on purpose!

(* My creds: I have participated in academia as both a student, researcher and software developer )

I've worked in Vancouver at a startup, and to me it seems that the goals of a Canadian startup are just more conservative. No one ever expected to become a Facebook, or a Google or even Nortel or RIM for that matter. The philosophy has been mostly to create a profitable company, in the more traditional sense-- consistent revenue that can employ people. No one is looking for giant cash injections from VCs, nor are we throwing lavish parties and giving away Porsches at company picnics (cough Trilogy cough). We aim smaller than 'murica so of course we don't have any mega tech companies. And we're happy for it, at least I know I am.