saalweachter

You just raise the head.

You harvest the top crop, the one you want, cutting above the lower height, then go back through and make a second pass with the head lower.

You'll lose some of the lower crop, crushed under the wheels, but it was there as bonus anyway.

The glacial cycle was longer duration, lower fluctuation.

Glaciers don't melt instantly the moment the temperature flips from "form glaciers" to "melt glaciers". They operate on the integral of temperature -- heat. The temperature determines how fast they melt or form.

These melted really, really fast.

It requires management buy-in, both to allow some number of engineers to be allocated to such "non-production" work, and also to allow the friction security creates to continue to exist and "slow down" the "real work", both by vetoing things that would weaken security and by forcing everyone to use more cumbersome workflows.

That usually doesn't happen unless the company has suffered a large financial or reputational loss as a result of poor security practices. Sometimes not even then, if the company doesn't get scared they'll start losing money or get in some sort of legal trouble.

I think "good security/engineering practices" still has a chance.

Things like--

  * Minimizing attack surfaces by not running lots of software on the same server and not bloating feature sets beyond the minimum 
  * Limiting access so that most things can't be done by most users, there are *no* super-users, and escalating access is temporary ans requires multiple accounts to authorize
  * Encrypting data at rest

All software has flaws and it's now easier than ever to find and exploit them, but this disproportionately hurts people who were only putting on a show of security and relying on a single layer or two of defense instead of developing a robust insider threat model (which helps with both insider threats and threats that get inside) and defense in depth.

It also doesn't necessarily protect you from anything by obtaining it.

If you, say, go and get a certificate of no-permit needed when you're replacing all of your kitchen cabinets, and then you decide to move the sink while you're at it, you're back to still needing a permit for the plumbing change (and even if you aren't, if your neighbor calls the inspector and says they think you might be, the inspector might say, "no, we already know about that, it's just cabinets", or they might wonder if you are and then you're back in the situation you'd be in without the certificate).

In the US there's also a third category besides "permit approved" and "permit denied", "no permit needed": the thing you are doing is allowed and not covered by the permitting process. You just do it. This shows up in both building code (you typically don't need a permit for most repairs or cosmetic renovations) and environmental protections (you don't need an environmental study for logging in a non-protected forest).

The tricky part with "no permit needed" is that while you can just go and do whatever, if someone charged with enforcement suspects you're doing something that requires a permit, they can still demand you prove you don't (and stop work until you do), and if you guessed wrong and you did indeed need a permit, you're double-fucked.

That's why for many of these processes, there's also something like a certificate of no-permit needed, where you go through an abbreviated permitting process spending a lot of time and money while all of the clerks and officials stare at you like you're a moron before finally giving you a piece of paper saying you didn't need to do any of that in the first place.

And that's why a lot of people with a lot of experience and a good understanding of the law skip getting a "no permit needed" certificate.

I am assuming it's similar in other countries.

The German spelling reform was also an international agreement by Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein and Switzerland.

Can you imagine trying to organize a spelling reform agreement between the US, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, the UK, Germany and Canada?

I mean, I would sign up for a study where I am randomly assigned a hobby to pursue for the next 20 years while researchers study my health outcomes.

I think this needs a catchy name.

It's not a new problem in software, and it's not unique to software.

A lot of hobby woodworkers, for instance, spend most of their woodworking effort on their new woodshop. Building a workbench, building shelves and cabinets and special holders for all their drill bits, mortising chisels and tools, special tables for their miter saw, a special cabinet connected to their dust collection system for sanding small pieces...

Likewise, the favorite project for programmers is ... programming tools. New languages, new libraries, new editors. We've gone through like six version control systems at my day job.

There is some merit in this, since new tools make you more efficient at building more new tools, but eventually you have to step back and remind yourself what your actual goals are.

I call it the tool maker's dilemma, but that's not nearly as catchy or easy to fit into conversation as bikeshedding.

For the longest time, exchanges didn't list stock with super-voting/dual class shares. It was only in the late 80s/early 90s that this rule was dropped; you'll note that Microsoft and Apple don't use them, as they were banned when those companies went public.

You're not getting high budget shows without like a hundred million subscribers, sure, but there are bootstrapping options.

Dropout does their original content on around 1 million subscribers @ $6/mo.

There's also licensing existing content -- the mega corps building walled gardens aren't likely to play ball, but if you make it painless and have non-exploitative terms, there's countless smaller content producers who would happily upload their catalogue to another service.

I think if the right group of founders (experience in streaming,v experience in content production, good professional network with existing smaller production companies) was able to kickstart it with a million subscribers, give or take, they'd have decent odds of providing enough value to start a more subscribers -> more content spiral instead of the reverse.

Netflix isn't owned by its subscribers is the critical difference. You don't buy shares of NFLX to gain access to the service, and subscribing does not come with any shares/voting rights.

What I want is a streaming service that operates as a consumer cooperative.

Subscribers vote, elect a slate of directors who each get a fraction of the content-budget to spend as per their campaign promises. Licensing content, buying it in perpetuity, producing it themselves or funding some group of creators -- none of this "how can we milk customers more", and no more fruitless community campaigns to save a beloved series, you just need some critical mass of subscribers to vote for the guy whose platform is "I will keep making more seasons as fast as possible until the sun boils the ocean".

For a lot of environmental regulations, whether or not a permit is needed is most of the question.

In the US, if you want to build a shed in the middle of a wetland, you need to go through an arduous permitting process and are unlikely to gain approval. If you want to build it within 100 feet, you can probably do it, but you need to confer with the relevant DEC to show that you won't negatively impact the wetland during construction. If you're more than 100 feet away, you don't even need to talk to the DEC, because you're not in protected land.

Of course, if the DEC decides they don't think your shed is outside the 100 ft adjacent area, they may decide to do a demarcation and figure out exactly where your shed is relative to the wetland, and if you messed up you're in trouble. But if they send out a biologist to demarcate the wetland and you're far enough away, you're fine.

So many people, if they think it's ambiguous, will take the time to go through an abbreviated permitting process to get a certificate of "no permit needed", to save themselves the headache later on.

If you go through a process like this, chances are people with local expertise will tell you you're wasting your time -- the case looks pretty clear cut, and hardly anyone ever has trouble in such circumstances. The clerk at the department responsible for issuing the "no permit needed" certificate may tell you you're wasting everyone's time.

But if you're a big corporation like Google, you don't really have an excuse not to do it. You can afford the lawyers, you can afford to plan years in advance, and so many more people are going to notice if you skip steps. Even if you end up being in the legal clear, no permit was needed, you're so much better off getting it in writing in advance.

... you realize Asia consumes 3-4x more pork than tofu, right?