samkater

I had a similar experience where I was also assured the data was “doubly protected, it’s secured by a password here and re-secured at the remote site.”

Besides that immediately making me question their security, it is a great example how people trust things without much thought. I’ve heard of calls for statistics to be pushed over calculus to improve math literacy in the general population, perhaps some cybersecurity courses should be pushed over “learn to code” to improve tech literacy.

My understanding, to put it in AWS EC2 pricing terms, is that we do not pay the market "spot" rate for electricity (variable, often less than what you might pay elsewhere, but could spike up) - which is what Texas allowed. Typically we pay the "on demand" rate which is fixed. Large energy users probably negotiate "reserved" pricing.

My point being, we pay the market rate, those massive hikes are just built-in over a long period of time.

I generally agree with the “get over yourself” comment but would like to offer a different perspective. The ending suggestion here and in many other comments is “work on yourself more” which I disagree with as the primary path to take. Instead, work on others more.

Try to make the world around you a better place. Maybe you want to tutor below grade-level kids, tutor high performing kids, help with the homeless challenge in your community, volunteer with the humane society, volunteer with hospice, do some environmental projects, help out with a niche historical society, volunteer at the zoo, etc. The point being, do something (in meat space) for your community that you connect with, and you will come into contact with like-minded people who may or may not be “cool”, but they at least want to help out the world around them too. There’s that old saying “it is better to give than to receive.” If you aren’t already, give that a try. :)

My grandfather was an avid volunteer, far more busy in retirement than most working people. My dad once lamented in a family gathering that he (my dad) didn’t want to retire for fear of becoming bored. My grandfather just said in his special way that is hard to convey, “there’s a lot of good organizations that could use some help.”

All the best to you and your search!

I’m not an expert, but my light reading of the paper makes it seem like it isn’t “random noise” in the colloquial sense, but more like “there are properties to the randomness even though the images look like noise.”

The abstract seems to say that, but again, I could be misinterpreting: “Our findings show that it is important for the noise to capture certain structural properties of real data but that good performance can be achieved even with processes that are far from realistic.”

Agreed on the nice effort comment. The ones showing the scene from a distance took me some extra time to figure out what was "off". For me it is the whitecaps on the water (if present). Some of the pictures appear to show waves going in the opposite direction of their surroundings. One of those things that when you see it, you can't really unsee it.

I don’t follow the research here but I was pretty sure it was a joke at first because after the initial quote (preceded by the statement “ Consider the statements below. What do they describe? A trip on psychedelics? A dream?”):

> I felt I could reach through the screen to get to another place. Lasers became entire fans of light sweeping around, and then it felt as if the screen began to expand. I saw old stone buildings … like a castle … I was flying above it.

I was presented with 3 options, a Dodge Ram, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and some other truck. I was trying really hard to figure out what the statement had to do with vehicles until I scrolled down (on mobile) more to realize it was a poorly placed advertisement. Not sure why the internet thinks I want to buy a truck, but I imagine there could have been even more hilarious things that could have fit the context better.

I’m not outright disagreeing, but it seems your last statement contradicts the rest of the payday example. “If instead we start to examine causality we can start to figure out the root of the issue and how to address.”

The causality piece is exactly the issue, right? People who use payday loans have less savings, more likely to work in jobs where their hours are unstable, have other poor financial indicators (past use of a payday loan, for example). Black people may disproportionately fall into this category, but I would argue it is wrong to effectively punish all black people (or conversely give other ethnicities an easier time) simply because of their race.

Biases exist, no argument there. The dilemma is what we do with them.

> The rise of remote work is 100% misunderstood. Good software engineers can work anymore but I haven't met many engineers that can mentor well remotely.

Absolutely this. I love working remotely and will probably not go back to an office until at least the kids are out of school. But both being new and training new people are skills that are just _different_ from being in the office.

Open offices were not a good fit for me, but one valuable thing from a past job was sitting close to both my manager and their manager. That was a way to learn "Oh, that's how you talk to <client A, department B, etc>" without having to be told "this is how you talk to these people." Training a remote new person requires so much more intentionality that most people are not accustomed to.

I'm with you there. I (not a game dev) imagine that balance is hard to find, particularly when choosing the right moment to release. I remember playing "Age of Conan" (the mmo) when it was released and in my opinion while the graphics were good, the game-play was hilariously out of balance (or buggy). My younger self found exploiting the lopsided game-play very enjoyable, but ultimately didn't stick around for too long. If the balance was reversed (more polished game mechanics, less polished art) my friends and I probably would have made it a staple.

But to each their own! It's nice to see the variety available from movie-like experiences to pixel art with all ranges of game mechanics.

In the simple savings-and-loan case, banks loan from their deposits. So technically it is the bank's available capital, but the capital belongs to someone else. If the bank has $1 million in deposits, it might decide it can safely loan out $100k, which in some sense increases the money supply.

Fascinating read - I must confess I only made it through half at the moment.

I used to play Crusader Kings 2 and there was an event about a “Hole from Hell” which was essentially a bottomless pit. I always assumed that was just a made up thing to add variety to the game. Apparently it’s no so far fetched?

I would add some nuance to this view. For nearly every undergraduate course I agree - the ability of knowing where to look for resources in a particular subject matter, synthesizing the available information to solve a reasonably novel problem, and presenting the information in a coherent way is a skill/art that should be one of the primary goals of the education.

For advanced degrees, though, I'm not so sure. I expect someone which a masters or Ph.D. to actually be an expert in the subject matter, not just someone who is really good at figuring out how to solve problems. A big part of that is being able to internalize the information so well they you in effect become a resource that could be used by an undergraduate student. This internalization goes beyond rote memorization, but memorization is a big part of it too.

Just a disclaimer, though - I do not have an advanced degree, so maybe I expect too much from those who do? A big reason why I have no interest in pursuing one is that many people with a masters degree I find have little expertise to show for it, they could have just as easily learned the same information by self-study or being fortunate enough to find interesting work. (the hiring landscape is a separate topic)