I had a friend 10 minute walk down the street whose parents enforced a certain number of hours outside per day. So he would call me on the phone, we would meet halfway, and then we would wander around the sidewalk and talk about video games or make pretend imaginary things.

I can only imagine in todays technology landscape I would have preferred to stay home glued to YouTube on my iPad instead of seeing my friend; beating Pokémon Red for the 100th time didn’t quite have the draw by comparison

On the contrary, in the 21st century I don’t think universities own this privilege nor should we pretend that they do. Radical discourse is now almost exclusively introduced, refined, and tested on the internet, then later brought to other venues (including universities). And this is for good reason - the internet is simply more efficient and with less barriers.

To that end, as someone who is not a university professor, I frankly could not give a crap about the state of universities wrt free speech. Every student carries a phone in their pocket with a cellular connection that offers all the free speech and inquiry they could want.

I think it was generally convenient as being very low maintenance. The only availability canary alarms are when the underlying services go down, which is almost never.

Debugging and running locally are the weak points. Eliminating an entire class of things to think about (container health, scale in and out, and so on) is very nice. Since it’s a control plane, tps and costs were low.

On the other hand, Amber offers a look of what a Crystal rewrite of Rails would look like

I enjoy writing it but don’t think there’s any particular reason to try/learn it, unless you happen to also be a ruby dev who prefers compiled, strongly typed languages.

These problems (known as fermi problems) have been out of vogue for over a decade now. Google is one of the companies that pioneered algorithm-centric leetcode problems as a replacement for fermi problems.

Leetcode problems are not hugely useful outside of the data given by solving a fizzbuzz. Rather, it’s just another excuse so interviewers can convince themself a person is smart, call it signal, and justify a hire.

The last time Google gave me a job offer, one of my interviews was literally a souped up fizzbuzz - straightforward imperative code with no trick, no complicated algorithms, and no fancy data structures. I suppose that may be the reason I got an offer, that I didn’t need fancy algorithms that I hadn’t prepared.

Ultimately it’s impossible to know if someone will be a good hire from an interview. Being a good engineer requires a bunch of traits that simply can’t be tested. The leetcode interview, as I see it, acknowledges this weakness and instead chooses to filter out low-effort candidates, as anyone persistent can practice leetcoding and interviewing (in theory).

I like EVs and have a charger at home for my own car, but maybe due to that I also understand the difficulty of finding a reliable charging situation in a new place. On top of that I was visiting and parking at my parents house, and they don’t have a charger installed.

There’s something to be said by beginning a conversation with a shared understanding of what is considered a reasonable ground truth.

This is a nitpick at best. From outside a given field, one generally has no option but to pick one or some sources as authoritative and refer to them (or to declare no source is authoritative).

In other words, if I say “the science says XYZ” this is shorthand for “my preferred authoritative sources of information on the relevant field assert XYZ”

Can this be incorrect? Yes. Is this often used as a bludgeon? Yes, and reasonably so: without piercing the research veil, what discussion could exist besides disagreeing on a sources’ authority?

If I say “the science says kids shouldn’t wake before 8 am”, and you respond with some neuroscience argument that childrens brain can adapt to waking up before 8 am, you are essentially making an off topic argument: I am referencing an authoritative position, not arguing why that position is correct. In that sense, yes, I am applying a bludgeon; and I right well should, because I can’t have a meaningful engagement with your scientific position anyways.

I see your sentiment often and even though I agree that usage of “the science says” is a poor description of how science works, nonetheless language is an evolving construct and “the science says ___” is a mainstream construct in English language dialogue at this point

There’s nothing wrong with appealing to authority. Often times it’s the best we can do. Sometimes authority is not sufficiently convincing and in such situations it’s fine to point out that whatever “the science” refers to needs more evidence supporting their claims

Ultimately GNSS is just measuring your position relative to some celestial objects using the time it takes for signals to propagate space (and some other info: their ephemerides, and a shared-ish clock). The fact that land exists, and where it exists, are not relevant

Your error corrections might be thrown off when the base station moves, but that’s not an issue of GNSS that’s an issue of RTK

From context it’s quite evident GP is referring to machine drying. Clotheslines don’t have a lint trap.

We can ban ads in certain location/manner/topic but not blanket ban all advertising speech, which would be a 1st amendment issue (and sort of a moot point, it would be politically impossible for something that broad and destructive).

You can get ads off the bus itself but you can’t get ads off the YouTube app the guy next to you is staring at, or the branded swag (that functions as an ad) that this person is wearing.

I personally like the aesthetic of visual overload that you find in ad-laden cities (let’s say in Tokyo). It makes the space feel living, breathing, and alive, which a city should be. And then the visually quiet spaces, like temples and parks, feel much more sweet.

Also at a conceptual level I disagree with the justification that we should make cities adfree due to the harms of ads (described in OP). Ads will appear elsewhere: within stores, online, on top of taxi cabs, stapled to poles, and so on. We can’t make ads disappear. Our best bet is to target specifically the most harmful ads by law (like misleading/false advertising and such).

Although I agree with you, I think there's something to be said for the late/post pandemic psychology.

Stocks were booming irrationally. Gamestop, Tesla. Crypto going wild. Unprecedented greed, not just among the big bad corporation, but literally gripping the entire nation. Savings rate had been up since early mid 2020(?) and seemingly every household was flush with cash. Professionals were job hopping for magnificent pay increases. Every 'pandemic hobby' had shortages. I paid $200 for a two leaf houseplant that now costs $30-$50 in 2023. A friend of mine paid hundreds to pre-order keyboards a year out from delivery, and the moment they were fulfilled secondhand markets would trade them at huge markups.

So then my question is: if you are a corporate worker living in this environment of greed, why wouldn't you explore price increases with greater than normal vigor?

I don't buy "big evil corporate" narratives but I do think America in general was engulfed by greed around that time

By definition this is more efficient communication when you can ping someone irl, interrupt their flow, and get an immediate response.

And yes, it’s significantly worse for deep work.

In exchange for losing deep work, you no longer have to write a detailed thought to your PM, wait 5 hours for them to ping back “sounds good to me”, then begin working on it the next business day not feeling sure if they even read what you wrote.