You're probably referring to upsampling upon playback (reconstruction). It is a "fix" in the sense that it obfuscates, it is not error correction. This only reinforces my point, which was that it is not impossible - or even implausible - that a human could distinguish in a blind test a recording made at a higher sampling frequency (than 44.1) compared to an identical one at CD quality.
If you're referring to sampling at a higher rate than the Nyquist frequency at recording, the reason that's done is because you can hear the difference if it isn't recorded at a higher rate. The big difference here is that post-processing allows storage of the smaller amount of information (frequency and bit rate) of the target. I'm simplifying a bit here, but that's actually my point: you can hear the difference.
Perhaps you're solely focused on playback frequency in the discussion? I'm not. I'm suggesting that, at any point in the chain, if you operate solely at 44.1kHz sampling rate, you will lose something, in spite of the fact that human hearing tops out at about 20kHz.
But we're talking about CD sampling/recording rates, not turntables here.
The original frequencies aren't necessarily below the noise floor of the recording process, and can introduce harmonics during the playback process. Many do have enough "energy"; there's no magical cutoff at 20kHz just because that's pretty much the upper range of human hearing.
You can argue - somewhat correctly - that those harmonics within audio range would be captured by the lower (CD-quality) sampling rate.. but herein lies one of the things that, depending upon conditions, can be heard. It's not the same sound profile as playing back the actual higher frequencies because (shockingly enough) playback conditions impact how it sounds. Note I'm not saying one would sound better than the other, just noticeably different.
Also, if you have inferior AD conversion and low-pass filters when recording, anti-aliasing can be a problem caused by higher frequencies. Again, I'm talking strictly about higher sampler rates and storage at "better than we can hear" quality. AC (not sure if it was you) argued it was completely identical under all cases unless you were some kind of mutant. That just isn't true. It's mostly true, but not completely.
Finally, if we were to do what you suggest with a vinyl record, it... doesn't prove much of anything. Why? You're only passing the higher frequencies. The harmonics occur at a lower frequency in terms of the music. Ostensibly, you're playing inaudible frequencies against line noise, which will of course sound like line noise. This, of course, assumes that the recording wasn't at some point or another passed through some kind of EQ or digital recording (same sample rate discussion) that didn't remove them. Digital recording goes back much further than most people think..
Emphasis here on something that is mostly irrelevant: the difference between OP saying it's impossible for there to be any distinguishing characteristic for humans, and then talking about what the practical implications are. You really should read the short article I linked, it gives a fair, if high-level, explanation.
I'll disagree with you... mildly... about the CD versus higher resolution. It's about harmonics introduced by higher frequencies impacting the lower (and the reproduction of said harmonics during D/A conversion upon playback), and anti-aliasing of higher frequencies unable to be captured correctly (a la Nyquist). Does it mean higher frequency is better? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A lot depends upon not only exactly what is being recorded, but the equipment and conditions for both recording and playback.
I'll agree it's mostly hype for little or no benefit, but it isn't entirely fiction.
There's a lot of truth in this, and in visuals anyway. Case from my own experience:
Early in my career, I led a small team to create a product to monitor operations of a physical system. This system was geographically situated in a such a way that different locations were located on a map. The top-level view of the system might refer to different geographic locations (e.g. "First St node" and "Highway 3 node").
This was during the time that Google Earth was New! Exciting! AJAX?! For a prototype, we lifted *the customer's own marketing map graphic* and overlaid a colored disk at each location representing current status.
Two side effects of the prototype demo: first, the sheer wonderment of "how did you get that?! Is it a satellite?! IS IT GOOGLE EARTH?!" Second: "How does it know the status?" "Holy crap! Maple Ave node IS RED ZOMG CALL SOMEONE WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!"
The best part: explaining it was (1) a simple.jpg we lifted directly from their marketing swag, and (2) it was just a prototype and didn't mean anything *did not do a damned thing*. They still believed we had satellites monitoring the systems (why satellites? How would satellites know the status?)
I travel a lot for work (~175K miles a year). One a flight from Dallas-->Brisbane-->Sydney (before Sydney direct), I left my laptop in Brisbane, in the DMZ (area in airport for international flights, after deplaning and before immigration/passport control/customs). This itinerary stopped in Brisbane to refuel, but you left the plane and (interestingly) went through security immediately after, then waited in a special area to get back on the plane and resume to Sydney.
I left my laptop at security. Didn't notice until I was in my hotel in Sydney. Call the airport, and they said "leave a message for customs/security, they will call you back." Yeah, right. I did and... ten minutes later they called.
The guy found it, then explained the problem was that it hadn't been through customs. I had a co-worker coming through the same flight in a couple of days; he agreed to give it to the co-worker. I figured that this was unlikely to actually occur, and started backup planning.
My co-worker gets off the plane in Brisbane, announces himself.... and is handed a laptop, complete with a note taped to it explaining it had been left and to give it to him on this date.
I still have the note on my laptop to remind me how stupid I can be.
I've used all 3 (OPO, OP2, OP3) on T-Mobile in the US. Only problem with OPO that I had was some wrangling with the data/network/carrier settings, but after that I had no issues.
I was intrigued (I suppose that I still am) until the comment about sunscreen and being outdoorsy. Herein lies the danger of such things, but I assume it is poor journalism rather than poor science (or, at least, I hope the scientists aren't concluding this).
You see, I wear sunscreen. Religiously. I am not terribly "outdoorsy". I am paranoid about skin cancer (runs in the family) and wrinkles (I'm a bit vain, what can I say).
I think what they meant to say is, given a population with certain characteristics, one can infer certain probabilities about the population. While this is interesting in a population, it's also the same horse s#!t that results in me getting Facebook ads centered around marijuana because I align closely with libertarians (but I don't smoke pot. At all). I long for the day when our marketing overlords start sending me phone ads for paddle boarding or tennis or outdoor yoga because I wear sunscreen. It's so much easier to tune out stuff that has zero relevance.
I remember this! Interesting... there was an article in "Hustler" (yes, that Hustler) that put forth the theory that petroleum jelly was being absorbed in the system, and causing a breakdown of immune cell production. I think it even said something about "coating" cells or something like that. The Hustler article quoted some professional/scientific hypothesis white paper on how the mechanism could work, etc etc. I also think it went on to talk about how amyl nitrate usage exacerbated the problems, leading to a collapse of the immune system.
...except that this is hearsay (at best), and quoted in a book ("And the Band Played On") that also disregarded information that he wasn't some mythical Patient Zero. They were selling books.
Not saying he didn't do this, but there isn't any compelling evidence he did.
Except the statements about him intentionally attempting to infect people are, at best, anecdotal. They're also from a source ("And the Band Played On") that disregarded the misinformation around patient zero (actually being patient O, or "Outside Southern California") because it made good narrative.
He may have been an asshole, but it's not verified.
I agree with what you're saying, with one important caveat: it's pretty typical in soft-skill jobs (which media, frankly, is) where there is a good supply of qualified workers to take a job doing customer service to get one's foot in the door. Further, it's typical with such places to have a minimum time in service (12 or 18 months, usually) before being allowed to move to a new position... because lots of qualified people are sticking their foot in the same door.
Before I went back to school and got my CS degree, I worked customer service at a major wireless carrier. At the time (mid/late nineties) they were expanding and growing. I had a friend who worked customer service there (because she wanted to get into sales, and they said 'you will need to get your foot in the door') and said if you can do your year, within six months afterward if you have any skill whatsoever you'd find a different job. She did; I did; it all worked out. We knew what we were getting into and, yes, a year on the phones kinda sucked. I had my eye on a larger prize and knew my own skills, so it worked for me. The woman complains about this, but knew it going into it. I don't know if Yelp *actually* promotes from within, and if they don't this is indeed a specious practice. If they do promote from within (as my previous employer did), then I don't have a problem with it if they disclose up front.
It's easy to poke fun or exclaim they should give everything to charity blah blah... but as some have pointed out, a lot of/. readers are in tech, and comparatively well-off. This hit home recently:
I hooked up with an old friend who was relocating to my city. We'd grown up together. Because of different career paths, my household income is dramatically more than his. We're in the neighborhood of 5-percenters, and he is struggling.
It is uncomfortable at times. We tried to keep it a low profile, discretely picking up the tab, but it just gets weird. We're genuinely excited about our impending holiday trip, and he's struggling to figure out how to afford his bills. What's worse, is sometimes the frustration bleeds out the edges and he gets pissy... and I don't blame him, but I don't blame us for not wanting to be around it or always trying to watch our p's and q's either.
I won't stop being friends with him or anything. This forms a fairly minor part of our interaction, but it does exist. When we were both poor, back when we were 19? Nope. Today, with highly disparate incomes? Yup, and I get it.
Because "triggered" is a misnomer... or more accurately, it only provides some of the information the light cycle works from. Depending upon the exact configuration, that intersection may be configured to be red in that direction until after someone stops there... which then triggers a timer... which then cycles the light some seconds later. Lights work on cycles, can be timed across a system (manually), and most can even do time-of-day patterns. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it isn't direct cause-and-effect either.
I've worked at places that are heavily remote and heavily not. I've seen it done successfully and not.
One place, when I was on team A 100% on-site, I interacted with my manager very minimally. We had little direction, lots of bureaucracy, and a slow pace of accomplishing anything. I moved to another team B, 100% remote, interacted with my manager a lot, we had lots of planning, direction, and follow-up, and got stuff DONE.
I've seen it time and again: the overwhelming majority of people need leadership. What kind of leadership is specific to the individual; good mgmt can tailor their style to individual needs. Rare - much rarer than most people think - is someone who needs no leadership.
What happens is that remote teams can exacerbate management failings. People slack off; some people work in chunks (as I do - I will goof off for a couple of hours and then pound out a day's work), some people work slow and steady. If you're results-oriented, you can measure this. If you manage people correctly, it can be done remote, on-site, or blended.
Managing remote teams requires a different set of skills. Most places make the mistake of assuming a remote worker is just like an on-site worker, to be treated the same. They're not. It's not better or worse, just different.
You're actually making my point; I'm sorry if it isn't clear. Just because you consider me dragging "highly emotionally charged and totally unrelated example" into it doesn't mean I'm not right. I'll agree slavery is more serious, but please explain how interracial marriage or segregation are fundamentally different, based upon the arguments for and against them?
Marriage has not been defined as that for "thousands of years". It's actually varied quite a bit from culture to culture and over the decades, and even in modern times. Even Wikipedia has multiple well-referenced examples. Miscegeny was NOT legal, socially acceptable, or the norm in the overwhelming majority of cultures - even Westernized ones - until relatively recent history. I'm old enough to remember when seeing a black man holding a white girl's hand, walking down the street in the major city I grew up in, drew openly hostile remarks. I'm not that old, either.
Saying there isn't anything discriminatory in a definition - and that it's based primarily on biology - is specious. Couples who can't or don't want to have children get married. For a long time published arguments against miscegeny touted the idea of racial dilution and even health hazards to any babies.
You may understand why people don't want to change it. So do I: they're bigots. I'm actually okay with bigots, until they think they can impose or continue to impose their views on others by restricting their rights, especially when said rights don't infringe upon anyone else. Show me one decent ethically sound and morally righteous reason why society benefits by not allowing homosexuals to marry. Again, I challenge you to replace the words in any argument with "mixed race" instead of "gay", and explain that it isn't bigoted.
"Being anti-interracial-'marriage' does not automatically make someone racist or a bigot." How does that sound to you? Anyone who thinks they can be anti-gay marriage and not have a very narrow, judgmental, bigoted view is deceiving themselves by couching their bigotry in supposedly sound arguments of culture, society, and biology. That fits your Webster's definition quite soundly. I'll agree my stance does too - however; the same argument can be positioned for any stance (again - substitute interracial marriage and the people against it). I base the validity of my position on ethics and morality.
Some people against gay marriage have absolutely nothing against gay people or gay couples. And some even support legal gay coupling, with the same rights as marriage, just not called "marriage".
Replace "against gay marriage" with "against emancipation", and "gay people or gay couples" with "slaves or slave families". After all, just because you're for slavery doesn't mean you hate black people, right? You just understand their socio-economic and biological limitations, right?
Or better: replace with "against interracial marriage", and "mixed black and white couples or other interracial coupling". After all, it's just so unseemly to push their integrated views on polite society, right? Plus, think of their children - they'll never have a chance to not be mocked in public, to be integrated into either race's culture. You'd be diluting both races. It would be a travesty, really.
Or better: replace with "against desegregated schools", "blacks and whites in the same classroom." After all, each group needs to learn different things. It's really not fair to group them all together. Plus, how could they learn their cultures? Or better yet, just put them in "their own" schools (e.g. not calling it marriage). It's really better for them in the long run.
I could go on, but I think my point is clear. If one wants to be a bigot - fine. Own it for what it is. But please don't imply that - somehow - one's bigotry and biases are something other than that, or that just because one doesn't support gay marriage it is ethically or morally equivalent to supporting it. It isn't.
So I agree that in (my) perfect world, the government wouldn't be involved in marriage, the sad fact is that they are. Because they are, it ought to be addressed.
Saying you're against gay marriage, because it's a subset of marriage, and then "walking away", is not addressing the real issue. And if that's all you have to say on the matter, you're really just making a thin veil over bigotry. This is similar to folks who say "I hate the sin but love the sinner, and homosexuality is against my religion." It's a way of addressing any logical discussion against their bigotry by claiming "see - I'm not a bigot! I'm against it because of this other thing you can't really argue with."
In dealing with reality, we have a situation in this country where the government is deeply involved in things like civil rights, marriage, war on drugs, copyright... all those things that often enter the realm of "should they". That's an academic discussion. The very real discussion is that, today, there are laws and practices that actively discriminate against a subset of the population based upon biology, for strictly no reason or value to society, in the same way that similar laws and practices benefit others. That is a case for the government to be involved.
Like many who've posted, we give every developer applicant a live coding test. We allow them to select one from a list of 5 problems, to be coded in the target technology we're hiring for. For each of them, every member of my team can have working in under 15 minutes. I'm the manager over several teams, haven't written any production code in probably 2 years, and can whip them out of my posterior in a variety of languages. We provide the environment, compilation scripts/commands (if appropriate), and Google. We do ask that they not Google the actual problem. We give them an hour, and they can extend by another hour if they ask.
About 60% of applicants abjectly fail. I don't mean they have a bug, or misunderstand the problem so implement incorrectly, or are inelegant. I mean they fail to produce code the compiles or runs (depending upon technology). C++ "experts" who, in a fit of frustration, copy/paste a HelloWorld! example out of Google into vim, miss the first '#', and it doesn't compile, and cannot figure out why. PL/SQL "experts" who can't select from a single table.
The person who did the wrong copy/paste-desperation move assured me at the end of the interview they were actually an expert, and not to let their failure "taint" my impression of them.
About another 10% or so write something that is incorrect, but does something functional. For those folks, we weigh it case-by-case. The remainder pass (and are usually surprised when we tell them how many fail). It's a sad fact, but a lot of "experts" Simply. Cannot. Code.
It would be society's fault if you ignore the fact that Ravi had intentions to embarrass and humiliate Tyler... and if you don't think he didn't, you're naive. Of course, Tyler was a little lacking in the psych department, because people who are humiliated don't always kill themselves.
However, that's also like saying people who wear nice watches and sneakers in bad neighborhoods totally deserve to get beaten and robbed. After all, you lacked the proper judgement skills not to be flashy in a bad neighborhood and, arguably, it's society's fault that the criminal element exists... right?
Sorry - my comment should read "will find" not "will found", e.g. this would be an example of VCs finding a way to get of getting cheap *and entrepreneurial" talent without having to worry about work visas/sponsorship/et al.
So yes: I do understand VCs. So yes: they aren't interested in "offshore talent" in the manner of "hiring a code monkey to write classes", but they ARE interested in "offshore talent" like "these folks from [another country] who have what we think is a high-growth (your words) idea", and the idea is WAAAAY more compelling if you can bypass the whole pesky US/immigration/work bits.
Oh, and yes: VCs do practically enslave their staff. Especially the founders, and anyone else who has the possibility of a big payout dangled in front of them, that future, unstable, gamble-of-a-possibility pretty much chains someone to the startup. Yes, I'm being a big metaphorical, and not literal. You're right - someone can leave. There aren't real shackles. But anyone who has worked for a funded startup that has failed (and even some that have succeeded) can tell a tale that harkens to enslavement.
Blueseed might not be started by VC, but they (you) sure do seem to have some on their advisory board; again, sorry if my semantics are a touch off, but the flavor (doused with metaphor) remains correct.
Am I the only one who read this as "VCs will found a way to get cheap offshore talent under their collective wings by purchasing a cruise ship on which to enslave, err, house their startup 'incubators'"?
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Someone posted that same criticism in the article. Here is someone's reply (again, from the comments). I'm not a chemist or physicist, but what they say sounds reasonable:
Hi Heather - fair enough, it's not 2D as in the mathematical concept, but 2D has a physical meaning as well - the thinnest version of a material. Because the silicon and oxygen atoms don't lay flat, glass needs a minimum of three layers of atoms (two silicon and one oxygen) to form a chemically stable sheet. Inside some of these technically 3D ultrathin materials, the electrons behave like their world is two dimensional.
Slashdot Mirror
Two kinds of oversampling:
You're probably referring to upsampling upon playback (reconstruction). It is a "fix" in the sense that it obfuscates, it is not error correction. This only reinforces my point, which was that it is not impossible - or even implausible - that a human could distinguish in a blind test a recording made at a higher sampling frequency (than 44.1) compared to an identical one at CD quality.
If you're referring to sampling at a higher rate than the Nyquist frequency at recording, the reason that's done is because you can hear the difference if it isn't recorded at a higher rate. The big difference here is that post-processing allows storage of the smaller amount of information (frequency and bit rate) of the target. I'm simplifying a bit here, but that's actually my point: you can hear the difference.
Perhaps you're solely focused on playback frequency in the discussion? I'm not. I'm suggesting that, at any point in the chain, if you operate solely at 44.1kHz sampling rate, you will lose something, in spite of the fact that human hearing tops out at about 20kHz.
Cheers!
... anti-aliasing can be a problem caused by higher frequencies.
Oops... *aliasing* not *anti-aliasing*.
But we're talking about CD sampling/recording rates, not turntables here.
The original frequencies aren't necessarily below the noise floor of the recording process, and can introduce harmonics during the playback process. Many do have enough "energy"; there's no magical cutoff at 20kHz just because that's pretty much the upper range of human hearing.
You can argue - somewhat correctly - that those harmonics within audio range would be captured by the lower (CD-quality) sampling rate.. but herein lies one of the things that, depending upon conditions, can be heard. It's not the same sound profile as playing back the actual higher frequencies because (shockingly enough) playback conditions impact how it sounds. Note I'm not saying one would sound better than the other, just noticeably different.
Also, if you have inferior AD conversion and low-pass filters when recording, anti-aliasing can be a problem caused by higher frequencies. Again, I'm talking strictly about higher sampler rates and storage at "better than we can hear" quality. AC (not sure if it was you) argued it was completely identical under all cases unless you were some kind of mutant. That just isn't true. It's mostly true, but not completely.
Finally, if we were to do what you suggest with a vinyl record, it... doesn't prove much of anything. Why? You're only passing the higher frequencies. The harmonics occur at a lower frequency in terms of the music. Ostensibly, you're playing inaudible frequencies against line noise, which will of course sound like line noise. This, of course, assumes that the recording wasn't at some point or another passed through some kind of EQ or digital recording (same sample rate discussion) that didn't remove them. Digital recording goes back much further than most people think..
Emphasis here on something that is mostly irrelevant: the difference between OP saying it's impossible for there to be any distinguishing characteristic for humans, and then talking about what the practical implications are. You really should read the short article I linked, it gives a fair, if high-level, explanation.
I'll disagree with you ... mildly... about the CD versus higher resolution. It's about harmonics introduced by higher frequencies impacting the lower (and the reproduction of said harmonics during D/A conversion upon playback), and anti-aliasing of higher frequencies unable to be captured correctly (a la Nyquist). Does it mean higher frequency is better? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. A lot depends upon not only exactly what is being recorded, but the equipment and conditions for both recording and playback.
I'll agree it's mostly hype for little or no benefit, but it isn't entirely fiction.
There's a pretty good, albeit partial, explanation here: https://www.sweetwater.com/ins...
There's a lot of truth in this, and in visuals anyway. Case from my own experience:
.jpg we lifted directly from their marketing swag, and (2) it was just a prototype and didn't mean anything *did not do a damned thing*. They still believed we had satellites monitoring the systems (why satellites? How would satellites know the status?)
Early in my career, I led a small team to create a product to monitor operations of a physical system. This system was geographically situated in a such a way that different locations were located on a map. The top-level view of the system might refer to different geographic locations (e.g. "First St node" and "Highway 3 node").
This was during the time that Google Earth was New! Exciting! AJAX?! For a prototype, we lifted *the customer's own marketing map graphic* and overlaid a colored disk at each location representing current status.
Two side effects of the prototype demo: first, the sheer wonderment of "how did you get that?! Is it a satellite?! IS IT GOOGLE EARTH?!" Second: "How does it know the status?" "Holy crap! Maple Ave node IS RED ZOMG CALL SOMEONE WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!"
The best part: explaining it was (1) a simple
Seeing is, indeed, believing.
I travel a lot for work (~175K miles a year). One a flight from Dallas-->Brisbane-->Sydney (before Sydney direct), I left my laptop in Brisbane, in the DMZ (area in airport for international flights, after deplaning and before immigration/passport control/customs). This itinerary stopped in Brisbane to refuel, but you left the plane and (interestingly) went through security immediately after, then waited in a special area to get back on the plane and resume to Sydney.
I left my laptop at security. Didn't notice until I was in my hotel in Sydney. Call the airport, and they said "leave a message for customs/security, they will call you back." Yeah, right. I did and... ten minutes later they called.
The guy found it, then explained the problem was that it hadn't been through customs. I had a co-worker coming through the same flight in a couple of days; he agreed to give it to the co-worker. I figured that this was unlikely to actually occur, and started backup planning.
My co-worker gets off the plane in Brisbane, announces himself.... and is handed a laptop, complete with a note taped to it explaining it had been left and to give it to him on this date.
I still have the note on my laptop to remind me how stupid I can be.
I've used all 3 (OPO, OP2, OP3) on T-Mobile in the US. Only problem with OPO that I had was some wrangling with the data/network/carrier settings, but after that I had no issues.
I was intrigued (I suppose that I still am) until the comment about sunscreen and being outdoorsy. Herein lies the danger of such things, but I assume it is poor journalism rather than poor science (or, at least, I hope the scientists aren't concluding this).
You see, I wear sunscreen. Religiously. I am not terribly "outdoorsy". I am paranoid about skin cancer (runs in the family) and wrinkles (I'm a bit vain, what can I say).
I think what they meant to say is, given a population with certain characteristics, one can infer certain probabilities about the population. While this is interesting in a population, it's also the same horse s#!t that results in me getting Facebook ads centered around marijuana because I align closely with libertarians (but I don't smoke pot. At all). I long for the day when our marketing overlords start sending me phone ads for paddle boarding or tennis or outdoor yoga because I wear sunscreen. It's so much easier to tune out stuff that has zero relevance.
I remember this! Interesting... there was an article in "Hustler" (yes, that Hustler) that put forth the theory that petroleum jelly was being absorbed in the system, and causing a breakdown of immune cell production. I think it even said something about "coating" cells or something like that. The Hustler article quoted some professional/scientific hypothesis white paper on how the mechanism could work, etc etc. I also think it went on to talk about how amyl nitrate usage exacerbated the problems, leading to a collapse of the immune system.
...except that this is hearsay (at best), and quoted in a book ("And the Band Played On") that also disregarded information that he wasn't some mythical Patient Zero. They were selling books.
Not saying he didn't do this, but there isn't any compelling evidence he did.
Except the statements about him intentionally attempting to infect people are, at best, anecdotal. They're also from a source ("And the Band Played On") that disregarded the misinformation around patient zero (actually being patient O, or "Outside Southern California") because it made good narrative.
He may have been an asshole, but it's not verified.
I agree with what you're saying, with one important caveat: it's pretty typical in soft-skill jobs (which media, frankly, is) where there is a good supply of qualified workers to take a job doing customer service to get one's foot in the door. Further, it's typical with such places to have a minimum time in service (12 or 18 months, usually) before being allowed to move to a new position... because lots of qualified people are sticking their foot in the same door.
Before I went back to school and got my CS degree, I worked customer service at a major wireless carrier. At the time (mid/late nineties) they were expanding and growing. I had a friend who worked customer service there (because she wanted to get into sales, and they said 'you will need to get your foot in the door') and said if you can do your year, within six months afterward if you have any skill whatsoever you'd find a different job. She did; I did; it all worked out. We knew what we were getting into and, yes, a year on the phones kinda sucked. I had my eye on a larger prize and knew my own skills, so it worked for me. The woman complains about this, but knew it going into it. I don't know if Yelp *actually* promotes from within, and if they don't this is indeed a specious practice. If they do promote from within (as my previous employer did), then I don't have a problem with it if they disclose up front.
It's easy to poke fun or exclaim they should give everything to charity blah blah... but as some have pointed out, a lot of /. readers are in tech, and comparatively well-off. This hit home recently:
I hooked up with an old friend who was relocating to my city. We'd grown up together. Because of different career paths, my household income is dramatically more than his. We're in the neighborhood of 5-percenters, and he is struggling.
It is uncomfortable at times. We tried to keep it a low profile, discretely picking up the tab, but it just gets weird. We're genuinely excited about our impending holiday trip, and he's struggling to figure out how to afford his bills. What's worse, is sometimes the frustration bleeds out the edges and he gets pissy... and I don't blame him, but I don't blame us for not wanting to be around it or always trying to watch our p's and q's either.
I won't stop being friends with him or anything. This forms a fairly minor part of our interaction, but it does exist. When we were both poor, back when we were 19? Nope. Today, with highly disparate incomes? Yup, and I get it.
Because "triggered" is a misnomer... or more accurately, it only provides some of the information the light cycle works from. Depending upon the exact configuration, that intersection may be configured to be red in that direction until after someone stops there... which then triggers a timer... which then cycles the light some seconds later. Lights work on cycles, can be timed across a system (manually), and most can even do time-of-day patterns. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it isn't direct cause-and-effect either.
This is an amazingly well-written and astute response. What are you doing here?
I've worked at places that are heavily remote and heavily not. I've seen it done successfully and not.
One place, when I was on team A 100% on-site, I interacted with my manager very minimally. We had little direction, lots of bureaucracy, and a slow pace of accomplishing anything. I moved to another team B, 100% remote, interacted with my manager a lot, we had lots of planning, direction, and follow-up, and got stuff DONE.
I've seen it time and again: the overwhelming majority of people need leadership. What kind of leadership is specific to the individual; good mgmt can tailor their style to individual needs. Rare - much rarer than most people think - is someone who needs no leadership.
What happens is that remote teams can exacerbate management failings. People slack off; some people work in chunks (as I do - I will goof off for a couple of hours and then pound out a day's work), some people work slow and steady. If you're results-oriented, you can measure this. If you manage people correctly, it can be done remote, on-site, or blended.
Managing remote teams requires a different set of skills. Most places make the mistake of assuming a remote worker is just like an on-site worker, to be treated the same. They're not. It's not better or worse, just different.
You're actually making my point; I'm sorry if it isn't clear. Just because you consider me dragging "highly emotionally charged and totally unrelated example" into it doesn't mean I'm not right. I'll agree slavery is more serious, but please explain how interracial marriage or segregation are fundamentally different, based upon the arguments for and against them?
Marriage has not been defined as that for "thousands of years". It's actually varied quite a bit from culture to culture and over the decades, and even in modern times. Even Wikipedia has multiple well-referenced examples. Miscegeny was NOT legal, socially acceptable, or the norm in the overwhelming majority of cultures - even Westernized ones - until relatively recent history. I'm old enough to remember when seeing a black man holding a white girl's hand, walking down the street in the major city I grew up in, drew openly hostile remarks. I'm not that old, either.
Saying there isn't anything discriminatory in a definition - and that it's based primarily on biology - is specious. Couples who can't or don't want to have children get married. For a long time published arguments against miscegeny touted the idea of racial dilution and even health hazards to any babies.
You may understand why people don't want to change it. So do I: they're bigots. I'm actually okay with bigots, until they think they can impose or continue to impose their views on others by restricting their rights, especially when said rights don't infringe upon anyone else. Show me one decent ethically sound and morally righteous reason why society benefits by not allowing homosexuals to marry. Again, I challenge you to replace the words in any argument with "mixed race" instead of "gay", and explain that it isn't bigoted.
"Being anti-interracial-'marriage' does not automatically make someone racist or a bigot." How does that sound to you? Anyone who thinks they can be anti-gay marriage and not have a very narrow, judgmental, bigoted view is deceiving themselves by couching their bigotry in supposedly sound arguments of culture, society, and biology. That fits your Webster's definition quite soundly. I'll agree my stance does too - however; the same argument can be positioned for any stance (again - substitute interracial marriage and the people against it). I base the validity of my position on ethics and morality.
Well said. Wish I had mod points.
Some people against gay marriage have absolutely nothing against gay people or gay couples. And some even support legal gay coupling, with the same rights as marriage, just not called "marriage".
Replace "against gay marriage" with "against emancipation", and "gay people or gay couples" with "slaves or slave families". After all, just because you're for slavery doesn't mean you hate black people, right? You just understand their socio-economic and biological limitations, right?
Or better: replace with "against interracial marriage", and "mixed black and white couples or other interracial coupling". After all, it's just so unseemly to push their integrated views on polite society, right? Plus, think of their children - they'll never have a chance to not be mocked in public, to be integrated into either race's culture. You'd be diluting both races. It would be a travesty, really.
Or better: replace with "against desegregated schools", "blacks and whites in the same classroom." After all, each group needs to learn different things. It's really not fair to group them all together. Plus, how could they learn their cultures? Or better yet, just put them in "their own" schools (e.g. not calling it marriage). It's really better for them in the long run.
I could go on, but I think my point is clear. If one wants to be a bigot - fine. Own it for what it is. But please don't imply that - somehow - one's bigotry and biases are something other than that, or that just because one doesn't support gay marriage it is ethically or morally equivalent to supporting it. It isn't.
So I agree that in (my) perfect world, the government wouldn't be involved in marriage, the sad fact is that they are. Because they are, it ought to be addressed.
Saying you're against gay marriage, because it's a subset of marriage, and then "walking away", is not addressing the real issue. And if that's all you have to say on the matter, you're really just making a thin veil over bigotry. This is similar to folks who say "I hate the sin but love the sinner, and homosexuality is against my religion." It's a way of addressing any logical discussion against their bigotry by claiming "see - I'm not a bigot! I'm against it because of this other thing you can't really argue with."
In dealing with reality, we have a situation in this country where the government is deeply involved in things like civil rights, marriage, war on drugs, copyright... all those things that often enter the realm of "should they". That's an academic discussion. The very real discussion is that, today, there are laws and practices that actively discriminate against a subset of the population based upon biology, for strictly no reason or value to society, in the same way that similar laws and practices benefit others. That is a case for the government to be involved.
Like many who've posted, we give every developer applicant a live coding test. We allow them to select one from a list of 5 problems, to be coded in the target technology we're hiring for. For each of them, every member of my team can have working in under 15 minutes. I'm the manager over several teams, haven't written any production code in probably 2 years, and can whip them out of my posterior in a variety of languages. We provide the environment, compilation scripts/commands (if appropriate), and Google. We do ask that they not Google the actual problem. We give them an hour, and they can extend by another hour if they ask.
About 60% of applicants abjectly fail. I don't mean they have a bug, or misunderstand the problem so implement incorrectly, or are inelegant. I mean they fail to produce code the compiles or runs (depending upon technology). C++ "experts" who, in a fit of frustration, copy/paste a HelloWorld! example out of Google into vim, miss the first '#', and it doesn't compile, and cannot figure out why. PL/SQL "experts" who can't select from a single table.
The person who did the wrong copy/paste-desperation move assured me at the end of the interview they were actually an expert, and not to let their failure "taint" my impression of them.
About another 10% or so write something that is incorrect, but does something functional. For those folks, we weigh it case-by-case. The remainder pass (and are usually surprised when we tell them how many fail). It's a sad fact, but a lot of "experts" Simply. Cannot. Code.
Yeah, it is different.
It would be society's fault if you ignore the fact that Ravi had intentions to embarrass and humiliate Tyler... and if you don't think he didn't, you're naive. Of course, Tyler was a little lacking in the psych department, because people who are humiliated don't always kill themselves.
However, that's also like saying people who wear nice watches and sneakers in bad neighborhoods totally deserve to get beaten and robbed. After all, you lacked the proper judgement skills not to be flashy in a bad neighborhood and, arguably, it's society's fault that the criminal element exists... right?
Sorry - my comment should read "will find" not "will found", e.g. this would be an example of VCs finding a way to get of getting cheap *and entrepreneurial" talent without having to worry about work visas/sponsorship/et al.
So yes: I do understand VCs. So yes: they aren't interested in "offshore talent" in the manner of "hiring a code monkey to write classes", but they ARE interested in "offshore talent" like "these folks from [another country] who have what we think is a high-growth (your words) idea", and the idea is WAAAAY more compelling if you can bypass the whole pesky US/immigration/work bits.
Oh, and yes: VCs do practically enslave their staff. Especially the founders, and anyone else who has the possibility of a big payout dangled in front of them, that future, unstable, gamble-of-a-possibility pretty much chains someone to the startup. Yes, I'm being a big metaphorical, and not literal. You're right - someone can leave. There aren't real shackles. But anyone who has worked for a funded startup that has failed (and even some that have succeeded) can tell a tale that harkens to enslavement.
Blueseed might not be started by VC, but they (you) sure do seem to have some on their advisory board; again, sorry if my semantics are a touch off, but the flavor (doused with metaphor) remains correct.
Am I the only one who read this as "VCs will found a way to get cheap offshore talent under their collective wings by purchasing a cruise ship on which to enslave, err, house their startup 'incubators'"?
It's not two dimensional if it has a measurable thickness, which you stated in that same sentence. Unless you have a different definition of "two dimensional" than the rest of us.
Someone posted that same criticism in the article. Here is someone's reply (again, from the comments). I'm not a chemist or physicist, but what they say sounds reasonable:
Hi Heather - fair enough, it's not 2D as in the mathematical concept, but 2D has a physical meaning as well - the thinnest version of a material. Because the silicon and oxygen atoms don't lay flat, glass needs a minimum of three layers of atoms (two silicon and one oxygen) to form a chemically stable sheet. Inside some of these technically 3D ultrathin materials, the electrons behave like their world is two dimensional.