Hasnain says:

Interesting overview on the theory and practice of building distributed systems from an expert in the field.

Worth taking note of.

“If you're lucky enough to be able to, find yourself a position on a team, at a company, or in a lab that owns something big. I think the Amazon pattern of having the same team build and operate systems is ideal for learning. If you can, carry a pager. Be accountable to your team and your customers that the stuff you build works. Reality cannot be fooled.”

Hasnain says:

This approach seems absolutely dystopian and right out of Black Mirror - it doesn’t stop at my initial thought (reducing meetings); but focuses on gamifying and putting a dollar value to everything done at work.

I wouldn’t want to work here, but hey, the results seem to be indisputable.

“The approach has so far paid off. Disco’s operating margin has risen to 26% from 16% since the experiment was implemented eight years ago, and its profitability is the envy of the industry. Its share price has almost quadrupled in that period, to roughly 16,000 yen ($148), giving the company a $5 billion market value. Thanks to bonuses, worker pay is more than double the national average of 4.7 million yen, and in 2017, Disco was the first to win a new government award for creating an ideal workplace.”

Hasnain says:

This was so sad and heart breaking. I was aware of the plights of the adjuncts in the US (and worldwide) but didn’t realize it was this bad. I’m glad they are unionizing.

There are so many quotes in there I’d like to cherry pick but I figured I’d go with this one:

“In fact, this is a big lie. The long term trend in higher education has been one of a shrinking number of full-time positions and an ever-growing number of adjunct positions. It is not hard to see why. University budgets are balanced on the backs of adjunct professors. In an adjunct, a school gets the same class taught for about half the salary of a full-time professor, and none of the benefits. The school also retains a god-like control over the schedules of adjuncts, who are literally laid off after every single semester, and then rehired as necessary for the following semester.”

Hasnain says:

Interesting read on the demise of google+.

Goes into some history, but also describes organizational, structural, and design problems that faced the product.

“At the same time, we couldn’t be absolutely certain we were right. We couldn’t provide concrete evidence that the current direction was wrong. And when the execs are extremely smart people making 10 times the salary you do, there’s a tendency to give them the benefit of the doubt. Surely they must know what they are doing.”

Hasnain says:

Extreme example, but worth reading into why lines of code is a terrible metric all around for judging progress, projects, or effort.

“Bottom line? Getting to that point where you're doing more with less and keeping things as simple as they possibly can be, is really a lot of work. It means that for every one of those 750 lines, I've had to examine, rework, and reject around 5400 lines of code”

Hasnain says:

The author, a PhD student at NYU studying game design, goes into a lot of exciting patterns and shows how they contribute towards both engaging and entertaining gameplay.

Bookmarking for future use.

"Ultimately, level design patterns have always been used in games. Having guidelines on how to improve the player experience is a very valuable tool. A formal taxonomy facilitates wider dissemination of these concepts, stimulating expansion and contribution, helping improve level design practices."

Hasnain says:

The article goes into the author's own anecdata around the tale of two births, one with more parental leave than the other; and then goes into some studies on the benefits observed in families even decades later, when leave was present.

However I feel like one quote in the article has a very easy (sad) answer: "Why Aren’t American Men Taking Leave?" -- it's just not available.

Ends on a good conclusion though:

"For my part, I came out of my own paternity leave with an easy ability to take both of the kids as soon as I was done at work, or to handle sick days when they came up. That allowed my wife to transition back to her own job more quickly, and to commit with more confidence to new projects. We are both still as overwhelmed as most other parents of little kids, but at least we feel like we’re muddling through it together."

Hasnain says:

This was such an interesting trip down memory lane, going into society and automotives.

"So, the electric was a perfectly viable automobile for city traffic, superior to the gas car in many ways. Yet it provided neither the thrill and danger that rescued Vanderbilt from his ennui nor the romance of the open road and escapism of the bicycle. A 1902 report on “The Problem of the Automobile” in Electrical World and Engineer pointed out that the EV would never afford the freedom of the bicycle or gasoline car. Even if charging points or battery-swapping stations were available in the hinterland, the writer concluded, “One does not wish to limit his country tour to lines of travel along which he can strike charging facilities . . . [one] wants to have a certain liberty of action which a journey fully prearranged cannot give.” Had the EV won out against the IC car in those early days, our patterns of life would now be entirely different. Indeed, had this period of random technological mutation selected for the electric, the social history of America would be unrecognizable. The EV struggles in the marketplace today because it is a pigeon being asked to swim like a goldfish. We live in the world the IC automobile made. That world is not conducive to mass transit or even walking. It is little wonder that the EV, too, struggles to compete on the IC’s terms."

Hasnain says:

Don't know how to feel about this, given this is the first I'm hearing about it and this is from the point of view by a paper (presumably) slanted against the college.

Per a reliable legal commenter on HN, though, the data is scary:

"
A bit more factual context:
1. The student "protests" erupted the day after the 2016 election results came in, with a corresponding politically inflammatory element at work in the background.

2. The underlying incident involved an underaged black student who attempted to buy a bottle of wine, was refused, and was then found to have 2 other bottles under his coat as he walked out. When the owner's son chased him out, an altercation ensued and, as police arrived, they found the owner's son on the ground being hit and kicked by three persons, including 2 female friends of the shoplifter.

3. I use shoplifter, instead of "alleged shoplifter," because a guilty plea was entered admitting to the crime and also acknowledging that racial profiling had nothing to do with the incident.

4. Protests immediately erupted and were so volatile that the local police chief said he felt he had to call in outside help from a riot squad.

5. The students who did the protests claimed that Gibson's bakery not only had engaged in racial profiling in the particular incident but also that it was a long-time racist presence in the local business community. (Gibson's had been founded in 1880 and was strictly a family owned business, with the business supporting 3 generations of the family at the time of the incident).

6. The Oberlin dean of students (Merideth Raimondo) appears to have joined in the protests directly, shouting through a bullhorn and handing out fliers calling Gibson's racist. She claimed she used the bullhorn for 1 minute only and only to tell the students to observe safety precautions. Multiple other witnesses at the trial claimed she did so for a half hour and that she was a direct participant in the events. The jury obviously did not believe her. Also, she denied that she had handed out any fliers, was contradicted by a local reporter who said she had handed one to him, called that reporter a liar, and (at trial, once under oath) later admitted that he was telling the truth that she had handed him a flier knowing him to be a reporter.

7. The college immediately joined in the affair by terminating its long-term contract with Gibson's. A couple of months later, it reinstated that contract. Then, when the Gibson family filed suit, it terminated the contract permanently.

8. The college took the position that the matter would be dropped if Gibson's dropped the shoplifting charge and if it committed in the future to bring all incidents involving students directly to the college before it got the police involved. Gibson's refused to comply with this condition.

9. Gibson's in turn offered to forego any and all legal claims if the college sent out a mass communication stating that Gibson's had not engaged in racist activity and had no history of being racist. The college declined to do this.

10. Gibson's took a huge financial hit as a result of all this, barely managing to stay in business. It had to lay off all of its 12 employees and the family owners continued to operate the business without salary for 2 years.

11. Gibson's sued the college and its dean of students alleging libel, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and interference with business relations.

12. Throughout the trial, the college took the position that it had done nothing wrong, was only protecting the students' right to free speech, and had no responsibility for what happened. It also took the position that Gibson's was worth no more than $35,000 in total value as a business and that such amount should be the maximum awarded in any damages award.

13. The jury award $11.2 million in compensatory damages, $33 million in punitive damages, and also said that Oberlin had to pay Gibson's attorneys' fees. Under state law, there is a 2x cap on punitive damages (2x times the amount of compensatory damages awarded) and thus the punitive award will be set at $22 million. The judge is still determining the attorneys' fees question. All in all, though, the jury basically slammed Oberlin to the max and also awarded major damages against the dean of students.

14. Oberlin sent a mass email to its alumni association essentially saying that the jury disregarded the clear evidence showing it had done nothing wrong and vowing to fight this through appeal. It also formally announced that it will be filing an appeal.

15. Oberlin has had a long-time "townie" vs. "gownie" culture but this far transcends the small tensions that have historically existed.

William Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection has been on this case in great depth from inception, believing it is a case of major significance concerning college activism run amok. Here is a link to his reporting on the original verdict that contains a ton of links to the prior coverage: https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/06/verdict-jury-awards-gi...

The article here is by Jonathan Turley, a distinguished liberal law scholar, who is pretty critical of Oberlin's handling of the case, as I think most people are."

Hasnain says:

Interesting language comparison, which goes into a small (but not tiny) project independently developed by various teams and contrasts both the size of the resulting code, and in some cases, the quality / expressiveness of the languages.

While I'm generally not a fan of lines of code being used as a metric for discussion, in this case the author justifies the choice decently.

"I think my overall takeaway is that design decisions make a much larger difference than the language, but the language matters insofar as it gives you the tools to implement different designs."