This made me put "sign up on gun.io" on my to-do list. Very cool talk, very sympathetic guy (+1 for rapid fire info,+10 for making a stand for hacker aesthetics and fun in hacking)
> Gov't is already so cheap that we (US) have fluoride in our water, that was planned to be cheap dental care =(.
To understand you correctly, do you think the fluoride is a bad thing?
IIRC fluoridated water is amongst the best bang for the buck you can do for healthy teeth, with no downside that I'm aware of (?)
I was under the impression that no one has ever shown that drinking fluoride does much for your teeth: it doesn't have a systemic effect; if you soak your teeth in concentrated fluoride that helps (though we might be overdoing it now in the US for children: tons of cases of teeth with floirinosis; I have some friends who clearly have this problem... but for adults it is great), but the momentary contact of the extremely small concentration of flouride in drinking water can only do harm as it ends up in other parts of your body... and we also know it does harm, the only question is whether there is enough in your water for the harm to be noticeable.
We need to unify this with actually hitting deadlines/making it economically viable, at least until basic income is a working model.
Maybe tie it so that every stage has a payout (20% ln start, 80% on finish or sth like it). First stage ist planning the project, in two stages: first has a fixed compensation based on headcount/"salary". This stage roughly estimates the scope and sets the upper and lower limit of budget. Based on this budget, the second stage does detailed planning, setting out as many sub stages as possible. This second planning stage is added on top of those stages, the total budget is divided between all stages and the first payout is done.
Like this, good planning is rewarded (teams with more stages get more frequent payouts) and there is still some pressure to deliver (payout) but even more to do good work (every stage depends on the previous ones to be doable quickly)
This concept implies that it's possible to discover all possible scope before starting a project, which is almost always not the case on any project of relevant scale. This is waterfall.
The notion of "you'll get the rest of the money when the project is done" is toxic and dangerous, and implies that you can know what done means before you even start, and it's an objective and finite finish line you are approaching.
The reality is that you should be investing capital into resources over time to build towards a goal, and at regular intervals you should ask the question "are we done yet?". The answer should be based on what you have, not what's left in your backlog. Otherwise you'll descend into a groundhog day loop of checking boxes and completing tasks you came up with months ago without evaluating if what you already have built is good enough.
> This concept implies that it's possible to discover all possible scope before starting a project, which is almost always not the case on any project of relevant scale. This is waterfall.
Difference would be that the team defines their own scope. But I see your point
> The notion of "you'll get the rest of the money when the project is done" is toxic and dangerous, and implies that you can know what done means before you even start, and it's an objective and finite finish line you are approaching.
In modern lean software product development with continuous delivery there is no longer a "project" as such with a defined finish. The team just pulls features from the backlog in a never-ending stream (perhaps with a planning cadence layered on top) until the product reaches the end of its lifecycle and the business cuts off program funding.
> ... which is, of course, silly. And the author should know that.
This is not sufficient to explain to people why there are no rich conspirators hiding wealth. Mind you, I mostly agree with you. But I personally feel we need to have as simple as possible, verifiable, non debated arguments before we are allowed to think of things as silly.
> ... which is, of course, silly. And the author should know that, since I assume he is aware of $clear_refutation
Otherwise we either delude yourselves or dismiss others
You can use the Barcode to tie things together... smart pantries and stock monitoring depends on standardised(ideally free) access to identifiers for the goods
This sentiment is so bizarre from a European perspective. So the only thing that stops people from getting an education willy nilly is student debt? Or American engineers are all better in some respects than German engineers because of their debt?
What I (as a fellow European who considers the American student loan craze equally bizarre) read into the "struggle" part of nightski's post is that people approach a given education opportunity very differently knowing that it is costing them (or, probably even stronger in most cases: their parents) a lot of money, vs. knowing that it is free. I sure hope that I would have crunched harder during that time knowing that it was a crazy expensive bet and not just the opportunity cost of not entering the workforce early.
What I am not so sure is wether that hard crunch would have actually been better. I suspect that without the more freewheeling approach of European universities, I would have gone even deeper into the pointlessness of learning for the grade instead of learning for the education.
Generally speaking, my impression is that many people wildly overestimate the per-head cost of low intensity university education. Without artificially inflated budgets (driven by the misuse of tuition height as an indicator of academic quality), a few lecture halls, some professors and the usual lower echelons of academia who are basically donating their time for peanuts and the chance to occasionally publish seems to be an absolute bargain compared to other programmes designed for keeping people off the streets.
The reality is that you can get a really good college education for rather cheap in the U.S. if you are smart about it. I could of gone to a local state college for 1/10th the tuition of a private school and received an education at a very similar level.
I just feel that a free for all education system (ala Bernie Sanders) would be detrimental. Having things be somewhat exclusive and require some amount of effort is not necessarily a bad thing. Germany itself imposes exams for example (although I don't know how difficult they actually are personally).
Germany doesn't impose any exams at all. The only limiting factor is that you qualify for university and maybe your grade, if the number of applicants requires it.
There are no exams that need to be passed, no essays need to be written or anything of the sort.
Depending on the course/university there's limited space, of course. The problem is when this "exclusivity" that you mention is purely based on who can pay, that is what's detrimental.
I'm really not sure why you're getting downvotes. If I could go back and change my education path, I'd absolutely go the community college route for two years then complete my education at state college.
Having things be somewhat exclusive and require some amount of effort is not necessarily a bad thing.
Getting into your first choice program at your first choice university often requires a lot of effort, and the people who graduate from those programs are often part of a somewhat exclusive group. It's just that the effort required is entirely on your academic and intellectual qualifications rather than financial and persona connections.
I grew up with television, books, audio stories=>constant stimulation. I brought books to class to read when it got boring...some teachers let me get away with it(guess who were my favourites).I still crave it and am only slowly learning to relax nowadays. It actually makes interaction with non "hyperstimulated" people hard, because I either steamroll them, interrogate them (because I am interested and give them my full, hungry attention) or zone out because nothing is happening. "Vibing" and hanging out is not easy for me.
I always blamed it on being minimally autistic(not diagnosed and don't want to be insensitive, but some non neuronormative things are there i think)
I had quite a similar experience, and i think many HN users resonate with this comment as well. I found physical exercise to be the most effective tool to alleviate this problem.
About a year ago, i started swimming 3-4 times a week, and it definitely helped me maintain a less hyperstimulated baseline. Although i have no resources to back it up, i think it is somehow related to increased production of dopamine and the psychological effects of exercise (patience, self control, discipline).
> It is not unthinkable that the NSA has faked the moon landing and pictures of earth with photoshop / film equipment. You havent been above earth, so how do you know? I think you should be less arrogant at the prospect of somebody having a different opinion than you.
No. Their ignorance is not as important as my knowledge. I didn't go to space, but I can see ships going beyond the horizon and I did do the experiment of two sticks in the ground as a teenager
