Troubleshooting using Strace (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hokstad.com/5-simple-ways-to-troubleshoot-using-strace.html

<comment><AUTHOR> In trying to work out why a PHP command line script was hanging, I remembered about the strace command and found this article to be a good refresher.

Hope it helps someone else :)</comment>


Ask HN: What Podcasts would you recommend for the college students? - <AUTHOR> What kind of Podcasts would you recommend for the college students who are interested in startups/business? <comment><USER2> I highly recommend Indie Hackers podcast:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would second the indiehackers podcast. Another great one is The Startup Chat by Steli and Hiten.

</comment><comment><USER4> Y combinator podcast A16Z podcast Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman

</comment><comment><USER5> Acquired. It's about acquisitions and IPOs.</comment>


Google Is Target of European Backlash on U.S. Tech Dominance - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/technology/google-is-target-of-european-backlash-on-us-tech-dominance.html

<comment><USER2> > "We are afraid of Google," wrote Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of Axel > Springer

By quoting him the article has directly made itself extremely suspect, since the publishing house Springer owns the biggest and worst fact- and politics- mangling tabloid in germany, Bild.

<comment><USER3> I don't know anything about Bild, and only know Springer as the publisher of expensive low-print-run sometimes-poorly-formatted academic books. But isn't this like saying that the Wall Street Journal isn't credible because the same company also publishes the New York Post?

<comment><USER2> No, it's like saying the Wall Street Journal would be suspect if the same company publishes FOX News, or the Daily Mail. Publications that openly lie, distort and abuse; on a massive scale; to serve their own political slant.

Addendum: To clarify how terrible Bild is, consider this website: [http://www.bildblog.de/](http://www.bildblog.de/) It is a blog dedicated to pointing out factual mistakes in the Bild publication. They have been running since 2004.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if this is deliberate or not, but until 2013, the Wall Street Journal and FOX News were owned by the same company..

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation)

<comment><USER2> I was not aware of that, but it leads me to ask a question:

I have seen first-hand that the thinking of Bild extends to other companies owned by Springer, companies that have nothing to do with what Bild does, like the price comparison portal [http://idealo.de](http://idealo.de) I have seen this in person when i attended job interviews for programming positions at those companies. That is my reason to not give anything or anyone connected to Bild, directly or indirectly, any iota of trust in their honesty.

So, what is your reason for giving WSJ any trust?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Google competitors say: google is bad"

<comment><USER6> It's ridiculous to label Google a monopoly. People have to go out of their way to type in Googles URL, and anyone can type in something different. Yandex and baidu are valid non-US competitors.

Quality is the reason why people go back to Google. Compare this to the monopolistic practices of Mircosoft; who still viciously fend competitors from installing their software on OEM devices, amongst other horrible business practices. You could also label Apple or Oracle but in comparison they're not that bad.

It boils down to the fact that dodgy tax breaks are good, unless you're not getting a slice of the pie.

<comment><USER7> Google is the default search engine in Safari, Chrome, Firefox on both mobile and web. Nobody is going out of their way to look for or type Google.com.

And not sure why on earth you are bringing up Yandex or Baidu which are both country specific engines with very strong ties to their respective governments.

<comment><USER8> I rebut your naked assertion with anecdata. Once a retailer offered to look up something on her computer for me. She opened up internet explorer, the default browser on her operating system. It loaded Bing. Then she typed "Google" into Bing. Then she clicked the first result. Then she typed her question into Google.

<comment><USER9> Saw this on High School Students too.

The default search engine was Yahoo. They search for "Google", click on the link and search from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, we hate them for their freedom.

Oh, wait, we're trying to protect our freedom. US tech companies are on a rampage attempting to destroy civil rights, consumer rights and labor rights in Europe. Often openly breaking laws that aren't outdated and in need of "disruption", but very much explicitly exist to prevent what these companies are trying to do.

This insanity has got to end at some point. Imagine if a foreign companies started liquor stores across the US that sold alcohol to under 21 year olds, flaunting US law, claiming to be innovative and disruptive, and accusing the US of just trying to protect it's internal market.

We've been pretty fucking tolerant of this shit so far, acknowledging that some things may be up for debate. Regulators have mostly limited themselves to diplomatically urging companies to adjust their practices.

But it's getting ridiculous. Especially Uber has demonstrated that US companies have absolutely no scruples anymore about launching businesses that openly and deliberately break local laws. This isn't business, it's organized crime.

<comment><USER11> > Imagine if a foreign companies started liquor stores across the US that sold > alcohol to under 21 year olds, flaunting US law, claiming to be innovative > and disruptive, and accusing the US of just trying to protect it's internal > market.

We have literally discussed this idea at work last week. Air France should park their Airbuses in some airport and sell wine there to 18-year-olds during their prom nights since the laws of France are in effect aboard a ship.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to contact John Carmack - <AUTHOR> It has always been my dream to develop video games. But I don't know how to get started now, given my current career and the state of the industry.
I'd like to try to get opinions from people in the industry. I've always looked up to John Carmack.
I'm really interested in Amazon Lumberyard.
Does anyone have any suggestions to get involved with game development? Contact John Carmack? <comment><USER2> Hi,

What do you feel is stopping you from becoming a game developer? And how do you think John Carmack will change that for you? I don't think they can change anything for you, you have to change it for you.

If you really want to build video games, then build them. Try things, play with Lumberyard, play with Unity, play with Unreal, find what you like. Find what part of Game Development interests you, learn more.

Then from there it's finding a job, depending on your current career you'll probably take a pay cut, game development is notoriously underpaid.

I'm currently a developer at a decent sized game studio / publisher. I sort of just happened upon it, I was previously a web developer, I decided to apply for a job here, and now over a year later I can say it's something I really enjoy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. It feels like making that move would uproot my life. It's scary.

I wish I had a collaborator or someone I should bounce ideas off of.

My background is in advanced mathematics and I've gravitated towards data science and engineering. Would love to be a part of the game development process, even if not developing directly.

If I were to use my skill set in game development it would probably be in MMO games, or something with lots of active users interacting.

I have been following the handmade quake blog. I like it, just don't have enough time to really do anything meaningful.

Advice?

<comment><USER2> Yeah it can be a problem fitting it in, but if it's really what you want to do then you somehow have to manage it.

Engineering comes in lots of forms, "frontend" working with the clients, 3d models, etc. "backend" handling events and networking. And much more in between, if that's what interests you.

With a background in maths and data science, and knowledge of engineering? There are a lot of areas in Game Development where you could fit in. One that I might suggest is in "Game Design"? By this I mean a person who "thinks up" features (and/or whole games), does the math to calculate values of x and y, and the like. To figure out ways it could be exploited, and to circumvent them.

Using your data science knowledge to find out what parts of the game are used and where it could use further development.

Typically at our company we get given a game design document from the game designer, this can contain anything from a basic overview of how things function, to projections, maximum possible outcomes (think for example, the maximum amount of gold a player could gain from this scenario) etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds really interesting to me. What size is your company? Would it make sense to work at a large company and get immersed? Do some mobile development? Design Mario maker levels?

I've done basic game development before (built centipede). Really like the design considerations involved in VR. Would love to start playing with that.

<comment><USER3> Large mobile games do a large amount of straight-up data science. They analyse the behavior of millions of users every day. If you have data science skills already and just want to be in the game industry somehow, mobile game analytics would be an area to research.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/CasualConnect/search?query=anal...](https://www.youtube.com/user/CasualConnect/search?query=analytics)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's Julie Zhuo on Leaping from Individual Contributor to Force Multiplier - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gitprime.com/individual-contributor-to-manager-julie-zhuo/ <comment><USER2> This is a good read and I'm a fan of Julie's thoughts and her recent book. However, at least for smaller teams (<50 engineers), I don't agree with "Effective managers are typically not involved in the details of the team's technical work." Instead, I'm a big fan of being able to "lead from the trenches" when necessary. Giving value-added comments in pull requests or design reviews can be a great way to "power-level" your team. Sure you don't have to be the one coding, but its good to know the technical reasons driving decisions. Maybe we don't need a fancy event-bus for communication between these two services in this case. For smaller teams, I'd prefer "Eyes-on, hands-off" management--but it would be hard to be eyes on if you are not involved, at least as an observer, in the details of the team's technical work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Saved you a click:

– Being a manager is so much more than our conceptions of what managers do.

– The three most actionable levers for managers to pull are people, process, and purpose.

– Authentic, trusting relationships make everything else tick.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Part of managing a team is understanding that you have to give power away; you have to allow and enable your team to make decisions."

Most important lesson for many new managers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Such a great read — I'm making this transition currently and found this, along with Julie's book to be immensely helpful.</comment>


Automated web testing is hard - <AUTHOR> http://arrgyle.com/blog/automated-web-testing-is-hard/

<comment><USER2> Woohoo!</comment>


Selective Empathy Can Chip Away at Civil Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53476/how-selective-empathy-can-chip-away-at-civil-society <comment><USER2> What about the hypothesis that focusing on empathy is the problem, rather than its application the cure?

Gloomy as it is to say, technological superiority has been very comfortable but doesn't offer any new way of tackling the fact that humans are basically the same as they have been for the last millennium; large groups of people who simply are not going to agree with each other.

What is important is maintaining the institutions that have been wildly successful in mediating conflict between diverse groups, and that all the different tribes of a society make an effort to accept that institutions are more fair and reasonable than the alternatives.

Empathy does not resolve genuine disagreements. If it solves a problem, the problem was one of perception rather than reality.

<comment><USER3> And we should all pretend that the internet resolves conflicts at any level? I think the widescale lack of communicating without empathizing pheromones is quite obviously making a shitstorm of the whole wide world. But keep culting with your bad self.

<comment><USER4> > I think the widescale lack of communicating without empathizing pheromones > is quite obviously making a shitstorm of the whole wide world.

I rather believe that deep empathy for your own groups is the cause of many shitstorms. To quote from the article:

"For example, we often think of terrorists as shockingly blind to the suffering of innocents. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an "excess of empathy. They feel the suffering of their people.""

<comment><USER3> But the inability to infringe on the rights of others is not itself an infringement of any actual right. That is an impossible lesson to be learned by us here in the west.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> By 2009, on all the standard measures, Konrath found, young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent!

I apologise in advance to folks in the humanities for my skepticism, but when you're quantifying something like "empathy" which is not well defined and canot be measured directly, then a quantitative difference on its own doesn't mean much. That 40% shift may be because the questionnaire itself changed over time, or because it didn't change enough with the times, or any other factor that is has nothing to do with the actual "empathy" of the subjects.

Edit: I was once given a personality test by a psychologist [for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, like]. One of the questions was along the lines of "a holy man can heal a patient by laying on hands: true or false?". At the time, I had no idea what that even meant. "Laying on hands"? What, like a D&D Paladin? Years later I learned that some evangelical sects in the US practice this as some kind of prayer or ritual. The personality test I took was most likely drafted originally in the US and there were many more questions that I found very confusing, like that one. So, if I had no idea what many of the questions meant, what exactly was that questionnaire supposed to be measuring? Yet I believe it was some standardised psychological test given to people around the globe.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again [citation needed]. I'm afraid long-term empathy for the sake of Other can't work. It only seems to work when people still remember major disasters and wars. It's inevitable these fade away, isn't it? (except for very, very long term, when evolution and/or genetic engineering might change this)

In my country anti-Muslim sentiment is strong, made stronger by the government and its alliance with the church. When I see people get carried away, I often recommend them to learn more about Muslims to "know your enemy better". It's a trick and I think we need further studies to see if it's more likely to backfire (people hit another group they perceive as enemy much harder because they now know their weaknesses) or work towards peace and cooperation.

(I'm not a fan of any religion myself, as for Islam my main beef is it doesn't distinguish between the religion and the secular state. It can therefore be called a form of totalitarianism)

<comment><USER7> > Tribal instincts are super strong, that's been proven over and over again

Tribal instincts aren't as strong as you think. Every civil and egalitarian right that people have gained since the enlightenment are the result of overcoming tribal instincts. The definition of a "tribe" is more often than not mostly a social construct. If society can set it up, it can tear it down.

<comment><USER8> The _definition_ of tribes is a social construct. The _existence_ of tribes is not.

Reformers who seek to abolish tribalism usually find that they've simply redrawn the boundary lines and replaced one set of tribes with another. The dogmatism of the Church gets replaced by the patriotism of the State. Racism gets replaced by classism. Discrimination on appearance gets replaced by discrimination on education.

Sometimes just this redefinition of groups is progress: I'd argue that group boundaries based upon choices or values are more useful than group boundaries based on origins or genetics. But the utopian vision of "and the world will be as one" is naive, and ignores basically all recorded history.

<comment><USER9> > _Reformers who seek to abolish tribalism usually find that they 've simply > redrawn the boundary lines and replaced one set of tribes with another._

I completely agree with this. It seems as though that many(all?) people have some group that's the Other and it's acceptable to attack them in various ways. For example, it used to be socially acceptable to attack nerds, but it isn't anymore, however, people have simply picked new groups that are acceptable targets that are more specific, such as anti-PC people. What seems to have improved though, is that we seem to condone extreme measures less and less. Nerds used to be physically bullied, but that seems to be less acceptable nowadays.

While I think that the ideas of inclusiveness aren't going to work, because there's always going to be some Other that's acceptable to be demonized (eg incels right now) by the in-group, I hope that the demonization becomes less and less extreme over time.

<comment><USER6> Around here there are tons of image memes about vegans and anti-vaxers. On websites that are mostly associated with the more liberal side. Apparently not. I guess it's just a desire to unite by having a common enemy or at least a target for ridicule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would argue that failure to presume good faith does more to harm civil society than a lack of empathy. Perhaps presumption of good faith is a form of empathy - but I don't need to empathize with someones point of view to presume they have their own very good reasons, and are trying to advance the argument fairly.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a call for what used to be called enlightened self interest-- the knowledge that "there but for the grace of God go I, or any man" can also be read as a call for a less punishing, more compassionate way of life.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems like the type of empathy taught in the 1970s had a very specific purpose: prevent the world they knew from going up in flames through nuclear war.

And the type of tribal empathy people show together has the same purpose: prevent _their_ world (in the form of values, customs, traditions, and other things they hold sacred) from going up in flames through inaction and the erosion of others not holding those believes.

It makes me wonder how much empathy is coupled with fear. I've read that the post-WW2 unionized capitalism, the Marshall plan, all of the egalitarian civil society built up in the 50s and beyond was supported by the capitalist elite because just about everything was viewed as superior to the devastation of WW2. People were willing to sacrifice some of their personal wealth because the alternative was losing all of it, and oftentimes their lives as well.

Memories of war have faded from most of the developed world. Perhaps it'll take a refresher before people remember why all of those institutions that preserve social stability were necessary in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER12> Maybe Civil Society's empathy was exploited a bit too much, a bit too brazenly. If that's the reason, insisting the show must go on won't get you much empathy.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure about the statement that people have less empathy these days. I'm also skeptical when people say this or that group has low empathy.

Rather I think all humans have a store of active empathy which they can spend or allocate in different ways. most common is empathy to family and close friends and then to the neighborhood. Active empathy is where empathising does something.

That some groups of people seem to show lack of empathy could be a sign that the observer should empathize more with that group to locate where and how their active empathy is.

Empathy is neutral too. The worst "monsters" of nazi regimes were often fuelled by empathy.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I show you a kindness, will you reciprocate, do nothing or try to extract more?

<comment><USER15> If you give a person kindness and they are not able to reciprocate, is it selfish of you to expect such a thing?

What if a person needs kindness more than once? A broken arm or leg, for example? Is a single kindness enough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Almost 10,000 years of civilization and we're still trying to figure ourselves out.

Why is it so hard to codify "Don't be a dick"?

Because then what do you do about someone who is being a dick?

But what if they just were being a dick to someone who was being a dick?!

Who decides what counts as being a dick? What if they are dicks?

</comment><comment><USER17> One other possible dotcom connection, to the alleged decline in empathy...

Before the initial IPO gold rush, there seemed to be relatively more thoughtfulness and altruisim among CS people, about futures of this technology.

Then the norm became CS students (and sometimes professors) talking like MBA students (who, previously, were very different, and complementary). Talk of futures became simplistic, self-focused, and self-promoting, and often seemed disingenuous.

If we look at the way social media works today, one interpretation is that some dotcom founders have remade the world in their image.

</comment><comment><USER18> The article very much seems to reverse cause and effect. It cites numerous examples of selective empathy or lack of empathy coinciding with the erosion of civil society, but never clearly explains how that empathy element caused the issue. Instead, it seems much more likely that our hyper partisan devolution into more segments and tribal in groups and outgroups is itself that erosion in civil society and lack of empathy or such that is only reserved for your in group is a symptom, an effect rather than the cause.

</comment><comment><USER19> Random acts of kindness was a popular phrase when I was a teen. It always struck me as a motto for a psychopath, see someone in need, roll a die, and then act. I know that wasn't the intent. But it should have been, strive for more kindness. But it is ieasier for folks to act once and feel better than to change their median behavior. It seems like one time changes don't move the average, that behavior is conserved and we do worse things at other times but our ego masks any sort of self reflection.

</comment><comment><USER20> Or just not caring is a step up from hating. Having no opinions is better than having hate. What seems to have happened in America is that the blue collar working class has become disenfranchised both economically and before Trump politically because of business decisions made by the executive class and they want someone to blame.

Nobody forced America to move all of its blue collar jobs to China and the 3rd world, that was a political decision. Though you can make up reasons of why it's economically impossible now to compete with 3rd world manufacturing these are post-hoc arguments. Before the fact it was perfectly possible to continue to manufacture goods in the US by moving manufacturing to poorer states and innovating as much as possible to keep the costs down.

The wealthy in America have no empathy for the poor and the poor hate on the immigrants while not correctly assigning the blame for their economic woes.

Going forward with this whole basic income idea, it's likely the executive class will try to turn it into a work for food and housing program. Where you can get a basic income but you have to work for it at jobs the companies don't really need to employ for but are simply offering to increase employment in return for a basic income check. That will offset any amount that the companies pays for basic income taxes.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think teaching empathy in schools is problematic, because students will see through the bullshit of being graded by any teacher who is encouraging them to be empathetic and attribute that BS to empathy as a concept.

</comment><comment><USER22> >young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent!

Meaningless without context.

</comment><comment> muah-dihb This is actually a key mechanism for what's wrong, socially, with pretty much everything these days. It fits right in with the concept of The Long Tail.

We get to selectively apply our preferences now, for our unique musical tastes to hear any artist, and thus only those we like; an infinite choice of movies, and thus never the fixed schedules of centralized broadcasts; we can binge on an entire series in a weekend, commercial free, viewing dozens of hours, watching itall in one sitting; browse unlimited archives of text, applying search appliances to a corpus of text, to randomly access select passages ona whim, in ways notpossible with a conventional library of physical volumes.

So too, now, we apply this tendency to the company we keep. We ghost people. We provide votes to rank performance, and perform to score points in a virtualized hypertext context ( _it 's not really a community, it's just web pages still, despite all you may know about interaction, javascript, live video streams, chat, texts, telecommunications and telepresence, social media profiles, blogs, photo sharing... even AR and VR, and second life type avatars... it's all actually still pretty primitive with leaky abstractions everywhere, to be quite honest_). Dating random people has exploded in ways not possible with classified ad sections in print media, or even dating services that played match maker, decades ago.

So it's this impulsive, push-button tendency toward instant gratification, creeping in atthe edges of every facet society. The combinatorial explosion of random access awareness to everything we can expose ourselves to, limited only by the pace we set for ourselves. Far from sheltered in an informational sense, now armed with a much broader context of understanding, determined by whichever choices are fortuitous enough to present themselves to us in an endless chain of relational links or rungs we climb, as we negotiate a landscape of media consumption to learn and inform ourselves. With this awareness, we build the context to pass further judgement, stored in a buffer of medium-term memory, like driving at night, with the high beams on, following road signs, but only ever being led to fast food pit stops, big box stores and gas stations, and hotels. Never a home to reside in. No family to speak of, just strangers on the street, it seems.

So that buffer of medium-term memory dictates which peers receive love, who gets the ranking votes, why we buy junk food from this gas station, but not the other.

It's not going away.

It can't be simply destroyed and directly eliminated.

The void left behind will force something to regrow in its place.

This way of life is here to stay. It's going to harden and calcify in this disposition, unless we find a new way; a replacement to unseat it. To fix the broken parts. A way forward.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ammon Bundy is the example they use? Ammon Bundy supports migrants because he's a rancher and wants cheap labor on his ranch. He wants taxpayers to bear the cost so he can privately profit. That's why people are suspicious about "empathy," it's usually a way of manipulating your emotions so that other people can profit.

<comment><USER24> Wow, skeptical comments like this strongly reinforce the article's point. To question whether empathy is helpful and suspect the motives of those who are promoting it? Ammon Bundy is a fellow human being with struggles of his own - isn't that enough? It doesn't mean you have to agree with his choices (you can even call them morally wrong).

Empathy is merely a concern for fellow human beings, not emotional manipulation, despite the fact that some people attempt to manipulate others.

<comment><USER25> Empathy is a concern for _some_ fellow human beings, not all. I think you'll find that most people draw the lines of empathy around the identity group to which they belong and exclude from empathy those their group has identified as the "other."

Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness. It's not likely to extend to all human beings, unless we make contact with a hostile alien civilization.

<comment><USER24> > Empathy is a concern for some fellow human beings, not all.

> Empathy is an evolutionary tool for promoting group cohesiveness.

Empathy is an emotional attitude we can choose to extend to others. The fact that some people don't feel empathy towards everyone else doesn't mean that's morally right.

Evolution has nothing to do with our moral choices, and it's no excuse either. Extending kindness and dignity to others is far more effective at creating social good than hoping (or waiting until) aliens show up.

If you insist on a pure-naturalistic philosophy (which I do not, but hear me out), consider human society as an _emergent_ property with attributes of its own that are irreducible to natural (or evolutionary, or whatever) causes. As long as we _can_ choose the right as individuals, we carry a moral obligation to do so.

<comment><USER25> _Empathy is an emotional attitude we can choose to extend to others. The fact that some people don 't feel empathy towards everyone else doesn't mean that's morally right._

You're entering dangerous territory here. It's not a well-accepted fact that empathy is something you can choose to extend to everyone. On the contrary, there's ample evidence to suggest that we cannot extend it to everyone [1]. To then ascribe moral character to a function which is biologically limited is to run afoul of the ethical principle that _ought implies can_ [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ought_implies_can](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ought_implies_can)

<comment><USER24> Compassion fatigue notwithstanding, it _absolutely_ is possible to believe that all human beings are worthy of dignity, respect, and empathy.

To have decided ahead of time that everyone is worthy of empathy is most of the battle. Yes, we all have limited emotional resources. Millions of murdered people doesn't move us like it ought to. But love and empathy are like muscles — practicing them improves our capacity to do so.

It also helps to be emotionally healthy and in healthy, loving relationships. (And if I may say so, knowing and being loved/forgiven by God provides a wellspring of emotional life that nothing else can; I'm a Christian.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> After abusing the great majority of people in the US for the last 50 years both economically and socially, the elite are now surprised by the fact that some of the people have noticed.

<comment><USER27> If you're implying that abuse by elites is some new phenomenon within the last 50 years I completely disagree. In fact social inequality has probably been more favorable and egalitarian during the last 50 years than basically any other time in human history, and US history. There's always room for improvement, but it's worth remembering how far we've actually come.

<comment><USER28> I think a lot of the argument over whether "things are getting better" as Pinker et al. claim and "things are getting worse" as Piketty et al. claim is the time scale involved. (Nearly) everybody agrees that we are living in a better world than existed before WWII. The question is are we continuing to get more egalitarian or have things begun to regress.</comment></comment></comment>


The Day the Dinosaurs Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died <comment><USER4> The story of this guy is very inspiring. Unlike silicon valley engineers who tend to work hard in anticipation of big payouts, this guy has been working hard for years for his seemingly true passion of paleontology. We need more people like him in every field and especially in the silicon valley.

<comment><USER5> I think there are enough high quality open source or research projects to show that it's not only about the payouts in our field either...

One thing I find remarkable in this story: extensively working in the field (=literally/outside) -- opposed to following conventional "publish or perish" advice advancing his PhD in a more predictable manner...

</comment></comment><comment> D-Coder Shorter version of this article with much less of the personal history: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs- extinct...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction- asteroid.html).

</comment><comment><USER6> td;lr

Unknown of paleontologist spent several years digging up a site which records the K-T impact. Complete with whole fossils, raining debris from the meteor, the whole 9 yards. The site includes a variety of animals, including dinosaurs, who died on that day. We can even place the time of year from the plant fossils.

A well-known science journalist has been to the site and verifies that he isn't making it up.

The paleontologist's working assumption was that it was the result of a tsunami. However it appears instead to be the result of a seiche - <USER2> earthquake from the meteor sloshing water back and forth, destroying everything. So the entire site captures the last hour of the K-T zone. (Plus one random mammal that tunneled into the site some time later and died in its burrow.)

This is one of the most important paleontological sites ever found.

</comment><comment><USER7> Twitter thread talking about some holes in this story: [https://twitter.com/Laelaps/status/1111749308884279296](https://twitter.com/Laelaps/status/1111749308884279296)

<comment><USER8> I stopped reading and started skimming at the complaint that DePalma dresses like Indiana Jones. Good. It would behoove many professions to dress well again. I hope this age of slob ends soon.

And what's with the indigenous people non-sequitur? There were no people, indigenous or elsewhere, 60 million years ago.

<comment><USER9> _I stopped reading and started skimming at the complaint that DePalma dresses like Indiana Jones_

That's a shame, it's actually a good article. However, how would you dress if you had to spend hours a day on your belly under the desert sun? Perhaps it's just a practical way to dress and the journalist was just exercising some artistic license?

<comment><USER10> I think they are saying that they stopped reading the Twitter posts, not the article.

<comment><USER11> And the twitter thread is what is good and should be read.

The piece in the NewYorker makes it look like DePalma's work makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the extinction of the dinosaurs, while the twitter thread (and [https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte/status/1111669545285107714](https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte/status/1111669545285107714) cited therein) point out that the actual paper published about the discovery doesn't even mention dinosaours and that DePalma is just acting as "a pulp novel caricature of a paleontologist" following the established script of "Go to the press, get your fame, let the academics argue while the public goes 'Wowwww'". All the while violating the embargo on the paper.

<comment><USER12> If science by press release is bad, how is science by Twitter better?

<comment><USER7> Twitter is discussing things, not making a sensational PR claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does he have to do to earn his phd? It cannot be that every paleontologist has to make an incredible discovery that shines forever. My CS Phd was not like that. Why hasn't just a few of these things been enough for this fellow to get his PhD, if there is anything to it.

<comment><USER14> Write a thesis.

<comment><USER15> And that ain't for everyone.

<comment><USER13> But that's how you get your PhD in this world. A very very few people get one for meaningful papers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This smells slightly off. A bit too smooth, a bit too fortuitous, a bit too jackpot, a bit too good to be quite true.

If it _is_ what it claims to be, then hats off and wow, incredible find and a true milestone. But until until the whole process of papper and peers is well under way, I shall take the story with a wagonload of salt.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is also a brilliantly written article.

<comment><USER18> I should hope so, the author has multiple published novels. _Tyrannosaur Canyon_ is the one mentioned in passing in the intro.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Uh, hello? This is not "front page of HN for a day" important. This is one of the most important findings in paleontology ever. If even half of the claims made about this site are true, then its importance is on par with the Burgess Shale. We likely now know the season the dinosaurs went extinct (it's the Fall). This is like getting to drop a net in the ocean one day in the Cretacious and keeping whatever comes up, but has plant life as well. It's not really a stretch to think the sediment here could even give us insight into the physics of meteor impacts! But all I can find online about this is that some popular science author posted an angry rant about it on twitter.

I'm not a scientist or anything. I'm some guy who took an interest in dating the Cretacious-Paleogene (K-T or KPB or K-Pg, etc.) extinction event last year. My perspective is narrow and biased. But no one seems to be willing to comment on this, so I felt compelled to dig up some information and report. In short: this is real, and it's huge. Read the New Yorker article, and [1].

It's okay to take issue with the way these findings have been presented, but there's no reason to doubt the truth of the claims made in articles about this finding. DePalma is not a well-established scientist, but his collaboraters are respected and influential researchers. Walter Alvarez is probably the second most famous dinosaur researcher alive, having co-created the impact hypothesis in the first place. Jan Smit, while not as prominent in the public eye, is likely the world's leading expert on K-T dating. I have personally also been impressed with the work of Klaudia Kuiper, who has made significant progress over the last two decades in improving the accuracy of radioisotope dating—specifically 40Ar/39Ar, the current most precise method.

These people are not likely to fabricate a finding, much less one which would be instantly discovered when other scientists are allowed to access the site. Alvarez, in addition to already being famous, is 78 year old! Smit is 70 and retired, and shows no attention-seeking behavior as far as I can tell. It's nearly impossible to even find a word written about the man. It's also very unlikely that they would be mistaken about the nature of the find. If conference abstracts are to be believed, then multiple independent lines of evidence point very precisely to this event being associated with the Chicxulub impact. It's worth noting that [3] gives an Ar/Ar date of 66.03 mya for glass shards found at Tanis, which is exceedingly close to dates Kuiper (presumably using the same lab or labs) has found for zircons known to be from the K-T boundary.

People seem to be concerned about there being no actual dinosaurs in the site. Even if you believe fish are boring and only care about land fauna (I will admit to leaning that way myself), marine life is still hugely important for its ability to tell us about the environmental conditions at the time. Likewise for plants: don't you care at all about what the earth looked like as dinosaurs roamed? Listen: we have plenty of dinosaur bones. This site is actually much more valuable than typical beds of large animal skeletons because it preserves soft tissue and vegetable matter that we rarely ever encounter in this condition. And again, even if you are absolutely sure you only care about facts about dinosaurs themselves, more information about their surroundings is useful. Knowing about what a herbivorous dinosaur ate, with some detective work to find what adaptations this diet would require, is likely to tell us about this animal's behavior and posture as well.

That said, there are dinosaurs. The site contains "dinosaur tracks from two species, says Jan Smit" ([2]; also mentioned in scientific source [3]). The Berkeley press release [1] says Smit mentionsed the "buried body of a Triceratops and a duck-billed hadrosaur", although it doesn't go into detail about condition or say whether the hadrosaur is complete or fragmentary (the Triceratops is a "partial carcass"). And given that all the author's other claims seem to hold up, I am inclined to believe the New Yorker article when it says large feathers and an egg with embryo were found at Tanis.

The mammal burrow is discussed in [5]. That alone would be a huge find and given the authors I find it unbelievable for it to be a fabrication.

Popular press:

[1] [https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/03/29/66-million-year-old- dea...](https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/03/29/66-million-year-old-deathbed- linked-to-dinosaur-killing-meteor/)

[2] [http://bambinidisatana.us/2017/01/27/devastation- detectives-...](http://bambinidisatana.us/2017/01/27/devastation-detectives- try-solve-dinosaur-disappearance/)

GSA presentations:

[3] [https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper284267.htm...](https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper284267.html)

[4] [https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Paper305713.htm...](https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Paper305713.html)

[5] [https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Paper305627.htm...](https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Paper305627.html)

<comment><USER20> This sure looks like the real deal and I'm looking forward to the PNAS article that is coming out next week, "Prelude to extinction: a seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota". It is a bit disappointing that these press articles are coming out before people can read the science journal article. Don't see any pre-prints anywhere.

<comment><USER21> Here: [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116) "A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota", DePalma et al 2019

> The most immediate effects of the terminal-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact, > essential to understanding the global-scale environmental and biotic > collapses that mark the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, are poorly resolved > despite extensive previous work. Here, we help to resolve this by describing > a rapidly emplaced, high-energy onshore surge deposit from the terrestrial > Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich > impactite reveal that its emplacement coincided with the Chicxulub event. > Acipenseriform fish, densely packed in the deposit, contain ejecta spherules > in their gills and were buried by an inland-directed surge that inundated a > deeply incised river channel before accretion of the fine-grained impactite. > Although this deposit displays all of the physical characteristics of a > tsunami runup, the timing (<1 hour postimpact) is instead consistent with > the arrival of strong seismic waves from the magnitude Mw ∼10 to 11 > earthquake generated by the Chicxulub impact, identifying a seismically > coupled seiche inundation as the likely cause. Our findings present high- > resolution chronology of the immediate aftereffects of the Chicxulub impact > event in the Western Interior, and report an impact-triggered onshore mix of > marine and terrestrial sedimentation—potentially a significant advancement > for eventually resolving both the complex dynamics of debris ejection and > the full nature and extent of biotic disruptions that took place in the > first moments postimpact.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the link. This should be fun reading. Published April 1, 2019.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to see a video of the recreation of the event they describe if anyone has a link to it?

<comment><USER23> [http://folk.uio.no/galeng/Movies/Cx45e_rho_tev_S.gif](http://folk.uio.no/galeng/Movies/Cx45e_rho_tev_S.gif) (from [http://folk.uio.no/galeng/research.html](http://folk.uio.no/galeng/research.html))

<comment><USER24> When temperature is measured in electronvolt you know things are serious...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How did our ancestors survive such catastrophic conditions?

<comment><USER26> Our ancestors at the time were small shrew-like creatures. The extinction event occurred in several phases. The immediate impact directly devastated the local region and created a mega-tsunami that spread yet more destruction. It also kicked up a huge amount of debris which then re-entered Earth's atmosphere around the world over the course of the next roughly hour or so. This would have heated most of the atmosphere to the temperature of an oven, sparking massive wildfires and killing off most land animals. The ash and other crud injected into the stratosphere (such as sulfur dioxide) would have stuck around for several years and reduced the effective insolation at the Earth's surface substantially, causing massive die-off of plants and a contraction of primary productivity (biomass creation) across the globe (effectively a "great depression" in the food web).

Many aquatic animals would have been able to survive the initial effects but would have been put in quite a pinch by the reduction in food that set in after. As mentioned, large land animals on the surface would have been mostly wiped out pretty quick, many of the rest would have starved as the one two punch of massive fires and reduced sunlight (and possibly global cooling) would have produced. Small animals that lived or took refuge underground (or perhaps were aquatic or semi-aquatic) could have survived the initial effects in large numbers and though they would have diminished in population in the hard times afterward could have eked through.

Scrappy little omnivores and/or scavengers would have been well suited to ride the waves of chaotic changes following the mass extinction.

<comment><USER27> Basically, rats. Which is probably surprising to no one.

<comment><USER16> > _Finally, he showed me a photograph of a fossil jawbone; it belonged to the > mammal he'd found in the burrow. "This is the jaw of Dougie," he said. The > bone was big for a Cretaceous mammal—three inches long—and almost complete, > with a tooth_

7 cm jawbone. Some rat, that.

<comment><USER28> The mammal mentioned in the article was a marsupial, so not in our ancestral line. Marsupials have split from the eutherians (to which we belong) long before the C-T boundary. At C-T there were already early primates, which is our closer family.

A fascinating story about this is in Baxter's "Evolution" book which starts with a little primate at the CT boundary and traces the history of the family to modern humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> tl;dr's aside, this is a _fantastic_ article and should be read in it's entirety.

I must say, "formidable paleontologist" Jack Horner comes off as a royal a-hole:

 _" But, when I asked Horner about DePalma recently, he said at first that he didn't remember him: "In the community, we don't get to know students very well.""_

<comment><USER29> You get the feeling that Robert DePalma might be the Andrew Wiles of paleontology. It's kind of rare when you read something in plain sight - <USER3> the New Yorker - and you recognize it should be much, much bigger news than it is.

<comment><USER29> I'll stop here, but this is a bit of an avocation of mine, and this is unthinkably amazing. To think something like this existed... I almost think there has to be catch, because it's too good to be true.

 _" He planned to remove the entire burrow intact, in a block, and run it through a CT scanner back home, to see what it contained. "Any Cretaceous mammal burrow is incredibly rare," he said. "But this one is impossible—it's dug right through the KT boundary." Perhaps, he said, the mammal survived the impact and the flood, burrowed into the mud to escape the freezing darkness, then died. "It may have been born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleocene," he said. "And to think—sixty-six million years later, a stinky monkey is digging it up, trying to figure out what happened." He added, "If it's a new species, I'll name it after you.""_

and

 _" The block told the story of the impact in microcosm. "It was a very bad day," DePalma said. "Look at these two fish." He showed me where the sturgeon's scutes—the sharp, bony plates on its back—had been forced into the body of the paddlefish. One fish was impaled on the other. The mouth of the paddlefish was agape, and jammed into its gill rakers were microtektites—sucked in by the fish as it tried to breathe. DePalma said, "This fish was likely alive for some time after being caught in the wave, long enough to gasp frenzied mouthfuls of water in a vain attempt to survive.""_

<comment><USER30> That's the mind blowing thing about fossils. The chances of one forming are one in millions... but there have been so many living organisms on Earth that finding them turns out to be pretty trivial. One of my most mind blowing memories as a child involves tripping on a rock in my grandparents' yard, pulling it out, and revealing on its surface the perfect carbon imprint of some fern-like looking plant.

And then we have the one in a million chance of finding the one in a million site, which leads to what the article describes. Pretty awesome.

<comment><USER29> Ah, it's a bummer, but sounds like there is reason for skepticism: [https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte/status/1111669545285107714](https://twitter.com/SteveBrusatte/status/1111669545285107714)

<comment><USER31> That the first paper doesn't talk about dinosaurs is reason for skepticism? He didn't tell us everything in the first paper, therefore it's probably bullshit?

Please.

<comment><USER29> I didn't say that. But that link I provided was a working paleontologist, so I figured his skepticism was worth noting. I couldn't tell you if it's bullshit or not, as a non-expert in the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Last Day of the Dinosaurs, good CGI re-creation

[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10wog2](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10wog2)

My letter on a related topic

[https://www.scribd.com/document/374712301/20180227-David- L-G...](https://www.scribd.com/document/374712301/20180227-David-L-Goldfein- Letter-SC)

</comment><comment><USER33> Are there any KT exeperts that can comment on the article?

<comment><USER34> Yes, they are quoted on the article itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is one of the most fascinating things I've ever heard. Definitely listen to the whole thing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Amazing discovery. What pieces of the evolution puzzle and history of life on earth are still left to discover?

</comment><comment><USER37> While I do find this fascinating (if it holds up), there is so much prior evidence for the impact, and for its devastating consequences globally, that this is unlikely to change the course of paleontology.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. And here are reasons.

1\. It settles a question of whether the dinosaurs were already gone.

2\. It let's us know what time of year the impact was.

3\. We are literally seeing everything in that ecosystem. It is very, very rare to get a fossil record that shows us a whole ecosystem. (The best known example of mass fossils, tar pits, are very heavily biased towards scavengers. Mudslides will preserve a complete ecosystem, but usually not with the same quantity and quality as this one.)

4\. For species after species you have complete preservation. Including soft tissue, body shape, skin, and so on.

5\. He found tektites in amber. That is, we have pieces of the meteorite preserved in a substance that would preserve their chemical makeup. Once analyzed this will give us direct information about the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs that we could not have received any other way. For example we could learn whether it was a comet from the Oort cloud versus an asteroid from the inner solar system.

6\. The quality of preservation is such that we not only can identify dinosaur feathers, we can identify where on the body those specific feathers came from.

7\. The quality of soft tissue preservation is such that we can identify the diet that some of the animals ate.

8\. The fact that the ammonite shell was initially pink upon being excavated suggests that we may be able to learn about the color of some of these things. Evidence of color is very hard to come by.

If the story holds up, this site is important for a lot of reasons beyond adding to the evidence for a meteorite wiping out the dinosaurs. And if this is a partial list that is obvious now, I am sure that the list will get much, much longer.

<comment><USER37> These are all valid reasons for saying that this is an important site, but only 1, 2 and 5 can tell us something about the extinction event itself.

<comment><USER14> Most of the pressing paleontological questions are not about the extinction event itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First LED cinema screen in the U.S.A. officially opened - <AUTHOR> https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/how-new-led-cinema-screen-could-change-filmmaking-moviegoing-1104745 <comment><USER2> > which is 14 foot-lamberts (a measure of luminance in cinema). In comparison, > the LED screen has a peak brightness level around 300 nits (a measurement of > brightness)

in case anyone is wondering:

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300+nits%2F14+footlamb...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300+nits%2F14+footlambert)

more than 6 times the brightness per unit area

<comment><USER3> Nice. So now, in addition to being deaf after watching movies at the cinema, I can also be blind as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprised nobody is pointing out the possible labor savings. No more projectionists. One or two people will be able to remotely run 20,000 screens because it will be mostly automated. Once they fully automate the vending of tickets the only people needed will be those running the concession stand.

<comment><USER5> That's already done. It's called multiplex. The projectionist controlls the 6-35 digital screens in his theatre complex, and the money comes from the foodstand. Since the studios demand too high fees for the movies, theatres have to stay profitable by selling food and drinks. Quality of the movies and the projections sink, but interestingly the quality of the food is rising.

<comment><USER6> > quality of the food is rising.

unless you're buying some gold class dining ticket (which tends to cost upwards of 100 dollars), the food (or snacks) is terribly overpriced and quality isn't getting better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article seems to pitch LED screens as something to upcharge for, which makes me think there isn't really any/enough cost savings for the theater from a "no projection booth" standpoint, but that does surprise me a little. Obviously the costs of paying a person to run the booth isn't high, but perhaps the lower likelihood of something going wrong has its benefits as well.

I could see a marketing push for the, "New LED Screen!" but if cinemagoers aren't generally able to notice a substantial difference (or if it's a worse experience, even), then I don't really think people will opt in. After all, even the 3d push has basically died, and that's a substantially different experience.

<comment><USER8> Regarding 3D - a lot of people have slightly (or completely, for example me) different eyes. For these people, 3D movies cause headache and it's not a pleasant experience overall - the last time I visited a 3D cinema, I wasn't even able to look at the projection without my eyes hurting, thankfully it was just a short educational sketch.

<comment><USER9> What gives me a headache is not being able to control the focus. Normally you can choose to focus on something close or far away. With a 3D screen, the focal point is always the same. Something that's not in focus on the screen can't be brought into focus.

The problem is the same for non-3D screens, but they don't bother me(probably because I've been looking at 2D screens my entire life). The added 3D effect is what seems to trigger it for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> wont LED screens cause more stress on the eyes than a projection? I hate 3D movies, my eyes feel very tired from the constant refocusing. I think LED screens at this size and in a dark environment would have the same effect.

<comment><USER11> No, why would they?

<comment><USER9> Most LEDs have their brightness controlled via PWM, which essentially switches the LED on and off many thousand times per second.

You can see this in most LED car taillights if you move your eyes while paying attention to the light -- it will create a 'strobe' effect, a trail of images along the path that it traveled in your field of view.

Some people are sensitive to this flicker. A similar thing happens with most DLP projectors.

<comment><USER12> Most people could barely perceive the flicker of 60Hz CRT televisions. The kHz refresh of LEDs is not perceptible.

<comment><USER9> There are plenty of people[1] that can perceive whatever PWM frequency is typically used in vehicle LED taillights. Like a few the people in the linked forum, the switching in the vertical Cadillac tail lights are particularly visible to me.

I agree that when viewed directly, it's quite unlikely anyone can perceive a switching frequency in the thousands of hertz. But if you sit in one of the closer seats, your eyes will be darting back and forth across the screen, which would be enough for that strobe effect to bother me if the frequency is anywhere near what is used in the taillights.

[1] [https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=451...](https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=45126.0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> why would I want to go watch a TV screen at the cinema?

<comment><USER14> Because it's still a huge screen with high quality audio?

Why would you care how the image gets on the screen of it ends up looking better?

<comment> matt-attack On the contrary, the audio is horrible (Yes, I've heard it). Movie screens are perforated to permit "screen speakers" to be positioned directly behind the screen. LED screens do not allow such positioning. The center channel (i.e. where most dialog emanates) is positioned above the top of the screen. This has the effect of disassociating the voice from the speaker and breaking the suspension of disbelief.

<comment><USER15> I doubt this will break the suspension of disbelief that easily. People have no problem listening to Movies on crappy stereo or mono on their laptop's display speakers or using crappy 3.5mm earplugs (sometimes with only one plug in the ears).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hopefully they won't sell too many of these before they can build Rec. 2100 screens with HDR and much larger color gamut. MicroLED tech would be nice, too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2100)</comment>


CURIOUS CASE OF HIRING FOR SEARCH RELEVANCE - <AUTHOR> http://shoaibsehgal.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/curious-case-of-hiring-for-search-relevance/ SEARCH RELEVANCE IS A KEY TO SEARCH BUT HOW SHOULD YOU HIRE. READ IN THIS BLOG:<p>http://shoaibsehgal.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/curious-case-of-hiring-for-search-relevance/ <comment><USER2> Is the following needing an edit?

"One needs few team members who understand how to build systems at scale, or have clear understanding how to build systems at scale."</comment>


Users pour forth MacBook trackpad woes - <AUTHOR> http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/11/03/macbook_glass_trackpad_woes/

<comment><USER2> I haven't seen any of the issues people are talking about on the new MacBooks, though I have seen an issue where if I'm resting my thumb on the bottom of the pad like I used to when there was a discrete button I can't do two finger scrolling.

<comment><USER3> I had serious issues with the trackpad for the first 1.5 weeks. I realized I was resting the full left hand side of the first bone in my thumb on the trackpad and flipping back and forth between shell and selecting - it was getting confused. Since then my experienced has improved significantly, although I'm still looking forward to the fix they're talking about releasing soon though.</comment></comment>


How the Glorification of Software Developers Compromises Tech Companies - <AUTHOR> https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/how-the-glorification-of-software-developers-compromises-tech-companies

<comment><USER2> My first job in tech was one where the founder of the company thought highly of the programmers because he knew he couldn't program, and thought little of the rest of us. This was good incentive to learn programming, but otherwise annoying. One of P.J. Plauger's "Programming on Purpose" books has a very good essay on the importance of tech support.

</comment><comment> kuni-toko-tachi Non-tech people are nurses (male or female), engineers (male or female) are the doctors. The problem in most companies are that the nurses tell the doctors what to do. That's completely backwards.

Non-tech people have no business managing technical people's time. They are grossly unqualified to do so. The only purpose of non-tech people in an engineering organization is to act in a service capacity, removing obstacles that prevent the engineers from working efficient.</comment>


Squiggle - <AUTHOR> http://squiggle-lang.org/ <comment><USER2> I kinda like this, but wish there was a download err something... Props to the creator!</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't there a distributed source control standard? - <AUTHOR> Recently BitBucket announced they are stopping support Mercurial -- https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket -- which has a lot of devs in a minor panic to get their repos converted in time.
But what if distributed source control relied on a standard set of protocols and contracts rather than a specific implementation? This would allow numerous implementations that all adhere to the same contracts and protocols and allow for some creative freedom -- and productivity enhancements -- in individual implementations.
Competition brings about improvement; in world where it's Git or nothing then the state of tooling stagnates. <comment><USER2> Like WebDAV? There are a few problems with standards. One is that there are so many of them, and another is that once set, they tend to impede progress or the adoption of better ways of doing things. Hg lost out to Git, and for the foreseeable future, git is probably going to hold sway. There was a similar era where, at least in corporate areas, ClearCase was the thing to use. Thank goodness those days are gone.

</comment><comment><USER3> The git protocol is the standard; feel free to build different tooling on it. [https://hg-git.github.io/](https://hg-git.github.io/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's all about the tooling now.</comment></comment>