Thermodynamics can only be invoked when we know enough about the systems involved to make effective decisions.
Our present knowledge of how food is turned into both used and stored energy is extremely rudimentary... there's a ton of chemical processes occurring, all with various different levels of efficiencies and failsafes.
Take two humans of identical weight. Now feed them exactly the same thing. I guarantee you will not have the same outcome for both.
We are not at a place in science where human bodies are like car engines. We don't know how fuel gets combusted. We don't even know how to tell if someone is a 4-cylinder or a V8.
So, given that the user manual is basically a blank page-- how can you just claim user error? That is a gross exaggeration that trivializes the plight of many.
Pretty much all research has shown that the best way to improve poverty is to give people money, and not some sort of good that you've decided is better (goats, chickens, cows, whatever).
Unfortunately, giving away money just doesn't sell. :(
I'm not sure that it's as cut and dried as you describe.
If I understand correctly, GiveDirectly is uncertain about the effectiveness of their programs outside of their current "pilot" countries.
[there are lots of factors: the poor in Kenya & Uganda are very poor - and the marginal dollar to them is very effective, replacing thatched roofs, etc; Kenya has good support for transferring money]
Besides, it's a good thing to experiment to see how effective different methods are. It seems naive to settle on one method and decide all other methods are "stupid," especially when contributing to one doesn't necessarily detract from the other [the Gates foundation has enough money to saturate any one charity].
It's always so surprising to me to see people unhappy about the good work others are doing.
IMO, The tech industry has a huge alcohol problem in general.
It's not uncommon for even largeish companies to have beer kegs and frequent happy hours.
Just recently we had a team event that revolved around alcohol, a mixology class. Although attendance wasn't mandatory, it wasn't exactly optional either. So there was a lot of awkwardness considering a number of people on our team were non-drinking muslims, 1 person was pregnant, and several others just don't drink.
This creates an exclusionary sort of culture, and as one of my coworkers said it "I don't really want to be forced to go to the bar with my middle aged male colleagues". If you think about it, it does seem a bit creepy.
Other industries have moved on from this sort of model. Sure, there still can be alcohol at events and the occasional BBQ with beer or happy hour, but they have strict policies about returning to work after consuming alcohol, and alcohol is not the main focus of the event.
I take full advantage of the beer keg at our office, but if it went away I certainly wouldn't be upset. I'd just do what I used to do, and go to the bar after work with coworkers who want to go.
What does "it wasn't exactly optional either" mean? For whatever it's worth, Mixology course sounds terrible even as someone who partakes in alcohol.
"Other industries have moved on from this sort of model"
Source? I've worked for a few corps outside of strict tech focus and that was not my experience.
What's the end-goal of this anyways? You can't moderate social interactions, so if your company stops doing alcohol-related events, your teams are almost certainly still going to go to happy hours. I get that this would be a problem if every corporate event solely revolved around getting rip-roaringly drunk, and that would be needlessly exclusionary, but I also doubt that's the reality outside of some really fringe cases. Although maybe that is how it really goes down, and I've just had a sheltered workplace experience
"It wasn't exactly optional" was that there was an implied request that everyone would attend. It went on everyone's calendars and was during work hours, not after.
I'm not arguing alcohol should be removed from office functions. I'm saying [a] they shouldn't be the focus and [b] maybe we don't need to have fridges of beer where it is acceptable to grab one and go back to your desk.
My wife's company (a nationwide outdoor retailer) does have alcohol occasionally at events, but those are semi-regular BBQs at the end of the day, and are absolutely optional. My friends work in healthcare where there is zero alcohol. Other friends work in the government, also zero alcohol. My mother works for a shipping company, also no alcohol on premises. In fact, outside of tech no-one I know has alcohol kept on premises.
I haven't eaten meat in 29 years. I don't get offended when I go to work events where meat is served or even offered as a centerpiece of the event like at a pig roast.
I don't work at vegan companies, or non-profits, their cultures aren't compatible with me. However, I wouldn't go around saying they have a "smug problem" that's their culture and their welcome to it, the moment I want to work at those cultures I'll either accept the conflict or do as the Romans do.
What is assholish is to insist that everyone else change what they enjoy just because you don't like it.
Generally when highlighting problems, you want them to change...
I mean who is like "Oh you have a drinking problem, just keep drinking, it's fine, I dunno why I even brought it up"
I've been around alcoholics, one night I bought a case of beer and had a couple beers while coding, then I got a talk from my girlfriend in AA about how drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism.
Startups don't have a drinking problem, alcoholics have a self-control problem.
Ha you're right, thankyou! In my defence, the first Google hit for OSX screenshot is this Apple page [0] that doesn't even mention that utility - and "screenshot" in Spotlight doesn't suggest Grab. It's in the "Other" folder of Launchpad which I don't think I've ever opened.
Especially if there are Creative Commons photos of the subject available, which you'd assume to be true for public spaces. Seems wasteful to put so much effort into writing up an article and then not fully dressing it.
Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco.
We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big).
As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts.
We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately.
Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind.
If you cancel on a guest as a host, Airbnb heavily penalizes your listings. They will be outranked by pretty much every other listing for at least a couple of months. (It happened to me and many other hosts I know.)
I imagine the ebook is the one both providing greater value, and having a harder time competing for production resources -- while paper may be overcapacity now.
Ah, food studies. The breeding ground of bad science.
I am not saying this is bad science, but a quick glance shows this to be survey data.
The problem with the data is that people who eat "healthy" probably care more about their health. Even if the food has a negative effect, they could have other tendencies (exercise) that outweigh any negatives.
Plus they probably eat more carefully, in general, drink less, etc.
So... correlation != causation yada yada
A better study would be to take unhealthy people and now introduce the fruits and veg and see what happens.
You might be correct, but I've seen a lot of smart people fall into this trap: "X is not proven to be true, there for X is false". The study might not prove any hard facts, but it doesn't mean the point of the study isn't spot on.
So by default your name and DNA are not visible to anyone.
You'd have to make your profile public in order for other people to see any information about you. All it shows in the relative finder is that there is a match. The person just follows the "contact" link and sends you a message. They don't really expire, so you can just sit on them until you feel like responding/granting access-- at which point they can then see your name.
At that point they can't see your DNA either-- you have to go through another process to grant them access to your DNA.
All in all it's a pretty good system.
I know many academics who spent a lot of time throughout their school career writing code to get their research done.
They looked at this as a necessary evil, and as such learned the bare amount minimum to get by. They are smart people and were able to make the code help them solve their research problem. But they are busy thinking about their research so usually their algorithms are fairly simple + straightforward (lots of nested loops and n^2 sort of things).
The main problem, in my experience, is that many of the research problems are actually fairly simple (algorithmically) and most research departments have access to fairly powerful computing facilities. Coupled, this means you can brute force a lot of solutions-- there is no real push for understanding of the algorithmic complexity.
As well, most academics are on a much MUCH longer timeline than your average business or startup. Did your algorithm break 1 month into processing your simulation? Fine, fix it and run it for another month. Or just take what you had and publish it anyways.
Just as academics look down upon the technical side of things, we are just as much to blame for idolizing the academics. Science (even in math and engineering) is a lot more 'sloppy' then we like to imagine. There are oodles of papers out there that are just downright incorrect-- and not on purpose!
(* My creds: I have participated in academia as both a student, researcher and software developer )
All true, but the issue isn't really that they could improve algorithmic complexity with more technical skills, it's that they could improve their overall productivity.
There's a huge resistance to using source control, so lots of time gets spent searching through deep folder structures and finding just which 'file1_v3 (4).doc' is the right one. Data gets lost due to simple mistakes.
They spent 20 minutes coding the Runge-Kutta algorithm every time they need to run a numerical simulation without realizing or caring that (a) they could spend 25 minutes to create a function that they could reuse or (b) that the function already exists.
In short, the issue isn't computing time, it's researcher time. But the idea of spending some time now to save time later is so foreign because of the focus on getting the publication out as quick as possible.
My experience in academic computer science has been the complete opposite.
In industry, what I've seen is that often engineers are scrambling to please managers or customers, with work divided among multiple people, so the code is usually poorly written and undocumented.
In academics, publications are of primary importance, so everything is documented. The longer timescale means there's more time to refine code that's designed for a single, focused problem. The limited scope of the programs used means code quality isn't an issue most of the time.
Also, in theoretical computer science at least, the focus is entirely on rigorous proofs and finding optimal algorithms.
While in industry, it's more "get practical things done quickly so we can sell it".
> While in industry, it's more "get practical things done quickly so we can sell it".
That's a pretty short sighted example of industry - I'm sure those examples are out there, but I don't think they're common (or the companies long lived).
Most places I've worked know that they'll have to maintain that code well into the future.
Not really so in academia (publish and forget) - which is why it's rare to see even basic measures taken for modularity and abstraction, e.g. the creation of types to represent entities in the problem domain. I think I've seen that done in Matlab, once.
Our present knowledge of how food is turned into both used and stored energy is extremely rudimentary... there's a ton of chemical processes occurring, all with various different levels of efficiencies and failsafes.
Take two humans of identical weight. Now feed them exactly the same thing. I guarantee you will not have the same outcome for both.
We are not at a place in science where human bodies are like car engines. We don't know how fuel gets combusted. We don't even know how to tell if someone is a 4-cylinder or a V8.
So, given that the user manual is basically a blank page-- how can you just claim user error? That is a gross exaggeration that trivializes the plight of many.