cbanek · HackerTrans

I suggest you try to look for a new job. It doesn't cost you much (other than some time) and you can test if you think the grass is greener on the other side. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It can give you a taste of the hiring market, which isn't very easy right now, and that can sometimes make you appreciate what you have. If you are taking interviews and everything sounds boring, maybe that will give you what you need to look at different careers and then start interviewing for those jobs?

cbanek

2년 전discuss

Lynn was a real role model for me over the past 25 years. I'm sad that I never got to meet her, but her technical impact is everywhere.

cbanek

4년 전discuss

There's some great stuff in here I won't go over, but it's mostly performance theater. Management, and people, love to talk, but especially management. I'm always amazed how some people would rather have a whole day of meetings to figure out what should happen, when one person could just test the theory in an hour or so. But people love theory and hate facts. In theory no one is wrong, the conversation can go forever, and it's fun to have your mind think about something less mundane for a while.

I'm reminded of a study although the link currently evades me. It was something about who feels best after a meeting, feeling the meeting was productive. It was usually two groups, which many times were the same person - the organizer, and the manager. Both of these people feel like even having the meeting is some kind of grand gesture of teamwork that is good, even if it was a complete waste of time and sent your team angrily in directions toward bathrooms on different sides of the building.

The more people present at a meeting, the more useless they are. Of course the prime example of this is the "all hands meeting". Never go to these. They are a waste of time, and at worst, you can ask anyone else what else happened.

cbanek

4년 전discuss

> You can try using some BS of your own;

Don't you worry about Planet Express, let me worry about blank.

cbanek

5년 전discuss

While it's almost more than two years now, get a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones. I use them normally at home but they really shine when travelling on a plane. I didn't realize that most of the tiredness and stress from being on a plane for me is the constant loud noise. Totally worth the $250.

cbanek

6년 전discuss

I recently converted to jrnl.sh a few months ago and I am loving it. I used to run my own private wordpress, and it was nothing but headaches, and fear of dataloss.

I use jrnl.sh on mac, and I can easily have it in my documents folder and sync it up to iCloud. I also back it up to a few other places, and since it's encrypted, I don't worry too much about people being able to peek.

The format being very simple has made it easy to hack up python scripts which allowed me to bring all my old livejournal entries, medium entries, and wordpress entries together into one diary.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

Tinder for laundry seems like good, clean fun.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

I think the car industry is a racket because they frequently have lots of recalls that affect safety, but they often don't admit it freely. (like the Takata airbag incident) Same for requiring car dealerships, and negotiated pricing. Getting a car serviced for a recall then having to wait for months, possibly while not being able to drive your car can be a real problem.

Utilities like cable / internet aren't really protected by the government, in that there is supposed to be competition, but the companies rarely want to compete, so they tend to service different areas.

A lot of banks do a lot of the shady tactics that Wells Fargo does, like ordering deposits and withdrawals just to make sure you get hit with the maximum amount of overdraft fees.

I totally agree with you on healthcare. That is one of the biggest rackets in the US where price fixing is rampant, and price discovery is purposefully non-existent.

Oh, and just to throw one more in, the airlines!

> Every truly hated industry is shitty because they are a government fief and nobody can compete with them.

If you're a monopoly and the government doesn't step in, they are basically granting you a fief over that area.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

It's true that Google, Apple, and Facebook are now getting the treatment that Microsoft got a long time ago.

But I'm not sure I agree that everyone would go free software if it didn't happen. If anything, I think another company would just come along and build something slightly less crappy but no more open. These days you don't even own the software anymore, it's just a subscription or SaaS.

> Software companies making shitty stuff, left alone, will die naturally.

You could say the same of many industries, and I don't think it's any more correct for software than it is for cars, phone providers, banks, or any number of hated industries. People make shitty stuff all the time, and it sells.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

This also makes me feel even more strongly that the FTC should really clamp down on these very strict app stores.

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/amicus_briefs/app...

Both the App Store and Google Play stores I think are basically illegal monopolies. I should be able to install whatever app I want, without having to jailbreak my phone and deal with warranty nonsense from the manufacturer. Just like my computer, which I can also install whatever software I want on it.

Both the mandatory fees, and the review policy are terrible. Both Apple and Google could just as easily "recommend" an app as "safe and following best practices" rather than banning them from the app store. And still, many apps get through the nonsense, which has been real joy for scammers and possibly illegal money laundering:

https://medium.com/@johnnylin/how-to-make-80-000-per-month-o...

I get that they want to protect their brand, but really, I think that horse is out of the barn.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

I don't disagree with what your saying, but I think LSST's builder concept is actually quite amazing and the opposite side of that coin.

For people building the telescope (think hardware, software, logistics, everything before the science can be done), many of whom are not academics, and don't typically get authorship or write papers, it's great to get credit for working on the project in a formal, public way. You don't even have to edit or provide some kind of task directly related to the paper either, which I agree can get somewhat clique-ish.

cbanek

7년 전discuss

As someone who now works in astronomy, I'm not at all surprised at the high self-citation rate for the field. It is true that a lot of papers are published by large consortiums. For example, at LSST (where I work), if you have been working on the project for 2 years, you are considered a "builder" and added as an author to all major project wide papers.

Those papers, which tend to be long and full of great stuff, are cited a lot, and have hundreds of authors.

I wonder how many of these papers are where the first author has cited other papers where they are the first author. (Or really, at least the first few authors) It seems like for the data shown, it is just if anyone in the author list is anywhere in the author list of the citation?

Also for some research niches, you may be one of the few people writing papers on a subject. There's no one else to cite.

I do think there's some very valid points about bringing the person up to speed on previous research that brought them to the current paper. But I don't think those citations should really count as a citation in terms of metrics for how successful a scientist is.

To be honest, I find all the metric gaming about number of papers and citations to be ridiculous. I don't hear many people saying they want to write the best paper in their field, or something new. It all seems to be a numbers game these days. Academic career growth hacking, if you will.

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