I can't believe people voted me down for this! It's a direct quote from the movie, after Vizzini uses the word "inconceivable" you warthog-faced buffoons:
I remember a radio host in the 90's remarking about how ironic it was that three of the biggest movie directors at the time were: Opie (Ron Howard), Laverne (Penny Marshall) and MeatHead (Rob Reiner).
It's definitely interesting seeing him physically morph from his younger days to today. When he first came on my radar as a director, I wondered if it was just another guy with the same name, I had to go look it up, and I was surprised. Seemed like a really great guy. :(
The first time after getting my driving license and having to find parking in the city, I was so jealous of George Jetson whose car collapses into a briefcase when he gets to work. Glad to see TV converging to reality.
A few people I know had moved to houses on one side of the bridge for easy access to schools and jobs on the other side, and were hit hard by the closure.
Their commute times skyrocketed to go to the next Thames crossing.
To be fair, this issue isn’t endemic only to big companies. I’ve seen similar even in academia, some people just know how to “play the game” and play it very well.
It really depends on the culture of where you are, which can even vary team by team in the same org.
Some people seem willfully ignorant of the game. When confronted with the reality of it, they turn away, complain that it exists, and act like a bullied middle schooler.
You don’t have to enthusiastically endorse the game. You can learn it, just like you learn Go or Rust or whatever. You can refuse to actively play it, but also be aware of it enough to avoid getting hurt by it.
E.g. figure out the minimal effort for convincing game players that your work is important.
I so wish every new starter in professional working life is given a 101 on literally this. I've seen so many talented people over the years think they're above taking part in the corporate optics and then subsequently get bogged down by resentment watching lesser people getting pats on the back.
The system is crap. It should all be about meritocracy and all that but it's not. It is what it is. People need to stop being naive shooting themselves in the foot
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The other thing to it is that its so infuriating because people who say they wish the game wasn't the game and genuinely could change things because they have the right sensibilities, and are talented enough to rise up to position where they can make decisions that matter, choose not to engage in the game to make that happen. Wake up, you're letting the "wrong people" (in your view) win.
I don’t understand the seeming lack of regulation for flashing bike lights.
I don’t mean a simple “normal” flashing light, but the super bright ones that are like a camera flash strobe going off 2-3x per second which hurts your eyes and kills your night vision, making it hard to see anything including the actual cyclist.
It used to be law that a bicycle had to have a solid on light front and back at night, and any extra flashing lights were optional extras that didn't count, but they scrapped that law several years ago.
Title is a bit misleading - it's not pure germanium that superconducts here, it's germanium doped w/ Gallium atoms.
Superconducting germanium alloys have been known for decades, I used a Molybdenum/Germanium superconducting alloy in my PhD research 20 years ago, with much higher Tc.
The interesting aspect of this current experiment is the precise alignment of the Ga atoms into specific points of the Ge lattice, so preserving the crystalline structure order which leads to some interesting effects.
Leaves me wondering if this will allow for superconducting cryogenic transistors? If my hobby level understanding of how silicon doping works, this new superconducting germanium would be a p-type? I could imagine something like ion implantation could be able to establish n-type regions within the germanium while allowing bulk regions of the lattice to maintain superconducting properties.
Though admittedly, I'm not actually aware what parts of a semiconductor circuit are the biggest power dissipation sources, so I guess its entirely possible that most of the power is dissipated across the p-n junctions themselves.
Yes, this would be P type. Boron is usually the P type dopant of choice. I’m not sure what role they have in mind for this, but probably to replace polysilicon and metals as conductors. What you have to watch out for is that this will make diodes wherever it bumps up against n-type material. This is a problem for metals as well, because you can get accidental schottky junctions, and we usually solve it with degenerate doping under the contract. I’m not sure what a junction with this material would do though.
I want to note that in what has become the largest (by mass) application of semiconductors, silicon PV cells, boron has been replaced by gallium as the P type dopant of choice. Boron suffers from an annoying form of light-induced efficiency degradation that gallium avoids.
The sheer irony of your unwarranted pedantic critique of the usage of “next” is that all HN threaded comments, including yours, have a “next” link in their headers which clearly does NOT refer to unwritten future comments.
This is inaccurate. Here is what troll means to many people "a person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online post." My response clarified without being offensive. I was careful to word it neutrally. I hope than a charitable reader can see this.
To put in the terms of Kahnemann's Thinking Fast and Slow: it is worth considering if maybe the commenter above got triggered first (a System 1 emotional reaction) and then later sought to rationalize (System 2) a "reason" for that: namely "he's a pedantic troll".
> If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality. - Daniel Kahneman
I'm reasonably sure this is not what happened, judging by my own recollection of when I have been tempted to write similar things, and my discussions with people who have written similar things. However, your story is both simple and coherent.
It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
> It's much easier to point out others' alleged irrational thinking, but the main purpose of books like this is to help you better understand your own thinking.
That sounds right. I only can make probabilistic guesses as to what is happening in someone else's brain. By posing a question to someone else, there is some chance that person may ask it of themselves. If not today, then perhaps in future.
Would you please stop perpetuating flamewars and taking HN threads on generic tangents? You've been doing this a ton lately, it's not what this site is for, and the effects your posts have been having on the threads is regrettable.
Also, please stop crossing into name-calling and personal attack, as you did here. jeffwass shouldn't have referred to you as "a troll" but there's no question that your posts have been having trollish effects in the threads, and this is actually what matters (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Hello. I've taken some time to think about this. I appreciate your explanation, I care about HN, and I'm open to feedback.
> Also, please stop crossing into name-calling and personal attack, as you did here.
I see many of my comments were unkind and unnecessary. I'm sorry, and I will stop. Here are three examples in this thread of where I went wrong, in my own words:
- I was accusatory, mean, and condescending when I wrote "I wonder if you will be intellectually honest if/when I reveal errors, mistakes, oversimplifications, and so on?"
- I did some psychoanalysis (which is unwarranted), such as when I wrote "You are clearly upset and bothered and resorting to rationalization and attacks."
- I accused someone of bad faith when I wrote: "You exaggerated and trivialized. You deflected and moved the goalposts. These are signs you want to win more than discuss in good faith."
I will keep these course corrections in mind.
P.S. I know this isn't a full reply to your comment; I am still processing some parts.
Advertised “No Fee” currency conversions, but a HUGE spread built into the conversion rate that comes out to a massive fee.
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