Thanks for that! I'll have to get a pint next time I'm there (for some prog-metal in like two weeks). Concert beer tastes better in glass glasses too heh
First, I understand what you are saying and understand the constraints keeping you at a job you have issues with. I've certainly seen organizations go too far on consensus even when each person individually (especially the ones at the top) would like more decisiveness. This is a hard and draining place. And all moves out require even more energy that you may not have and should not (in a just world) have to expend.
Someone recommended "Moral Mazes" and I heartily second it. Though mostly because it was so profoundly cynical that it pushed me to defend the systems I was so annoyed by.
If you want to learn the language of design by committee, "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg is the book that the rest of the committee is playing from. It has genuinely useful pieces. But I also find it fundamentally dishonest in that it frames all other forms of communication as "violent" in a rank misuse of the word. Additionally, the techniques it recommends require that you put in all the effort of framing a situation as no-blame or shared-blame when it very much is not. You do not need to agree with your opponents' tactics manual to find value in its study.
"Radical Candor" by Kim Scott is an attempt to bring directness in to otherwise passive aggressive situations. It's a valiant attempt but it's unclear to me how viable its recommendations are.
However it's not clear to me that any amount of high or low level reading is going to help with your feelings of dissatisfaction here. It sounds like you're looking for a "win" instead of an "out". And despite the deeply cynical feelings it can generate, you cannot succeed at office politics through cynicism. Or irony. Or cynical, ironic, distance. The successful are either completely earnest, or sociopathic enough to fake complete earnestness. And from the outside those are indistinguishable.
Data has always been plural! Datum is the singular. But actually treating it as plural is mostly a question of where the person speaking/writing is based. Americans treat it as singular, Brits plural. See also, corporations
Note that in the English language, there is a rule in regard to forming compound nouns, which is that only the head of the compound can carry the plural marker.
So for instance, whereas the compound noun phrase "law school entrance exams" is perfectly fine, "law schools entrance exam" is not. It has a plural on "schools", where it is not allowed to be, because that is not the head of the noun phrase.
According to this rule, we should not have words like "data processing", unless we treat "data" as plural. If we treat "data" as the plural of "datum", we must make it "datum processing".
Is that how it is in British English, or do they still make it "data processing"?
In any case, one cannot be a proper pedant about "data" and "datum", while continuing to use terms like "data storage".
From a random internet site:
"
The data are correct.
But most people treat 'data' as a singular noun, especially when talking about computers etc.
For example:-
The data is being transferred from my computer to yours.
And I have to be honest, I've never heard anyone ask for a datum.
"
It could be the case that the scientific pluralization is leaking into regular usage because more people are collectively reading / reporting on scientific studies. Alternatively, Google / Grammarly and similar tools might be suggesting it because it's been seen in their training data / examples.
In any case, IMHO 'datum' is a singular point of information, any reference to multiple points of information would make the noun plural.
Hello, yes, recent member of the HN note-taking crowd here. Throwaway meeting notes are exactly my use case. It helps that I do most of my thinking on paper anyway so I have a pen and pad handy at all times. For me it's all about focus. Writing is an activity that I enjoy doing independent of what I'm actually writing. Can't zone out if I'm taking notes which leaves me in a position to drop all of the many great insights I always have in every single meeting.
Hey komali2, why'd you have to go and describe me this sharply on a Saturday morning? Is it that I accidentally crowded you out at the Four Barrel pour-over bar and now you want your revenge?
I've heard it said about running: it doesn't get easier, you just get better. I'm beginning to think that that is true of life in general. My greatest source of dis-ease (rather than literal disease) is the feeling that I'm not living up to my potential. Been with me since at least third standard/grade.
While I've never been to Stockholm (heard Noma's a good local joint), I'm at the place where I'm more afraid of getting too comfortable than I am of never being at ease. I'm trying (and usually failing) to think of things one bandaid at a time rather that the whole million at once. Setting my goals real low: to suck less rather than to be good/great. Help's a lot that there's one or two things that I legitimately feel I'm damn good at.
I'm curious, especially on the topic of stringing-together-unix-tools-on-a-whim, have you found any little tricks that apply to that area specifically rather than to the general concept of productivity?
Re unixy engineering stuff, I'm still a young engineer, the only thing I can think of is that I learn the most when I shoehorn it in during work, if I have time. So recently there was a fat data modification task, turn a bunch of CSV stuff into arrays and escaped strings etc, and rather than try to figure out how to have sheets do it which probably would have been easier and faster, I used it as an opportunity to upskill my vim knowledge. Picked up a couple new commands. That's only when I don't have a crazy deadline looming though sadly.
This is what I hear out of Bangalore too. Maybe even further? Like you can command Valley level comp (or at least base+bonus) if you can clear the right hurdles. Though maybe in Poland too, the issue is that there are far more people one rung down. Cut distance from from 110m to 100m and suddenly there's a lot more competition
Some amount of post-install runtime loading is basically necessary on Android if you're using shared native libs. Can't remember off the top of my head what needs to happen but basically every app runs into strange crashes until they start packaging their .so as a resource and then loading it in Application.onCreate. Chrome does this so it's at least de facto allowed.
Google has to allow dynamic loading at app start because of this. Or fix whatever subtle interaction between Android and an OEM's "improvements" is causing this. Not a huge step from here to getting your library from the internet instead of bundled with the app.
Not trying to justify any one app's behavior, just bringing up a fundamental reality baked into what you're saying: Apple doesn't have to deal with the gaps in its security model becoming load bearing features.
I don't follow. Google could lock this down if they wanted to. They own System.loadLibrary, dlopen, and the kernel. If they wanted to enforce that native libraries were covered by the same signature as signed the APK they could. Maybe not now that the horse has bolted.
