And I’m so glad they did. Tiktok has brought so many positive changes to my life, and it never would have happened if they hadn’t built a product so good that it’s literally addictive. I don’t want the government to be my parent.
Additionally, Instagram and Facebook have tried their best to make their products as addictive as possible, yet their recommendation algorithm is so absolutely terrible (not to mention their ads) that I barely stay on the platform for five minutes when I use it.
What the TikTok algorithm does for me: surfaces exercises for all my joint problems, finds people exploring local sites and reporting on local issues, helps me discover new music, reveals how we treat prisoners, shows me what it's like to do jobs from sitcom writer to oil rig tech
What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies"
> What Europe does for me: Makes me click "Accept cookies"
that's only because the implementation of the law is poor and advertisers drag their heels in having it as a brower-level setting. Not helped by the fact that advertisers run one of the biggest browsers and fund one of the next biggest.
I hadn’t, and your article lost me there to be honest. You didn’t explain the what, why, or when behind it, and it didn’t make sense to me at all. That said, I’m abnormally horrible at math.
> You didn’t explain the what, why, or when behind it
>> The trouble starts when you have two variables, and you need to combine them in different ways to hit two different numbers. That’s when Gaussian elimination comes in.
>> In the last one we were trying to make 23 cents with nickels and pennies. Here we have two foods. One is milk, the other is bread. They both have some macros in terms of carbs and protein:
>> and now we want to figure out how many of each we need to eat to hit this target of 5 carbs and 7 protein.
Noted! I may make a totally separate post on gaussian elimination. Could you talk me through what parts were confusing, and would you be willing to review a post on gaussian elimination to see if it works for you?
As always with these types of things, it starts off well and I think “wow! finally someone is explaining math in a simple and straight forward way I can understand!”. And once again, they already lost me at Gaussian elimination.
>Powerful stakeholders are typically so stupid and dysfunctional that it’s effectively impossible for you to identify their needs and deliver solutions to them
I’m sorry, WHAT? How old is this author? “I fail to communicate effectively with anyone who isn’t an engineer because I lack the required empathy and perspective” is very different from “the average stakeholder is stupid and dysfunctional”. I stopped reading at this point because author is clearly someone who doesn’t take responsibility for their own failures in communication.
The preceding paragraph says software engineers *believe* these things and has a footnote referencing HN discussion.
Thus my interpretation is that those points are examples of the extreme, often false stereotypes people believe. They are the mistaken position against which the author is arguing.
IMO, the ARC tests & the visual pattern IQ tests (e.g. Raven's) have little difference, especially if the Raven tests require the taker to draw out the answer.
It’s also really good for me as a very senior engineer with serious ADHD. Sometimes I get very mentally blocked, and telling Claude Code to plan and implement a feature gives me a really valuable starting point and has a way of unblocking me. For me it’s easier to elaborate off of an existing idea or starting point and refactor than start a whole big thing from zero on my own.
That’s a big flaw. The US needs to stop being at the center of everything, and now we can really see the vulnerability it causes. I hope this becomes an impulse to diversify research funding more.
The US has a /lot/ of money and people. Several other countries put together wouldn't be able to match it, especially not ones with any comparable standard of living.
