Not everyone likes features. I work in a domain where speed is everything. Yet, we regularly get managers for whom making things faster isn't going to fill their slides, so they constantly ask for new features no one want, will bloat the software and make it more expensive to maintain.

Making things faster is great for everyone: users don't have to change their code to use new features no change in tests, no change in API, no complex interface points to discuss. Yet, some managers have the feeling that if there is no new feature there is no work done. Also, it seems the number of features is the only key performance indicator they understand, even though it's actually the opposite: more features = more technical debt = less ability to focus on what really drives the business.

All in all, even when developers are experienced enough to know that features = more maintenance and features have to bring enough value to pay for their maintenance, there will always be bad managers pressuring into building more crap. Often those managers come from consulting companies where they bill by the feature, and don't understand what makes a good product.

Whether he was right or not doesn't really matter here. He was asking fair questions which totally have their place in a culture which encourages honest discussions. Other employees could agree or disagree (with real arguments, sourced research debunking his points if need be) but engaging in the sort of political fight that happened was the real issue here, which HR should have condemned on both sides.

I don't know him. He may well be a toxic person (explaining the outraged reactions against his paper and his eventual firing) but from what I've seen nothing seemed to be out-of-line. Regardless of the gut reaction against him, I think what he wrote was a particularly good summary of what a lot of people think, and worry about, in a silicon valley culture which sometimes goes very far in terms of positive discrimination -- not unique to Google. What worries me here is that I've seen very little good answer to what he wrote, from experts in the field. Given how much hormones impact our behavior, it would be very surprising if there was zero bias on the average women/men skills (note the "average" here, doesn't mean all women are this and all men are that), but how significant that bias is versus the cultural bias is very hard to determine. I doubt we have any certitude on the subject though I'd love to see what research says about it.

So in the end it just triggered a flame war between idiots on both sides, which is very disappointing given the importance of this subject.

Indeed; one thing that has been constant since the beginning of AI is how amazing it is to help people with disabilities. With AIs now capable of seeing (with transcription), understanding (with transcription), speaking, the possibilities are endless. And even though we don't know when that will really become a reality, self-driving cars are an amazing hope for many who struggle to keep a normal life.

Now, of course, like any amplifying technology, it also allows some to do more harm.

No but humiliating them won't turn them into peaceful partners either. You can continue to build up the hate or try to de-escalate it and keep a door open for peace (not at any cost of course).

Agreed playing appeasement games didn't work so far, because Putin was full of himself. Yet, once the tide turns and Russia starts to crumble and Putin is out of options (we all hope he'll be removed but ...), it might be clever to not humiliate Russia.

Their economy has already suffered a lot and it will take them decades to recover. With all the most-educated leaving the country, it wouldn't be surprising to see the population being very poor for decades to come, and given how hostile they are to the west already (thanks to the propaganda) they would be easy to manipulate. Sure the "reparation payments" shouldn't happen, but still, the anti-US sentiment in Russia has never been so high, in particular among the less-educated. That's not good for the future.

Agreed, and the US seem happy with that. Which might not be such a great idea, as the humiliation of Russia will only lead to further conflicts decades from now. WWI Gerrmany humiliation -> WWII. USSR collapse -> this war. History repeats itself, and it would be good to let Russia keep a bit of the most pro-Russian areas in Ukraine, or some young crazy Russian who's 18 today will become the a dictator in 2050 and lead the next war.

The US now fully control the situation, they can support a full defeat of Russia or force to Ukraine negotiate when Russia is starting to ask for a stop. I'm afraid they'll be too happy to see Russia humiliated again and plant the seeds for the next war...

I'd go to Carmax as well if I had to buy a car again. Their experience was so much better than any other dealership, both to buy and sell a vehicle. They're not perfect but they're not clowns like other dealers. Their prices are seriously studied in both buy and sell situations. There isn't much to argue or negotiate about.

Not exactly the same system, but there are websites, and some work really well. That's the whole point of the article. Online shopping for cars is blooming in the US, especially since in-person shopping for a car is the most dreadful experience there. And it's common knowledge. And yet car sellers don't seem inclined to change their practices even though they're slowly digging their grave. I had the same horrible experience in any dealership I went to.

Dutch sandwich, Double Irish, etc ...

Basically the main selling subsidiary pays what it earns (and more) to an empty entity as "royalties for using the Amazon brand" so that it makes no profit or loses money. Then the empty company based in the Nederlands pays no taxes because of the way taxation works in the NL.

Then you end up with countries like NL and Ireland sucking the money from the others in the EU and blocking any change because they have no interest in that of course.

It is key to repeat over and over again that large companies don't pay taxes in EU so that it gives them bad press (short term damage to their reputation), but more importantly it reminds EU citizen who are the countries producing value and those leeching off the system (Lux, NL and Ireland basically but it's more complicated than that), so that political pressure builds up and we can hope that long term those countries change their laws or get kicked out of the EU.

Winter is coming.

Reference needed

More energy production = more fossil fuels burned, more pollution, more warming, etc. Why would you think everyone on the planet should be allowed (able?) to consume that much energy?

Do you have a hidden source of unlimited clean energy? I doubt it.

Even if you did, say if we had nuclear-fusion plants, then we'd be experiencing another boom in energy usage, which would only stop when the energy we produce starts heating the world to unbearable levels again (not through CO2 but because energy always ends up in heat).

Reminds me of the movie folks explaining how piracy was causing billions of dollars of loss in revenue. As if you would have bought the hundreds of crap divX you were watching because you were bored.

Yeah, stopping password-sharing would probably cause a bit of increased revenue in the short term. But not 1.6B, and long term it's not clear they would gain anything at all.

On the other hand, the alternative the rest of the world uses is ... free education. You know, paid by big gov and taxes. But that's not going to happen in the US because that would be socialism. Or maybe even communism.

Thanks for the insight. It's an obvious solution, so I was suspecting it was pointless due to some better solution otherwise that would have been built everywhere.

What's your source on the 129x factor? I could not find power capacity related to a given volume in the articles, nor a way to compare that to a battery. I'm also surprised to see such a huge factor as mechanical energy storage is/was used even in racing (e.g. Fomula E) with flywheels so efficiency must not be that far off. Would flywheels store more energy than just moving blocks up and down?

Finally, the argument about efficiency is not totally relevant, as there are many other factors: cost of manufacturing, cost of space, and environmental impact (remember this is about clean energy and lithium batteries pose some concerns about finite amounts of metals). We could also imagine moving blocks up and down a mountain slope rail which would eliminate the need for costly concrete buildings.