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Comment Re: ADHD does not exist (Score 1) 232

Sure, but if we're going to gatekeep employment and advancement behind a system that rigidly demands that you work well under time pressure, a lot of people never get to find something suited to their abilities.

I myself barely made it through university because I'm terrible at taking tests. I've been successful in my industry for almost 30 years now. But I was gated by the same tests as everyone else.

Some parts of the working world are a lot more forgiving than you're giving them credit for, especially now that remote work is a thing. Over the last few years I've watched companies drop the programming test from their hiring process—including Epic—because it didn't get them the results they wanted. They accidentally selected for people who worked well under stress, but 99% of our jobs aren't like that. They got better results with interviews that involve a lot of talking to reveal the things that you know.

In Canada, someone did a study of how much it cost to administer NSERC grants (a very prestigious, large grant for doing science research) vs. how much it would cost to just give every applicant what they asked for, and it was CHEAPER to give out the money than scrutinize each grant for its worthiness. Where's the value in withholding the money? There's good science that doesn't get funded and instead bureaucrats shuffling papers eat it all up trying to understand grant applications that they're not qualified to inspect.

You will definitely get people working the system in these cases, but there's an argument to be made that more accommodation will just give better results overall. Just give EVERYONE more time on the test. 100% of people get 6 hours to write the test. The people that are now trying to 'take advantage' of the system are returned to a level playing field. The people that need that time because they're neurodivergent don't have to ask for it. You get to see if people actually learned the material. There's little practical downside.

Comment Replace CEOs with AI! (Score 0) 30

We need to push for CEOs to be replaced with AI. They'd do a better job and would cost a LOT less.

Start repeating this everywhere and get the meme-makers on it. It will be wonderful to watch them squirm as they suddenly find reasons why AI shouldn't replace a company's most valuable assets: its most highly-paid executives.

Comment Don't show up to bad meetings (Score 2) 61

I'm a lead programmer in the games industry, and I did not show up to meetings with low value. But that said, 50% of my time was spent on meetings and managerial duties.

Critically, I consider it my job to go to meetings so the other programmers on my team DON'T. We need to talk about the state of the game. We need to discuss mechanics and timelines and all sorts of things. But I don't want other programmers in more than a few hours of meetings a week, and most of those meeting hours should be just in our team giving and getting updates.

We were aggressive about cutting meetings that people felt had little or diminishing value. Sometimes meetings are useful for a time and then they're not. I never went to a meeting that I was invited to where I didn't feel like I needed to hear the information or present something useful. Guard your own time, no matter what level of worker you are.

But yeah, useless meetings feel terrible. I didn't feel bad about the meetings I went to because we often accomplished a lot.

Comment Re:Saturated market (Score 1) 92

Nah, the deals on used EVs are great right now; I think more people are going to start buying them up. They have low maintenance and running costs, and for around town, they're great.

There are so many goddamn F-150s on the road belonging to people that never tow a single thing or load the bed up. They're commuter cars for accountants with masculinity issues. Don't tell me that we shouldn't get these dipshits into normal cars or EVs both for the sake of the environment and road safety.

Comment Re: ADHD does not exist (Score 1) 232

Autism is a much broader category than it used to be.

There's actually some evidence now that ADHD and Autism are on the SAME SPECTRUM, they're just different manifestations of slightly different brain wiring. For some people, it's more of an impediment, but fundamentally, the impediment is that we don't allow those people to be themselves. They might stim by flapping their hands a bit or moving around (I have ADHD, and I ALWAYS have to have something in my hands during meetings; I also 'pain stim', where I might press the tip of a paperclip against my finger. It doesn't HURT hurt and I don't break the skin, but the stimulation is something that I do basically unconciously).

Anyway, when we talk about neurodivergence, some people need little to no accommodation and some people need lots. I actually don't think having tight time limits on tests makes any sense. In my work, I get lots of time to research and figure out answers, and if I do it enough, the answers become easier to come up with. Are we trying to test whether people know things, or whether they deal with time pressure the way we think is necessary (again, for no good reason).

You gotta pay people to monitor the exams anyway, just let people have the time they need. If they get 100%, great, they know their stuff. What's the issue?

Comment Standards Needed (Score 4, Interesting) 125

We really need standardized protocols for garage doors. Chamberlin had a near monopoly on the market and had proprietary protocols.

If you want to make a compatible garage door opener, you have to use their HomeLink chips. My Tesla had HomeLink integrated, and it's awesome having the garage door just open when I pull into the driveway with GPS activation, but now they charge extra for this, in part because HomeLink is a proprietary chip, and they can't just integrate the functionality directly without an additional part. That's also why it's limited to only controlling three garage doors (which is an issue for some people with overly complicated lives).

Now it's a similar situation with WiFi control, where they have a proprietary protocol that goes through their servers simply so that they can charge a subscription fee.

What is needed is some good open standards.

An open standard for the RF signals: Let anyone implement the hardware. Allow for separate open/close signals, as well as the current activate signal. Allow for separate authentication for the signals, so you can do things like have a keypad access outside that only needs the code to open the door, not close it.

An open standard for WiFi control. This is likely already covered by Matter.

Comment Passing a school bus is no joke in Texas (Score -1) 95

A school bus, with the red lights flashing, may NOT be passed on either side. This is to prevent children from being run over. Texas cops are quick to fine anyone who does, and it's hammered into your head in Drivers Ed.

In some states it's not a big deal, and so many of those people moved to Texas to get away from their states, only to turn Texas into what they hated. They don't learn.

Comment This is stupid. (Score 1) 89

This is exactly end to end encryption, and the so-called "security researcher" appears to have no idea what he is talking about. So:

Mr. Fondrie-Teitler, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Comment Re:study confirms expectations (Score 1) 200

That's actually a good question. Inks have changed somewhat over the past 5,000 years, and there's no particular reason to think that tattoo inks have been equally mobile across this timeframe.

But now we come to a deeper point. Basically, tattoos (as I've always understand it) are surgically-engineered scars, with the scar tissue supposedly locking the ink in place. It's quite probable that my understanding is wrong - this isn't exactly an area I've really looked into in any depth, so the probability of me being right is rather slim. Nonetheless, if I had been correct, then you might well expect the stuff to stay there. Skin is highly permeable, but scar tissue less so. As long as the molecules exceed the size that can migrate, then you'd think it would be fine.

That it isn't fine shows that one or more of these ideas must be wrong.

Comment Re:And this helps how? (Score -1) 143

"Here"

Here's an idea, pajeet! Why don't you fuck ALL THE WAY off and get off our AmeriKKKan social media?

Nobody wants to listen to you stinky foreigners who whower once a week and don't tip.

Leave. Go. Get on your own country's social media and post all the "AmeriKKKa sucks" comments you want there.

AUSLANDER RAUS!

Comment Re:Serious question (Score 0) 163

It is $6.25 bn and while it is generous it is only $250 per child born during that narrow period of election significance.

The Dell pledge is not for children born during "that narrow period of election significance" but rather applies to children under age ten that were not born during said period. AFAICT, the kids getting a thousand bucks do not benefit from this pledge at all. The Dell pledge also only applies to children who live in zip codes where the median HHI is under $150k.

Dell is piggybacking off of the infrastructure that already needs to be put in place to administer the accounts created by congress. I really don't understand why people seem to be so angry about this. The only real connection to Darth Cheeto is what the funds are named, and Dell didn't name them, congress did.

Comment Approval voting (Score 1) 110

What we really need is to move to Approval voting; many prefer ranked choice voting, but I don't believe it's practical on a national scale - Approval is much simpler and achieves the same goal: allowing one to vote for who one wants, without it being a spoiler vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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