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Using prime (not zoom lenses) tend to aid in 'mental' composition that preceeds the physical composition.

A person who had trained themselves taking (and reviewing) 100s or 1000s of pictures of one particular camera, and one or 2 particular lenses of fixed focal length (prime lenses) -- would have developed a mental model of how a given picture will look, before they take it.

It is that 'pre-physical' mental modeling maturity, that allows experienced photographers to transition to artists (same is for film development and analog printing processes, as well) and stay minimalist at that (as far as gear).

Camera makers are aware of this I think.

This is why cameras with non-detachable, single focal length (prime) lenses are very popular, at any time.

Before it was Yashica Electro 45 [1], now it is Richo GRIII [2] (as examples).

It is also notable that camera makes who make popular SLRs/mirroless cameras such as Nikons, look for current/modern trends of what a 'favorite focal lenght of a lens' is.

For example Nikon recently announced that they will be making 26mm pancake lenth for their Z mirrorless line.

26mm is an 'unusual' focal length, the standard wide-angle is 28mm. And these lenses are usually not pancakes (pancake means very slim / thin lenses that are barely sticking out of the camera body).

But this 26mm focal length is the length (equivalent) of an iphone camera. That's clearly why they are picking this unusual focal length -- and making a optically high quality lens that will fit their full-frame Z range of cameras.

The full frame camera sensor (or even APS-C sized or m4/3 sized sensors) allow to take pictures in low light situations with out flash, while still autofocusing reasonably fast -- much better than with a phone camera.

I would also not be surprised if Nikon would also develop a new Z camera body that will be just big (small) enough to just host these small lenses and that will have perfect integration with phone and pocketable.

So that the camera can utilize this lens, creating much better low-light opportunities without a flash (allowing the photography be more discrete, and take advantage of natural shadows in composition).

They will have to solve battery dimension issues (full frame mirrorless requires more power than a smaller sensor.)

Nikon, I suspect, will also probably enable the post processing to utilize new or (even app-store like) filters to add various effects.

Point I wanted to make is that fixed focal length, single lens, single camera -- enables 'trends', mental-model training and probably other interesting features in the whole word of photography that I do not have words for.

Camera makers certainly know this.

So minimalism in that sense is great, but requires a lot of training and practice :-)

[1] http://www.yashica-guy.com/document/chrono.html [2] https://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/products/gr-3/


This is driven, probably, and inspired by -- John Baez

[1] https://math.ucr.edu/home//baez/theoretical/theoretical_web....

In my view John is an exceptional educator, inspiring, energetic and accommodating to many people.

I do think, however, his 'save the planet' efforts are misplaced. I think the mathematical tooling and theoretical machinery to help technical initiatives in planet saving -- exists.

What does not exist is honesty in country/world wide policy making.

Every crook wants to be viewed as 'idea generator', planet-saving-angel -- as long as tax money get diverted to whatever causes -- through their 'sinks and facets' of control.

I am not advocating to give up -- I am advocating to use talents that these folks have to figure out how to achieve transparency in political, contractual system of incentives.

If they would work with investigative journalism to find who the crooks are, how they divert public money, how they have selective outrage against one entity, but not another doing similar things -- that were the focus should be.


Well, one of the possible applications is game theory. Maybe these techniques could be used to design incentive structure that work. This of course is very loose reasoning on my part as I don't really know the details.


I actually think naming colledge/university where you got your degree, has to be prohibited.

It adds to discrimination and unequal treatment.

Asking if you a have a degree form an accredited university is OK.

But which one of the universities -- is like asking how much are you paying for your rent/house, and what type of neighborhood you are living in (and so asking for address has to be prohibited too)


First of all not all kinds of discrimination are bad. What about small vs. large schools (cultural exposure/social skills)? What about exceptional programs/colleges that are relevant to a given job posting? They’re not the rule, but these are examples of factors that could be relevant to a given position.

I’ve also never heard of anyone living in a really nice house or neighborhood for free because they’re a great neighbor, but I’ve definitely heard of, and met, students from very challenging backgrounds who were granted the opportunity to go to school for free and subsequently reaped the benefits of using it for self-promotion on their resume during their job search. Maybe if potential employers were running around asking, “How much of your own money/your family’s money did you use to pay for college?”, I think you could have a point here but otherwise I’m not seeing it.


It should not be the 'names' of the institutions that are relevant to the job posting, it should be the skills.

In other words employers should not looking for 'how you a acquired skills', but instead for 'what skills you have'.

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Same as when you publish scientific paper (or a Talmudic treaties, for that matter) before it gets accepted....

It should not be relevant the name of your scientific advisor, institution, or whether you grandparent a famous Rabbi (if we are going with theological texts..)

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Yes, by eliminating the names of your school from the hiring process you are also eliminating that little detail that the cost of attendance for 1 year undergraduate at , say, Vanderbilt University -- is 80,000 USD [1], and that you could afford it...

But the approach I am suggesting does more than that -- it incentivizes employers to consider skills of the hires, and not the 'image' of the schools they came from.

Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.

Certainly I am not advocating to hide personal achievements (eg participation in relevant open source projects, STEM olympiad's, or other relevant endeavors that build not just technical skills, but also a good character).

[1] https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/affordability/


I am not sure that you completely understand how higher education works in the US. This is understandable because it can be confusing.

Sticker price doesn't really matter, because those who cannot afford it are usually given financial aid and/or scholarships. At some places, the percentage of people receiving financial aid is over 50%.

The rhetoric that college is worthless and is solely an indication of "privilege" is harmful, especially to those who are lower income. College is still one of the best ways to acquire skills and an education, and is still one of, if not the biggest, ways for people to climb themselves and their families out of poverty.

Most students work their asses off to get into a good college, even the wealthy ones, and I think you underestimate their efforts and how hard it is to buy your way into a top school.

Also, there is definitely a significant difference, on average, between the type of student that MIT/UChicago/Stanford/etc might admit, compared to the students you might find at a top 100 college. I don't think that hiring should ever come down to where someone went to college like this (I'm sure that very rarely happens), but it does make sense most times for stretched recruiters to take into account where someone was trained because it does make a difference.


> how hard it is to buy your way into a top school.

Just to add dimension here, I think this is a pretty hard claim to prove. I think it would be safer to say that these types of situations are most likely the exception and not the rule. Even if that's not true, we should address that rather than cutting off our nose to spite our face. Otherwise, I think you make a lot of great, succinct points and I agree with everything you said here.


Curriculum isn’t standardized, and while a noisy signal, difficultly of admission to a school can be valuable in lieu of other signals, or otherwise knowing the details of a particular school’s curriculum — top 50 vs. top 500.

Interview 1000 people uniformly sampled from the population of software engineers and get back to me if you disagree.


Ok, I think we will agree to disagree. I interviewed 1000s (low 1000s) of people through out my career.

I made mistakes -- but majority of them were on soft-skills sides of the problem.

The university names mattered little, and in many cases effected person's self-promotion efforts/abilities. That has some value, but not when it is 'instead of' high ethics and technical skills.


I at least partially agree with you. I wouldn’t suggest that a university name or even the presence of a degree should ever occupy the crux of a decision to proceed with or reject a candidate. I guess you could say I think of it as primarily additive value. The bone I have to pick is simply that I think more, rather than less, information is generally better in this case because it makes it possible to determine how additive it truly is.


I feel that you’ve glossed over my example about institutional size. I don’t mean to harp, but it’s a pretty good example of something a hiring manager can use to make positive inferences about a candidate. If hiding names and cost are really that important, perhaps we could list “institutional attributes” on resumes instead, but I’m not sure how well that would work either. It’d be hard to standardize, and there are too many things that could be missed. Unfortunately, plenty of good candidates are bad at laying out their skills and achievements. Where relevant and where it doesn’t lead to flagrantly unfair and biased treatment, resumes should have more information, not less. I say this as someone who is deeply concerned about equal and just treatment and who has recently been evaluating candidates.

> Which, in turn, will incentive the schools to prioritize education quality over hyper-marketing.

Believe me, I’m game for anything that makes that happen but I don’t think this is going to do it. But for the sake of discussion, removing this information from a resume could make identifying candidates who have gone through precisely these kinds of schools more difficult to identify. Accreditation is sadly not a catch-all. Plenty of schools have had their accreditation suspended multiple times or have various other statistics/metrics e.g. marketing/promotional spend, available which one could use to evaluate education quality, but only if you have a name to start your search with.


I could see, "what proportion of your own money/your family's money" might work, but only with some cap on that money. I'm fairly sure I spent a larger proportion of my own & my family's money than any of George W. Bush, Chelsea Clinton, or Jared Kushner.

Being granted the opportunity to go to school for free used to be called a scholarship, I think.


> Now we've got a huge swath of US citizens that will never take the vaccine

Not only 'the vaccine' (meaning Covid-19) vaccine. Trust to CDC is lost, trust to FDA is lost, trust to Executive orders on health policies is lost.

Trust to major news networks, trust to health pundits -- is lost.

On top of that, of course, trust for non-health related 'institutions' (eg FBI, CIA, NSA, FISA courts) -- is lost.

Everything from here on coming from the above institutions -- will be viewed with skepticism and distrust.

Hell, probably trust in legitimacy of election process is lost too. Will see, I guess.

My point about the article -- is that fails to consider the whole system in a country like US...

No longer will western politicians be able to point out to authoritarian dictatorships -- from the point of moral authority.

The "Whatabout-ism" is now 'normalized', and will continue be normal discourse of international politics for a very long time.

Historians 200 years from now 2016-2022 will have to be calling this as a 'Period of Pundits & Institutions loosing people's trust' for many of English-speaking countries.


Hiring SREs is costly...

Hiring narrowly focused people with significant pre-existing experience -- Is always costly.

... and I also think, it is practically always a wrong strategy...

I am fundamentally against micro-managing labor pools by federal government.

However, there are need to be economic incentives (including immigration policies) -- that make it more difficult for employers to hire for 'tool-centric' positions, unless those tools are very expensive physical devices (eg telescopes, quantum computers, etc).

The incentives need to direct employers at training on the job (not at after-work online classes).

When I see on HN's hire threads -- 'if you have Azure experience -- you will get on top of the pile' -- I cringe.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Same pretty much with Ruby/Php Rust/C++ Haskell/Scala modalities of the same problem.

Yes hire people who understand process/idioms/patters, but invest in the f..ing training -- if you need somebody 'yesterday' to help, get consultants -- and have them help and at the same time hire for full time roles -- and train your internal stuff (possibly, even, have them learn from the consultants).

Afraid of people leaving after acquiring the highly thought-out skills ?

-- implement meaningful compensation/retention policies that reflect effort that you spend on training, and risks that you are taking if a person who was just trained -- leaves.


What you are saying is generalists are cheaper to hire and that you can train them. That's true.

That's why, as a seller (worker) you should try to specialize in at least one area to sell yourself better.


Speaking from experience, it sells better to bring along special soft skills in the package, than yet another technology stack.

Too many coders, generalists or not, cannot engange properly talking to something that isn't a computer.

Those that manage to merge coding skills, with UI/UX, marketing, understanding the customer point of view, already have an upper hand.


Yes, you need soft skills too. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't specialize in something. That doesn't have to be a tech stack either, in fact it's the last thing I would suggest.


That's part of it.

I am also saying that there needs to be a system of incentives, that then, produces, organizational/hiring practices that favor non-tool-specific employment process.


Well, for that your company has to admit it it doesn't have specific problems. Because if you do have specific problems, it's probably more efficient to hire people that can handle those.


> while impairing ACE2 binding

It appears that COVID-19 can also enter cells (these would be immune cells that came to 'help') via so called Fc-pathway.

Therefore allow the virus to multiply even more

"... In addition to viral entry via ACE2, antibodies against coronavirus spike proteins (anti-spike-S-IgG) can induce antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of viral entry via type II Fcγ receptors. ..." [1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7406916/


That really has nothing to do with what I wrote, other than for you to write about ADE, which is not a practical issue for anyone to worry about with SARS-CoV-2:

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-antibody-depen...

I can't flag you, but someone else really should since your followup is completely disingenuous.


sorry, but your assessment of what is genuine vs disingenuous, is very disingenuous in itself.

Perhaps, it is time to relinquish the presumptions of moral superiority -- and just discuss technical details without the drama ...

I am saying that you wrote does not cover full spectrum of how the virus replicates, therefore your comment does illuminate the complexity that's present in interaction with our immune system. Which includes, according to the NIH paper I referenced, antibody-dependent-enhancement (ADE).


If you saw any form of antibody-dependent enhancement, signals would be far spread now, considering how much viral spread is occurring...

> However, using monkey and mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, none of the in vitro infection-enhancing Abs enhanced SARS-CoV-2 virus replication or infectious virus in the lung in vivo. Three of 46 monkeys had lung pathology or bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cytokine levels greater than controls. However, repeat studies with dose ranges of in vitro enhancing Abs did not increase lung pathology. Thus, in vitro infection-enhancing RBD and NTD Abs controlled virus in vivo and was rarely associated with enhanced lung pathology. [1]

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8232969/


That isn't relevant to the discussion at hand in any way shape or form.

You're interjecting it because you want to talk about it because you're an antivaxxer.

It has no relevance outside of some narrow understanding of what happens during severe COVID itself and the mechanism behind why some people get very sick and most people do not.

And you're practicing sealioning acting like you're just innoccently interjecting.


I am not a lawyer, I am not a patent agent.

I am assuming you are in US.

First you should do on your a patent search as well as just search -- to confirm that your idea is that unique.

Perhaps you will find that 70% is not unique -- but just did not work because the software tools or hardware was not ready yet.

This is ok. You can still patent how you use new, widely available tech, to solve a productivity issue or such.

Although simple 'method' claims are not as defensible as a triplet of 'method', 'process' and 'software program' claims.

Second, you cannot patent an invention after you made it available in public. So make sure that the timing and sequence of your events work. Also if your patent is not implementable (due to an error in description ) -- you cannot 'fix it later'. So you have to make sure that your idea workable (this actually easiest part for engineers/developers).

Third, do not do Provisional Patent application -- it s a waste of money. It is not a patent, it is an application to get you the 'date' sooner than if you would file a full patent

Then, assuming that you have resolved that you want to patent, and that your idea patentable.

You have to worry about your idea being not just stolen but also turned against you.

So a well funded corp, or well-funded/lawyered-up individual -- may not just do what you are doing, but patent it in a way that will claim that their idea is original, and that you have no right to use it.

So not only that they can steal it from you, they can prevent you implementing it -- if they are that malicious. It is harder if you release open source and explain your idea to all -- but still possible.

Of course, if you do not have money or enemies with a law degree -- the chances of those 'disabling' blows are low. But there is, unfortunately, little in the US judicial system to protect you from those.

Since US law does not require an inventor to implement a patent -- basically a lawyer who cannot code a production-ready system, can do this to you.

Utility patents in US allow you to patent method, process, program. In many patents you will see in Claims sections something is described as a 'method', then the same thing is a 'process', and then at the end it is mentioned that the program implements the 'process'.

So, in the claims section (the most important section), you could describe your invention as 'method', and as a process.

If you obtain the patent, you will continue to pay its fees, to keep it current. The max live of a utility patent is 20 years.

At some point in time, during that period you may turn the patent over to a foundation that allows it to be used by anybody (and they may continue paying fees to maintain it).

This will not protect you from somebody implementing your ideas, but will protect you from being virtually racketeered.

If you decide to work on a patent, consider a patent agent, rather than a patent lawyer.

Patent agents are cheaper (although I do not know by how much), they can represent you in-front of PTO boards, but not in court. Patent lawyers can do both.

If you patent eventually goes to litigation, you can get a patent lawyer at that time (although they will tell you that they are best to write patent too, to make it ready for any possible court defense).

Most patents never go to litigation, and many expire even before 20 years, because the patent assignee failed to pay maintenance fees.


Laura Loomer is one such candidate (almost -- she was a Federal Congress candidate)

She has been trying to fight the bans on her own, for a while.

https://loomered.com/

Do not know if the new law will help in her cases or not.

I am certain it will be challenged, however.

The legal battles that this will spawn , will be used to sharpen the legal language, evidence, etc.

Overall, the direction that Conservatives will take -- is arguing that Political speech must be protected the same way that religious speech is. So this is a federal level battle, overall.

Personally, it seems that giving examples of how hotel owners were refusing Black customers, in the past -- by arguing that they can build their own hotel, and equating this to the Left tech titans vs Conservatives -- will not work.

As race, ethnicity or biologicals gender is not chosen. But religion is.

With regards to theme park protections, I guess they are not speech platforms anyway, so carving out -- for one of the larger tax payers is understood.

This is a raging ideological war in the country that has been going one for more than a decade. Conservatives feel on the defense for some time, the time of questioning the legal weaponry that sides use -- has long passed.

Will be interesting to see how investment banks that have large presence there -- will react as well. They may threaten to leave (and covering up by the demands of their clients) to apply their pressures, as well.

Everybody who has not yet taken side, will have to pick one.


One might, briefly, struggle with this question:

Can a cabal of morally bankrupt bribe-takers wielding selective-outrage-justice weapons against own citizens (Marine Le Pen, Trump, and their supporters)

be scolding another, less-presentable Dictator?

And the Obama admin behavior [1] with the attempted Snowden plane intercept, is not much different either, I agree..

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/20130703-bolivia-president-evo-m...


I actually think both are wrong (Taleb little bit less so)

Because they are using empirical evidence (eg previous data) from 'experiments' that are effectively, unrelated to current situation.

In my personal view, of course,

Most previous elections in the last 30+ years, were between RINOs (Republican In Name Only) and Democrats. Those are pretty much two fractions of the same bribe-taking, accountability-avoiding global Cartel.

This Election is between the representative of citizens of the Republic (Trump) and the Cartel's candidate.

This really did not happen from the time Bushes-then-Clintons took over both parties and turned them into co-existing fractions of one party.

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Another analogy: we do not use same methods and design constraints when building anti-lock breaks control software, as we do when we build a daily revenue reporting system.

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Frame of reference is different basically. And we do not know the tensor(s) that help us to move between the coordinate systems.

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So we are not going to be able to use even 2016 polls (because then folks did not realize how Corrupt the RINOs+Dems are )

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My prediction is that Trump wins, GOP takes House and retains Senate.

This will also be the largest percent wise vote for a GOP president, by Latino and African American voters.

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Will check back in 9 days or so, to see if I was right !

Cheers.


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