I really appreciate how functional the building is. It's extremely visually distinct while having really engaging vertical elements (I've always thought it evoked waterfalls) and lacking the functional flaws I've seen with other highly visible architecture (I'm especially thinking of the Gehry Building at MIT - that's whimsical in appearance but an absolute nightmare of usability with awkward unusable interior spaces and a long legacy of mold and maintenance issues).
It's especially amusing that Boston City Hall is within a stone's throw of the only block that survived the fire of 1872 and throws a shadow over Faneuil Hall.
Stata at MIT has sort of grown on me from an abstract architectural perspective. But it cost a lot and I've never really heard good things about it from people who actually use the building though I've never been in it myself aside from the ground floor. It was also sort of justified as a landmark northeast entrance to campus but was soon pretty much literally overshadowed by a lot of newer construction in the area.
Even if every single news site went down on election night, it would be fine. People aren't gonna die if they don't find out who won the election until the next day or even the next week.
The results of this election will not be knowable the night of the election anyway. There are way too many people currently preparing too many different ways to challenge the results regardless of what actually happens.
Finding out the winner on election night is really just a modern illusion. Media "calls" have zero legal weight, and they rely on predictable geographical voting patterns and large enough win margins to build confidence on the outcome before all the unofficial tallies are in. That's way more difficult these days.
The fastest state to certify actual official results takes 2 or 3 days (Delaware), and most states are closer to 2 or 3 weeks.
Harris doesn't need to "attempt it", she somehow became the Democratic choice without a single vote for her, replacing the man who said it'd be ridiculous after all the millions of votes he got
Like it or not (I don't!), primaries are internal functions of membership organizations. The law has found this again and again. In these contests, it is the party delegates who are given the right to choose the party nominee.
It really wasn't. It wasn't difficult for anyone to get past their cheerleading for the Iraq War other than Judith Miller, who (for her service) was given a fake job at a fake conservative paper for a time that I'm sure paid her enough to retire comfortably. The Cheneys and Bushes are media and political darlings. No one paid a price for going with the herd, and doing what the administration demanded.
It was and is difficult for people who failed to cheer on the Iraq War.
The NYT has always been on the administration's side when asked, and "corrects" the record about 5 years after it could make a difference for anyone. Everyone involved gets cush editor-in-chief jobs at "liberal" magazines, or professorships at quarter-million dollar J-schools.
...which says that it's based on reputation. I presume the previous poster's opinion is that the NYT is no longer deserving of that reputation. It's weird that you asked for a citation of their opinion.
Given the disinformation campaign that will take place (at the very least from russian bots flooding social media), I would much prefer all sources of information be fully available throughout the election. Of course this is their highest leverage moment, but it is also critical for the future of the country (at the very least). It is somewhat akin to ambulance drivers choosing to go on strike on Memorial day weekend. I am not a fan of the tactic, since they could strike any other time and get the same thing, perhaps striking 2 days more than they would have to at this time.
The best single volume overview is this page-turner, which embraces Vienna and Paris, for math, science, philosophy, literature and art at the turn of the 20th century:
The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought
Are people's historic perspectives really that cartoonishly small-minded?
The early 20th century was a flashpoint where rising powers decided who would become the global superpower.
Agree or not about antisemitism and nationalism, both of those were enormously popular, mainstream things. It wasn't weird or fringe to adopt an national ideology character used by those things. So much of Europe (centered around Germany) acting on those views isn't the cause of their downfall—on the contrary, they were convinced (and these were not dumb people who couldn't see patterns) that such things would strengthen their people and their homes.
So obviously that isn't what "screwed it all up". What screwed it all up was the existence of other rising powers and the timing of it all. Their rise was threatened by a strong Germany. This is all completely mundane, predictable global politics.
The rest, about who was "evil" and "the bad guys" is almost entirely fiction written by the victors—also, coincidentally, completely mundane and predictable.
Clarifying that I misread who this was a response to. I thought you were talking about Germany and the area around it, and in specific with the last part of your comment, referring to Germany.
Why is Japanese software so bad? Chip shortage or not using the card purchase UI at train stations is confusing, even in English.
As a US software engineer, I can not figure out how a country that can make great hardware (e.g. high-speed trains), has a beautifully minimalist design aesthetic (e.g. wabi-sabi), and lots of talented artists and engineers can produce such crappy user interfaces. Or for that matter, beyond a few games is irrelevant in the world software markets. Does anyone have an idea?
Some software may not bridge the gap in design sensibilities between Japan and other countries, but Sony and Nintendo are examples of massive Japanese companies working on various hardware and UX solutions for an international audience. I don't think it's fair to paint software from Japan with such a broad brush.
A minimalist design aesthetic also doesn't automatically equate to good UX. I think there's lots of people on this site that would say modern, western UX is often poorly executed and potentially getting worse (in some regards.) A common complaint I hear is that interfaces have too much white-space.
If UX is predicated on user research, it's important to recognize that people coming from outside Japan and who don't know the language aren't the target users and probably not the right ones to be making a judgement calls on the quality of Japanese software as a whole.
If you're asking about the difference in design sensibilities, this is speculation, but a couple things that come to mind are:
- The information density of local written languages.
- The relatively small number of fluent English speakers in Japan means there's potentially less opportunity for ideas and design patterns to cross pollinate, making each style feel more foreign to outsiders.
I believe that there two factors that people don't talk about much:
- Software engineering wasn't much of a prestige profession (I suspect still isn't), and most bright STEM students ended up studying other forms of engineering
- A general lack of interest in hacking and tinkering
People make some wild claims, such as kanji or East Asian culture, but there is plenty of quality Chinese and Korean software.
> not using the card purchase UI at train stations is confusing.
Agreed that the UI for Japanese train ticket machines can be confusing for first-time users such as foreign visitors, but foreign visitors aren't the primary use case. These machines are designed to be familiar and fast for the bulk of their users: residents of Japan who know how the train system works. Stations need to move massive numbers of people through these machines quickly, and this layout is incredibly efficient for that.
Older terminals used a very similar layout of two groupings [1]:
1. physical pushbuttons with prices displayed using 7-segment LEDs
2. physical pushbuttons for most common multi-passenger sets
The touchscreen terminals provide this exact same layout, which provided continuity as the changeover happened, and kept the lines at the machines moving quickly. They're also freakin' brilliant when it comes to minimising the button-presses required to buy tickets. e.g. two parents and a kid going to a station that's 400-yen from here? Press the "two adults, one kid" button, then the fare. You're done. Fare zones are listed on a large train network map usually posted right above the machines with both adult/child prices [2], but locals almost always know where they're going and how much.
Given how heavily-trafficked Japanese stations are, it's way more critical to minimise the time required to use the machines and keep the lines flowing than it is to provide an easy experience for foreign visitors. Compare to e.g. Montréal where even users familiar with the metro can spend upwards of a minute to buy a ticket or recharge an Opus card.
Carryover old user interface (paper, button, board, etc) layout and flow on latest user interface is a phenomenon seen everywhere in Japan. Enterprises don't want to take risk to change interface much, or no ability to think that.
And most of that elimination of extreme poverty? In China. Now, I suppose you can consider Dengism capitalism, if you ignore the fact that it's markets and capital under controlled conditions being used to build up industrial capacity for the transition to communism, but hey. Whatever definitions let you sleep at night.
I think the big criticism with The Capitalist Manifesto is that it was essential the guiding philosophy in the late-1990's to early 2010s where the belief was that building a strong trade with China based on capitalist principles would lead to political change there.
It's impossible to say whether or not it is a fallacy of course, but this is a criticism that does need addressing.
The other major criticism is that it doesn't take into account externalities. It was written in the 1950s, before the birth of the modern environmental movement, but non-the-less the effect of unbound lassize-fair capitalism was understood and the book could do more to address this.
For me (as is common in political/economic trade offs) it's enough to say that the book makes some good points that seem more true than false, and there is enough data to show that it does work much of the time.
Optimizing for unit economics vs. top-line growth are opposites in building a company. In the years of free investor money (2020, 1999, etc), companies choose growth over unit cost because their boards and investors are trying to drive huge valuations. This is true in software, farming, and many industries.
Unlike many companies in the software industry, we have grown profitably for nine years without the need for any funding. Our success has been fueled by our ability to invest profits into our business, allowing us to improve our software and expand our operations continuously.
However, the 2022 Section 174 R&D tax credit changes have had an impact. This recent change affects many small, independent technology companies, including my company. We have been busy building products, making our customers successful, and making payroll. We are happy to pay our fair share of taxes on our profits. However, investing in software development is the engine that allows us to grow our company and hire more employees. Our tax laws must continue to reflect this reality.
I think the point of this law is to capture tax from companies in their growth phase, as the general public sees these companies as tax avoiders and their lack of profit as an accounting trick.
In reality, it will keep small companies small and less of a threat to big companies.
It isn't even that the deduction went away, it must now be amortized over five years (an accounting trick on the part of Congress to pretend they're not spending money they are).
This hurts businesses more the smaller they are, but paradoxically it also hurts businesses more the higher percentage of their revenue they spend in payroll. Literally if you give your employees a bigger reward for their work, you're hurt harder by this ridiculous law.
If you're a sociopathic CEO with 8-10 engineers whose work output isn't directly tied to profit, and you're paying out most or all of your profit in salaries, you're definitely going to be looking at letting a few of them go to ease the tax hit.
Would you recommend to keep on with favoring this accounting trick for fairness because previous businesses took advantage of it? If so, how/when should the legislator changes laws when needed?
> general public
Not sure what’s your definition, maybe “non-startup founders neither investors” ? I work in startup since a couple of years and all my employers did declare me as r&d while we where only implementing react or so without any “research” difference than a cabinet maker building a piece of furniture. This drives me nuts because I don’t contribute to my country tax while my income is on the very upper side comparing median.
Think of it like being a fan of 486 PCs or pixel art.
I do hate this architecture, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowellism