I think it is incredibly important for tech companies to not only give adequate amount of leave, but also to make sure it is taken.
I know that after 6-9 months without any holiday my productivity drops, my motivation too, I can start to get bored etc. After a week's (or preferably two's) holiday, I'm raring to go again, and my output sky rockets.
I think the mandatory minimum in the UK is 20 days plus public holidays. However, less than 25 is too little in my opinion.
I'd take issue with psychology not being a science. Ok, 'pop-psychology' as evidenced in this article is not, but psychology itself definitely is (speaking as someone who did a very rigorous course in Experimental Psychology at Cambridge).
Just to name a few things that psychology covers (off the top of my head):
Speech and language development
Child development (e.g. work of Piaget and many since)
Models of mental illness (depression, autism, schizophrenia etc)
Animal psychology- operant conditioning (Skinner and forward), language in other animals etc
There's too much to mention really, and its an extremely important and relevant field.
> I'd take issue with psychology not being a science.
Yep. It depends on how you define "science". If science means having a central corpus of theory that defines the field, informs research in the field, and regulates practice, as is true for physics, biology and every other scientific field, then psychology isn't a science.
If instead "scientific" means white lab coats and clipboards, and endless papers that are never replicated and that contradict each other, then psychology is a science.
If "scientific" means ignoring a field's reduction to practice, so that theory never informs clinical practice and anything goes in clinics, then yes, psychology is a science.
Interesting you should mention autism. There is no clear definition of autism, no known cause, no clear diagnostic criteria, and no treatment. But that doesn't mean that psychologists don't diagnose and treat it -- of course they do. They just don't have any science to back up their practice.
Occasionally, an entire autism-spectrum disorder is simply abandoned, as is happening right now with Asperger's Syndrome. The reason? Clinical psychologists got carried away and began diagnosing nearly everyone who showed any apparent symptoms.
It's the same with depression -- a recent meta-analysis discovered that depression drugs don't actually work for most patients, and all the "evidence" that supports depression medications was cooked by vested interests.
As to schizophrenia, it's not a mental illness, it's a physical illness with genetic roots, an ailment that manifests severe psychological symptoms. Psychologists are reduced to treating the symptoms.
In medicine, if a "doctor" doesn't pay attention to medical research and evidence-based practice, he isn't allowed to practice because he represents a threat to public safety. In psychology, this simply isn't true. Professional organizations have repeatedly ruled that certain therapeutic practices are unscientific and invalid, and clinicians simply ignore them (examples include Facilitated Communications and Recovered Memory Therapy).
Medicine became respectable by stopping all unscientific clinical practice, and now any "doctor" who fails to meet present evidentiary standards is breaking the law. Psychology has yet to begin this process, and clinical practice is out of control.
Psychology have two choices:
1. Make clinical psychologists adopt evidence-based practice.
2. Make clinical psychologists stop calling themselves "psychologists."
There is no third choice.
> There's too much to mention really, and its an extremely important and relevant field.
Science is about building and organizing knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions. And that is true for some areas in psychology,especially in case of research based on methodologically correct experiments. However it's true that in many areas we still lack of such approach and thus results. Instead there are still many myths and straight-up bullshit.and that's real shame as it affects the public image of the field.
For the same reason burning wood is green- as long as you are regrowing it.
So - if you're burning timber from a forest which is sustainably managed (so you're renewing wood at the same rate you're using it), then there is no net carbon released.
That would be true if carbon dioxide was the only greenhouse gas. But it isn't.
Burning biomass could be sustainable if we make sure that new biomass is grown at the same rate as it is burned. I have yet to see a document assuring me that is the case.
In any case burning biofuel is not greenhouse gas neutral. And hence not green.
I'm not sure I agree. I'd say my name is private, I'd say my date of birth is more private, I'd say my medical conditions are more private still. There are clearly degrees of privacy.
Does it really make sense to hold my bank to the same standard as a real estate website? Sure they should all reach some minimum requirement (salted and hashed passwords), but I expect my bank to have far higher standards (e.g. two factor auth) than a a random site.
The problem with storing passwords insecurely is that people reuse them. You can try to tell them otherwise as much as you like, they will do it, so even if one service holds non-sensitive data, stealing the password will grant access to other, completely unrelated services.
I guess the issue is that the layman cannot really tell how secure a solution is, and so are unlikely to be able to make well reasoned decisions about the information they release. As such there really needs to be a far greater level of responsibility placed on people who hold the keys so to speak. Once again this is especially true since people re-use (and use overly simple) passwords at a scary rate. By not protecting their information on a crappy real estate website you are potentially leaving open their bank to abuse.
I feel instances like these just show dangerous levels of incompetence and a blatant disregard for user's information. Good solutions generally require less work anyway so there's no excuse.
They may say buy on bad news, but following that philosophy might have lead you to buy Enron and any number of companies where the bad news wasn't just temporary but a sign of real underlying problems.
You're also falling prey to anchoring bias. Because Facebook stock has previously been twice as much as it is now, it seems 'cheap', and a good deal.
What you really need to consider is the net value of Facebook as a company (by assessing its long term money making potential), and deciding whether its currently under or over valued.
I personally would never consider buying shares in FB because of the weird voting structure/rights. When I buy a piece of the company I want the corresponding votes to have my say in making sure that company is run in my best long term interests.
If you're not buying a significant share and are 'just investing' in a company's potential, you should actually feel more confident knowing that the company is firmly steered by the hands that created it and made it successful.
But I want to be able to make that decision. There's nothing stopping me from re-electing Zuck as CEO every year and letting him do his thing.
However, if he starts doing crazy things, or I think there's a better candidate for the job, I want to be able to vote to chuck him out. 1 share 1 vote!
Couldn't you say the same about any company though? "Sure XYZ are doing badly, but they've got some really smart guys there, all they need to do is come up with a fresh idea for how to make money"
We can only really judge Facebook on what they are doing now, not a revolutionary new way of making money which no-one has yet thought up.
No you can't. Facebook is still growing and still innovating. They have more user data and more user engagement then anyone and they're sinking their hooks ever wider via social widgets and authentication services. They haven't hit a wall yet, and there are still many potential areas they are well positioned to expand into.
Everyone is concerned that they are plateauing, but that's just because of the tremendous numbers they have. Just because they're running up against the limitations of human population at this time doesn't mean the product has plateaued.
If anyone's looking for a photo printing API that's cheaper, ships photos internationally for a flat fee, and has already launched, check out Pwinty ( http://www.pwinty.com ).
We've very much a white label service, so you can add all your own branding etc, and we just do the boring stuff.
So- if you want to build the next PicPlum - think about using Pwinty to do it!
Tom, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I've built an internet-connected photobooth and I've been wanting to offer additional prints on my website. It's called Photopops ( http://myphotopops.com ).
Is there a work-in-progress Python module somewhere? If not, I may work on that.
Hi- there isn't at the moment, so we'd love someone to come up with one (and I'm sure we can offer you some free credit on the service to say thanks for your effort!)
I can vouch for Tom at Pwinty being great to work with. A few weeks ago I asked if their printing api could be extended to more options. Tom said yes and got me a quote in 24 hours. They are very flexible.
Exactly the same with strawberries- chilled they lose a lot of the taste.
A lot of this can be worked around by going to farmer's markets/growing your own and picking traditional varieties which have been selected for taste over appearance.
TLDR: Looks like a failure in their CA-7 batch processing systems, which compounded so they weren't able to back out. Lots of the experts in RBS's implementation of CA-7 have been made redundant, and been replaced with offshore-expertise
I'm not going to question the proficiency of the offshore talent, however, I'm sure most on HN would agree that there's great value with legacy systems in not getting rid of the people who have been working on them for the last 20 years, and know all the idiosyncrasies and foibles.
Lots of the UK banks still use highly complex decades old main-frame based systems which interact with hundreds of other systems. It feels to me like the systems have got so complex, that its hard to see a way of replacing or rewriting and simplifying them.
"It seems whoever made the update to CA-7 managed to delete or corrupt the files which hold the schedule for the overnight jobs, so they did not run, or ran incorrectly"
The aspect that they didn't export the job queue prior to update is something that cross's the border of neglegence with both feet.
Still can't understand why a bank that had people who made bad deals and lost money causing the bank to partialy fail are kept inplace and paid bonus's and the IT people who did there job well are replaced by cheap labour external to the country and this is at a time when there going on about TAX evasion, this too me makes no sence and is why I don't run banks :|.
IT is seen as an overhead, and as something that doesn't contribute directly to profitability. When compared to dealers, dealers bring in the profit, IT slurps it away.
Very true sadly. Don't see many outsourced HR and accounts sections though.
Sad part is that when it goes wrong it does effect the balance sheet. Even sadder is how they internaly cost IT and do it wrong. Remove the IT and see how many people/time is needed to do the same job and that is the true cost/potentual impact of IT. Sadly though that is never done and only comes to light when things fail and then they blame IT and not the effects of seagul managment, budget cuts etc.
Interesting that a retail bank whose core business is to process transactions takes the decision to outsource that capability. And then is exposed as unable to monitor/control the outsourced operation.
Some similarities to the now defunct Railtrack whose remit was to maintain the UK railways decided that it was a good idea to outsource all of its engineering capability. It turned out that Railtrack did not have the ability to manage, monitor or access the state of work carried out by contractors. Some details and links in...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railtrack#Founding
A good lesson. Accessing which are the core functions of your company. And the ability to execute them without failure.
To both your questions, the answer is lack of expertise at hand. People who knew the smells and idiosyncrasies of the systems were not there anymore. A good engineer (as I'm sure there are plenty in the new offshore teams) can fix mostly anything, he'll just take some time if he never did it before. Now they learned how long those delays were.
Maybe in their next business case for off-shoring, they'll plug in realistic numbers for the risk of downtime and its cost.
> there's great value with legacy systems in not getting rid of the people who have been working on them for the last 20 years, and know all the idiosyncrasies and foibles.
As someone who unfortunately has been in touch with CA-7 and who comes from a strong Unix/Linux background I can tell you I wouldn't want to touch that thing with a 30ft pole and on top of that these batches are usually extremely complicated in terms of dependencies and a ton of history and lessons-learned go into building those chains and the whole system is so complex yet so critical, we have 1 or 2 guys doing graveyard shifts for nothing but watching CA7 do its thing because if anything fails it could also shut down vital parts of the bank. (e.g. because literally some plain text files didn't get copied from A to B, in 2012...)
So not only is there possible great value in NOT getting rid of people who basically grew up with the system and know it inside out but when you do get rid of them it should be more than crystal clear to even the most disconnected manager that this is some really serious stuff you are outsourcing and just blindly trusting the friendly sales guy's promises is not going to cut it... it is almost like outsourcing a custom in-house software to an off-shore "expert" and hoping they can just instantly pick things up where your people left it off.
Now it is time to really take a very close look at those SLAs that the project team just wanted approved and signed asap....
Someone who suffers from depression and has ADHD should probably be extremely closely monitored by their parents/carers. It's not for the government to directly intervene in things like this. If a certain message is going to trigger someone to committing suicide, then connecting them to the internet is probably a very bad idea.
> Just in the same way you can't harass someone in the street
It happens all the time. People harass other people, begging, wanting you to fill out surveys, trying to sell you stuff. Go down a pub... Look at football supporters harassing each other. People need to grow far thicker skin when it comes to words.
> there shouldn't be carte blanche for bullying just because it happens to be online
Online "bullying" isn't really bullying though. It's your computer telling you that some human being apparently said something. You should take that with a huge grain of salt. It could as likely be a bot. It's parents place to educate their children into the mindset of assuming nothing is real online. People are not who they say they are. People may not exist.
Am I being online "bullied" by the automated spam process sending me emails suggesting I need penis enlargement devices?
So someone who's got ADHD and depression should effectively be stopped from using the internet in case they get bullied?
Asking you to fill out a survey is not harassment, neither is trying to tell you stuff. This person was the victim of a vicious and malicious campaign against her, and you really have the guts to compare it to someone trying to sell you stuff on the street?
Online bullying is real bullying. Would you say that if someone sends you a text message you should ignore it because it 'could be a bot'.
Yes- people should be educated that people online may not be who they say there are, or may not exist. But I think this is orthogonal to the proposal, which is that if someone harasses and bullies you online, you should be able to find out who they are and stop them. Just the same way you'd expect the police to help you out if someone started making abusive phone calls to your house.
> So someone who's got ADHD and depression should effectively be stopped from using the internet in case they get bullied?
No, as long as people caring for them know the potential risks and impact. It's up to parents to ensure their children are aware of how to view/use the internet.
If your child has epilepsy, then you have to be careful with strobe lights etc. It's just basic risk assessment.
> Would you say that if someone sends you a text message you should ignore it because it 'could be a bot'.
Every so often I get an automated bot SMS messages from vodafone. If someone/something sends you a message that you don't care about, delete it. Move on. If you're getting lots, then maybe you need a technological solution to filter out the spam/bots. The point is, don't start waging a war against the noise, just ignore it.
> "Just the same way you'd expect the police to help you out if someone started making abusive phone calls to your house."
I doubt the police would care unless there were specific threats to your life, or stalking etc. More likely you'd just be told to block their number.
It's a very slippery slope from this, toward "I find this joke offensive, the joke teller should be prosecuted".
I think it is more of a case of our civil laws starting to catch back up to how far technology has been pushed.
Unfortunately, it seems there will always be some humans out of the whole who will abuse/take advantage of/mess it up for the rest for whatever reason. In many of our civilizations, we attempt to codify what is acceptable behavior and what is damaging behavior, and what recourses we have for harm inflicted.
I always thought bullying doesn't count unless there is a real threat of being beaten up behind the school on a regular basis. Apparently mainstream definitions are much broader...
My point is that your first response when getting a message, through any medium, is "Did this message come from who I think it did". Is it from someone I care about.
If it's from someone/something you don't care about, discard it, block it. Setup filters etc.
> The medium is irrelevant; the content is what's relevant.
The content is only relevant if it's from someone you care about. If it's from a bot, or some anonymous internet troll, the content is irrelevant. Discard it.
I could go through my "spam" folder and start getting offended/repulsed/scared by everything it contains. But what would be the point?
It's a lot easier for a bot/human to make out they're someone else online, than it is leaving a voicemail. (Until you can say to a speech changer "Make me sound like my targets girlfriend").
> The content is only relevant if it's from someone you care about. If it's from a bot, or some anonymous internet troll, the content is irrelevant. Discard it.
I don't think that's true. There are lots of cases of disturbing content containing specific knowledge of and threats to the recipient where the source is an anonymous internet troll. The latest case is here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-pen...
> People need to grow far thicker skin when it comes to words.
I prefer this viewpoint: "a culture where the only people able to contribute to the national conversation are thick-skinned, insensitive, white, straight males who can repel or ignore this ugly trench of abuse is not a culture any thinking person should want to live in." http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-pen...
I also suspect that turning this into a conversation about spam and how this happens to everyone would be classed as "derailing"
People need to grow far thicker skin when it comes to words.
Sometimes these cases seem to be coming from people who just bought their first internet machine and become deeply offended that arguing on the internet works by different rules than their dinner table conversations. I would even go so far and argue that trolling can lead to a higher level of tolerance, as it pushes the believes of those being trolled over the top. In an ideal scenario this could lead to realization that their opinions, views, and in the end reality, are not as black and white as they think - i.e. a Steven Colbert effect.
> Online "bullying" isn't really bullying though. It's your computer telling you that some human being apparently said something. You should take that with a huge grain of salt. It could as likely be a bot
Let me just take a second to call bullshit on that.
There are people in London who spend their Christmas Eves running around barefoot Clapham High Street from gay bar to gay bar clothed as a bottle of mustard. Just to put this in perspective.
> Do you really think that is OK
Yeah. In fact, I wouldn't only say "OK" but "highly usual" to see such a report. Why? Because 1) at least one thirteen year old killed themselves 2) telegraph, being the rag they are, obviously picked it up and made it into a tearful story, or maybe even made it up (which wouldn't be beyond their reach). Someone didn't seek help and therefore killed themselves. Who cares? Are you next going to grief us about the fact that someone drove too fast and killed themselves? That someone ate a razor and killed themselves? That someone touched a live electrical wire and killed themselves? Rest assured more people die and become crippled in traffic accidents than in effect of bullying, yet metropolitan areas in the US do not even have an investigative unit responsible for ascertaining the identity of a hit and run car driver unless the person dies. Crippled for life? Yup, fine with us, just go home. Dead? We might investigate. There's one guy in our metro area handling those. For millions of drivers.
When predicting things, sometimes you feel like there's an itch and you follow up on it and it turns out you notice a pattern which lets you reason about the nature of the world as a whole. Here's the tip: if there were a trend with people being bullied killing themselves, I might be able to agree. If it were additionally undoubtedly correlated, in that bullying meant a rise in suicide rates across people with all sorts of psychological backgrounds, and the raise is well above what happens under other conditions when mental illnesses are accounted for, i might even be compelled to agree. But posting a story of one person, out of millions in Los Angeles alone, is nothing. It's not an indicator, it's not even an itch on a fly's butt.
But to answer your question:
> Here's an example of a 13 year old girl who commited suicide after being bullied online. Do you really think that is OK
True answer? I don't give a shit, and I'm not going to start walking like on broken glass, turning my whole world upside down, and assuming inane and unnatural behaviours because of someone else's unique and unusual deficiency. Get real.
I think the mandatory minimum in the UK is 20 days plus public holidays. However, less than 25 is too little in my opinion.