It's incredible to read your story. I'm sorry for what you went through.
It also re-affirms my belief about the solution:
> But I decided to do no harm. I started thinking about it as a sort of superpower I have, one that must be used with great care and responsibility.
i.e. Accept it, and deal with it.
This is huge. Most sufferers find that impossible. Because....
> you have to acknowledge and face the pain you've caused, which can result in unbearable guilt.
It can get better. Living a quiet life is better than a life full of extreme highs and lows. It feels emptier, because it isn't full of drama. But it's how most people live.
I'll agree, with the caveat that perhaps if the BPD person admits they have BPD, is in therapy, and is trying to get better... sticking around may be OK.
But it's no different than when someone has alcoholism or a drug habit. If they don't want to get better, get out.
This is the only hope, but I'm afraid one would have to put limits on the amount of time spent in a relationship and do some reflecting on their own life and goals. Realistically, is one willing to spend decades with a BPD in therapy hoping for good results? I'm just trying to guard against false hope.
Or working with someone who has BPD. They don't get anything done. They play office politics to a ludicrous degree. They blame everyone else for anything that happens. But they know who to suck up to, and they know how to make it look like they're getting work done. So they don't get fired.
Keep a relationship or a job means nothing unless you ask everyone else if they're getting better. If the answer is "OMFG I'm still walking on eggshells around that person", then they only progress they've made is to fool the therapist.
I’m especially gutted to read stuff like this, having been recently diagnosed with a moderate to severe case after not understanding my behavior for over thirty years. Have you ever asked someone with BPD what it’s like to live with themselves? To cry and drink themselves to sleep because they don’t understand why they’re like this? How they can’t fathom why they’re completely and utterly alone when it seems like they’re doing everything right, but going off the deep end every now and then without any earthly idea why? How they’d much rather embrace a bullet to the fucking temple than deal with this godawful sickness and a world full of indifferent people like you for just one more day? Pray tell, have you ever asked someone what it’s like to feel like life itself is a prison from which you can’t escape, trapped with a person you can’t even begin to explain nor relate to?
Didn’t think so.
I get my work done, dude. It’s like no matter how much I try to keep other people happy, nobody gives a shit and assumes I’m like everyone else they’ve ever met who claims to have it, and they’re confidently able to predict who I am based on a label. You sure have the leprosy of BPD figured out; sounds like I should be playing more office politics, since that’s what I’m supposed to do, apparently.
A not-insignificant portion of this thread sucks, is just outright depressing, and suggests to me that there’s little hope for ever successfully loving or communicating with other people. And you know the worst part? I fall in love easily because I want absolutely nothing more than to feel that connection with another human being. Comments like this remind me of the futility that lies therein. I shouldn’t have read the comments, and I knew better when I clicked it, but I did it anyway in the vain hope that I would read something to inspire me to keep pressing forward. How’s that working out, you ask? Makes me relieved I bought a tall bottle of Goose at the store earlier, thank you.
Your other, horrible comment comparing BPD to incontinence makes me want to say something really nasty, emotional, and visceral to you, but I’m strongly resisting because it would just reinforce your fucked up belief structure about people who are genuinely suffering on a level that you can’t even comprehend. Seriously, I’ve clicked Edit and typed some of the meanest things I’ve ever said several times now, but I also know to resist that overwhelming urge for both of our sakes. How’s that for your opinion of people like me? Do I fit your box?
I genuinely hope you find it in yourself to develop empathy for people who aren’t as advantaged and in control of their lives as you. I’m sorry to rebuke you so harshly, but Christ.
I dated a girl with (I would guess) BPD for a couple months, and it was either fine (most of the time) or a hellish nightmare. I gave up when she shouted at me for two hours, started physically shoving me, then threatened to call the cops on me because I spent an hour talking to her (chill male) roommate after she had gone to bed. I ended up suffering fairly severe anxiety attacks for at least another month or two, and felt tremendous guilt and regret that I couldn't help her, as well as anger at her behavior.
She was otherwise an apparently successful masters student who I'm sure can hold down a job for years at a time. But taking completely senseless abuse just isn't worth it for the vast majority of potential partners, even if the BPD person has many redeeming qualities and can't control their outbursts.
I wish her (and everyone in a similar situation) all the best, but I am too emotionally sensitive and empathetic to be able to deal with that for the long term without going nuts myself.
If you post uncivilly to HN again we are going to ban you. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site properly from now on. If you can't be scrupulously respectful of others, HN is not the forum for you.
> Your other, horrible comment comparing BPD to incontinence makes me want to say something really nasty, emotional, and visceral to you, but I’m strongly resisting because it would just reinforce your fucked up belief structure about people who are genuinely suffering on a level that you can’t even comprehend.
As is typical in borderlines, you missed my point entirely. My comment was about the impact this disorder has on others. Because of the disorder, your pain is so large that you are blind to the impact that the disorder has on others.
That's the problem.
I sympathize with you, I really, really, do. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But ultimately, it's your disorder, and is your responsibility to fix.
Then, take the advice to heart. You will be happier by far.
One problem with the disorder is that the lows are tempered by highs. It's exciting to be emotionally involved, to think the world of someone, to be on the "high". And then it crashes, and you feel like shit.
I've read a lot about BPD, and things written by BPD sufferers. Despite the lows, most are also addicted to the highs. And they can't deal with the underlying disorder until they break the addiction.
As an example:
> I fall in love easily because I want absolutely nothing more than to feel that connection with another human being.
That's the emotional high I'm talking about.
You can get away from the lows. But the cost is that the highs are also mitigated. This is how most people live. There are few extremes. Just every day fumbling through life. Life is this: just living.
> I genuinely hope you find it in yourself to develop empathy for people who aren’t as advantaged and in control of their lives as you.
That is another typical BPD comment. You know nothing about my pain, my experience, or my journey. But because you're in pain, then my life must be wonderful.
Stop splitting. Decide to just live. Decide to not inflict pain or suffering on others. Work on the addiction to the highs.
If you want to talk more, email me. My email address is in my profile.
This is a shocking personal attack and particularly painful to see here. You've followed it up with other things that are just as bad. This is not allowed on HN.
I've banned this account, mostly because you behaved so badly here, but also because you've engaged in flamewars and personal swipes in the past. We really don't want that kind of discussion on Hacker News. If you'd like to commit to using this site properly in the future—which means only posting scrupulously respectful remarks—you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and ask to be unbanned.
also BPD here, and also inclined to point out you’re misrepresenting the other as much as he may be misrepresenting you.
those of us who accept our diagnosis and work toward treatment (and it is a small subset) are often deeply aware of the impact our condition has on others. often i feel i go the distance to cultivate the good more than others in my circle because i am so distinctly made aware of my own inhered failings in the social arena.
how may i help you? how may i make your life a more pleasant experience? how may i alleviate your burdens? these are all questions at the forefront of my mind when communicating with humans generally and even more with those i have invested time and effort.
it’s a real effort which i am inclined to point out you may not fully be aware yourself of the enormity of despite saying so. you don’t live in this mind where every emotion is like a firestorm. we may talk of our disorder as a real sickness, as an illness to be eradicated but you on the other end have not felt what it was like to fall so deeply in love that self and other disappear in a moment of self-self knowing. if humans knew all other humans in such a fashion, humankind might be better off.
my goal is to eliminate the poisons and elevate what i know to be good in me. we can get better. i have seen the results myself. please don’t write us off as a population.
i’d urge the mentally healthy to also strive to be even more tolerant, compassionate and selfless than you may already think yourself to be. being human (”healthy” as it were) can be seen itself as a kind of mental condition that one is enslaved to: extraordinary people like the Buddha have made such observations.
I didn’t miss your point. The part that made that comment horrible is “you’re not allowed to come over until you stop peeing on my couch,” like human beings with a regrettable, painful, mortifyingly embarrassing condition are untrained dogs to you. Like it’s something they can just stop. That’s what you said: figure it out, then I’ll let you sit on my couch. I considered the possibility that I misinterpreted you here, then noticed that I wasn’t the only one, if so.
Then you did the exact same thing here, too. “Stop splitting.” “Decide to stop hurting people.” “Just flick off this light switch that’s taken years of therapy to even understand, buddy! Just live! Just be!” Okay, Julia. You’re talking about serious, life changing journeys that require a lot of help and support along the way, and paying them the same respect as taking the car through the wash.
I’m not blind to my impact on other people. As is typical in armchair psychologists, you missed the entire part of my comment where I talk about how intensely aware I am of my impact on others. That’s this entire comment: oh, he has this condition, let me ignore everything he said and talk to him with my years of psychological training. Maybe that will get through.
I’m not splitting with you and acknowledge that I know nothing about your pain or journey. I know only what you’ve chosen to share in commentary here, and brother, it’s enough of a display of malempathy to make me conclude that your opinion matters very little to me. I didn’t even need my disorder to make that determination. The follow up didn’t do a lot to help.
As a BDP self-diagnosed here in the post, I fully understand why you did this. I also did it in the past without knowing why but today I got some reflection about it, mainly with this topic and your reluctancing in understand that the way your argument is severely biased because of this condition we share.
Please don't self diagnose. Not much good comes out of it, as you can't act upon it with treatment such as therapy or medication. Please see a professional instead.
I don’t know if I agree that I’m biased about calling out a lack of empathy like that — maybe that I personalized it too much, sure — but I respect your viewpoint and I’m glad you’re reflecting on it. Self awareness is step one on a journey that’s going to take you and I a long time, and I’m glad to see that this (awful) thread has some positive outcomes.
You can’t repeatedly say “typical borderline” and “I understand your trauma” in the same comment. They’re mutually exclusive. Whatever experiences you’ve had with a person like this don’t give you any sort of insight into everyone. People are people. Notice I sniffed out what was going on with the other commenter? I can’t help but wonder who it was that patterned you like this, so armchair expert on a condition, and people, you’re so keen to dismiss. I’m guessing it was the coworker, but there has to be more to it than that.
Have you ever stopped and considered that perhaps some of your coworker’s behavior had nothing to do with the condition he claimed to have and that you’ve associated? I thought about responding that some of the things you described aren’t indicative or symptomatic, but inferred it’d be a waste of breath.
You’re wrong, and you’re so convinced I’m wrong on account of something I was brave enough to share, that we are never going to meet on this. You can’t position yourself as trying to help when you just say “typical borderline” to comments you think you understand — which your reply makes clear that you genuinely don’t. You bet I reacted emotionally. You’re generally indicting an entire group of people, including me, with completely wrong perceptions of a disorder you clearly do not understand.
You want me to explain my position? ‘Kay: Your comments make you sound like an asshole. I don’t think you are one. I’m trying to guide you to somewhere in the middle of that, with the added bonus of lightly educating you about a condition you think you know, and you’re resisting and turning it around on me like I’m pulling teeth and doubling down on practicing psychiatry with a flawed mental model for even understanding the people you’re talking to. And I’m coming from the disadvantage of everything I say being interpreted in that flawed mental framework of behavior, with the added irony of the person turning comments around being able to lean on that being a condition of my disorder to disregard what I’m saying even though I have a point.
Step 1: Avoid ever using the word “typical” about any behavior you observe in someone else and try listening, instead. Your conceptions of “typical” might be (and, in this case, are) wrong.
Step 2: Try reading my comments as if they’re someone you respect and admire speaking, someone who’s not a random who you’ve safely labeled in a box that you’ve built from past trauma.
For what it’s worth, though I somewhat sparred with you, I can completely understand where you’re coming from. Your anguish that comes through from your situation is the same pain I’ve seen inflicted on so many in my own life. I’d be devastated to hear that you hadn’t found peace with your family, and I genuinely hope that you guys can work it out and find common ground. Blood, water, all that.
This was a tough thread but I don’t carry any hard feelings. Nobody won, here. Let’s learn for next time, I owe you a beer, and best of luck (really).
Although I still feel like people around me give me a difficult time accepting my behavior, at least now I know a huge chunk of the problem also lies in my behavior - and it is only there that I can fix that anguish, not externally. So yeah, hard small victories, I guess.
Do you have anything productive to add, such as responding directly to my dissection of the lack of empathy I’m talking to, or are you just projecting your brother onto me because you think you understand a label?
If I didn’t give a shit, I wouldn’t be trying to explain it to him. Rebukes are based in corrective intent. If this were really a “BPD moment” (sigh) I would have split him to irrelevance and ignored him like he doesn’t matter to me. But I believe people can change, and I think a disregard for the suffering of other people is something that’s a little easier to change than others. Even yours. Your brother deserves it.
This is the first time I’ve ever acknowledged my condition online. I’m already regretting it, based on the labeling dismissal of my opinions.
I'm most likely projecting my brother. But my man, it's hard not to. I've just read your comments to my wife without telling her the context, and she said "sounds just like your brother". I mean no harm, I wish you all the best, but I couldn't resist reacting, it touched a nerve I guess. My brother always talks about how he helps friends and family, he tries to understand everyone, feels empathy. But there's never anything to show for it. I know I'm just an object to him, a shell, we all are, to take the abuse. If I drive him somewhere (he doesn't drive) he will not appreciate it, because that is my role in his life. He will even text uncles and friends late at night to drive him or do some other favor. But none of it counts, because he is the only one who feels, he listened to me when I had problems, and empathized. I guess I need to bow in front of him, the majesty, only person in the world who feels. When I read your comments, I get the same vibe, it hits all the right spots. It's uncanny really.
Would you please stop? Your comments in this thread do not reach the bar for civility on this site. If you want to admonish others about taking responsibility, you need to do the same for the effect of your own behavior here, which is clearly not helping the level of thoughtfulness and insight of this discussion thread.
Agreed. This whole thread is abusive and vile, maybe the worst thing I've seen on HN.
jsmthrowaway - if you ever read this, you have my empathy and support. Ignore these a-holes; they are just ignorant and loud. Unfortunately there are many sick people in the world who don't understand mental illness, but remember that there are many people who do understand.
I never understood why Youtube didn't have uploaders select various categories for videos. It would do a number of things:
* allow them to demonetize / ban / block videos for abuse of categorization
* train machine learning on the various categories
It's a lot more socially palatable for Youtube to say "Hey guys, we HAVE a blood and violence category, but you didn't use it for this video. So we'll punish you for that."
Instead, we get programming videos getting demonetized / blocked for god only knows what reason. That makes people made, and is bad press.
YouTube does actually have video categories that the uploader selects, although historically it has led to people mis-categorizing their videos on purpose.
For example, before gaming was a category that was embraced by YouTube, many popular gaming creators would categorize their videos under Comedy instead of Gaming, because the Gaming category did not have a spot on the front page. This also led to a fights between gaming YouTubers over mis-labelling under lesser used categories just to get the top spot and end up on the front page.
As far as I can tell the categories are as follows: Autos and Vehicles, Comedy, Education, Film & Animation, Gaming, Howto & Style, Music, News & Politics, Nonprofits & Activism, People & Blogs, Pets & Animals, Science & Technology, Sports, Travel & Events.
Other commenters speculate that there is a technical reason why YouTube doesn't allow content producers to choose their monetization categories but I bet it's more likely to be a business reason. I'm sure it would be technically challenging and possibly for not much reward (for Google), however, I bet it's even harder to sell advertisers on ad packages that include Google ads when any producer can opt out of any group of ads. It would make it much harder to tell advertisers how many eyes their ads would actually make it in front of.
That seems like a reasonable idea to me but I think part of the answer is that a mind boggling amount of videos are uploaded to Youtube every second. Tracking categorization abuse seems straightforward in theory but good luck automating that reliably over millions of videos especially when you know that some very dedicated people will try their best to game the algorithm in their favor.
People will start using the "blood and violence" category exclusively if it means they're less likely to be demonetized, rendering it useless. Or the other way around: if this category means they get fewer views they'll try their best to be always nearly avoid it, except of course it can get very subjective and some people are going to be flagged "blood and violence" even though they argue it's not that violent and channel XYZ did worse and didn't get tagged etc...
When it come to moderating Youtube, and given the ridiculous amount of content hosted there, you shouldn't think "how would I do it" but rather "how would I design an algorithm that would do that". And suddenly it becomes a lot less obvious. You can't teach algorithms common sense (yet).
I think the reason YT avoids this is for fear of monetization loss as fewer things get exposed to wide audiences so there is less "vitality", and YT loses advert potential.
If they cared about users and creators, they'd take a page from Flickr.
this would be an extremely dirty dataset, as there is no incentive to not put your videos in as many categories as possible. if you can only have one, people will still put it in the most popular category a large fraction of the times I'm sure, not the correct one
The implicit goal of most YouTubers is to get views, as that's how they make money. Putting your video in a smaller category/in not the max amount of category reduces your exposure, reducing your potential views. The incentive of having a lesser chance of being flagged feels tiny compared to that
Which they would determine using... an automated algorithm which decides which category a video should be in, and comparing it to the category chosen. At which point...
Well, it's both a challenging production task (which Google is great at) and a learning from streaming data task, which Google also has some experience with e.g. news. The latter is certainly a interesting challenge, but many researchers are already working on it.
They have more data than they do now for machine learning, and a better PR story.
i.e. uploaders can't be mad about the categories, because the categories are chosen by the uploader.
Uploaders can be mad about Youtube double-checking the categories and getting it wrong... which is less likely to happen if they have better data for machine learning.
Ultimately the determination is still made by the machine learning process, so you're describing extra work to provide an interface of dubious value that will be used more to misrepresent video content than to provide useful signals, and it seems that customer support related to this would increase dramatically.
I think Google relies overmuch on questionable ML in most areas, but in this case, the alternatives are either ridiculously expensive, or easily exploitable.
Do the banks talk to each other about their customers? So if you don't pay a loan to bank A does bank B know about it and make their lending decisions based on that information? If so, it's functionally identical to the credit reporting agencies in the US.
Is the same type of credit with the same interest rates available just as easily in France as in the US?
In Germany life is also not dominated by the credit agencies like in the US but there is a thing called "Schufa" that does some credit reporting. Not sure how it works though.
Banks will usually not give you an account and shops won't give you credit if your rating is bad. For example, you are so late to pay your bills that the creditor has involved collection agencies or the courts to get their money.
Landlords will more often than not demand a document from the Schufa (supplied at your own expense) to consider you eligible for renting a flat or a house.
> Landlords will more often than not demand a document from the Schufa (supplied at your own expense) to consider you eligible for renting a flat or a house.
Not just landlords, employers do Schufa checks too, same for phone/mobile contracts, cable TV, and for what its worth even power/gas companies. The latter is really bad because it locks poor people into the highly expensive "Grundversorgung" tarriff (regulated, the local utility MUST offer it) by the local utility, thus taking away even more of their money.
That's a matter of liver health, right? So you could theoretically go higher (by combining antidiabetic drugs with beta-adrenergic agonists, and then sitting in a hospital in a cold water bath hooked up to a liver dialysis machine.)
Not a viable alternative to dieting and exercise, of course, but maybe an alternative to liposuction or gastric-bypass surgery.
I'd suspect the more exercise you do the more that number moves up, you'd be breathing harder. I'd hesitate to try and put a 'hard limit' on anything like this.
A colleague who was into serious mountain climbing said that at 5km it was not enough to eat like 5000 calories per day to maintain weight. He even on purpose gained weight before his trips, and still returned leaner despite eating a lot.
Like the previous commenter mentioned, that's mostly water. I've seen various numbers between 100 and 150 calories burned per mile for runners, which at the high end is just a bit over one pound's worth of calories for a marathon.
I’ve read about people who do things like swim the channel, and bulk up (10’s of lbs) before doing so. Given that they lose this weight in the process, how does that happen?
I think that's mostly independent. A swimmer bulking up for a channel swim is probably putting on a mix of water, fat, and muscle in the slow lead up to the swim (and maybe extra water in the days before) and then losing water during the swim. Here's [0] a discussion of swimmers strategizing about weight gain, and you can see that it's largely about issues like insulation from cold, buoyancy, and strength, and not because they're worried about losing the weight during the swim itself.
"Strong likelihood" only in cases of extreme dehydration. Many wrestlers/ boxers will drop >5 lbs in one day with no longer term impact. The majority of that being water weight they gain right back again.
Well, but you also breath in the O2 first, I think the C just binds to that. C and O weigh similar amounts so it is just 1/3 of the 2 pounds. But you have to count the water loss as well, it is part of fat cells.
How many calories can you max burn per day, around 8000? That would be ~1.1kg of fat loss at 7 kcal per g fat. At a normal day of not eating it is ~300g afaik (2100 kcal at 7kcal/g).
To have such enormous deficit you would have to exercise a lot. And of course you breathe faster during the workout so I think it is entirely possible to breathe out more than 2 pounds of CO2 per day. 2 pounds if probably average for a typical person.
While people complain about the racial bias in the courtroom, the sex bias is substantially larger.
Heck, the Supreme Court of Canada recently gave a woman a complete pass for trying to have her husband killed. Because after she was charged with attempted murder, she conveniently remembered that she was the victim of domestic violence.
Despite her claims being provably false.
i.e. claimed incidents occurred when they lived hundreds of miles apart. There's no record of her ever calling the police, despite her claims of multiple police visits, etc.
We found that judges take gender, but not race, into account in determining the amount of bail for certain types of cases; more specifically, Black females faced lower bail than Black males in less serious cases. In contrast, we found that both race and gender affected the likelihood of pretrial release. White defendants were more likely than black defendants to be released pending trial and females were more likely than males to be released prior to trial. In fact, white females, white males, and black females all were more likely than black males to be released.
Okay, I think I see what you mean now. It's a bit hard to see since you're so focused on gender bias.
I think you're right that these factors, while answering fairly objective questions, reinforce bias due to things like prior convictions. Once someone starts down this path, they get treated worse by the system based on history. Even though they did their time, they aren't starting fresh.
Still, I think it's an improvement (to a very flawed system) because it's not adding new bias. It also doesn't seem practical to reexamine previous convictions to see if they were fair when setting bail.
> Okay, I think I see what you mean now. It's a bit hard to see
I must admit to not understanding how it's difficult to see the correlation. If bail is set on factors X, Y, and Z, AND those factors are shown to be biased, then by definition, bail is also biased.
> since you're so focused on gender bias.
That's just a weird statement to make. The research shows bias and I quoted the research... how does that make me "so focused" on gender bias?
> it's not adding new bias.
That is a good point, but continuing existing bias is a serious problem.
The logic behind this is that any bias resulting in unjust convictions will later also cause bias when setting bail. It seems like making sure unjust convictions don't happen is probably the more important of the two? And fixing unjust convictions would also fix the issue with setting bail.
I cannot read the paper there - How is "judges take gender, but not race, into account in determining the amount of bail" determined? Purely from correlation between bail amounts and above factors?
he authors found that Microsoft Excel would often interpret “SEPT2”, which corresponds to the gene Septin 2, as “September 2nd”. The programme also tended to mistake identification codes like “2310009E13” for numbers in scientific notation—in this particular instance, the code would be read as 2.310009 times 101
Excel is fine for the home user. But the implicit conversions of input data can play havoc with any complex analysis.
Plus, it's limited precision can cause errors such as subtractive cancellation, etc. In order to correctly calculate complex formulae, the calculations must be done with an understanding of the limitations of the computers.
e.g. you don't calculate (a^2-b^2) for large 'a' and 'b'. Instead, you calculate (a+b)*(a-b). That has the same mathematical result, but is not affected by subtractive cancellation.
> Excel shouldn't be used for much other than trivial things
Good luck with that, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
Many "non-trivial" applications got their start at someone's desk in the form of a shitty excel spreadsheet with horrific macros. Is it optimal for "complex analysis"? No, but it doesn't matter because most things are computationally simple. The hard part is the intricate business logic and the timeliness of getting results and these things are not "trivial" at all.
Instead of complaining about how terrible excel is, the community here should be providing alternatives. And no, engaging a software team/consultant for a million dollars to develop bespoke applications or interfaces to enterprise systems for every little project isn't a viable solution for people who need to get stuff done pronto.
I agree with that. Modern software development has version control, unit tests, package managers, etc. Ideally we get support for some of those concepts in something that feels like a spreadsheet to the end user. (I'm not sure if it could ever be retrofitted to Excel)
As others have said, you can get version control with Excel by saving the file the SharePoint.
Some huge financial spreadsheets have sanity checks computations. With conditional coloring (turn this cell red if the sanity check fails) these can feel a lot like unit tests. However, these are mostly for business logic - so it's hard to see how a vendor could provide them.
In other words, it's not that excel doesn't have version control and unit tests - it's that the people who wrote excel spreadsheet sheets don't understand version control or unit tests.
> Instead of complaining about how terrible excel is, the community here should be providing alternatives.
Yeah... like I'm going to compete with MS by writing my own Excel replacement. That just isn't realistic.
What would be realistic is for MS to acknowledge that a large proportion of their customers use Excel for a particular purpose. And then tailor their software to the needs of their customer base.
But why would MS care? The researchers already bought Excel. So why "fix" it?
On top of that, no one is aware the the published papers are crap.
The real solution would be for journals to deny publication of papers based on shitty Excel analysis.
This is what screwed me over as a herbarium curator (a herbarium is a type of natural history museum for plants):
Excel completely corrupts dates before the year 1900. It just boggles the mind -- if your spreadsheet has dates for 10,000 years from now that works fine, but if there are any dates from the 19th century or earlier, it can cause big problems.
Not really. With care, you can usually get the format right temporarily, but it often changes for non-obvious reasons and there's no way to see that the format is wrong until it mangles your data.
In general, one of the worst things about Excel is there's no obvious way to lock anything to keep it from getting changed by accident.
Preferences have become a pretty natural part of using a computer, I'm not sure why we can't rely on users trying that when they run into problems.
I would be worried about endless forking of defaults as a feature of newly built tools, leading to a bunch of new tools that will be harder to maintain.
If they can't manage implicit data casting preferences (if those exist, they may not), surely handing them something more complicated like R, MATLAB, or SQL is even worse.
Interesting little article. I just read about Jeff Bezos initiative to push for all departments at Amazon to be accessible as service interfaces. Could there be real interdisciplinary growth by having academic fields concepts and data accessible in the same way? Maybe starting with papers. But then if every model developed was some kind of living running service in the cloud or hosted on .edu you could query or interact with
Personnel had an insufficiently detailed understanding of technical procedures involved with the nuclear reactor, and knowingly ignored regulations to speed test completion
Before beginning construction, Tohoku Electric conducted surveys and simulations aimed at predicting tsunami levels. The initial predictions showed that tsunamis in the region historically had an average height of about 3 meters. Based on that, the company constructed its plant at 14.7 meters above sea level, almost five times that height. As more research was done, the estimated tsunami levels climbed higher, and Tohoku Electric conducted periodic checkups based on the new estimate.
There's just no good reason for either Chernobyl or Fukushima. Both were preventable by following simple safety procedures.
Yes, and rightly so. Engineers must design around human fallibility. They don't get to blame human error and claim the whole system is otherwise perfectly safe. Either the system is safe under conditions of human fallibility, or it is unsafe.
>> There's just no good reason for either Chernobyl or Fukushima
Of course there is reason. Humans are part of the system and a relatively weak part at that.
It also re-affirms my belief about the solution:
> But I decided to do no harm. I started thinking about it as a sort of superpower I have, one that must be used with great care and responsibility.
i.e. Accept it, and deal with it.
This is huge. Most sufferers find that impossible. Because....
> you have to acknowledge and face the pain you've caused, which can result in unbearable guilt.
It can get better. Living a quiet life is better than a life full of extreme highs and lows. It feels emptier, because it isn't full of drama. But it's how most people live.