>The positives you experienced are very possible for a homeschooled student as well, and this seems to be a common boogieman.
How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.
Easy - homeschooling may include but does not require "in the home" any more than "homework" is required to be done in your house.
I was homeschooled and have homeschooled my three kids. Never has that meant "only at home and only with my family". My kids have been in co-op classes, taken classes from Art or Technical instruction centers (piano lessons, voice classes, programming, robotics), enrolled in community classes via private institutions and the local JC (cooking classes, performing arts) and been enrolled in independent study charter public schools which have some in-person classes. And in high school they start taking in-person JC courses.
There is lots of regular exposure to a variety of other people in all of that!
> especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.
What makes you think school is a good environment for that? Kids can be very cruel to each other with often the most societally maladapted dominating for reasons that have no bearing in real life.
But users like me who hate shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app aren't addicted to shorts because we refuse to open them. And there's no risk of me going to Tiktok or reels because I hate short-form video.
Why would a user who hates shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app be sharing links to shorts with their friends?
If a paying user want to disable shorts, wouldn't allowing that ability make it more likely they will continue to pay?
The reason I started paying for Youtube premium was to turn off the ads. I hate YT shorts and I get annoyed when I accidentally open one. If YT continues to shove shorts down our throats, I'll probably cancel my subscription because I hate shorts that much.
> Why would a user who hates shorts so much that they want to disable them in the app be sharing links to shorts with their friends?
Because the user thinsk it's a funny penguin and that their friend will laugh. The reality is that for almost all users, the demonstrated and disturbing reality is that they will engage with what you put in front of them if you can tune it right. They may wish you didn't do so, and may idly lament to people about how much they resent you for not giving them more control, but they still engage, and in cases like yours, still subscribe. They're that attached (addicted) and therefore that valuable.
> If YT continues to shove shorts down our throats, I'll probably cancel my subscription because I hate shorts that much.
What modern online media companies learned is that they really don't have to care about that. Individually, you and your subsription don't matter to them at all, and most people just don't get indignant enough to storm off over stuff like that as long you you put the right funny penguins and half-naked women in front of them, so it all works at scale regardless.
And if you were to cancel your subscription, are you ready to go so far as to give up the platform entirely, or would you just fallback to being an ad target who's demonstrated all the appealing targeting characteristics you already have, while still being fed shorts?
That seems extremely unlikely given the significant global economic impact of tariffs, and the comparatively microscopic effect of transgender athletic participation in the United States.
For example, when Kentucky passed their trans sports ban in 2022, there was a grand total of one (1) transgender high school athlete in the state[0].
I mean, it's almost laughable to suggest that any of those things are even near comparable to the potential long-term impact of historically unprecedented tariffs being thoughtlessly tossed around on a whim.
They are related in the sense that stuff like violent crime by ethnic gangs and transgender affirmation of children easily rile up people to Trump or others who will bluntly oppose it, and then you end up with poorly designed tariffs.
It was largely a failure of anti tariff other candidates to capture these other 'easy wins' needed to get to the point of implementing sane economic policy.
I believe the claim was, with Trump in power there will now be a proper investigation of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
I have doubts. First, as someone else pointed out, there already has been lots of investigation in Republican-run states, and they turned up very little. Second, Trump seems to have the ego-driven need to deny that he lost. He seems to have the tendency to hire people who tell him what he wants to hear, and to fire those that don't. That's not likely to drive an impartial investigation.
In France, vote by mail was used between 1946 and 1975. It was stopped due to too much fraud (even if less than 2% of the population used it).
Just the fact requiring a valid ID is a contentious idea in the US is baffling when seen from here. I think more people in the US should check how elections are done in other countries (and not just 3rd world ones).
>>It is unlikely that there has been a significant increase in electoral malpractice since the introduction of postal voting on demand in 2000; available figures suggest that 32 convictions were made from 1994–99. In both periods, the offences arose almost exclusively from local elections, and related to a tiny proportion of all elections contested.
Again, the facts are clear, but that doesn't stop the baseless fearmongering. A direct quote from your source:
>>There is no evidence to date suggesting that electoral malpractice has occurred as a result of pilots of various forms of electronic voting. However, serious questions about the security of electronic voting from organised fraud remain unanswered.
It flatly concedes that no evidence of voter fraud from electronic voting exists, but then somehow concludes that serious questions remain unanswered. Simply absurd.
None of this changes the fact that mail-in voting in the United States is objectively and measurably secure, and that instances of fraud are so miniscule that claims of it having an impact on election outcomes are provably false.
What would your response be to someone who, hypothetically, might view this sentiment as some unsettling combination of elitist and vaguely authoritarian and then decides that maybe you shouldn't be voting? Would you be bothered by that?
You believe that an anonymously written article full of baseless speculation that relies on an anonymous Tumblr post as its source is credible?
It would benefit you to educate yourself on how to evaluate the reliability of claims you read online. Here's a tip to help you get started: anonymously written online posts that rely on other anonymous posts should be considered with a very high degree of scrutiny.
Did you bother to check the links in the article and tumblr post? You would have found archives of the web sites in question, with Nyberg's horrifying words dating back to 2006 preserved. The chat logs have been preserved and distributed all over the place as well; they're not hard to find.
Yes, I very obviously did because I explicitly referred to it in my comment.
Nothing in your comment changes the fact that you linked to an anonymously written article full of baseless speculation that relies on an anonymous Tumblr post that is also full of baseless speculation.
Not a single credible source in the entire mess of nonsense that you linked to. You should be embarrassed.
My point is that if Excel spreadsheets can be audited, practically speaking, why are these major errors going unnoticed all the time?
Edit: My contention is that spreadsheets are in fact, very opaque, and it is incredibly difficult to check that every part of a spreadsheet is actually doing what its users think it is supposed to be doing. Specifically, I posit that it is harder to check a spreadsheet, than it is to check a "traditional" program in a normal programming language, which works on pure data.
> Specifically, I posit that it is harder to check a spreadsheet, than it is to check a "traditional" program in a normal programming language, which works on pure data.
I don't think I can agree with this. The average codebase I see is pretty terrible readability-wise. Nasty levels of function nesting, tons of variation of behavior based on arguments passed into functions, etc. I assume the average Excel spreadsheet is also pretty nasty, but it has the advantage of having a debugger "built in" vs looking at the code generally without actually seeing the data flowing through it (e.g. who runs every code review they do through a debugger?).
I also think this ignores that a "traditional" program replacing Excel would still need to get data from somewhere, which commonly implies a SQL database or a data warehouse that speaks SQL these days, and complex SQL is itself NASTY to verify/fully grok through reading alone.
My main problems with checking spreadsheet code are:
1) Code formatting - spreadsheet formulae are generally presented all on one line with minimal spacing and no syntax highlighting. Any mildly complex formula should ideally be presented a) across multiple lines, b) with indenting to show function nesting depth, and c) in colour.
2) Copy and paste - spreadsheet formulae are generally copy-and-pasted every time they're used (i.e. on every row), rather than being defined once and referenced in each place they're used. Some spreadsheets are now good at highlighting if one formula is out of place in a column of otherwise-similar formulae, but it's hard to check if formulae are supposed to be "the same" in different columns, or different worksheets, or in different spreadsheet files.
I've been involved in at least a dozen audits during Series B/C fundraising periods, the bulk of which included financial models with forward-looking quarterly forecasts backed up with prior-quarter actual results.
Accounting audit usually involves accountants/CFO going through how the accounting system accounts are structured, and how those accounts get turned into the three financial statements (cash flow, income statement, balance sheet). You might have a unique accounting scenario where large expenses can be amortized over several periods, and an auditor will check how that reporting schedule was produced to net out what everyone is looking at on the financial statements. Maybe there was an acquisition that didn't quite pan out and there's an impairment charge that had material differences. Maybe your business collects cash upfront but reports deferred revenue. Maybe your company offers a product warranty so there's a non-trivial accrual schedule to consolidate warranty liability.
I worked at a company that convinced the SEC that it generated revenues from its published content over a 5-year period, allowing it to amortize expenses over that revenue-generating period while front-loading revenues over the first 18 months. Eventually the SEC changed the rules and expenses were expected to be reported in proportion to revenues.
There's a lot of ways those numbers can be put together, with a lot of different rules for how cash, revenue, and loss can be represented and disclosed. The kinds of errors I've seen encountered are less Excel formula errors, and more fundamental issues with account structures and how numbers are being strung together to reach what is reported.
The impression I've received is that what matters during the audit process is not if there are mistakes and errors, but if they lead to material changes that alter the trajectory of any decisions being made.
OK, I can see I've been talking somewhat at cross-purposes to some other people in the thread. When the G*P commenter said:
> The killer feature of Excel for financial modelling, over 'proper' software, databases etc is portability and auditability.
...comparing Excel to "'proper' software", extolling Excel's "portability and auditability", I read that as highlighting Excel spreadsheets' ability to be audited as software.
i.e. the ability to inspect the "code" of a spreadsheet, to ensure it does what the authors think it does/want it to do, and that it conforms to any informal/internal guidelines of the organisation using it - the sort that "'proper' software" is subject to.
That seemed to me to be the meaning intended by the original comment in the thread?
The kind of professionals doing audit's against Excel spreadsheets are not auditing the "code", they're auditing the methodology used to produce the results being audited.
I've also been through several code audits, and other than sharing the "word" audit they're not the same thing. Audit in this context is the ability to follow how some numbers were derived, and to check how the work was done. It's so that the 3rd party that hired them can confirm the numbers a 1st party are showing are what they say they are (and if not, are they close enough).
Accountants are confirming things comply with GAAP or IFRS, and pointing things out when they don't and asking for clarification. They'll be checking that liabilities were properly structured, and reflected in how profit was derived. They'll be reviewing deferred revenue schedules to make sure next year's pre-paid subscription revenue isn't recognized in Q4.
A financial auditor is going to be looking at the assumptions of the forecast, and working backwards to confirm the methodology. They'll confirm that Q4 2026 projections used the prior years average multiplied by quarterly constant. Or they'll find a results from an ARIMA/Prophet model with notes to "see X". Maybe they'll catch an Excel formula error or 2, but they'll unlikely mean much compared to what else could be wrong.
Because not all spreadsheets are audited? Just because they can doesn't mean they are. Also a financial audit is very different in what it is looking for, compared to a cyber security audit, for instance. They are looking to prove the accounts show a true and fair view of the company, not 'are your formulas perfect'. They are more likely to copy out your raw data and run their own analysis.
Answering your edit, not all spreadsheets are opaque either. We design ours to be audited.
Auditors don’t show up to critique your formulas. They are looking at business processes, which means usually the data that flows between things. If it gets to the point where they are digging that deep, they have a finding and are trying to assess the severity.
Software, including major business systems are often fucked up. There are major companies using RPA software to robotically use excel to correct some fubar in Oracle financials that wont get fixed for a few years.
The beauty of excel is that the business speaks it.
Except that's not at all what the article is talking about:
> But the tightwads I spoke with have very real agita—panic, guilt, stress—over their financial situation, even though there’s no real reason for them to worry. They drag around a phantom limb of poverty, burdened with the sneaking sense that something isn’t right, no matter what their bank account says.
It's the reason the article was written by a marketing professor, it's motivated by exploring why people are resistent to marketing and the end goal would be to change the thinking about people who save rather than spend.
You can see yourself the language used to describe saving not spending as that used to describe abnormal behaviour driven by unreasonable delusions.
My apologies, I should have said written by Olga Khazan, drawing extensively upon the works of marketing professor Scott Rick and marketing professor Abigail Sussman.
This seems more an error of attribution than flat out wrong, but sure, take a performative extreme by all means.
So it's not even a mistake or confusion, and you knowing and willingly lied through your teeth. That you attempt to shamelessly defend your outright brazen lie only makes it worse. Absolutely indefensible and morally decrepit. Among the worst I've seen on HN.
How do you do that? Seems like it would be impossible to replicate the experience of learning to navigate daily social interactions in a mixed group of people, especially when it comes to dealing with conflict.