I also suspect those who have decided to leave their employer will be more likely to create, maintain, and even keyword stuff the skills listed on their LinkedIn profile. This would be a poor proxy for real world skill level and their impact on the departed organisation.
Edit: Ah wait, I think I get what you mean. By "global news" you mean it's been deemed worthy of sharing to an international audience by media outlets, as opposed to a crowdsourcing news source like HN. Is that right?
I mean when you write 'UK researchers find', especially to a global audience (which UoKentucky PR dept may not particularly have but HN does (Hello from the (the!) UK)) that it sounds more like the country UK than the.. no offence intended but not exactly world renowned university. (I've heard of Kentucky, probably my first time hearing of its university in its own right - though I might have assumed it had one.)
I wouldn't read too much into it. UK is one of my alma maters. Everyone in that area of the US means "University of Kentucky" when they say "UK". It isn't a dig at the United Kingdom nor is it (I assume) an attempt to gain undue credibility by associating with the country. For the people there, UK as the University is simply the first order association for that acronym, rather than what is to them a faraway country that has no bearing on their day-to-day lives.
I don't think I am? I'm just agreeing the title should be different here, and it has now changed so either the submitted or a mod agreed.
> Everyone in that area of the US means "University of Kentucky" when they say "UK". It isn't a dig at the United Kingdom nor is it (I assume) an attempt to gain undue credibility by associating with the country. For the people there, UK as the University is simply the first order association for that acronym, rather than what is to them a faraway country that has no bearing on their day-to-day lives.
Right, that's what I meant about audience, and it making sense for the UoK's PR dept.
I don't feel like that is a correct way to measure an institutions mediocrity or not. I have found that frequently cited Universities that publish many very popular articles per year per journal become less credible with fame. Hubris aside objectivity becomes lost in the money being made.
A far better measure of a University would be the people it graduates or by assessing the actual effects and impact of a research University with their published studies.
If the University of Kentucky specializes in agricultural research, that's most likely why you've never heard of them - perhaps they've made huge contributions to the elimination of terrible fungus plaguing a specific crop, nobody would hear about that.
Fixing the proverbial fungus is a far bigger deal tho than most of the ambiguous pop science publications coming out of far more "prestigious" institutions these days.
a lot of southern schools publish in a different fashion. Most of my agricultural and husbandry knowledge of the area i live in comes from various universities .pdf files. My point is merely not publishing in Nature (or wherever) doesn't mean that serious research doesn't occur at that campus. Their "customers" may just be citizens of that state (or in some cases, that county).
Argument from authority is a pernicious fallacy, and typically effective too. You were right to call it out. I must admit I overlooked the sarcasm, however.
Yeah, it was kind of weird - pretty sure the positive comments about it weren't organic, but there are some other anti comments that didn't feel quite right either. I'm not even sure if the comment section works any more!
> In a practical world this is an outrageously useless platitude.
As an industry we went from treating engagement as an art form, to treating it as an optimisation problem. Along the way we got very, very good at it, at scale. While profitable, we now know that the methods used to drive this engagement are harmful. Many countries recognise this harm and have introduced legislation to limit or ban methods used on vulnerable groups, such as children.
It is interesting that we, as an industry, do not talk more about the harm we are complicit in causing. Somewhere along the way we normalised and accepted the idea that addicting features are desirable, and that we are not responsible for the consequences.
With all said, an industry is not an individual. You and I may care about this problem, but it is not clear how to fix it. At the very least, as individuals it would be good to avoid contributing to addicting features as a matter of principle wherever the opportunity arises, lest we become the equivalent of digital drug dealers.
While the analogy they offered may not be a good fit, I agree with the sentiment. My takeaway was not that addicts have zero agency or ability to help themselves, but that it's unethical to rely on this as the sole mechanism for minimising harm.
Not the original commenter, but I have often been asked by non-technical colleagues to answer questions about a spreadsheet they've sourced from someone/somewhere else. "So-and-so shared this spreadsheet with me. Can you please take a look at let me know if ...". Sometimes this is delegation, but frequently comes down to a lack of skill.
