aaronem

52 ms·

451.
by aaronem 12y ago
Customization isn't a flaw. Obsessing over customizability, to the point where you fail to notice glaring flaws in the user interface and the behavior of the device, is a flaw.
452.
by aaronem 12y ago
I often see the same argument made in defense of desktop Linux vs. Windows and OS X. It's a little more justifiable there, I suppose, but a phone is an appliance. Its job is to do the things I need it to do, to do those things well wit
453.
by aaronem 12y ago
> I think a lot of what you're talking about has more to do with an apparent inability of some people to act with any sort of common sense around other human beings rather than 'class'. Some of it, maybe. A lowered standar
454.
by aaronem 12y ago
[Quick prefatory update: HN's throttling algorithm has decided, on the basis of five comments counting this one over the space of the last hour, that I'm "submitting too fast". It'll therefore be a fair while before
455.
by aaronem 12y ago
Destroying souls.
456.
by aaronem 12y ago
I've recently been solicited by a couple of recruiters, on behalf of contractors who've got some of that work. One of them in particular amused me by trying to hard-sell a six-month contract job with a firm which organized a &quot
457.
by aaronem 12y ago
> An email address is a piece of information that is guaranteed to be unique to each user because everybody has their own email address. I once let myself in for a lot of headaches by designing a system around this unwarranted assumption
458.
by aaronem 12y ago
Not all that often, unless either a) you're in the habit of frequently making broad changes, or b) your build tool doesn't take account of modification times.
459.
by aaronem 12y ago
You miss the point in a fashion utterly typical of engineers. I couldn't have paid for a better illustration, and I greatly appreciate your having provided such a fine one free of charge, hence the upvote by way of recompense. If you
460.
by aaronem 12y ago
No doubt you know the United States had a similar problem in their early days, and that nothing sufficed to resolve that conflict short of a half-decade of generally very ugly warfare. Here's hoping the "United States of Europe&qu
461.
by aaronem 12y ago
Democracy is an unstable isotope of government, with a short half-life; unless overthrown, it invariably decays into leaden bureaucracy, which generally comes as something of a relief to all involved. Skipping the democratic phase entirely,
462.
by aaronem 12y ago
> If Carmack felt like developing VR outside of Zenimax offices, he obviously could have. So it must be true that Zenimax didn't actually help VR in any substantial way. How does that follow? (Standard disclaimer: I know nothing of
463.
by aaronem 12y ago
Assuming we have; as yet, this presents a distinctly half-baked aspect.
464.
by aaronem 12y ago
(1997)
465.
by aaronem 12y ago
I hadn't seen that site before. I think it's really cute how they update their past predictions [1] after the fact [2] to improve their apparent accuracy, but you'd think they would have the sense to stop short of having &quo
466.
by aaronem 12y ago
Those who are willing to take IPCC at its word need no convincing. Those who are not so willing also need no convincing. By now there's no third category of meaningful size, and everyone on both sides is sick and tired of arguing over
467.
by aaronem 12y ago
Not quite what you're looking for, but there is a "Stealth Infrastructure Catalogue" linked after the article, which might serve you as a place to start.
468.
by aaronem 12y ago
Hardly an "insane level of politicking", as you like to put it; in a relatively close parallel early in my career, I cost my contracting firm a moderately lucrative client, and verged closely upon getting us sued, out of the same
469.
by aaronem 12y ago
> The fact that they're "human" is a flaw Ladies and gentlemen, behold! Eight words -- eight syllables -- laying bare why so many engineers tend to have such a hard time dealing with politics and people, on every scale f
470.
by aaronem 12y ago
To regard the Constitution as "the highest law of the land" is, at this point in the history of the United States, somewhere between naïve and just plain silly. The actual highest law of the land is that made by Supreme Court fi
471.
by aaronem 12y ago
(In the following, we will stipulate that your "rogue programmer disrupts Photoshop, resulting in a better product and getting half of Adobe fired" situation is plausible, for the sake of illustration.) The half of Adobe you posit
472.
by aaronem 12y ago
> And that's great... for Facebook. Really? Because I'll bet you any sum you care to name that Facebook is just as riddled with internal politics as any other organization of its size in the field, Google specifically included.
473.
by aaronem 12y ago
I think that's probably telling in itself. I've GTFO'd twice; one time was by my own choice, while in the other I had to be helped along by the organization a few months after I failed to follow my sensible instinct to resign
474.
by aaronem 12y ago
Well. Conveying competence is, indeed, a valuable skill. But the most it can do for you is to get you a seat at the table. What will you do once you've got the job, and it comes time to play the game? And, while we're at it, why a
475.
by aaronem 12y ago
> In my opinion I think the author did try to address the big picture. Sure. But grandparent's point is that he did it backwards: first he made the changes he wanted to see, and then he demoed it up the chain and got himself in ho
476.
by aaronem 12y ago
For those like me unfamiliar with what's here termed the "psycho-clueless-loser model", it appears to be what is more commonly termed the "Gervais Principle", and you can find what looks to be a reasonable overview
477.
by aaronem 12y ago
How do they avoid lock-in? The site makes no mention of the concept whatsoever, and I don't see anything about an ability to export, in a non-bespoke form, all the data you've painstakingly collected in Findings.
478.
by aaronem 12y ago
I've read On Writing , though not recently. The strong impression I have is that his advice was intended as just that -- advice , rather than binding pronouncements. That is, King in On Writing seems essentially to be saying "
479.
by aaronem 12y ago
Stephen King is not the ultimate authority on prose style, nor, I believe, would he presume so to present himself.
480.
by aaronem 12y ago
Who suggested that having the client bear some of the load unburdens developers? I've done that kind of work, and it was some of the hardest work I've ever done. And "servers shouldn't work hard" is a similar oversi

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