beat

68 ms·

601.
by beat 7y ago
I've come to the sad conclusion that excessive code quality is a smell. And most attempts to head off technical debt are really just premature optimization, which is its own sort of evil. Don't burn the village in order to save it
602.
by beat 7y ago
He makes a lot of interesting hash from the speed of light (like the Dark Domain defense). But he more or less handwaves away the speed of light as a limitation, introducing viable FTL travel in Death's End . (As an aside, one of the
603.
by beat 7y ago
Not confusing fiction with reality. Simply stating the premise of the novel. I don't object to anyone handwaving away complexity in service of narrative. Virtually all authors do that. (Two exceptions that come to mind are Tolstoy&#x27
604.
by beat 7y ago
That's a good point. I think it's subject to some of the same flaws as the original article, but you're right - the Dark Forest of the internet already has ways of driving people off.
605.
by beat 7y ago
Sure, there's some prior art. But it's not necessary or relevant to cite the prior art when talking about a specific work. If you read carefully, you'll find I didn't claim he was the originator, because duh.
606.
by beat 7y ago
In the books. It's just the author's theory for the Fermi Paradox. And it's a compelling and terrifying theory.
607.
by beat 7y ago
Only if you actively hide the community from the rest of the internet, rather than passively hide (by not advertising its existence).
608.
by beat 7y ago
Not everyone reaches the conclusions of the Dark Forest. But those who don't reach it are exterminated.
609.
by beat 7y ago
As much as I love Cixin Liu's "Dark Forest" concept (I've sung my praises of his novels quite a bit here), I'm not sure this post fully fleshes out the analogy. I think it could be developed further, though. What ma
610.
by beat 7y ago
At that point, it's not technical debt, it's sunk cost.
611.
by beat 7y ago
Good technical debt... well, what's the expected lifetime of a piece of software? How long do you think it'll be maintained and growing, before it is either no longer relevant/needed, or replaced by a new product? Over the ri
612.
by beat 7y ago
Eh. With proper care and a well-configured turntable, records can last a long time. And you can always buy a new one.
613.
by beat 7y ago
You know what else doesn't have ads, privacy terrors, and algorithms? Vinyl. But really, I think the pleasure of vinyl is the pleasure of being fully engaged in the act of listening. The privacy is the privacy of your own experience.
614.
by beat 7y ago
I think that's one reason for the vinyl resurgence - artwork is so much better.
615.
by beat 7y ago
Okay, maybe not energy intensive is the wrong way to put it, but... what about organically capturing carbon? Trees or algae farms? It's energy intensive, but it's solar energy, not generated electricity.
616.
by beat 7y ago
I recently went through a sleep study, and the doctor was openly aggravated by how current trends and devices focus on "deep sleep", when it's actually "light sleep" that we need to regain our mental focus.
617.
by beat 7y ago
Ok, even if you take humans as the motivating agent... how does it become a moral act? How is an exchange of money for goods/services an inherent good, or an inherent evil for that matter?
618.
by beat 7y ago
I agree we'll probably need some sort of carbon sequestration. I disagree that nuclear is the only possible power source for that (or for that matter, that sequestration is going to be that energy-intensive).
619.
by beat 7y ago
When you buy something from Amazon, is it an exchange between individuals? When you get a paycheck from a corporate employer, is it an exchange between individuals? No, that makes no sense. It's an exchange between an individual and an
620.
by beat 7y ago
Yes, but can consumers look at those and derive meaningful expectations for their subjective experience of using the speakers? And how many of those things are sensitive to dynamics, volume, signal complexity, etc? I think this stuff says a
621.
by beat 7y ago
Economics is amoral. It doesn't know good from evil. The biggest mistake on the right is thinking that capitalism is Good. The biggest mistake on the left is thinking that capitalism is Evil. It just is . It's like thermodynamics
622.
by beat 7y ago
I did transient response measurement while studying recording in college (onto recording media). But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous wo
623.
by beat 7y ago
Impedance is a difficult and complex thing (which is why failure mode #1 for dudes on the internet being all "objective" and "scientific" is failing to grok the difference between impedance and resistance). So how an out
624.
by beat 7y ago
Because I keep calling the coding test mentality "nonsense".
625.
by beat 7y ago
That depends on impedance behaviors between components, too. As a guitarist, I did guitar cable listening tests. With passive guitar pickups (high impedance, low output devices), different cables have easily audible fingerprints. With activ
626.
by beat 7y ago
Some things are very hard to measure objectively, though, despite being real. (Anything subject to chaos theory, for sure.) I mix records. I use two different sets of monitors for mixing - a pair of Tannoy System 12 DMT monitors (equivalent
627.
by beat 7y ago
When I'm interviewing experienced people, I usually gauge technical skill by picking something out of their resume and digging into it with questions. If they don't really understand what happened technically, it's immediatel
628.
by beat 7y ago
> It also takes a good architect to interview an architect And that's the underlying problem behind this coding-test nonsense. You don't ask an architect candidate to implement a binary tree in an interview because it's re
629.
by beat 7y ago
I think a big part of the discussion that's being missed here is that a lot of senior-level engineering jobs aren't about coding. They work at higher levels, and are often communication-intensive. I work in DevOps. If I'm int
630.
by beat 7y ago
She was offended by it, as were a lot of her friends (all industry people with similar experience levels). Imagine if someone asked you to conjugate verbs or graph sentences to demonstrate your English skills. Would you do well at it, even

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