davidp

12 ms·

61.
by davidp 12y ago
Yes. It is used to contrast with "the rule of men." In Russia, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, the laws don't seem to matter very much; if Putin or the oligarchs/warlords/chavistas want things to be a certain way, ther
62.
by davidp 12y ago
I'm a fan of biking to work, but my inner skeptic is wondering about correlation vs. causation. You'd also have to compare the total automobile traffic levels to get a clear picture. It's possible that drivers are avoiding
63.
by davidp 12y ago
I mostly agree. The real measure of an investment, however, is the opportunity cost: What else could I have done with those resources? Might it have yielded higher returns? But as the author alludes, the company is much better positioned
64.
by davidp 12y ago
> for true long-term support, with support meaning=capability of debugging issues in-house for all the core stack they release Your definition of support doesn't match that used by enterprises like Spotify, i.e. the ones with real m
65.
by davidp 12y ago
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." [0] This case illustrates one of the permanent forces to guard against: Well-meaning people routinely make shortsighted decisions to address a problem, at the expense of things that a
66.
by davidp 12y ago
It might depend on where you live. I took a recent trip through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and I noticed that Austrian street signs tended to use "Straße" while German and Swiss tended to use "Strasse". OTOH it c
67.
by davidp 12y ago
> a person's ethics are primarily dictated by their present circumstances and environment Citation needed. I can accept "influenced by" or even "heavily influenced by" without too much argument, but "primar
68.
by davidp 12y ago
For the same reason that French laws don't apply to German activities outside of France.
69.
by davidp 12y ago
As a gay-friendly straight man, I am puzzled by the idea that those gifs are supposed to reflect the author's sexuality. Was that really the author's intent? Serious question. Until I read this answer I did indeed assume that t
70.
by davidp 12y ago
Although you're technically correct (since baud connotes the rate of change of the signal and not the rate of data communicated over that signal), modems didn't start sending more than one bit per baud until we got to higher data
71.
by davidp 12y ago
Here's the product page for CourseSmart Analytics[0], the product referred to in the link. By my read it's just as bad as the OP suggests; the screenshots even show specific students' names with their "engagement index&q
72.
by davidp 12y ago
"... companies grew determined to show that they prized their relationships with customers more than those with authorities" I've noticed that the words 'customer' and 'user' are starting to draw my cons
73.
by davidp 12y ago
On the contrary, coming from the world of mature SQL systems (like SQL Server), I was horrified to learn that MySQL supports neither transactional DDL nor online schema updates. These are taken for granted in premium SQL databases, and to
74.
by davidp 12y ago
Outraged that 1) someone tweeted a fake bomb threat, 2) that someone actually got arrested over it, 3) that an entire industry finds itself in the legal position of having to take action to respond to something as utterly effortless as some
75.
by davidp 13y ago
Wait. When I click "Security Check" in my LastPass Tools... menu (this is in Chrome), I get taken to an internet-hosted web page where I'm prompted to enter my master password. [1] I am not taken to a chrome:// pa
76.
by davidp 13y ago
There may be a standard project organization that "makes sense" to people familiar with Go, but based on the amount of confusion out there about this, that page is obviously not succeeding in its mission. Consider items like these
77.
by davidp 13y ago
Huh. This is the first licensing-related thread I've read on HN in months where someone said something I found interesting and informative before I gave up and stopped reading. Thanks for your even-keeled comments here; helpful and re
78.
by davidp 13y ago
Enabling rich IDE support is precisely the point of TypeScript and similar enhancements like Python 3 type annotations: Give the computer in front of you enough information to automatically do for you what you would otherwise have to do man
79.
by davidp 13y ago
I've been secretly lusting after one of these aerial SUVs for 10 years now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-12
80.
by davidp 13y ago
> it takes some time to dynamically load a library into an address space. There are tables that may need to be walked and updated with correct pointers True, but I'd expect that to be dwarfed by the I/O time required to load ev
81.
by davidp 13y ago
I'm puzzled by the idea of a system being leaner/faster with n copies of a library in physical RAM rather than 1 copy mapped via VMM into whatever process wants it. IIRC this was the main point of shared libraries, not pluggabili
82.
by davidp 13y ago
You might be surprised at how many people show up to a developer interview and are unable to have an intelligent conversation about the problem, let alone solve it. This is a weedout question, that's all. Bear in mind that the objecti
83.
by davidp 13y ago
> To blame the listeners is one step short of accepting things as they are. I disagree: - If the talkers are the problem, then the solution is... less speech? Muzzling/censorship? I'll pass, thanks. Better to have the frenzi
84.
by davidp 13y ago
> The talkers have gained power over the doers, and it is wrong. Somehow critics have grown in power to be able to extract punishment and concessions from people actually on the ground. Agreed, although I don't think it's the t
85.
by davidp 13y ago
Useful perhaps to someone enamored with the idea of they themselves being the story, instead of their words. None of the people whose work I admire would go near it.
86.
by davidp 13y ago
I enjoyed the presentation very much, until "Engineers 3-10x more productive" Citation needed. If this were generally true (of any technology X) the dollars would be flowing that way in an unstoppable torrent, and anyone
87.
by davidp 13y ago
If Google knowingly allowed their app store to host software that harms carrier-supported devices, they might easily be in breach of contract with those carriers. This is a defensive move.
88.
by davidp 13y ago
Thanks to the law of averages, a "stack ranking" system isn't harmful as long as the size of the group is sufficiently large. Employees aiming to be in the top 20% of a 5000-person organization are incentivized completely di
89.
by davidp 13y ago
> For that use case, mirroring the data on save to MongoDB was a no-brainer I think you just confirmed the OP's point -- MongoDB makes a good cache, not a good primary store. I'm guessing you didn't do updates into that M
90.
by davidp 13y ago
Yes, I said 'restricted use logo' above; I wasn't talking about the open use one. My point is that Debian, like Canonical, may assert their intellectual property rights for whatever purposes they see fit. Some folks (not ne

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