fatbird

32 ms·

391.
by fatbird 4y ago
You're leaving out a significant factor in cost-plus contracts in their favour: the buyer pays the actual cost, not the cost-plus-contingency that's built into fixed price contracts. It may not work out that way for the reasons y
392.
by fatbird 5y ago
Clearly this generation needs a refresher on The Big Lebowski .
393.
by fatbird 5y ago
JavaScript based webdev continually makes the next thing you have to do seem easy if you just use this framework, that approach, the latest library for it, and the build tool that finally handles this case. It's a textbook example of
394.
by fatbird 5y ago
You're not wrong , dimgl, you're just an asshole.
395.
by fatbird 5y ago
There’s a missed target here, I think, which is capitalism trying to turn observations into reproducible goods—-commoditising progress, in other words. And like all things capitalism tries to commoditise, to the extent it succeeds it will d
396.
by fatbird 5y ago
There's actually a fairly simple explanation for why a heliocentric solar system wasn't superior in antiquity or when Copernicus introduced it: in both the Ptolemaic and Copernican models, the orbits are circular and require compl
397.
by fatbird 5y ago
$150/hour is pretty cheap for a lawyer these days. But even still, a lawyer has a bachelors and a law degree, while this gets 20 minutes talking to someone with a PhD--and in this case, someone with a lot of experience both doing phys
398.
by fatbird 5y ago
Well, to make it concrete then: I've seen teams get happier and more productive when some asshole is removed from the team; I've likewise seen teams get less productive because someone is added who drains morale, interest and prod
399.
by fatbird 5y ago
"The sum of its parts" is a very opaque phrase here. But even without defining it, anyone with work experience has some understanding of the effect of workplace dynamics, environmental factors, office morale, and other intangible
400.
by fatbird 5y ago
This is a digression, but the book starts by saying that it's a benefit to the developer to have one language front and backend. I've been working on node/JS web apps for several years now, so this is my lived reality, but I
401.
by fatbird 5y ago
At one end, there's making one-offs or small editions that sell for thousands of dollars each (or hundreds each for larger handmade editions). In terms of physical production, a binder could make hundreds from scratch every year; in p
402.
by fatbird 5y ago
Late career switch to fine leather bookbinding. Love it. I’ve always been interested in crafts, and they offer an immediacy and a tangibility that’s lacking in technology, especially in the cloud. Also, it’s a community that thinks in te
403.
by fatbird 5y ago
No, not at all. no foreign occupation of Japan The U.S. occupied Japan and had absolute rule over it Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to pre-war borders Japan was occupied by the U.S. and had zero territorial integrity
404.
by fatbird 5y ago
At the time the bombs were dropped in August 1945, there were also 900,000 veteran Japanese soldiers on the Home Islands. Even if the civilians didn't pick up sticks and stones, the Japanese death toll would almost certainly include t
405.
by fatbird 5y ago
Japan was run by the Emperor and a six person cabinet; the military held half the cabinet seats. The Emperor didn't rule the cabinet, and thus the country; the group governed by internal consensus. Even after the atomic bombs were dro
406.
by fatbird 5y ago
This is incorrect. We have the diary of Shigenori Tojo, foreign minister of Japan in August 1945. He describes in detail the cabinet proceedings before and after the dropping of the bombs. Even after the bombs were dropped, half the cabi
407.
by fatbird 5y ago
The Japanese surrender terms were flatly unacceptable: retention of the Imperial gov't, no foreign occupation of Japan, Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to pre-war borders, Japan handles their own disarmament and prose
408.
by fatbird 5y ago
As you say, plus the fact that this is Quillette, a publication founded in part to give a platform to writers on the topic of race and IQ. Their arguments against any sort of deplatforming are pernicious and self-serving.
409.
by fatbird 5y ago
"An english speaking person able to work entirely in ASCII" is a single use case that still leads to that complexity: we have emojis because people started drawing things with ascii characters. More recently, we have fonts for co
410.
by fatbird 5y ago
Arguably, Bargue accelerated the decline of the French Academy. Once his drawing course started reliably producing skilled draughtsmen, skilled draughting became less interesting and important as in fine art. It's a common observatio
411.
by fatbird 5y ago
You can't judge whether someone was "great" in a particular field if they didn't actually practice in that field. Bargue drawings are very technically demanding, but they're exercises. They don't even count a
412.
by fatbird 5y ago
Picasso twice completed copying the entire series of Bargue drawings, a set of 70 lithographs sold all over Europe in the 19th century as a course in academic drawing. His copies are excellent; he'd certainly mastered the academic rea
413.
by fatbird 5y ago
Most U.S. foreign aid is credit to be spent with U.S. defense manufacturers. In other words, "foreign aid" is a way to hand out U.S. hardware to allies or those for whom it's an effective bribe. The best example of this is
414.
by fatbird 5y ago
So is dismissing something by saying "it's just virtue signaling".
415.
by fatbird 5y ago
As someone else said: "We lose money on every sale, but we're hoping to make it up in volume!"
416.
by fatbird 5y ago
Even in my own work, when I'm moving back and forth across the code, I'll set up interfaces and contracts where appropriate, because it's important to have stability somewhere in the evolving mess. One of the problems you ca
417.
by fatbird 5y ago
In Dune, the Spacing Guild held a monopoly on space travel because their navigators knew how to use the Spice to fold spacetime. Later in Frank Herbert's books, the Ixians replicate this ability technologically, ending their monopoly
418.
by fatbird 5y ago
Malware triggered by its absence? If the device disappears, it's likely because it was found and removed, so malware that starts erasing data or otherwise causing confusion or covering their tracks is a plausible next step (though not
419.
by fatbird 5y ago
No, because it's an adversarial process where the jury has to choose between the two sides. On each particular, one side wins and the other loses. Their decisions matter. But here's the thing: their decisions, ideally, should be
420.
by fatbird 5y ago
Their experience, I guess. I know that, of the university professors and professional engineers I know, they are some of the smartest and also some of the dumbest people I've ever met. It's like they invent new ways to be wrong,

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