jtheory

42 ms·

271.
by jtheory 12y ago
Timezones in computing are an annoyance to solve properly, once, and then always use that code. Use a library of timezones maintained by someone else (in the OS, the VM, or similar), because these need to include the history of timezone c
272.
by jtheory 12y ago
Can you give some examples of parts of the world that have different standard business hours from 9 to 5? In your explanation, don't use times as reference points. ... Yes, of course there are variations in standards; but that makes ti
273.
by jtheory 12y ago
There are definitely inconveniences with timezones (believe me, I know); but this would be worse. The political nightmare of convincing the non-British part of the world that "sorry, your day of the week is going to switch in the middl
274.
by jtheory 12y ago
It's not arrogant to know there's a "most common" time for meals, working, and sleeping. When you're actually setting up a specific event, of course everyone will participate ("actually, a 7am call is great fo
275.
by jtheory 12y ago
Yup; it's not impossible; but think of how much more complicated the interface would become. There would have to be a whole lot of little, wordy labels instead of simply showing the time. Times (with shared meanings) are good shorthan
276.
by jtheory 12y ago
No; this isn't a good idea. The developers on our team live in 3 different time zones (this number has been as high as 6 in the past), so I have some experience in this. Times have meanings that would be quite difficult to track wit
277.
by jtheory 12y ago
Actual nepotism: "we're a team of painfully inexperienced and/or incompetent people, some of whom aren't even engineers, but we're all from the Dickerson family 'cause the boss-man is a Dickerson".
278.
by jtheory 12y ago
Ah, right -- we've got some odd behavior there as well; newly-shared folders not showing up in particular. I suspect there are bugs in how the (locally-cached) LastPass vault stays up to date, possibly coupled with a delay on the serve
279.
by jtheory 12y ago
A few possibilities: - it's simpler for tax/legal purposes for them to hire people who are US residents and legal to work in the US. - we're in the UK, and hire non-UK-based remote, but we've had a hard time if the timez
280.
by jtheory 12y ago
Yup; but I'd say you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the pretty damned good. KeePass' encryption is quite solid -- if it starts to show some cracks in the face of quantum computers or whatnot somewhere in the future, I
281.
by jtheory 12y ago
The KeePass database is strongly-encrypted before you put it up on Dropbox, so you're not relying on Dropbox's own encryption (I wouldn't either).
282.
by jtheory 12y ago
We use LastPass internally, specifically to share long random passwords among the people that need them. It's not been a flawless experience, but it works -- what are the problems you've seen?
283.
by jtheory 12y ago
It's certainly not generally down for everyone. I've not seen any oddities in IPN for a few years, and can confirm notifications have gone through over the past few days. It's important to be careful about jumping to drast
284.
by jtheory 12y ago
Oh... you said "PV" in both sentences, which is specifically converting light to electricity; that's what threw me. For heating a house with solar (not PV) -- it would depend on insulation level, I'd imagine. I do know
285.
by jtheory 12y ago
It probably depends on the water bottle. I put boiling water into a fairly thin-walled rubber one, and it sprang a leak a few minutes later, so I'm more careful now.
286.
by jtheory 12y ago
Sorry, it's not the intended vibe -- people complain when they're voted down w/o explanation, so I'm trying to avoid that. I mostly want to improve future discussions, not scold/shame people; my own posts aren'
287.
by jtheory 12y ago
Don't use boiling water with hot water bottles; the ones you can buy have warnings about this (it can damage them). Just use hot water from the tap (which hopefully should be more efficiently heated than however you boil water as well
288.
by jtheory 12y ago
Not my comment you're responding to, but it's not talking about PV for heating (that'd be kind of ridiculous, honestly). Systems for heating water/air using solar can be quite inexpensive as well; converting light to hea
289.
by jtheory 12y ago
Voted down, then responding in case you don't know why: this is a discussion about micro-heaters. Yes, it's a bit disagreeable to run across even minor, aside comments that disagree with something you believe strongly, but please
290.
by jtheory 12y ago
> let's not pretend everyone is capable of everything if they just practiced more From the article: Her next step is to find out what factors contribute to being an expert on an instrument, playing field, in the classroom or at wor
291.
by jtheory 12y ago
Is there a time constraint? E.g., before I had kids I spent a few months traveling from Western Europe down to Turkey, working along the way -- probably in about 10 different countries; countries don't reasonable expect you to file tax
292.
by jtheory 12y ago
Assuming that you're working remotely for clients who are outside of Thailand, is this actually a problem? I've worked from various places while traveling, and never worried about this, though obviously it would be an issue if you
293.
by jtheory 12y ago
I think you misunderstood the request (providing the option to drill down doesn't create more mental work), but I also disagree about "we all have friends and fam"... the typical digital nomad is NOT traveling to see family i
294.
by jtheory 12y ago
The interesting part for me was the claim that brief, intense exercise was actually less dangerous than low-intensity, more prolonged exercise for the elderly. That's not intuitive, to me -- I would have assumed that old folks should
295.
by jtheory 12y ago
I'm pretty sure the answer to that will be "as much as possible" - the OP is trying to find out what's possible.
296.
by jtheory 12y ago
This caught my eye, from the "How we do it at ArsDigita" list: > 6. dragging people out to writing retreats; most programmers say that they can't write but experience shows that peoples' writing skills improve dramati
297.
by jtheory 12y ago
I think this is part of the best answer. Find a place where there's nothing of value under the surface (that we can think of), bury it really friggin' deep, and then put the warnings in a layer of, I don't know, engraved grav
298.
by jtheory 12y ago
This is great -- I'm planning on burying most of my substantial fortune deep underground in the New Mexico desert, and this looks like just the thing to signpost around the site so people don't mess with it.
299.
by jtheory 12y ago
> It could be a different tree, or the person might just have moved closer to it I think the flowers are there to address these two problems -- though that's an odd choice, because normally the flowers would change much faster than
300.
by jtheory 12y ago
That's not an assumption I'd make, actually (that they wouldn't grasp the problem domain) -- there are plenty of atheists who were born into religious families, but left the religion. I doubt most of them would be comfortable

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