kabdib

81 ms·

811.
by kabdib 8y ago
For a domain-specific language, CMAKE is a total failure at making things clearer and simpler and more reliable. And of course the wizened software engineer in me has to be restrained: "Oh hey, I can make a better build system than t
812.
by kabdib 8y ago
Depends on the size of the meteor. It's very likely survivable; micrometeroid protection is a design feature of the suits, which have plenty of layers, and a small hole won't cause rapid decompression. For a through-suit puncture
813.
by kabdib 8y ago
Microsoft encourages its research people to help product teams ship things based on their research. I had two interactions with PhD types on two different products. The first was a researcher who talked to us a few times (just a few hours o
814.
by kabdib 8y ago
I remember being at a startup full of engineers, and us trying to hire a salesperson. Years at big companies taught me contempt for marketing and sales. But there's nothing like finding good marketing and good sales when you'r
815.
by kabdib 8y ago
I left my last job largely because of this. Exec-levels couldn't decide on a technical direction for the next big version of a major consumer product, then chose a very bad strategy, which took nearly a year to change to something sa
816.
by kabdib 8y ago
I talked with a Pharmacist a few months ago about the cost of epinepherine, and a 10 dose bottle was $6.
817.
by kabdib 8y ago
Yup. I've called him a "one person smoke-filled room", it was pretty obnoxious, even in the days when companies allowed smoking indoors.
818.
by kabdib 8y ago
I was at Atari from 1982 to 1987. During the heart of the crash, I remember attending a meeting with a bunch of 2600 programmers and marketing types, and the new Atari CEO (a guy from the tobacco firm Philip Morris -- I forget his name -- w
819.
by kabdib 8y ago
Nothing about the PDP-11 (direct ancestor of the VAX, which the article starts with). No details of how one ISA influenced another. I guess we can forgive the relative dead-end of the PDP-8 and PDP-10 architectures. Good picture of Ken Olse
820.
by kabdib 8y ago
The installation environment for Windows has always been overly complicated, error-prone and fragile, and a danger to system stability. There have been numerous cases of app uninstallers getting DLL reference counting wrong and destroying a
821.
by kabdib 8y ago
There's a famous story about early UI fail in some CAD software. Icons had just come into vogue (yes, there was a time before icons). The CAD system in question used a puck on a big mat to choose functions from a grid of names, which w
822.
by kabdib 8y ago
> Devices now need state, pushing up the base price. You can buy pretty decent (16Mhz, 2K EEPROM, 8K flash) microcontrollers for less than twenty cents (my numbers are from 7 years ago, things are probably cheaper, faster and bigger now)
823.
by kabdib 8y ago
IIRC in many chips the decoder stage translates native instructions into micro-ops, which are RISC-like and the main food for execution units. The translation is not necessarily a simple one (one native instruction is often more than one mi
824.
by kabdib 8y ago
I'm using an older Macbook Pro and an XPS-13 running Ubuntu these days. The XPS is fine; the trackpad isn't as good as the one on the Mac, nor is the UI as well done, but on the whole I have no complaints and certainly wouldn&#x27
825.
by kabdib 8y ago
I've been using an Dell XPS-13 with the Dell-provided Ubuntu for about three months and it's pretty nice. The trackpad is the best I've used on a Linux machine (still not as good as the Apple trackpads, but lots better than o
826.
by kabdib 8y ago
Sure . . . but they might have made more money with someone with better technical skills. Additionally, Ballmer had some dogma (Jack Welch style up-or-out review system, the "everything has to be Windows" nonsense [1]) that did
827.
by kabdib 8y ago
I work in a largely open space environment, and it's fine. The thing that makes it fine is that our desks are on wheels, and we are free to relocate to any part of the company that we like, no permission needed. (Well, the other big co
828.
by kabdib 8y ago
The receiver for the AR series of rifles does not need to be that strong. It doesn't handle any of the pressure of firing the cartridge; it's really just a mount for the rest of the components. The other components are not conside
829.
by kabdib 8y ago
Doubleplusungood is the official term, comrade.
830.
by kabdib 8y ago
I'm imagining a "stealth" wifi controller on one of the custom chips, hung onto a pin connected to an internal antenna realized on an internal copper layer of the motherboard. If you used a non-standard frequency and protocol
831.
by kabdib 8y ago
I love the work I do. In the first few years of my career I thought to myself, many times, "I can't believe they're paying me to do this." I wouldn't have done it for free, but man, it was fun. Most days it's s
832.
by kabdib 8y ago
To be fair the Apple ]I[ (and IIRC, the Lisa) had similar issues. One of those computers had socketed chips mounted upside down , with predictable results . . . and a 3 inch drop wouldn't fix that issue :-/
833.
by kabdib 8y ago
For an intern, I think that doing several different things is a positive sign. However, I expect professionals to stay at companies long enough to accomplish "interesting" things. A series of unrelated 3-4 month projects does not
834.
by kabdib 8y ago
Seymour Cray (the supercomputer designer) famously dug tunnels underneath his house when he lived in Minnesota. It sounds like fun, really.
835.
by kabdib 8y ago
Once upon a time, a certain large maker of a popular video game console lost the hardware engineer's laptop where the source code for the game controller firmware was. I don't know the nature of the catastrophe, whether the code w
836.
by kabdib 8y ago
> Also, note that if you move the "int a, b" to outside main, so a and b are on the heap instead of on the stack, then gcc does find that the pointers are equal. This is also an utter accident, since it depends a great deal on
837.
by kabdib 8y ago
That's putting a lot of faith in HW manufacturers' security practices. I've had conversations with ex-employees of a couple of large cell phone firms who know about their build systems, and am not willing to buy those brands
838.
by kabdib 8y ago
First guess: Packaging and distributing python binaries is more difficult than it is with Go. (I like Python a lot; I've written tens of thousands of lines of it. But its code packaging systems leave much to be desired).
839.
by kabdib 8y ago
Time to re-read Deathbird Stories. In one sitting. What a magnificent bastard, indeed.
840.
by kabdib 8y ago
Other early works that I associate with cyberpunk are: Vernor Vinge, True Names Thomas P Ryan, The Adolescence of P1 Algis Budrys, Michaelmas Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress David Gerrold, When Harlie Was One Obvious

More ›