maliker

9 ms·

61.
by maliker 3y ago
Yes, it would be great if there were reliable publicly accessible RF networks available. I work mostly with rural US utilities and the problems they see with cell networks are (1) coverage isn't great and (2) costs aren't competit
62.
by maliker 3y ago
The US systems are 120 V line-to-neutral (ground), whereas the European and lots of other countries are 230 V line-to-neutral. So after going through a distribution transformer, the non-US systems are at a higher voltage, which means you ca
63.
by maliker 3y ago
There are powerline carrier (PLC) systems that can communicate over the distribution system at about 1-2 baud. They’re getting replaced by mesh RF systems since PLC is quite lossy and the bandwidth is not sufficient for pulling back full ti
64.
by maliker 3y ago
I use copilot/chatgpt to autocomplete tricky APIs for me: pandas, matplotlib, flask, etc. Stuff like is this done with method chaining or is it in the weird array-style notation (pandas). Is it a function or a parameter that changes th
65.
by maliker 3y ago
The first microgrid they discuss was built by a local not-for-profit electric cooperative. It's a nice example of how there can be benefits to the grid as well as the consumers served by the microgrid. There are not a lot of details ou
66.
by maliker 3y ago
When solar was becoming affordable, there was a lot of talk in the industry about "grid defection" exactly as you describe, but it didn't come to pass. Now that energy storage is getting radically cheaper too, I think there&#
67.
by maliker 3y ago
The US grid is still pretty reliable now, but it's been getting worse and worse. E.g. see some of the recent NERC reports https://www.powermag.com/nerc-warns-of-mounting-reliability-...
68.
by maliker 3y ago
Pair the storage with some solar, and you could probably reduce the storage size or increase the survival duration (or both). Here's a fun tool that lets you play around with the balance of these things and see the expected cost: http
69.
by maliker 3y ago
G.H. Hardy was also famous for not working that hard. From https://math.stackexchange.com/a/845622 "In fact for most of his life his day, at least during the cricket season, would consist of breakfast during which
70.
by maliker 3y ago
flyctl getting rolled into aws cli (or boto3 shudder) would definitely hurt
71.
by maliker 3y ago
Probably a couple more years of good service until they get acquired. They're leaps and bounds better than the container services on AWS and Azure, solidly better than the GCP one. Seems like they could sell to get their exits before t
72.
by maliker 3y ago
It's always boggled my mind how disorganized most companies are with written information. It's always a wiki here, 7 different file shares over there, most of the latest data is on workers' desktops named "mgmt report 04
73.
by maliker 3y ago
I'm intrigued by the idea of using web browsers to experiment with new computer interfaces. Because everything we do with a computer can be done decently well inside a browser (e.g. see ChromeOS), any prototype can quickly be used day-
74.
by maliker 3y ago
Onboarding is probably one of the hardest parts of the job. Keeping code quality high and documentation definitely help. One thing I don’t see mentioned in the thread yet is mentorship. I try to spend more time with new hires to help them b
75.
by maliker 3y ago
I got my start in engineering management by supervising interns and then moved on to leading a team of 7. It was a great way to learn how to help other people do the work instead of just doing it, and I recommend it if it’s available. There
76.
by maliker 3y ago
Every news site has some notion of top items, but you’ve done it 10x better. The de-duplication of similar stories, great summaries, and super clean interface are amazing. Bravo! It really feels like you solved news aggregation.
77.
by maliker 3y ago
I've been doing this for years but missed the run=1 argument in archive.today to go directly to the latest copy instead of the list of all copies. Thank you!
78.
by maliker 4y ago
Sad but honestly a reasonable concession to make while Twitter fights to just remain solvent.
79.
by maliker 4y ago
I would have guessed Roblox was the largest. 214 million monthly active Roblox users in Feb 2023, assume only 20% are kids actually building something so 43 million, beating scratch's 36 million monthly unique visits [1]. Still awesome
80.
by maliker 4y ago
I went to a talk by a grad student historian who studied how mathematical ideas evolved in Europe roughly 1600-1900. He started his talk by quickly drawing a damn near photorealistic map of Europe on the chalk board. Very impressive way to
81.
by maliker 4y ago
I usually show this to new devs starting out as a quick way to explain inconsistent and/or leaky abstractions. It’s a great and entertaining intro.
82.
by maliker 4y ago
I ended up writing an AppleScript to open the Safari passwords dialog because I got sick of hunting for the proper dialog. If you save it as passwords.command and make it executable it'll open the window right up. But yeah, it's a
83.
by maliker 4y ago
Even without AI, switching to computerized competence based learning is showing crazy good results, e.g. https://alpha.school/ after a couple years is seeing double the performance on standardized tests with only 2 hours of
84.
by maliker 4y ago
I asked bing chat about whether it was gpt4. It denied it, then I asked it to search for news stories about bing and gpt4 and to summarize them. Then it would start admitting that gpt4 was part of its tech stack but only a small part (conde
85.
by maliker 4y ago
When I was in an engineering undergrad back around 2008, the most reliable source of free food was recruiting events for defense contractors.
86.
by maliker 4y ago
It appears that it's hard to detect AI generated content. E.g. true detection rates are only around 25% and there are also techniques to further mask output [1]. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/cha
87.
by maliker 4y ago
Other folks have pointed out there are military applications, and I read a while back that these kind of "space planes" have a unique advantage: with their wings they can dip into the atmosphere and very quickly change their traje
88.
by maliker 4y ago
Yes, surely a relay could have prevented this. I did a little googling, and since fast chargers can deliver up to 350kW, it does appear that a breaker rated for that power could be pretty expensive and large (e.g. full panel sized, $1,000).
89.
by maliker 4y ago
Someone introduced me to making red sauce by basically just cooking tomatoes for as much time as I have, and it's now my go-to red sauce. Really amazing how good just well-cooked tomatoes are. https://www.seriouseats.com&#x2
90.
by maliker 4y ago
Somewhat. I'm definitely grateful that I found work in a mission-driven field (energy), where I'm a research manager for a non-profit. The day to day is a lot of grant administration, a little bit of research, a decent amount of h

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