neilv

23 ms·

361.
by neilv 10mo ago
That imprecise chunking (with MD5 sums, and distributed across an FS tree, and using hash IDs, then separately storing the assembly information) seems like it would be a headache to restore, or to use with other mail programs. An alternativ
362.
by neilv 10mo ago
Yet the new AI startups I'm seeing are only offering terrible deals to early hires who could improve their chances of a nice exit. In this crazy environment -- in which money is flying around over AI much like the dotcom boom, but star
363.
by neilv 10mo ago
Exactly. I think some of the commenters were unaware of some of the context, and got an entirely different read on the piece.
364.
by neilv 10mo ago
> His henchmen make bloodcurdling threats about wiping the UK and other European countries off the map with Russia's vaunted new weapons, but he's usually much more restrained himself. Is it a good personal shield, for him to
365.
by neilv 10mo ago
> > We live in a late-stage-capitalist hellscape, where large companies are run by aspiring robber barons who have no serious convictions beyond desiring power. All those companies want is for obedient engineering drones to churn out
366.
by neilv 10mo ago
Absolutely, downvote down calls for founding engineers paid to get meaningful equity. We wouldn't want someone accepting a small fraction of their market salary to get even 1% pre-dilution of an early startup (even in dark-pattern opti
367.
by neilv 10mo ago
Pretty much. And that seems to reflect changing sentiment of the mods over time (e.g., no information, no inspiration, no trying to emulate, only emoting). But what I thought was funny was, if you didn't know that, it would look like
368.
by neilv 10mo ago
That would be a cynical '84 TV ad. (Like the extremely common revolutionary leader who pretends to want to free the people, but actually just wants to be the dictator instead.) I had the impression that the original Macintosh team was
369.
by neilv 10mo ago
I'd guess nobody sat down and said "Here's the target demographic profile for the new UI, so let's rework our messaging, people!" It's just a funny accident of maintenance over time that the result looks like
370.
by neilv 10mo ago
Interesting thought. On RMS and Woz specifically, how much have they ever been opposed? I only know a little about them, but I think of both as good-natured, high-impact, little-bit weird hackers, with substantial common ground in philosoph
371.
by neilv 10mo ago
Funny: maybe it's my ad blocker, but if go to https://old.reddit.com/r/StallmanWasRight/ (old-school Reddit UI), the right sidebar says: > "With software there are only two possibilities: either the
372.
by neilv 10mo ago
Point taken, but as an aside, I'm just guessing that RMS was way too smart and knowledgeable to fall for Ayn Rand, for long. Some people with no other frame (e.g., very insulated teenagers) might accept the given values she proposes (b
373.
by neilv 10mo ago
I was talking with a great-sounding few-person early startup (nice people, non-evil business, interesting work, etc.), and they wanted me to fill a highly-skilled role... in-office in a VHCOLA, for $110K and "0.5%" in usual option
374.
by neilv 10mo ago
Hello, bdangubic, pleased to meet you.
375.
by neilv 10mo ago
They do, and, early on, Microsoft (and perhaps others) put in some checks to try to hide that.
376.
by neilv 10mo ago
This is one of the lesser bad-professor archetypes (the personal errand slaver) that surprisingly exists in real life. And much worse archetypes also exist and persist. Like many professors behaving badly, you'd think they'd get
377.
by neilv 10mo ago
My programming teacher in 9th grade spent half the class time on Pascal and programming, and half like a literature or social studies class, including reading and discussing "Player Piano". Today, the people who most should read i
378.
by neilv 10mo ago
What's confusing to me is that even most of the the print-on-demand services I've seen for self-published writers don't go below trade paperback trim sizes (5x8 inches). There's a huge amount of indie fiction that really
379.
by neilv 10mo ago
Maybe you could organize a lot of big-sounding names in computing (names that look major to people not in the field, such as winners of top awards) to speak out against the various rampant and accelerating baggery of our field. But the cult
380.
by neilv 10mo ago
That seems to be one of the things that some great professors do. I've heard of that convention from many colleges/universities. At any university, look for the professors who act like benevolent citizens of the best of universit
381.
by neilv 10mo ago
I bet this is it. I have a first.lastname@gmail.com, and my namesake has firstmlastname@gmail.com (with middle initial, and I think they originally created the GMail username without periods). So, I sometimes receive emails intended for him
382.
by neilv 10mo ago
Oh, I actually turned down a mostly great startup opportunity, basically over an n-on-1 interview. I had a strong recommendation (halfway to hired, before they even met me, with a colleague's favorite ex-manager/mentor) to take ov
383.
by neilv 10mo ago
Excellent points. I just wonder about the 2-on-1 interviews. I think they tend to double-down on the one-sidedness of typical interviews. It's not a group engineering meeting. Unless it's big-tech hiring of fungible worker dron
384.
by neilv 10mo ago
> Gemini made - “Telling my manager I’m quitting and both of us are upset about it" I bet this AI slop image is actually leaning more towards photos of a counselor at a hospital or clinic. Because it has several things that not on
385.
by neilv 10mo ago
> The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architect
386.
by neilv 10mo ago
A third possibility is diversion, while the most damaging evidence would be suppressed a different way.
387.
by neilv 10mo ago
> If you've never heard of Live Plus before, it's a feature [...] Is it really?
388.
by neilv 10mo ago
You just described an exceptionally good place to work (because, how many places would an employee casually mention a bunch of times that they might stay until retirement). Congrats on findind that situation, but I don't think it'
389.
by neilv 10mo ago
We're in an environment in which a handful of billionaire techbros (and aspiring ones) have simply taken most of the world's copyrighted material, and are using it to destroy the livelihoods of people who create it. Why give them
390.
by neilv 10mo ago
Something a bit like that is part of how I got the Lisp Hacker merit badge. I wanted a Lisp to be my new platform language for rapid systems research. And I had to spend most of each day on my laptop, from cafes and parks around town, with

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