w0mbat

28 ms·

241.
by w0mbat 6y ago
It's "lazy" in the sense that you look for the simplest most leveraged way of doing something well, not "lazy" as in negligent. A lazy programmer takes time to search for the things that the OS will do "for fre
242.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I used to hang with Douglas back in the day and we worked together a bit. Douglas once told me he got sent a very detailed PhD thesis that described how The Hitchhikers Guide was an elaborate parody of John Bunyan's "Pilgrim'
243.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Also promotion at Google is not easy to get. The competition is stiff, the standards are high, and you have to manage to get assigned to the kind of tasks and projects that get you promoted. I saw great people sit at one level the whole tim
244.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I clicked on this for all the wrong reasons.
245.
by w0mbat 6y ago
(Yes I know my bio says "Oakland" right now. I am working out of my partner's house during Covid. I still own a place in the South Bay).
246.
by w0mbat 6y ago
The south bay has hordes of pretty nice apartment complexes for newly arrived renters, and newish condos and townhouses for entry level buyers. Eventually you trade up to a 3 bedroom house or whatever you need. I have worked at various tec
247.
by w0mbat 6y ago
This is Stuart’s PhD paper from Stanford. His later work includes ZeroConf, Rendezvous/Bonjour, and a lot of the underlying network code of modern Apple devices. Some people may know him from his legendary multiplayer tank combat game
248.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Apple legally bought Cover Flow from the inventors, but was sued by patent troll Mirror Worlds LLC. Mirror Worlds was awarded $625.5 million in damages, but Apple appealed and won. Apple then got their own design patent on Cover Flow, but
249.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I think the formula for Kraft must be different in the UK where I grew up, vs the USA where I live now. I have already proved that US Kit Kats (made by Reese/Hershey) have almost no chocolate smell compared to Euro Kit Kats (made by Ne
250.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I think there is actually a U-shaped curve here. Working for an expert engineer is fun because their expectations are in line with reality, and they don't compel you to solve problems in stupid ways or in the wrong order, because they
251.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Kraft's own cheese powder is incredibly bland by comparison with Annie's. Whenever I happen to eat Kraft mac and cheese, I am surprised by how flavorless it is, but maybe some people like it that way.
252.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I am not convinced that the texture fingerprint is robust enough to remain unchanged once the note goes out into the world and is circulated for a while. Notes would start to be rejected as not matching the factory fingerprint just from nor
253.
by w0mbat 6y ago
So in the actual article they prove they can tell one real £10 note from another real £10 note, because every plastic note accidentally has a unique random texture. But as these are real notes, they can be uniquely identified by the serial
254.
by w0mbat 6y ago
What were you saying? I was busy upgrading the firmware on my guitar amp.
255.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I heard that Salman Rushdie came up with the "Naughty but nice." slogan for cream cakes.
256.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I'm not sure if that bit is sucking up to the CEO or damning him with faint praise.
257.
by w0mbat 6y ago
According to Wikipedia, when he worked in advertising he wrote the slogan "Opal Fruits, made to make your mouth water.".
258.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Regular expressions are hard. Let's go shopping.
259.
by w0mbat 6y ago
That's kind of a meaningless statement. Any search-ad revenue Google gets is a side-effect of users going to Google for good quality search results. Worse results would lead to fewer users, fewer ads sold, less revenue. The ad money is
260.
by w0mbat 6y ago
In the 1970s the British Museum in London borrowed King Tutankhamen's treasures, which had never before been seen outside Egypt. People flocked to see the exhibition from all over the world. Quite often tourists would get into a London
261.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Clearly this is the Nightfall phenomenon predicted by Isaac Asimov. The burnings must line up with total solar eclipses.
262.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Google's job is to portray the World as it is, not a desired fictional version. How would people even be motivated to change the status quo if it's hidden from them?
263.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Flywheels are not silent and have unwanted gyroscopic effects. Getting even more impractical, you could store energy in a spring like a wind-up toy. A pure electric system is much simpler as the motors are the regenerators and there is one
264.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Regenerative braking is a major saving in energy cost, and it's something that requires a battery component to store the recovered joules, and electric motors to put those joules to use. If you need a battery and electric motor anyway,
265.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Intel processors are done in the laptop market. I'll stick with fast, silent, ARM based machines like the M1 MacBooks.
266.
by w0mbat 6y ago
The log is a useful byproduct, but it's not the product.
267.
by w0mbat 6y ago
I hate this. Often I am rewriting a bad comment, or improving the working code I checked in yesterday whose ticket has already been closed. Deleting an unneeded #include. All kinds of stuff for which there is no open ticket. This kind of ru
268.
by w0mbat 6y ago
Absolutely. This guy has too many rules. When I work alone I'm climbing a mountain, and Git is the rope. I can fall, but I won't fall far. I commit as often as I want to. The log is not a story for someone else to read later, it&#
269.
by w0mbat 6y ago
UK readers over 50 will remember how the Wombles pulled this off in the 70s. A huge series of hits performed by basically a bunch of furries.
270.
by w0mbat 6y ago
A mapping application that frequently diverts traffic off the freeway into narrow residential roads, probably does the opposite of saving lives. In my experience, it doesn't even save time, just gives you a more complicated route

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