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NeoBasilisk

348 karma · joined August 17, 2017

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NeoBasilisk··on Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
Yep, anyone that started investing in 2012 or later is about to learn the true meaning of "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
NeoBasilisk··on Will VBA Die? (2019)
At some point, I hope we can get past this argument. Learning a new language for rudimentary tasks is not particularly hard. I'm not sure why people decided that JavaScript of all things was what we had to all latch onto.
NeoBasilisk··on What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)
RIP progressive enhancement
NeoBasilisk··on What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)
>It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well.

I haven't forgotten, and I will never forget.

NeoBasilisk··on Later school start times are associated with more sleep and better performance
Yeah, I used to walk to school when I was 7. It was only about 4 blocks away, and my mom told me to never deviate from the route she laid out for me, but it wasn't a bit deal.
NeoBasilisk··on Monoliths Are the Future
Ok, I read 5 years ago that microservices are the future and that monoliths are dead. I'm glad we're making progress.
NeoBasilisk··on Wikipedia now has more than 6M articles in English
The article count would actually be much higher if they weren't diligent about deleting or merging articles that they don't find notable.
NeoBasilisk··on Technical Debt Is Like a Tetris Game
I'm working on migrating a 10+ year old site into a new environment right now. The technical debt is crushing.
NeoBasilisk··on The technology pushed into schools today is a threat to child development
You don't think it would be embarrassing to be standing at a whiteboard at work and be unable to spell basic words?
NeoBasilisk··on Bible Lobbyist: We Can't Print Bibles in America Anymore
I feel like there's a good joke about an atheistic (and formerly Communist) country producing Bibles for a more religious country as they beat them at their own game of capitalism, but I'm too tired to fully form it at the moment.
NeoBasilisk··on For tech-weary Midwest farmers, 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity
I would be very careful in trying to attribute something as complex as corporate structures to human nature. We have seen massive changes in all parts of society throughout the last 10k years. I don't think the human genome has changed so rapidly as to cycle through slavery, feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, etc.
NeoBasilisk··on How Canada's military reacted to seeing Pokemon Go players trespassing
The game was insanely popular for the few weeks immediately following launch in 2016. It is entirely possible that Clash had more players, but they weren't all outside walking around while looking at their phones in places they'd never visited before.
NeoBasilisk··on Bill to crack down on robocalls passes Senate
cool maybe I'll start answering my phone again someday
NeoBasilisk··on Facebook, Google Drop Out of Top ‘Best Places to Work’ List
Don't employee surveys factor heavily into these evaluations?
NeoBasilisk··on O(n^2), again, now in Windows Management Instrumentation
It's probably because the implementation of the algorithm is the simplest, because you don't need to modify the existing data structure. You don't need to merge or create new arrays. You just repeatedly loop and swap two elements when needed. Super easy by all metrics.
NeoBasilisk··on A new treatment promises to make little people taller
Calling it a "flaw" is probably going too far. It is a simple acknowledgement that if your physical traits or abilities diverge significantly from what is average, then your quality of life will suffer in some way.

Depending on your condition, maybe you won't suffer much of a loss, or maybe you will suffer significantly. The simple reality is that society is not ever going to fully accommodate someone that is 4'6" (137cm).

As a somewhat irrelevant example, I'm colorblind, and I don't see any redeeming value in that trait. It's a mild inconvenience, and it there were a treatment to make it go away without significant side effects, that would be nice. There is no reason to be "proud" of your physical attributes that you had no part in creating. If you are part of a historically marginalized group, then pride in your group can emerge as a method of coping with that oppression, but otherwise there is no point.

NeoBasilisk··on An update on YC China
¥300 were deposited in your account for this post.
NeoBasilisk··on A 70-year-old's secret to a full and happy life
Things can matter to you, but they are not things that objectively matter.
NeoBasilisk··on 16-inch MacBook Pro
god I hope this is satire

I'm about 70-30 on it being satire

NeoBasilisk··on Linus Torvalds: Git proved I could be more than a one-hit wonder
Git succeeded in spite of its CLI, not because of it.
NeoBasilisk··on The Global Fertility Crash
I dunno man. I think 7 billion people might be enough.
NeoBasilisk··on Google Accused of Creating Spy Tool to Squelch Worker Dissent
Sure, but venting and taking collective action in ways that will almost certainly hurt the company's bottom line are kind of different things.
NeoBasilisk··on Gamers for Freedom: A handbook for protesting at this year's Blizzcon
It's going to be entertaining this year if nothing else.
NeoBasilisk··on Traffic lights worldwide set to change after a Swedish engineer saw red
This is why I will never call myself a software engineer, despite having a master's degree with a specialization in "software engineering." It's kind of an insult to actual engineers. Software Developer works just fine.
NeoBasilisk··on The next big thing will start out looking like a toy (2010)
ehhhhh I would disagree with your statement that "basically-modern VR has been around since the 80s." It really seems like this phase of VR really began with the release of the Oculus Rift DK1. Sure there had been earlier prototypes floating around, but they weren't taken seriously.
NeoBasilisk··on The Internet of creation disappeared. Now we have surveillance and control
Yeah, the consolidation has been relentless.

I also share the sentiment that a lot of the "innovation" online these days is merely skin-deep, but I can't say whether it's just my perspective after being online for 20 years.

NeoBasilisk··on New universe of miniproteins is upending cell biology and genetics
Probably not soon enough to be of much benefit to anyone alive today. I have no qualifications to say this, so I can only base it on the staggering lack of progress made on many other medical fronts in the last decades.
NeoBasilisk··on Americans Now Need at Least $500k a Year to Enter Top 1%
You don't need an "absurd" amount of income to be in the top 1%.
NeoBasilisk··on Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests
As someone who has been on both sides of that belief, I can agree that it generally has a stabilizing effect on people's mental state. However, once you lose that belief, it is very difficult to make yourself believe it again. And probably even harder for people that never believed in the first place.
NeoBasilisk··on A dumb reason computer vision apps aren’t working: Exif Orientation
Would it really be too much of a burden for phones to just save photos at the correct orientation now? I understand the hardware limitations that were present in 2007, but surely these can't still be a factor?
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