Everyone should read the above.
Cringely had so many stories where he seemed to be part of, or present to witness, significant events in the computer industry - after a while you become suspicious that one person could really do/see all these things. Like he was a 'Forrest Gump' of technology.
I figured out that, in the early versions of Realmz for the Mac, there was an enchanted item (a helm?) that added a few points to the wearer’s stats when equipped, but when removed it took away more than it added (i.e. left you worse off). It only took a few seconds for my programmer brain to start me furiously equipping and then un-equipping it, and sure enough, when that stat went to -127, one more equip-and-unequip was sufficient to give me a +128 bonus for that stat.
I never understood how that particular bit of logic could have been coded that way - it seemed so unnatural.
I’m sure I’m not the only programmer that developed a habit of resting my finger on the F5 key at a certain point in my workflow, and then had to unlearn it just because of the stupid touch-bar (Still using my 2019 Intel MBP with stupid touch-bar).
In a shared source, I wonder if it would be useful to make a theme that used brighter colours for segments of code that were more ‘contentious’, I.e. had a lot of changes? I guess it doesn’t work because a lot of contentious code is re-written (deleted and re-created).
Or maybe newer code could be brighter, and older code (not touched for a long time) could fade?
Sure, but I can imagine the more expensive airlines worrying that the ‘optics’ of spraying your passengers down aren’t great (to be clear - I’m not objecting and I’d rather they do it). I wasn’t suggesting they retrofit to existing aircraft of the period, but rather just build it in as they design the next generation airflow system. Or do you think it would still be way too expensive even then?
As a kid (in the early 70s) I remember the air hostesses walking down the isles with a spray can. They don’t do that any more, but I wonder if or why they don’t add lower concentrations of the aerosol to the air conditioning at the end of the flight.
Yes, and I imagine that’s why - in the minds of their lawyers - doing anything with the book (other than destroying it) is arguably less safe than destroying it
I don’t think it’s a sure thing that training a model on a work is considered a duplication in the sense that ripping a CD might be for example - unless I’ve missed something, that’s what hasn’t been decided in court.
I think they see destroying the book as the safest course of action for them.
I wouldn't characterise it as 'undercover cop...' but perhaps it might be fairer to say that until it's tested in court, no-one knows, so they (Amazon etc) are taking the 'safe' path of destroying the books?
There was a post on HN a few months ago showing the stages of post-processing on a photo of a Christmas tree in a room - the original photo was unrecognisable.
I would find the link, but I’m balancing my phone on my knee while trying to eat dinner and pretend I’m not playing with my phone while eating dinner…
We replaced our 2010 Ford Transit (diesel) with a 2022 Ssangyong (LDV) eDeliver 9 (battery electric), and one of the benefits I didn’t expect was just how much quieter it is in the cab - a conversation with my partner when we’re driving is much easier/more pleasant. (It’s not due to better insulation - both these vehicles are basically steel frames on wheels) - I don’t see this mentioned much in articles comparing EVs and ICEVs.
What downsides for the _average_ driver (who just wants to go from A to B comfortably and safely) does an automatic have? Back when I still drove a non-electric vehicle, I really appreciated an automatic giving me one less thing to think about (which means a little bit more attention to the things that matter like safety).
I also have an EGO mower, and in addition to the advantages you list, I would add that they’re less noisy and you don’t end up breathing exhaust fumes.
I don’t even understand why anyone would use a petrol mower at this point, except for some edge cases like professionals mowing multiple lawns per day.
I worked on a Win32 app that used space-padded strings, i.e. the destination string was padded with spaces, but there was still a null on the last byte. You had to use special versions of the string functions for length, copy etc.
I’m not sure why this was - the source base was so old it might have had its origins in Pascal struct behaviour.
I have similar feelings. When I started working at my first job, we were trying to make our enterprise product so easy to use it would be like 'a piece of software you'd buy on a CD at the supermarket.' (this was the late 1990s). We really did spend time on polish that made the product better and easier to use (it was sold as a product, with optional support), and I loved re-writing bits of UI and refactoring on my own time to make it great. But over the decades that followed, the new features became subscription based, and metrics were introduced, and were gamed...
Now I'm quite cynical about the industry. I'm 54, and the company I work for is about to announce a restructure. I'd consider doing something else for a similar last few working years too, but I'm not sure what else I'm good at!
I've wondered about this because I've heard the same thing from my partner - in Engineering school in Spain, she was told that waste aluminium as a building material should be avoided because it was so expensive to recycle. But we recycle aluminium here in New Zealand - perhaps it's something to do with being able to use green energy at night (New Zealand has abundant hydro power)?