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SketchySeaBeast

14,695 karma · joined October 4, 2016

Edmonton based software dev. Not the CTO of anything, have no side hustle, do not want to become a billionaire.
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SketchySeaBeast··on The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain
I feel like you keep missing the point and are more interested in gotcha's.
SketchySeaBeast··on 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)
Triffid music.
SketchySeaBeast··on The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain
I don't know enough to speak about that particular domain, but if the junior is writing something the senior can't understand, that's always going to be a problem. That code becomes the team's responsibility, and that code needs to be able to be maintained by the entire team, not only by the junior with something to prove.

Who is getting called at 2 AM when something breaks? Not the junior.

SketchySeaBeast··on The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain
If the code is so smart that it's not easily understandable, it's not easily fixable. My transition from junior to senior was accompanied by the realization that simpler is nearly always better.
SketchySeaBeast··on It's Only When You Look Back
I'm a simple man. Promises of utopia are well and good, but it would appear the way we get there is by corporations hoovering up all the new means of production, at which point they somehow decide to share it all with the rest of us for some inexplicable reason - turning their trillions in investment into charity.

I don't believe any of it, I just want hardware to be cheap and accessible again because that means all the compute won't solely be in the hands of the few.

SketchySeaBeast··on It's Only When You Look Back
In your future, when does it stop costing $500 to buy 32GB of DDR5? Or are the companies still leasing us the compute?
SketchySeaBeast··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
I think we've all seen by now that the majority doesn't much matter if you have a rabidly zealous minority.
SketchySeaBeast··on Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada
Few Albertans. The Forever Canada petition got over 10% of the entire population to sign it. Considering that it was a grassroots effort and that you had to sign in person, meaning you had to go out of your way to sign an entirely optional petition, really shows how much support there is in Alberta to remain.
SketchySeaBeast··on Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada
Speaking as an Albertan, it's only a very loud and vocal minority. The UCP government has seen that the premier only stays in power if they cowtow to the fringe crazies in the party, and that's what she's doing.
SketchySeaBeast··on Hating AI Is Good
It also doesn't qualify how or how often the users use the app. Online games like to do this too - "40M registered users!" when the number of players with an active subscription are a tiny fraction.
SketchySeaBeast··on Aspartame is not that bad? (2022)
*Would we say that there's not "nothing" wrong with water?
SketchySeaBeast··on Aspartame is not that bad? (2022)
Sure, but it feels like a silly distinction. The famous example is water, which fits those same criteria. Would we that that there's not "nothing" wrong with water?
SketchySeaBeast··on Show HN: Tired of logic in useEffect, I built a class-based React state manager
Very easy - mock the useNotifications and you can easily see all the behaviour by changing three properties.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI may be making us think and write more alike
I'm not fully comfortable with the shift in language either, but my point is that, even if the language is changed, the thoughts will remain. To use 1984 (is there a Godwin's law equivalent for this now?), the party taught that 2 + 2 = 5, which is changing thought. Social media is trying to do that, but failing. The danger is if it's one day effective, but to date it hasn't been.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI may be making us think and write more alike
I also agree with your follow-up around the normalization of language. It's a good point, but it seems like an improvement to standardize effective communication, and at the time it was outweighed by the ability to spread challenging heterogeneous ideas. LLMs threaten to engulf us in a uniform grey goo that lulls us away from critical consideration of what we're interacting with and, even more dangerously, creating.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI may be making us think and write more alike
On the contrary, the printing press enabled people to quickly spread new ideas. Protestantism was enabled by it. That was quite the schism in thinking.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI may be making us think and write more alike
That seems to me to be an example where the language is forced to change but the thoughts remain the same. Sure, people are using the "safe" terms, but they're using them to continue to subvert the rules, not to bow to them.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI may be making us think and write more alike
I say this with a multiple decades-spanning love of the game and the lore, but Warhammer 40k is what you get when teenagers try to create something immediately after reading Dune.
SketchySeaBeast··on Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general
> This country put the man abusing it in power.

Twice. I can forgive the mistake once, but this is the second time in 10 years that America is facing this nonsense with the exact same demagogue.

SketchySeaBeast··on Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket
Did we discover a new diet hack?
SketchySeaBeast··on Afroman found not liable in defamation case
It's important to remember to thank them for their service.
SketchySeaBeast··on Afroman found not liable in defamation case
> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.

I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.

SketchySeaBeast··on Most-read tech publications have lost over half their Google traffic since 2024
Yeah, that's only going to last until the first bad actor.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt...

SketchySeaBeast··on Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport
Is Opsec 101 to increase the estimate by two orders of magnitude? "We think this operation will take about 10 weeks, so we're estimating 10 years."
SketchySeaBeast··on Single bone in Spain offers first direct evidence of Hannibal's war elephants
I think it would be more accurate to say "based upon true events".
SketchySeaBeast··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
Wait a minute...
SketchySeaBeast··on AI-First Company Memos
That kind of makes sense philosophically if your business is trains, but I don't think that their business was AI agents. Although given they have a VP of AI, I have no idea. What a crazy title.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI-First Company Memos
It'll never cease to amaze me how many powerful people can't tell advice from advertising.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI-First Company Memos
Better, yeah.
SketchySeaBeast··on AI-First Company Memos
3. They discovered it's something they can measure so they made a metric about it.
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