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VonGallifrey

432 karma · joined September 18, 2013

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VonGallifrey··on google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update
> Studies always show that you don't. You think you do, but you don't.

Did those studies have any outliers that DID have a negative reaction to ads? I am 100% certain I'd react EXTREMELY negatively in a situation like that.

The same way I wanted to buy a Tesla and rented one a couple of times in the past. Now I would NEVER AGAIN even go into a Tesla. Fuck that company.

VonGallifrey··on google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update
> If you have $20 to spend avoiding ads, you have $30 to spend on cool products

Yes, but if you are so against ads that you spend $20 to not see ads (I am definitely in this group) and then see an ad for a "cool product" anyway, then that product is no longer cool. Any time something like this happens, I legitimately develop a grudge against that company and their products.

I might have bought that product before seeing the ad, but there is no chance of that after seeing the ad.

VonGallifrey··on .name Termination
> The same ambiguity can and always will exist with tim-apple.com and tim.apple.com

Similarly, I recently got a scam email that linked to de-apple.com (not a domain owned by APPLE) and also used apple.com-18221.com (also not apple.com).

I reported those domains to the registrar, but apparently it is not impersonating enough to take action.

VonGallifrey··on Don't Wordle
> HN blatantly doesn't comply

What about HN doesn't comply with GDPR? It does not seem to have tracking cookies.

VonGallifrey··on FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers
It reads to me like FreeInk is the e-book reader and e-Paper SDK, and CrossPoint is the firmware that uses FreeInk.

I currently use CrossPoint, so I wanted to install this, but when I clicked the GitHub button, it just linked to the CrossPoint Firmware.

VonGallifrey··on LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do
> But a company that does that is basically delegating both compliance and legal functions to IT. No sane company does that.

I was a Software Dev in a small (but fully regulated and licensed) stock exchange. We used to have guidance from legal experts, market experts, and traders, but in the last project I worked on, they just dumped 300 pages of laws and regulations on my desk and asked me what needed to be done. Why? Because the experts we used to have were either fired or left. Along with any product managers. I guess company leadership thought they were no longer needed.

Insane is right. I told them that this is not how it is supposed to work. I can't tell them what needs to be done. I am not a legal expert who can just interpret these regulations.

I was forced out of the company after that, but honestly, no one would want to work in such an environment anyway.

VonGallifrey··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
> If there were a license in the US for it, I’d agree with you.

Yeah, that is basically the thing in my country. You can't call yourself an engineer without passing a test, but I can't take it because there isn't one for software engineering.

Same thing for freelancing. Freelance jobs are defined in a list, and other jobs cannot benefit from the simplified tax rules that freelancers enjoy, but that list was written before software development was a thing.

VonGallifrey··on Louis Rossmann offers to pay legal fees for a threatened OrcaSlicer developer
His channel isn't really about 3D printing or maker projects, which is maybe why you have not heard of him.

He has (or had, not sure) an electronics repair shop where he showed laptop and phone repairs on his channel. Recently he is one of the people who push right to repair regulations and consumer rights. Which is probably why he is interested in this case.

VonGallifrey··on Why most product tours get skipped
You don't need a cookie banner for auth cookies. You only need consent (aka the banner) for 3rd party cookies and tracking cookies.

Cookies that are strictly necessary for the functionality (auth, user preferences, shopping cart, etc...) of the site don't need user consent.

VonGallifrey··on What is jj and why should I care?
Can you show how you would do this in jj?

I know how I would do this in git, but don't really see how this would be in jj. I currently don't use it in my workflow, but if it is super easy in jj then I could see myself switching.

VonGallifrey··on We can't have nice things because of AI scrapers
> turns out plenty of people say they write for others to read

LLMs are not people. They don't write blogs so that a company can profit from their writing by training LLMs on it. They write for others to read their ideas.

VonGallifrey··on Formatting code should be unnecessary
> just make a choice, run the linter automatically and be done with it.

Most people probably do this. These types of discussions (probably) come up when someone else made the choice and other people also need to adhere to this choice. This is important for teams, but sometimes big egos don't want these choices made for them.

VonGallifrey··on Self-taught engineers often outperform (2024)
Well... Self-taught means that the person learned by their own initiative, "without formal instruction or training".

Going to the library or buying and reading books is not formal instruction, and neither is watching Videos. There is no one to guide, help, or check on progress.

I could watch the entire MIT Intro to Algorithms Course on YouTube and still be self-taught, because watching that does not make me an MIT Student and it does not make Dr. Jason Ku my instructor.

VonGallifrey··on Self-taught engineers often outperform (2024)
> Attentive CS graduates have a structured pool of information to draw from

Yes, but a self-taught Developer also has their own pool of information to draw from. That could be prior experience, but it can also overlap with the CS graduates' pool of information.

You don't need to take a DSA class to learn DSA. There is a wealth of information out there for self-taught developers to learn these kinds of things. From textbooks to YouTube videos, it is all readily available for anyone.

Self-taught does not mean you need to invent everything from first principles.

VonGallifrey··on IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites
How exactly do you suggest that a country like Germany (since Germanys inaction was the topic of this thread) reach those goals? How does Germany end the blockade of Gaza? How does Germany end apartheid in the West Bank?

Just because I can’t do anything to improve the situation does not mean that I am in favour of the status quo. That does not make me evil either.

VonGallifrey··on IDF officers ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near Gaza food distribution sites
It’s one thing to call the situation “nothing complex”, but there was no solution in this clip.

Usually when people call something complex they mean that the solution is complex.

VonGallifrey··on The bitter lesson is coming for tokenization
Excuse me for the bad joke, but it seems like your context window was too small.

The Tree growing comment was a reference to another comment earlier in the comment chain.

VonGallifrey··on macOS Tahoe brings a new disk image format
> Given how many people use

How many people use software like this because they have no choice? I used Paragon NTFS, but the entire time, I thought it was ridiculous that MacOS can't read NTFS on its own.

VonGallifrey··on The Awful German Language (1880)
Given that the commenter left another comment about having been misinformed, I don't think it was a Joke.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44008622

VonGallifrey··on The Awful German Language (1880)
Fixed. I should have gotten a clue when I spelled Gemälde without the extra h.
VonGallifrey··on The Awful German Language (1880)
From your link there:

> written in a mangled form of German.

If you show this to anyone who knows German, they will recognize that this was written by someone who doesn't.

VonGallifrey··on The Awful German Language (1880)
painting = Malen

a painting = Gemälde

drawing = Zeichnen

a drawing = Zeichnung

VonGallifrey··on The Awful German Language (1880)
None of those are actual German words. For some of them, I found references that these words could potentially be used in Pennsylvania, but most of these words are not even German, even when you split them into their components.
VonGallifrey··on Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)
> We both guessed the censor was catching it as a false positive for the slur.

There is a word for this. It is called the Scunthorpe problem. Named after the incident in which the residents of the Town Scunthorpe could not register for an AOL account because AOL had an obscenity filter that did not allow the Town name.

It has been a problem since 1996 and still causes problems.

VonGallifrey··on Software development topics I've changed my mind on
> I brought over the blueprints, and the technician found the schedule of beams and columns within seconds

Is that really an example of the standardization you want? It shows that the blueprint was done in a way that the technician expected it to be, but I am not sure that these blueprints are standardized in that way globally. Each country has its standards and language.

If an architect from a different country did that blueprint, I would bet that it would be significantly different from the blueprint you have.

Software Engineering doesn't have a problem with country borders, but different languages would require different standards and conventions. Unless you can convince everyone to use the same language (which would be a bad idea; CRUD apps and rocket systems have different trade-offs), I doubt there could be an industry-wide standard.

VonGallifrey··on GoLic, injects license into source code files
> Technically, the person who distributed the file to them has violated the license by not sending the license text in-band.

That person might also just send parts of a file instead of the entire file with the license at the top.

VonGallifrey··on It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word
> who notably said horrible things

How do you objectively decide which statements are horrible and which aren't?

The other stuff you listed are facts, but this one would be subjective. That isn't just providing contextual information, but adding personal bias into the reporting.

VonGallifrey··on Greppability is an underrated code metric
The way I have seen this is that single letter variables are mostly used when declaration and (all) usages are very close together.

If I see a loop with i or k, v then I can be fairly confident that those are an Index or a Key Value pair. Also I probably don't need to grep them since everything interacting with these variables is probably already on my screen.

Everything that has a wider scope or which would be unclear with a single letter is named with a more descriptive name.

Of course this is highly dependent on the people you work with, but this is the way it works on projects I have worked on.

VonGallifrey··on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing
I have never heard any native German say "Bauer" for builder. "Bauer" is definitively Farmer unless it is used as a suffix.
VonGallifrey··on Why is a Guillotine blade diagonal?
It is white text on black background by default. Do you have some browser plugins that mess with the website content?
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