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WesternStar

164 karma · joined April 8, 2013

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WesternStar··on Go, Containers, and the Linux Scheduler
I think this is a great article talking about a thorny point in Golang but boy do I wish I never read this article. I wish this article was never useful to anyone.
WesternStar··on Soufflé: A Datalog Synthesis Tool for Static Analysis
Its also being used in the creation of Rust's next gen borrow checker Polonious.
WesternStar··on How you play Spades is how you play life
Do you feel the same way about when Americans claim baseball is the national pastime or say "As American as apple pie".
WesternStar··on How you play Spades is how you play life
In holdem you can fold or raise. If you fold you are obviously not playing your hand.
WesternStar··on Magit – A Git Porcelain inside Emacs
For me the thing is that emacs can be overwhelming. So focus on doing one task at a time. I still don't know the whole spacemacs interface. I know where my major mode keybinds are. I know how to deal with my .spacemacs. I know where to find documentation. I deal with everything else on a case by case basis.
WesternStar··on Hiring Without Whiteboards
Also people act as though software is a job without anxiety. There is plenty of anxiety in this job. Sometimes under pressure you really do have to perform or push back and its good to know if people can do it.
WesternStar··on The Four Quadrants of Conformism
I think the idea that people are the same no matter what the rules are just isn't true. It stated as though it is obvious and I need evidence that that is the case. The rest of the argument falls apart based on that point.
WesternStar··on MSU Vice President of research & innovation Steve Hsu has been forced to resign
I suppose it is fair to say speech of those in leadership positions with executive power is chilled by this. I think that's how its supposed to be though. Part of being in leadership is managing relationships with stakeholders. Part of it is being beyond reproach. Undisclosed conflicts of interest on published papers is not a small thing for an Executive at a university. Being responsible in an academic honesty sense is important in that position I think.
WesternStar··on Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds
>But when you say "I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense"... you are really saying that instead of trying for meritocracy, they should just use skin color?

I'm not GP but that doesn't seem like a charitable rendering of their argument. Its the stupidest possible rendering of their statement.

WesternStar··on Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds
How fortunate you are to merely be "exhausted" emotionally. This isn't really a conversation about skin color its a conversation on how we treat each other and we happen to treat people with certain skin colors in ways that make their lives worse and in some cases more dangerous. Talking about it like its about skin is foolish. It's about behavior.
WesternStar··on George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
So lets take one example lets say you have a late night restaurant devoted to providing drivers who would possibly drive drunk a place to sober up and people who are homeless a hot breakfast. Let's call this place "Waffle House". How exactly would those people become police as currently constituted. How exactly would an organization dedicated to providing satisfying justice without prisons become the police as currently constituted? The police as currently created barely solve crimes(30% clear rates) and don't really appear to be interested in justice. You seem to think its hard to imagine an organization dedicated to public safety that's not like them. They're so bad at it I ask the other question how could an organization dedicated to public safety ever be like the police.
WesternStar··on George Floyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter
No because the goal is to have public safety organizations that don't have any of the personnel, historical lineage or goals of the police. By poor analogy, the goal isn't to clone facebook its to make a twitter,Instagram,telegram,etc. Different orgs with different goals with different people ultimately focused on public safety.
WesternStar··on Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu
They should maybe consider adding an option for people to point at other repositories and surface them either in the ubuntu software store or in their own software store.
WesternStar··on Snaps are an anti-pattern on Ubuntu
I honestly like snaps. I like having spotify and discord working as to his other concerns I just don't care.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
People with guns lose fights too. Cold Arms are easier to assess and much easier to run from. Who said anything about a crime that's like asking in the current regime cocaine users what crime did they commit. I'm not suggesting arresting them. I want their weapons. They aren't using them to defend against tyranny so what good are they.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
Well I didn't say you couldn't fight. My proposal includes confiscation. Assume very aggressive pursuit of criminals with an unlicensed firearms. Like multi-county dragnet with blocked roads. Like we get O(100) cops for one gun. Most criminals will just probably keep it to cold arms.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
The United States of America has an oppressive government if they wanted to use their weapons to protect against tyranny today would be that day. But they don't the 70 million gun owners of America march in support of tyranny not against it.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
Call the police and have insurance.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
We should start by repealing the 2nd amendment. It is a bad law. Edit: This along with arm confiscation would limit force in police interactions and thus lower aggression.
WesternStar··on To Make Police Accountable, End Qualified Immunity
I'm for removing it entirely. We can build a new legal standard. The reasonable professional standard works fine for doctors.Seems like it should work fine for cops.
WesternStar··on A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it
J.K. could afford it because the U.K. subsidized her life with welfare. There should be more of that.
WesternStar··on Got fired? Ready to start a startup/new project?
Unless my interviews go better than I expect them to I'm working on a prober that automatically updates probes for data systems where the read path can be fairly heterogenous like SQL where the result size and the query time can vary fairly widely.
WesternStar··on Systemd, ten years later: a historical and technical retrospective
Healthy skepticism is necessary for any technologist. However, you do have to use it in both directions. I know my biases are that I prefer new technology to old. So I pay attention to that. However, it is just as bad to reflexively consign something as premature or ill-considered. Sometimes the collective hegemony gets it right. They may have missed on microservices but they didn't miss on the cloud really. I do try to be eclectic in my technology choices if only for cognitive reasons.
WesternStar··on Systemd, ten years later: a historical and technical retrospective
I see this kind of talking about stuff like the Unix way and existing conventions and programs. I almost have to ask myself when did we end up in a mausoleum. The Unix way is just a guideline from a time some folks wrote some code. A seminal and important time. Its just one(perhaps of many) piece of anecdata. Old code is old code. It's useful but the patterns and conventions it was built on may no longer be relevant. It is not obvious apriori that it is worthwhile to preserve existing conventions and not break existing code.
WesternStar··on Ask HN: What has the pandemic taught you?
There we're governments that succeeded though several of them. Its a bit rich to say you shouldn't be able to rely on the government when people did just that and got it right. It was societies where people don't believe in government that government failed.
WesternStar··on The power of admitting ignorance
There also seems to be this misconception that being intelligent gives you a license and even a propensity to be a jerk. I just don't buy it. Sometimes smart people are jerks. But if you're a jerk the onus is on you in my mind to prove you are smart. I won't make that assumption.
WesternStar··on Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]
I just don't get the downvotes. Black Patients go to doctors and say doctor I think I need help doctor goes "You're just whining" then the patient dies. https://newsone.com/3903170/black-women-call-out-hospital-mi... that's just the story from this year. They've had at least 2 in the last 3 years.
WesternStar··on Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation sequencing tool
Because you should be able to find a good hash data structure for your language. You shouldn't be able to accidentally get a bad one. It should arguably be the first data structure you reach for.
WesternStar··on Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation sequencing tool
<unpopular opinion>We should break ABI on unordered map just to stop embarrassing ourselves in public and in front of new users.</unpopular opinion>
WesternStar··on The pervert's guide to computer programming languages (2017) [video]
Private equity has been making millions selling the parts of a company for more money than the whole. I don't see how that split is any different.
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