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Yacoby

186 karma · joined March 25, 2014

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Yacoby··on Real time map of France's rail network
It sounds good, then you try and get a TER (regional train) and find there is one or two a day, using old rolling stock, overcrowded for an exorbitant price.

So if you want to take a TGV to/from Paris, it is nice. Anything else, less so (try looking at fast train route from Lyon to Bordeaux - through Paris)

Yacoby··on Organic Maps
There is also CoMaps (https://www.comaps.app/) which is a fork of Organic Maps, after concern over the governance of Organic Maps https://itsfoss.com/news/organic-maps-fork-comaps/
Yacoby··on Python Workers redux: fast cold starts, packages, and a uv-first workflow
Unless I misunderstand, AWS SnapStart and their memory snapshots are the same feature (taking memory snapshots to speed up cold start). It doesn't seem a fair comparison to ignore this and my assumption is because AWS Lambda SnapStart is faster.
Yacoby··on Why does a fire truck cost $2m
I'm not sure I understand your point. Just because the country is large doesn't necessarily mean that you need larger fire trucks?

(Or that America needs a one size fits all approach to fire trucks - things that work well in cities may not work well in rural areas)

Yacoby··on The Microservices Fallacy
The main reasons for micro services (that I didn't see covered) is that it reduces cross team overhead. 10 people working on a service is fine, 100 people working on a service requires processes which slow development down (as no one can keep what is changing in their head)
Yacoby··on Austria rail operator OeBB unveils new night trains
The interesting thing is that it that night trains can be quicker if you consider the waking. e.g. Zurich to Berlin - the train leaves at 8pm and gets in at 7am. So it is 2-3 waking hours spent.

(Does of course depend on how well you sleep on trains)

Yacoby··on Lychee – Self-hosted photo-management done right
Immich (https://www.immich.app/) is still under heavy development, but looks like it will hit most of those requirements (but not automatic album generation).
Yacoby··on Garmin Reacts to Apple Watch Ultra: We Measure Battery Life in Months. Not Hours
4 out of the 5 people I know with Garmin watches need the battery life while tracking to exceed 8 hours (this watch lasts 1 hour).

I doubt any of them are going to see this and swap their Garmin for an Apple watch.

I think the Apple watch and Garmin are aimed at very different markets and with current technology Apple can't provide what Garmin does without compromising their design.

Yacoby··on You can’t buy one square foot of land in Scotland and become a Scottish lord
Yes. Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom (which is also a country).
Yacoby··on Spain will introduce free train travel
The goal is to help with the cost of living issues (in part caused by high gas costs) and I think reducing CO2 is secondary.

Additionally I suspect trains (at least electric ones) have far less C02 emissions than cars. I'm not sure how electrified Spains rail is.

Yacoby··on The Serde Rust Framework
For context, the example from the Serde wiki written in Java using Jackson

  public record Point(int x, int y) {}

  // [...]

  var objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
  var jsonString = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(new Point(2,1));
It isn't obvious to me what advantage Serde offers that you couldn't get with Jackson or other similar libraries in Java (although I get that Java and Rust are different languages, and that there may not be something this ergonomic in the likes of C++)
Yacoby··on The rise of never-ending job interviews
Maybe they are a bad interviewer?

In my view, if the answer involves a topological sort the interviewer should know how to solve it and be able to follow and find errors in the candidates code. If the interviewer, knowing the answer, cannot find any issues then surely the code is fine (for code written in an interview)

Yacoby··on The Humble Brilliance of Italy’s Moka Coffee Pot (2018)
No, the moka pot is different from a percolator. A percolator produces coffee in a method similar to drip coffee, where as the moka pot produces coffee under pressure (making it slightly more similar to espresso)
Yacoby··on Have you ever smoked weed? Answer this question and you could be banned from US
Which is fine - if you have a deeper understanding of the US laws than most non US citizens. As far as I (from the UK) had read in the news it was legal in a lot of states and so my understanding was it was legal and fine. I didn't realize it was illegal at a federal level.
Yacoby··on Lasers should be classed as offensive weapons – British pilots' union
This is a Pilots Association saying they should be banned, not the government banning them.
Yacoby··on Austerity and mental health in the U.K.
The increasing in welfare spending seems to be a result of increasing spending on pensions though? http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_chart_2006_2016UK...
Yacoby··on Amazon Dash Button
They seem to have thought of that: "Unless you elect otherwise, Dash Button responds only to your first press until your order is delivered"
Yacoby··on Code Review Checklist
I think you need either code reviews or pair programming to ensure quality and bring developers up to a more even standard.

However I am not as fond of pair programming for ensuring quality of a change. I find that often it is easy when pair programming to go down the route that looks good at the time and it is hard to step back and evaluate the whole change. Where as being able to look at the end result without any intermediate steps often makes it easier to find flaws.

I think that with code reviews, I find them easier to do if I view the coder as an adversary. They have produced flaws and I need to find them.

Yacoby··on The truth about C and Unix history
Totally worse. free(NULL) preforms no action so there is no requirement for the if statement. ;)
Yacoby··on Show HN: Pfs – A Git-like distributed file system for the Docker ecosystem
I am not sure I see the point in implementing MapReduce when most of the current work seems to be in generalising MapReduce - i.e. Apache Spark and YARN. Is there any reasoning behind this?
Yacoby··on Vacuum trains: a high-speed pipe dream?
Safety, how do you know the car is safe, what do you do if it has a leak, etc etc. A single unit that can be tested and properly maintained is a far better idea.

You also then require car ownership, with very specialised cars that only a few would be able to afford.

City design in Europe also seems for the most part to be trying to push cars out of cities. If I was going for a business meeting in London I would prefer not to have a car. Taxi and expenses would be far easier.

Yacoby··on Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game
Their comment that no one has yet to "beat" threes is in my opinion part of the problem. I get a kick out of beating something, having reached some goal (often in competition with someone else). So maybe 2048 is broken. Doesn't detract from my enjoyment of it.

Also knowing other people had "beaten" 2048 initially helped to made it more addictive.