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adamdonahue

41 karma · joined April 29, 2014

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adamdonahue··on What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk"? (2023)
So a floppy disk has a disc inside?
adamdonahue··on An AI agent published a hit piece on me
This post is pure AI alarmism.
adamdonahue··on 'Dogequest' Site Claims to Dox Tesla Owners Across the U.S.
This.
adamdonahue··on Who profits most from America's baffling health-care system?
Hammer meet nail.

The same issue plagues the American higher education system, which is wildly overpriced.

adamdonahue··on YouTube suspended my account for posting DeFi hackathon video
Right-o.
adamdonahue··on YouTube suspended my account for posting DeFi hackathon video
There's an opportunity here. Put the video on both YouTube and a blockchain, make it easy to find on the latter via the YouTube URI, then when one discovers a non-working link you YouTube you can pivot to the blockchain-based backup. Once enough people know about this hack it then, with a browser plug-in, censorship be gone!

This is obviously off-the-cuff, undetailed thinking here, but an approach like this might make sense in the future.

adamdonahue··on The most remarkable legacy system I have seen
It was indeed "diddle," not "twiddle." At BAML, it's a "tweak." Beacon Platform is another implementation by the same team (but with support for the public cloud, and many more advanced features, I believe, including tighter web integration). I think it uses the terminology "bind."

[Disclosure: I was part of the Quartz Core team in 2011/2012.]

adamdonahue··on The unreasonable effectiveness of declarative programming
Spot on.
adamdonahue··on Technical Debt
But it's only debt if business decisions mean you must change it. I've seen far too many programmers crawl through legacy code that need not be replaced (it does its job) merely because it's using an outdated technology. But if there's no business justification for that, I'd argue it's not debt at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with some ugly COBOL code doing its job with no current need for modification. That's not debt. Debt is something you have to pay back.
adamdonahue··on Technical Debt
It's only debt if you have to pay it back.
adamdonahue··on TLDR Stock Options
I'm having trouble grokking the results here. If I put in 50 basis points for a seed-funded company it calculates as no return until a $40M exit. I'd like to see the justification for this.
adamdonahue··on Ask HN: What is so great about Bloomberg Terminal?
Hacker News is the ultimate waste of time. Correction: Hacker News _comments are the ultimate waste of time.
adamdonahue··on Why I Don’t Talk to Google Recruiters
It's definitely not "zero cost." It may be a low cost, but as with any choice, there is always an opportunity cost.
adamdonahue··on Time to Take a Stand
Yeah, Altman is a hypocrite. Zero respect for this guy. "Let's ban certain types of speech unless it's from me, of course."
adamdonahue··on Ask HN: Why does Google put the query in the URL hash instead of query string?
Exactly. You are someone who gets it.
adamdonahue··on Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience
The general trend in software development appears to be toward generalization over specialization. I'm not sure this is a good thing.
adamdonahue··on Recognizing magic as a rare and valuable art form and national treasure
Reads like an advertisement for Copperfield. But in terms of advancing the art form and of classic prestidigitation, I can think of no better current practitioner than Ricky Jay.
adamdonahue··on This is what happens when FlightFox copies your entire site without attribution
To say FlightFox 'copied [the] entire site' is a bit of a reach, to put it mildly. The idea, perhaps, but I wouldn't hold my breath hoping for attribution for that.