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barkingtoad

73 karma · joined October 28, 2011

technologist generalist bassist
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barkingtoad··on Tesla’s success in Europe catches industry off guard
Most common car repairs 2015:

Replacing an oxygen sensor – $249 - Teslas don't have these

Replacing a catalytic converter – $1,153 - Teslas don't have these

Replacing ignition coil(s) and spark plug(s) – $390 - Teslas don't have these

Tightening or replacing a fuel cap – $15 - Teslas have a charging port cover, and it breaks

Thermostat replacement – $210 - Teslas don't have these (in engines)

Replacing ignition coil(s) – $236 - Teslas don't have these

Mass air flow sensor replacement – $382 - Teslas don't have these

Replacing spark plug wire(s) and spark plug(s) – $331 - Teslas don't have these

Replacing evaporative emissions (EVAP) purge control valve – $168 - Teslas don't have these

Replacing evaporate emissions (EVAP) purging solenoid – $184 - Teslas don't have these

barkingtoad··on Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
What happens then?
barkingtoad··on Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"
After this culture war is over, the first people in the hole will be the actual right wing racists

The second people in the hole will be left wing people throwing that accusation around at any spare target.

The leftist McCarthyists need to go.

barkingtoad··on Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"
Well that appears to be what your media has informed you
barkingtoad··on Chinese Media Warn WeChat Admins: "You Can Be Arrested for Group Chat"
In the UK you can be arrested for teaching your girlfriend's pug to heil as a joke.
barkingtoad··on Faxing is growing in popularity
The fax protocol includes a strong "read receipt" type mechanism that the machines can't ignore. "Did you get the last page?" "Yes, no bad lines."

Legally, this is interesting because it doesn't exist in email. You had the machines agree that the complete document was sent and was received. You will certainly find that it other transfer protocols, but not email, where the machines don't talk to each other directly.

barkingtoad··on My dad’s resume and skills from 1980
As an engineer looking, it's rather depressing how many places have job requirements that are just a wishlist, or a resume-whittling strategy.
barkingtoad··on Geology’s Timekeepers Are Feuding
Because the end of the last ice age was only 12,000 years ago; and in that time frame, if that warming was caused by a prehistoric civilization, there would be a ton of evidence for that civilization's existence.
barkingtoad··on How 'DevOps' Is Killing the Developer (2014)
Generalists are never going to happen. In this industry people only hire Specialists.
barkingtoad··on The Day I Drove for Amazon Flex
UPS drivers are all about timing. They know precisely what they can carry, and what amount of time it will take them to manage the packages, with or without the awesome heavy-duty UPS convertible hand truck.

Partly because they are trained and know their craft - but mostly because they are correctly paid, and so they are almost always long-term workers with learned expertise at driving and delivering.

(As opposed to the Atlantic writer, who did the job for a day, didn't know how to do it correctly, found it difficult, and whined about it. That's not actually telling us much of anything, when you think about it.)

barkingtoad··on Pornography and the Butterfly Effect
Enforced monogamy, i.e., marriage
barkingtoad··on Interviews vs. auditions
So: if you are both skilled at tech AND at working with people, and you're shooting for a tech job with an experienced interviewer... BE MORE AWKWARD!
barkingtoad··on PragProg removes access to forums due to SESTA
Well that's the thing about the slippery slope argument... it always leads to jackbooted thugs marching into your living room and by then it's too late

Having heard this argument made so many times in my lifetime, I've been awaiting the sound of the jackboots on the stairwells for decades

This eternal vigilance has now become tiresome. So much to watch for, I don't think I can keep it up

barkingtoad··on Bringing people back to the open web
This same argument has been made countless times. "Linux has no chance in the corporate world. HP has thousands of paid devs working on HP-UX."

It turned out there were a greater number of devs NOT at HP... and today, there are more devs NOT at Facebook.

barkingtoad··on Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message
We should be able to derive this from the immediate actions that were taken in 1970-71 that actually prevented the end of civilization.
barkingtoad··on Facebook Can’t Be Fixed, It Needs to Be Broken Up
I'm trying to think of what it is, exactly, that Facebook has a monopoly on. The nearest I can come up with is: Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users.

The followup question would be: how can that be broken up?

barkingtoad··on Hiring, firing and more
> people change, even if they were a good hire a few years ago, now they may not any longer be good at that position in that company.

When a manager takes a very skilled person and demotivates them, that is what that looks like. It happens allllll the time. Fire the manager -- or you'll just be turning skilled workers into ex-workers.

barkingtoad··on BlackRock’s Message: Contribute to Society, or Risk Losing Our Support
And that's why farmers take care of their land, because farmers generally retire on the worth of it.
barkingtoad··on RSS: there's nothing better
To be more exact, RSS is headline-oriented, so it's about clickbait. It is not about sharebait.
barkingtoad··on Tech workers worry about age discrimination at age 40: Study
Linux Engineer, 53. When my cow-orker lent me the book version of "No Country For Old Men" saying "Here, this is going around", I figured I might be in trouble. I was laid off in the middle of the bad times, could not find anything for years, and have been rebooting my career since then.

In my last interview, the recruiter said I was ruled out because I was "weak on nginx". The interviewer didn't ask about nginx, but you know, whatever.

barkingtoad··on Sugar alters hormones and metabolism, sets stage for obesity and diabetes
"a calorie is a calorie"

This is the exact point the article is... arguing against in a very convincing fashion

barkingtoad··on Show HN: Send a fax to 50 countries, no signup, account or subscription required
HylaFAX Enterprise is a full SW solution, (roughly) HylaFAX plus the Dialogic SR140 which does both T.38 (new school fax) and G.711 (old school telephony fax). But generally it's 14.4k - believe it or not V.34 (33.6k) is still somewhat experimental over IP.

And 9600 is usually required to get faxes through to a lot of places, because everyone is trying to do fax over VoIP, and that is generally tough sledding, if it's possible at all.

barkingtoad··on A Pre-History of Slashdot
User #333 here. Back in the day, someone offered me oral sex for the low user number. What a perfect metaphor for the dot-com era: offering to wildly overpay for a social media asset that would eventually turn out to be useless.
barkingtoad··on Sickness absence associated with shared and open-plan offices (2011)
corporate told us to call it TEAM-building.
barkingtoad··on San Francisco hits 106 degrees, breaking record
depending on who's counting, the deviation is currently like +0.21 degrees C since 1980. although it is a meaningful amount you probably could not actually "feel and experience" it
barkingtoad··on Windows 8 Available in October
Agreed. Also I think a big chunk of the regular desktop users out there are going to be nothing but annoyed at the interface, and will do what they can to avoid Metro. It's been what, 17 years of clicking on "start" (or equivalent) and picking from a list. A lot of office workers are going to be horrified when they realize that doesn't work now.
barkingtoad··on AWS is down due to an electrical storm in the US
What a coincidence - "Pepe Deluxe" is my name for my penis.

.

...what do you mean lowbrow humor isn't allowed on hacker news?

barkingtoad··on Amazon EC2 down?
You tell me man. I guess the difference is I can install many more times more server horsepower for the $500/month rental of a half rack at my colo, and the result will be better uptime than EC2. I just can't install them immediately.
barkingtoad··on Amazon EC2 down?
My co-location provider's data center has had about four hours of downtime in ten years. It turns out a backup diesel generator, redundant connectivity, and a good network/sysadmin are all anyone needs.

People are now working out how to failover from AWS to Rackspace and that is infuriating to me. You... you need redundant clouds now? That can't be right!

barkingtoad··on Education, Skills & Slavery… and why we’re probably screwed.
That level of robotics (and generation of cheap energy to run them) will lead to a world where goods are plentiful and cheap. That in turn means the poor win, or rather the definition of "poor" is re-defined, as it always is.
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