billsmithaustin

I used the MV/8000 at a SCADA company where I worked part-time in college. It was a nice step up from the 16-bit DG Nova machines we used earlier.

Wasn’t there a startup that did this in the late 90’s?

That's funny. I remember news reports about how Japanese consumers didn't want to buy American-made cars because of the perception that Japanese cars were higher quality. The salesmen tried to explain that American consumers didn't care about things like panel gaps or wind noise of door closing bump noise.

The value of your open source project is not a function of how many trolls spew vitriol about it. There will always be trolls. They’re background noise.

I talked to someone who had a similar experience in New Zealand. As I understand it, this kind of treatment is more common in countries where the employment laws make it hard to fire someone. It is also more common when the employee's severance package is large and the employer is not just disappointed but upset with the employee.

Thermally insulated password gloves?

My daughter credits the test-taking techniques they taught in her SAT prep course for a big boost in her SAT score. She says the test-taking techniques were orthogonal to how well she knew the material. I'm happy for her but at the same time it seems unfair that my ability to afford the SAT prep course gave her an advantage not available to families with lower incomes.

So it translates the code into COBOL. That's awesome.

Will be interesting to read reviews on the battery life.

Are we really referring to data records as dossiers now? I think of a dossier as a record of things like suspected infidelity or membership in a dangerous political group. Do credit ratings and purchase history really rate as a dossier?

Clever idea but I wonder how long before the shippers figure out those are really bike boxes.

At my previous employer, every quarter we were supposed to update an elaborate spreadsheet describing how we measured up against the numerous criteria for the next level on the career ladder. I hated it.

That said, there were lots of people who obsessed over the process, looking for shortcuts or ways to game the system.

At this point, wouldn’t any PDA be a hipster PDA?

My high school physics teacher lent me his TRS-80. I learned my first assembly language on it. My whole career started with that.

The tone and writing style make me think this was a piece of undergraduate fiction rather than a factual account written by a PhD.

My favorite: "How do you make money?"

Indeed published a pair of blog posts back in 2013 on how they evolved their architecture to use LSM trees. Part 1: https://engineering.indeedblog.com/talks/1-1-billion-evoluti... Part 2: https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2013/10/serving-over...

I live in Austin. The bike infrastructure varies a lot depending on what part of town you’re in. No doubt that’s true for most places — including around the University of Texas. I’ve ridden many trips up and down Dean Keeton Street without any trouble from motorists.

The electrical pole story is ridiculous — someone didn’t know what they were doing. But readers should not assume the entirety of Austin’s bike lanes are like that.

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15486368

Regardless, there need to be opportunities to re-evaluate decisions that don’t work out. Sometimes the project will need to backtrack as people discover what works and what doesn’t.

No doubt a balance bike is an effective way to teach someone how to ride, but it also sounds like a way for bike companies to make more money. I taught my kids on normal bikes but with the seat lowered so that it was easy for their feet to reach the ground.

No. It’s a computing museum so the admission fee would be denominated in “pound coin”.

The wood textured patch is a nice touch. More electronic components should feature wood paneling.

Broken link. Was there actually a study on that subject or was this just a way to start a conversation about taxes?

The author meets a collection of friends at 7am because a later time conflicts with taking his kids to school. Friends, not co-workers.

I wanted the first ant to climb out of the bunker, find the home nest destroyed, and yell, “You finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up!”

The Deus ex machina ending ruined the whole thing.

Planet of the Ducks it isn’t.

I read the offenders were a rogue group of moral relativists. They said under the circumstances they did nothing wrong.

In the 90’s I worked for a company whose C/C++ code needed to run on at least 7 different Unix versions: SunOS, Solaris, two different AIX versions, HP-UX, DGUX, and whatever Motorola’s Unix was. The slogan around the office was, “There is no such thing as portable code, just ported code.”