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bitcrusher

444 karma · joined May 15, 2012

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bitcrusher··on Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison
I agree; I wasn't clear in my previous post. I understand the economic underpinnings. I cannot understand the coupled animus and have stopped trying.
bitcrusher··on Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison
Totally get that; I'm on the older side, so personally I've been down this road quite a few times. We're ALWAYS on the verge of our profession being rugged somehow. RAD tools, Outsourcing, In-sourcing, No-Code, AI/LLM... I used to be curious about why there was overwhelming pressure to eliminate "us", but gave up and just focus on doing good work.
bitcrusher··on Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison
I'm not sure why this is confusing? We're seeing the phenomenon everywhere in culture lately. People WANT something to be true and try to speak it into existence. They also tend to be the people LEAST qualified to speak about the thing they are referencing. It's not marketing hype, it is propaganda.

Meanwhile, the 'experts' are saying something entirely different and being told they're wrong or worse, lying.

I'm sure you've seen it before, but this propaganda, in particular, is the holy grail of 'business people'. The ones who "have a great idea, just need you to do all the work" types. This has been going on since the late 70s, early 80s.

bitcrusher··on Apple to Power AI Features with M2 Ultra Servers
It's been a few years but when I was there, Apple had an almost frothingly EXTREME policy against using ANYTHING from Google, most especially Tensorflow. Things may have changed in the last few years but I would not be surprised if that were still the case.
bitcrusher··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2021)
Fable | Product, People, Engineering | Full-time | Remote

Motion is everywhere: A GIF on Instagram, a video on YouTube, an animation on a website, or even a Netflix documentary. Yet! Moving content is super hard to create because while current software is powerful it's also intimidating for most creators to get started.

Fable (http://fable.app/) combines the power of Adobe with the accessibility of Figma and makes motion collaborative for teams–right in the browser. There's no software to install, it's made for designers, and it all runs in the cloud. In this new frontier of web-based software, we believe motion is the big missing piece.

Read more here: https://www.notion.so/fableinc/Careers-at-Fable-3d813b438e88...

bitcrusher··on Apple still planning return to in-person work despite complaints
This is the most hamfisted nonsense I've read in a while. Just say "I like to micromanage people" and be done with it. The fact that you're worried about what/how other people are using or dealing with their time says way more about you than about working environments. Some people don't do well without working in an office, other people do quite well working outside of a traditional office setting.
bitcrusher··on Public Opinion in Authoritarian States
You're being purposely obsequious, I think.

Let's try this:

If you take a LONG view ( more than the last 15 years ) you would see that prior to the fairness doctrine being removed, we generally weren't 'entertained' by media. That removal, rise of cable news and radio "shows" and the one issue wedge strategy of the Neo-con/Conservative movements created a socialization atmosphere for the last 30 years which advocates for a growing anger towards "mainstream" media. This first obvious signs of this were the obstructionists of the mid-90s, with Newt Gingrich leading the charge... This gave rise to the Tea Party, where obstructionism and venomous anger becomes the party line, not just an also ran belief. Simultaneous, the liberals are getting soundly beaten by not only a more directed and better orchestrated ground game but by tactics that aren't 'fair' by conventional standards. These events give rise to the seeds of 'falternative facts propaganda', which reframes everything as a personal attack and creates the 'drain the swamp narratives'. However, there's still a communication gap as traditional print media won't engage, and radio programming is notoriously hard to propagate. In comes the mainstream internet, starts connecting like minded folks from disparate areas who start grouping together. Twitter, Facebook, et. al start gaining in popularity, basing their entire business model on fueling the divisiveness playbook ( outrage engagement ), originated WAY WAY back when the fairness doctrine was eliminated. Media companies were also starting to getting in on the action, first by way of 'conservative' talking heads using shock-jock techniques pandering to their audience, creating a feedback loop. Liberals, after a few years of this, start seeing that they're 'losing' the culture war and fight back, emulating the tactics of their perceived opposition. Sprinkle some foreign involvement to amplify, season liberally with money and boom: 2019.

Anyway, I could go on, but I think you're not actually interested in any of this, but instead are trying to Trojan horse some nonsensical ideas about causation under the guise of intellectual exchange ( see: "China gets a bad wrap" as an example ).

Thanks for the chat though, I wish you the best.

bitcrusher··on Public Opinion in Authoritarian States
Unfortunately, you've got it backwards. The propaganda has exacerbated the division, almost in direct alignment with the removal of the fairness doctrine. All of the things you're describing are a consequence of growing up thinking that 'opposing views' are somehow validated and the problem is that people aren't listening.

It's true, they aren't listening to each other; But few people are saying anything worth listening to ( for example, having critical thoughts about ANY subject that isn't a regurgitation of talking points they heard/read/saw from their bubble ).

The propaganda has been successful enough that it's created a cultural viewpoint that starts with the premise that there ARE sides and that the other side won't listen so they're hopeless.

bitcrusher··on Having a non-typical tech stack helped us get better candidates
No, this is just a fancy tautological development argument. This is how we got into the Java trap (yes, it's a trap) to begin with. Everyone knows Java, you can hire Java devs easily, etc. etc. There's really no reason for this other than: "We don't want to let people grow beyond the cogs we hired them to be". That may or may not be "good" but at least call it what it is: Broken internal human factors processes, instead of couching it in pseudo-technical tomfoolery.

There is literally NO reason (other than time, mentoring and desire) that the jr. Java developers couldn't pick up Elixir in a short amount of time and be fully productive.

bitcrusher··on Mac Pro: Fooled You
No, the anger is born from an expectation (namely, that prosumers can get the low-end pro model) that well predates the whole life-style brand marketing (iPod 2001, iPhone 2007).

I believe this is also incorrect. Apple has consistently had a lifestyle brand marketing tactic when Jobs was at the helm. The clone years were a different animal, for sure, but pre and post Apple was most definitely marketed as a lifestyle brand and "experience". The difference is that it worked better the second time, with the addition of the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

Steve's 2x2 matrix was obviated almost immediately upon his passing. The product teams at Apple may from time to time use it as a reference to bolster a point in their favor but those days have long since vanished. People are 'angry' because they want a desktop PC like experience within the Apple eco-system and they don't have anywhere to turn. Personally, I think it is unjustified, as there are more than enough product spans to fill that gap BEFORE the introduction of the Mac Pro. All of this silly 'anger' to me is just another iteration of people being upset at Apple because they didn't fulfill their personal 'peeve'. Honestly, if you don't like the stuff or it's not what you want, then use something else. If you CAN'T then I submit that you're a victim of the aforementioned lifestyle marketing.

bitcrusher··on Mac Pro: Fooled You
I disagree with this. This viewpoint is the side-effect of Apple's lifestyle brand marketing. Apple releases a machine you can't afford and they're "pissing on you"? No, they're diversifying their product towards the high-end market they want to re/capture. If your favorite car company releases a nice premium product are they also "pissing on you"?
bitcrusher··on Mac Pro: Fooled You
On the one hand, this cat knows how to screw up marketing hardware/software ( Be, Inc! ). On the other hand, he's literally talking nonsense about a compute platform that is targeted at studios.
bitcrusher··on Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)
Yes, I definitely missed that one. Good catch.
bitcrusher··on Buying into the Emacs Platform (2018)
I understand that your experience is yours but I also believe that you might be going about it the wrong way.

First, you don't REALLY need to know anything but Meta-X and Control-XS, Control-XF, Control-XC to get going. Those aren't really that hard to remember or make muscle memory for, IMO. It IS hard to have to go back a bit to re-integrate how to do things in a new way if you're already happy with your existing workflow, so if there's no value for you, then... don't use it. Use whatever works for you.

bitcrusher··on Remote working – Bringing sanity to mind and lessons worth learning
There are lots of cheaper options than WeWork in Denver: Serendipity Labs, Thrive, Modworks, Shift... just to name a few. They generally average about 200/mo for co-working spaces, which is about half of what WeWork is currently charging.
bitcrusher··on Elixir, Phoenix, Absinthe, GraphQL, React, and Apollo
Yep! Just use Plug. There’s no need to drag the entire Phoenix stack in.

https://hexdocs.pm/plug/readme.html

bitcrusher··on China Cracks Down on Churches
I think you’re making the mistake of equating Christianity and Catholicism. They have the same roots but all of the things you’re assigning to Christianity is really the machinations of ‘The Church’ weilding Christians beliefs as a cudgel for the aspirations of ruling bodies.

There is definitely a fine line between the two that is often blurred, but Christianity at its core is about people who are oppressed finding freedom in faith. It’s one of the reasons it is easy to ‘spread’; every culture on earth has oppressors and oppressed.

I think your other point is super interesting however, in that when the oppressed are ‘free’ and become the majority, Christianity doesn’t have much to offer and then becomes the weapon of the ruling class ( or majority ) keeping people ‘in line’.

bitcrusher··on Being Fit May Be as Good for You as Not Smoking
Let's reconsider this position using some other example:

Such a shame that the "healthy at any genetic condition" BS is so popular these days. Literally killing people.

bitcrusher··on Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
BeOS... but modernized. Haiku doesn’t hit the right notes and BeOS was so freaking amazing for its time.
bitcrusher··on The Rise of Microsoft Visual Studio Code
And this comment is just a subtextual justification for making sure you still feel valued for not doing anything unusual.

This could go round and round. The point is that there SEEMS to be a correlation with people who learn things for the sake of learning them and folks who do well at exercises that test for adjacent skills.

bitcrusher··on Ask HN: Over 60 = no engineering jobs?
Or someone who lives in SF and likes doing startups, or someone who is terrible at finding a position that is the right fit for them, or someone who is terrible at recognizing terrible working environments, or someone who...
bitcrusher··on 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi
Obviously you're being sarcastic, but they're not just dumping netgear routers on walls and saying "TADA! MESH!"... They're actually using industrial grade equipment to do this.
bitcrusher··on Towards a Type System for Containers and AWS Lambda to Avoid Failures [pdf]
What're they going to say? "CORBA was a giant shitpile and created tire fires for several years but since this is an academic paper, we have to present historical context for our ideas"...
bitcrusher··on Why the Job Search Sucks
FWIW, I understood what you meant and I agree.
bitcrusher··on YC Bio
I would suggest that part of the reason is that it comes across as you having an axe to grind, rather than what you’re saying. The conversation was one party agreeing with you about there not being great treatment options until recently when studies have finally been conpleted with you saying, ‘you’re wrong, my experience proves it, anything you say is an attempt to invalidate my experience’

That is quite probably not at all what you intended but that is how I interpreted that exchange.

bitcrusher··on Why the Job Search Sucks
The level of pure bullshit that is part of the hiring process these days is mind-boggling. An recent example:

I interviewed for company X, where I spent an entire day with more than a dozen engineers, answering the same types of questions over and over again: "Here's our platform, how would you fix it". At every turn, I would speak about X,Y,Z issues that would need to be solved and how this or that technology might be applicable in a broad case. Diligently, in every session, the interviewers were taking copious amounts of notes about what I was saying... NOT how I was doing on the interview, but rather, the content of what I was saying. "How do you spell Corfu?" (as an example).

At the end, they told me they really liked me, and would have an offer for me in the next day or two... Two days passed and they called with "We're sorry, but you're just not technical enough for us".

I basically gave them a free day of consulting.

I'm not sure HOW to fix the problem, but it is definitely getting worse.

bitcrusher··on Why Ageism Never Gets Old
This has been my experience as well; It's as if every company is looking for a unicorn programmer... when their domain isn't any more or less unique than any other domain.

One of the "interesting" side effects is that it seems like interviewers are starting with the assumption that the person interviewing is an idiot who knows nothing and then works from there. So any slight misstep or misremembering of something puts you the fail box immediately.

My theory is that part of this is the broken culture of interviewing that we have as an industry. This "tricky CS puzzle" crap that originated at GOOG and MSFT is so prevalent that it's nigh impossible to actually succeed. More than once, it's obvious to me that the people DOING the interviewing couldn't pass their own interview...

bitcrusher··on What Everybody Gets Wrong About Jekyll and Hyde (2012)
I think the story that WAS told was just as interesting... Angel isn't about the duality of his nature. That was a character device to actually explore Redemption. I think the show did very well at exploring that issue. Angel goes through several phases of trying to cope with what it means to be redeemed... At first, his hardline do gooder stance, where it was never acceptable to "do wrong", which, given his profession actually ended up doing more harm than good. The story continued with him having to deal with "walking the line" and ultimately, allowing others to ALSO redeem themselves, through their own journey, accepting that the path to redemption was as unique as the person who was seeking it.

In a lot of ways, I actually found Angel to be much deeper than Buffy, especially as Buffy progressed through later seasons. The shows were definitely dealing with two entirely different aspects of human nature, so it is difficult to compare them fairly.

bitcrusher··on Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee
It's not impossible nor is it misleading. I think, frankly, that what you're saying is misleading.

You're able to do that because you're obviously "unattached" or "young"... You live in an apartment with a roommate. That's probably fine when you're single/dating. It's not super appealing when you're a person with a spouse and kid(s)... Also, as one progresses in age, there is a desire to stop having 'roommates' and perhaps even consider owning something.

The cost goes up considerably within those parameters.

It's "easy" to save 40% of your income if you live like a college sophomore in a dorm. It's not when you have other responsibilities.

bitcrusher··on Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars
I think in part, it's because "they" have a degree. There can be quite a bit of condescension from people who have degrees towards those who don't.. "I got a degree to get this job, you should have one too".
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