cbanek

I think people are starting to drink less too. Now doctors are starting to ask patients how often they drink and advising them to drink less and less frequently.

Maybe Square would be interested for Final Fantasy!

I also feel like a lot of companies and managers overestimate how important their services are. A lot of time it's about managers saving face or having a record to prove to the boss. When you're working on something stupid after hours merely because your boss told you it is down it is just maddening. It's a fire that no one cares about, but you have to put it out IMMEDIATELY.

Now sometimes you just need things to work, but at least set up a proper on call rotation, shifts, or whatever. But most people honestly don't need this.

I remember these! And they weren't exactly circle CD-ROMs either, they had round sides but then straight top and bottom, so you could fit them in a business card holder / wallet. I always thought these were pretty cool.

It's interesting you call out a year as a time span. I have no idea what the goals will be in a year, let alone how I'll code it. A year seems like a really long time, but also just short enough to justify adding extra work in early. My timeframe is more like a week to a month. Obviously different orgs will have different time windows for real reasons.

> But an accretion of kludges around an insufficient set of core functionality is absolutely worse than having a little extra functionality that you end up deleting later.

I agree that an accretion of kludges is bad. The problem here comes down to usually the skill of the programmer when the new work comes up. To people who don't understand the code, they are more likely to make what they think is a simple kludge than actually refactor to solve the problem "correctly", which usually involves more thought and creativity.

Whereas extra functionality usually increases the code surface area, and once published as a public interface to a library, is very costly and painful to delete. Then it festers as complications to new code that is added have to assume this extra functionality is used rather than not.

I've never been bitten by an interface that is too simple. I've never had a bug in code that I didn't need to write.

Don't try to solve future problems. You'll have the problem that the problem you solved isn't the problem that needs solving, and then the problem that needs solving.

If anything, overly simplistic solutions sometimes make me feel like I'm repeating myself, but really since the code is so easy it always feels possible to refactor it. That's a good place to be, much better than afraid to change something because it's too generic to know if you'll break something.

Everyone has an opinion on an interface that is easy to understand, and not over-engineered (bikeshedding).

While some parts can be pretty corny, let me call out the music as amazing. Each episode has a lot more unique music than I thought!

In the last few days I just finished watching it! Totally worth every time.

While I agree, I don't think the layoffs are getting rid of the bullshitters. If anything, it seems like they are still prospering just fine (from where I'm at). Bullshitters seem like cockroaches, they can survive just about anything when convincing people of their nonsense.

ah yes you are totally correct, thanks!

(I worked at SpaceX)

Two words: flight heritage.

Successful concepts are very often reused. For example, heat shields, parachute landings, sea landings, air bags for landings on hard land, etc.

Now, let me try to explain this in something similar: cars.

Cars are all pretty much the same. They have a steering wheel, 4 tires, transmission, engine, etc. The parts all do the same thing in different cars, but we don't always use the same engine, or the same tires, or the same frame for every car.

After making cars for so long, why do car companies still have recalls?

New models of cars usually either start from scratch or start based on a different vehicle already in production (new model year). But if you're starting from scratch, you've lost all the "little fixes" that go into making a car good. Like the difference from a new model EV car to a Toyota Corolla that's been in production for basically 10 years has a very different failure/recall rate. After many years of producing the same car, you fix all the little things and get your supply chains working well.

Now back to space ships. It's the same thing. You have made a new capsule and although the concepts are the same, think about all the little things: wiring, plumbing, controls, software. These are all new and basically untested. They lack "flight heritage" (proven working in space).

For the question as why can't we make Apollo ships or Saturn V's anymore, a lot of plans and drawings were lost. Key people making decisions, testing, or even building parts on an assembly line weren't there. Companies making specialized parts folded or went under, or just stopped making those parts.

Sometimes these can be small issues. Like for the Mars Climate Orbiter there was a problem where two different companies thought they were using the same units when they were not. Or when an accelerometer was installed backward on a different ship, making the chute not deploy.

Now compare this to the Soyuz, which is more like a Toyota Corolla of space ships. It's not the fanciest or has the most space or efficiency, but it has a lot of flight heritage and operational history. And from there, you can make small changes relatively safely.

This is true for all companies making space ships. Really it comes down to how well you test things and a good helping of luck on getting it to work the first time, or fixing it quickly.

My favorite Ballmer practice is stack ranking. It completely screwed up the entire company.

I worked on Windows Mobile at the time the iPhone came out. We were all shitting ourselves.

Of all the things that Ballmer was wrong about... I guess this is one of them.

VPNs seem blocked and return 403

I worked in an office building where the AC was on one circuit, but somehow the difference between the warm side of the building and the freezing side of the building was over 10F, which was about 30 feet away.

Sidequest:

“I’m going to do Windows and then I’m going to do Windows Mobile and I’m going to do Windows embedded.” (all on intel x86)

As someone who worked on Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded, it's funny because that's what management was hoping, but it was so different. I don't think any of the phones had an x86 chip in them, although that was our debugging setup so we could use vastly more powerful desktop machines as devkits (although we still had devices to). Having to port parts of Windows to ARM and even MIPS was a giant PITA.

Windows Embedded is closer since it was based on XP, but also a completely different branch from what I remember from Win Mobile.

A lot of people think it's easy to port things, and hard to write things. With really, really complicated software, it's still really hard just to port things.

Have also used 1password. It's great. It has an API that you can code against for automation, and you can also mirror some passwords / tokens into hashicorp vault.

I also really enjoyed the 800. That picture of Joust brings back memories.

I wonder how this interacts with, or not, getting charged with a crime and possessing cannabis and a gun at the same time. It seems like they all really trump up the other charges federally, even when the crime doesn't involve either.

A lot of times the questions I ask are literally about the job, since interviewers are so focused on trying to ask candidates things that they forget that it's a matching game, and the job has to be explained too.

I'll try to "turn the table" early on in the interview. Ask what they are building, ask questions, say how you might design it (or have designed it in the past). All the fluffy stuff people can lie about, but getting into a good technical discussion can I think prove that both people are on the same level and can work well together.

The other question I like to ask is "why are you hiring for this job?" This can be a real teller. Is it a group expanding due to new responsibilities? Did the last person leave in a huff? Figuring that out can really help explain the org you're about to go into.

Any nethack players here? I love the sokoban levels, probably my favorite little sidequest.

I'd love this, but right now I'd be happy with a team reverse engineering these things and not getting hit with some kind of IP lawsuit from whatever company. I think there's going to be a lot of abandoned-ware IoT stuff, mostly because the company wants to turn the software off because they don't make money from supporting old products.

My fitbit wifi scale, which I love and has been doing a great job for the last 10 years has now lost support to pair it with the new fitbit app, thanks Google!

it's recommended to give it some time if it's been running and to short across the terminals with something, like a screwdriver that has a non conducting handle. It's nothing too ridiculous.

This is when smart gets stupid. I'm a bit worried about this with my nest and other smart devices, but even with normal air conditioners there are a few stupid simple problems that will cost you hundreds of dollars!

A couple of weeks ago my AC blower fan stopped working, the compressor would run. I went up and found out that the capacitor was bad, and took a picture of it, buying a replacement. Took about 15 minutes to replace and I probably saved myself at least $400 (no AC is an emergency in the desert, and they will charge you accordingly).

Fixing household appliances can be fun too!

AI summaries of the news being one of two features mentioned in the article, so I'd assume those are the newsworthy things. My point is that this functionality is already present on the device and works quite well without needing any AI buzz or subscription fees.

And yet another way to try and destroy journalism: AI summaries of the news.

Why not just listen to the news? You can listen to BBC on Alexa, along with almost any other news radio station you please. If you want short summaries, just look at the AP.

AI summaries might not be correct or might miss out on important context: in the news, the details are everything. And I doubt Amazon will be paying for the news services they scrape.

Are AI summaries of news really that much better than just listening to the news? Does the AI part mean it's going to try and figure out what news stories I listen to? Or will it just be the same for everyone, and then you might just say Alexa give me the news, and you can program it to give you news summaries from a huge list of available sources, which are not AI generated.

This seems like a stupid product idea, akin to subscription mouse. And I actually like and use my Alexa devices quite a bit (nest thermostat, smart water heater, smart lights, timer, weather, use as a speaker for my laptop), so I think I'd be their target market.

Honestly I wish I knew. Having orgs and teams (since it is such a "local" problem in a corporation) that are willing to advertise to me that it's going to be a problem can even be a plus. It's very rare that these people learn better behavior once you get there. If anything it gets worse and turns into the hazing rituals you mention.

I'd say the market should decide, eventually, but this article actually proves the opposite, and it's at every level.

Same is true for interviews. As a woman who isn't super attractive, nor do I really try to be, some interviewers just have a weird expression when they meet me, and I know it's over from there. Just had this happen last week interviewing for a job where I've done PRs on the tools they were using and have been using the tools they were using for years. By the end of the interview he said he enjoyed talking with me but they won't be moving forward. He said I would struggle in the job due to technology but did not ask any technical questions.

It is what it is I guess. But I also wouldn't want to work for such shallow people either. Note, the person was found on the HN who's hiring, so it's not just random people but also what I'd consider more thoughtful people who should know better as well.

I'm not surprised, Fidelity also owns a piece of SpaceX.