devnulll

> Discrete mathematics is indeed crucial to understand computer science.

FAANG engineer here, having worked in multiple companies you would recognize as a principle (or higher) engineer. I've also taken Discrete math when I was a CS undergrad.

I've never used any of the advanced math learned in school, and I've had the pleasure of working on some of the largest and most complex systems ever made. Lots of basic Excel. The "math" I have needed for work (such as TLA+ modeling, percentile distributions, etc) was always learned "on demand".

The Big Players put atomic clocks in the datacenter, and provide multiple mechanism's of time synchronization. Google Spanner was the first to do this, back in... 2007?

https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/26/3692392/google-spanner-a... https://cloud.google.com/spanner/docs/true-time-external-con...

Now, I don't think they worry overmuch about general or special relativity at this point, but if we start putting datacenters in orbit that will become an actual issue.

I'll wager we'll start seeing Edge Compute and CDN features on the very large satellite constellations (Starlink, etc) soon. Initially this will preserve bandwidth between satellites and with the ground stations. This will be a big upsell feature. The Quant folks would pay more for those sweet low-latency links...

Humor aside, many years ago I had a 1:1 discussion with Vint Cerf (2003?) about interplanetary networks. He was thinking deeply on this topic, and I had some interesting and relevant input.

His focus was primarily on Store and Forward routing, and the implications that come with long latency hops. The overlap with military & battlefield networks where nodes are subject to active interference and "Node no longer exists" was a very overlapping topic.

A quick Google search shows he's still working on this.

Isaac is pretty amazing. His topic selection is like a peek into my brain.

I wish he had a team of content producers working with him, rather than having to do so much re-using stock footage.

> However, our finding that AI can accurately predict self-reported race, even from corrupted, cropped, and noised medical images, often when clinical experts cannot, creates an enormous risk for all model deployments in medical imaging.

Can someone help me understand the risk to which they're referring?

I open discussions with recruiters - typically Exec Recruiters who are normally cold/warm-calling on LinkedIn - and the conversation goes like this:

* "We have this amazing CTO / CIO / VP Role."

* "What's the pay range for this role?"

* "We pay market rates"

* "I'm currently making $X at my fancy FAANG role. Can you beat that?".

* "Oh. Nevermind".

It's helped, but there are still false promises made.

I am a huge fan of YouTube Premium. Youtube has become the de-facto video platform in our household, having totally displaced traditional shows.

To pay $10 per month to have unlimited content w/o ads is perfect. I don't understand the pushback.

The meta-point is that the usage of complex words is off-putting to those trying to learn something for the first time. There's always an element of "I don't know what this is, so I can skip it" but better to keep topics simple and approachable.

We've been using this one: https://www.w3schools.com/html/ He's had no trouble at all following along and using their tooling. I've been mostly hands-off.

I'm about to graduate him from "do it in just the browser" to using GitHub pages. That way he can have an HTML site that's "his" and start putting the pieces together.

One of my kids - 10yrs old - has been wanting to learn basic HTML and "programming". We've been going through the W3C with no trouble, and he's learning at an amazing rate.

This tutorial is way beyond anything he could approach. For example "Pedagogy" - I don't know what that means, and neither does he. Another example, from the beginning "In this section of the curriculum, you will be introduced to non project-based concepts important to becoming a professional developer."

I suspect most of this is translation issues, but given the audience (kids, newbies), this language is super intimidating.

GitHub pages seem to be about the simplest way to do this today - bringing the goodness of basic source control, simple issue management, and related.

The software engineering jobs you get in your 40s and 50s pay more than most NBA of NFL players will every make.

One day I'll retire and go back to school. The idea of learning Math - really learning & understanding Math - as a fun pastime is so appealing.

What's stopping me now? That sweet overpaid SDE salary and the endless obligations that come from being an adult. I suspect I am not alone...

As others have stated, legally, minorities are a protected class. Discrimination on the basis of race is illegal.

Parent here, of 3 pre-teen kids. My experience is that having kids has brought a joy of learning and exploration like little before. We constantly visit flight museums, train museums, and do unusual things like joining Facebook 4x4 groups and go on weekend adventures. We've done local MTG events and similar. Last weekend we went to the local Japanese Garden (yea, spring!) and the kids dressed up in crazy clothes for some fun pictures.

I can't sit still, so am always looking for new things to do. Having children do this with me bring joy to me, and to them.

Redmond from Jan to June vs Fiji? Seems an easy choice if you're without children and concerns around their schooling.

I think the engineers who work there would jump at the chance. :)

The tension between "Follow the Law" and "Drive like a human" is interesting. On the one hand, humans violate the law all the time: Rolling Stops, Speed Limits, Driving without Registration / Insurance, Passing on the Right, Left Lane Camping, Carpool lane violations, Stopping after the white line at a stop sign / light, not using turn signals properly, following too closely.

Any FSD System that drives on the freeway and follows the speed limit is doomed to failure. Likewise, as evidenced by the crazy amount of "right on red" fines in cities, humans don't come to a full 3-second stop.

"Drive like a human" seems a reasonable goal for now.

For the amortized cost of 1 strategic modern bomber, or a submarine, or an aircraft carrier, the DOD or US NRO could easily just pay SpaceX to do this. At the nation state scale, this constellation has proven to be trivially cheap.

The resulting arms race would be... interesting and would probably get us closer to Kessler Syndrome quickly.

The good chargers hold 8-16 batteries, so there's always a set on there being charged. The chargers seem electrically smart and maintain the batteries well.

This process works wonderfully. We've got ~100 Enloop's of various generations around the house in TV Remotes, XBox Remotes, Garage Door openers, and toys. This process works well.

> "You can’t return empties, so you can't free up the chassis required to move full containers out of the port. And because you're not pulling the containers out of the port, you're not able to return empties to the port. I did not know that this was the case before I went down there. We only discovered it during that three-hour boat ride."

It's interesting that he got this data by asking the owners of the many different companies involved (Ports / shipping / trucking).

Is this gridlock something that could be solved at-scale through short-term government intervention? That is, could the military provide "Free" storage in a boneyard out in the desert near LA for 6-24 months? Could permits and/or fees be waived to provide incentives? Should a new "Reef" be built by depositing 10k empty containers out in the Pacific (ick!)? The problem seems to be getting worse, and tipping points best avoided...

Seems like 1-off efforts to unlock the gridlock may be needed.

The PR for the fix is here: https://github.com/teslamotors/light-show/pull/3/files

Amusing. :)

Valhalla is a good example. It's a great experience on the modern platforms with SSD/NVME drives, but really rough to play on the older HDD consoles.

I actually thought this was a link to your blog at first. Took me a moment to realize it wasn't you.

Your May posting on Metastable was excellent, although your (now ancient) article on volatile variables and atomic processor operations has always been my favorite.

> In any large company, the team you're negotiating comp with is almost entirely unrelated to the team you'll actually be working with

I've a few data points on this, and disagree. Hiring Managers (and their managers) have to approve and signoff on things, and VPs are needed for major deviations from the norm. Yes, the HR team can do many things but it's all done in conjunction with the hiring manager.

I distinctly recall talking with one of my GM's one day about a new start. The discussion was, "I'm excited for $person to start, but I'm really worried (s)he's a player of games. The negotiation process was non-stop angle-shooting, and please keep an eye open for actual work vs politics."

> Current FAANG engineer here. I totally disagree, and the numbers support my case. My organization saw a jump in productivity when switching to WFO accompanied by a considerable increased in job satisfaction.

You're moving the goalpost on this. For me, as someone else stated, the separation between home life and work life is a bit easier with a commute. That's not touching on productivity, overall job satisfaction, or anything else.

I'm not even talking tradeoffs here - there's no "I prefer to work from the office because XYZ". I prefer working from home, for a variety of reasons. However, I do recognize that in this one specific area - separation of work/home life, the commute was beneficial.

Were I to list 50 pros/cons of working from home (which I've done), the winner is WFH. That doesn't mean an absence of positive aspects to the "work from the office" column.

> [...] found it very weird, and outright unbelievable, that someone was arguing that commutes were "far more effective for unwinding".

Ex (multi) FAANG engineering director here. I personally find that a 30 minute commute home is more effective for separating work and home than just the clock. The data published (by MSFT) shows employees are working more hours now than ever before.

Now, those pale in comparison to things like on-call rotations, email on Cell Phones, Slack & Team's notifications on mobile, etc. The Amazon practice of "DevOps SDEs are always on-call" that's spread across the industry makes disengaging from work in order to engage with family & friends generally impossible, even on vacation.

Atmos for music is - I hate to say it - just a fad, at least for now. Nothing touches a good stereo recording. Not the latest Atmos mixes from The Weekend, not a remaster from Rush or REM, and certainly not the weird Atmos versions of old Mono recordings from Miles Davis.

Now, XBox / PS5 gaming is a different story. Playing Assassin's Creed, or some of the other modern Atmos games, is pretty stunning.

I'm fortunate enough to have a purpose built Dolby Atmos theater. I've spent hours calibrating it, listening to MQA Audio via Tidal, Atmos over Apple Music, and top-quality Blu-Ray Audio (The Wall, etc). There's really no question that good 'ol Stereo is still king.

Purely for science, I've spent hours and hours testing - and seeing which cognac and whiskey's best match which songs. :)

I've been on both sides of this.

At large FAANG companies, I've seen candidates leave $100k+ on the table, as they simply accepted the first offer (on-hire stock awards and signing bonuses).

On the other hand, I've seen candidates spend weeks negotiating over some trivial point and spoil their relationship(s) before they even started the job.

Knowing the range for the role you're applying for (via Blind, or Levels.fyi, or similar) makes this process so much easier.

I bet this goes the other way, especially at the exec level. That is, the best indicator of startup success is past startup success. Certainly funding is easier, building the team is easier, and the emotional decision making is easier.

The phrase serial entrepreneur is often used.

No, I don't believe that's normal. That sounds like a CEO trying to take advantage of the labor force.