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devurand

49 karma · joined November 13, 2019

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devurand··on In a photo of a black hole, a possible key to mysteries
A healthy second to this suggestion! The channel and community they've built is a high quality, informal classroom with some really thought provoking content. They actively engage with audience questions, provide "homework" in the form of challenge questions and are very welcoming. And amazingly, even during the pandemic, with their shooting from the hosts home, they didn't skip a beat. I've been a patreon supporter for awhile and it is the best damn value for my contribution.
devurand··on Deno Is a Browser for Code
Sounds like you want Unison: https://www.unisonweb.org/docs/tour/
devurand··on Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms
I think the position of this article requires a poor assumption with regards to the "marketplace of ideas." It assumes a majority of rational, fact-checking, good-faith actors which is just not the case in the real world. And without that particular check in place, falsehoods gain an undeserved advantage in the "marketplace of ideas."
devurand··on Cognitive Biases in Software Development
Exactly. I did layout for awhile. Some boards you knew weren't going to come back. Customer was just paying for us to turn a schematic and BOM into a board with the least amount of cost possible. Quoted low. You could let the autorouter have at it. But other boards (especially finicky high clock speed chip tester boards) would definitely be coming back. Sure you could let the autorouter do its thing, but when that board came back for a rev, I'd have to fuck with all of that laziness to make space for new components or reduce the layer count.
devurand··on Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages
When I started to learn other languages after learning bash then Perl first, I was really dismayed at how clumsy it was to build up a data structure of any complexity. So verbose in the Java/C++/C# land.

Having those constructs so effortlessly available with a minimal amount of syntax spoiled me. To this day, I would likely still prefer to do any kind of complicated ETL involving deeply nested structures with Perl.

devurand··on Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages
> it took ages for a complete Perl 6 release to be available.

And unfortunately, the brilliant minds that worked on Perl 6 spent so much time rewriting the compiler tool chain and basically treating just that part as a research project, that it was incredibly difficult to actually contribute and push the project forward. Couple that with a spec that never seemed finished and a community that tore itself apart because of assholes, and it was a perfect storm to remove Perl from prominence.

devurand··on Build stuff
> The fact that I do programming at the weekend for fun on my personal projects does not in the slightest imply that I have fun at the kind of project that I have to do for the employer. So, judging by this criterion is a really bad idea of the (potential) employer.

I am not sure that was the argument being made. I think it was more like "If a candidate actively uses and develops their skill set in their own time, then they will be preferred over candidates that don't". Those candidates demonstrate a higher level of mastery of the skills needed by virtue of doing something, _anything_ over other candidates who don't, even if the demonstration is trivial. It can also signal a lower managerial load if the candidate has demonstrated the skill set to self-start and self-motivate. That can also mean less ramp-up time to being productive.

devurand··on A quiet roadside revolution is boosting wildflowers
Texas in the spring is wonderful. Everyone is out taking pictures in the massive fields of bluebonnets and indian paintbrush. Of course, it can also cause traffic issues as people pull over to do the photo op in the medians.
devurand··on The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer
> I don't consider myself FUCKING SMART, quite the opposite, especially at that company with those coworkers who were despite the sound of it actually really smart, but unlike my coworkers I had not accepted the situation but felt that there must be something to do to improve it.

This is the secret sauce. The impulse to solve the higher order problem and the willingness to question fundamental assumptions in order to arrive at a solution.

Your non-10x devs might have attempted to optimize the DOS system, or maybe even introducing some kind of caching and just lived with the somewhat mitigated performance.

devurand··on Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
Empathy. Definitely practice empathy. Hacking brains is a lot more difficult compared to hacking code.
devurand··on Ask HN: What has your work taught you that other people don't realize?
This is painfully on point where I currently am.
devurand··on The Unstoppable Rise of Sci-Hub (2019)
> I'd like to see some weighted reputation system used instead, where academics can give their "vote" to papers they like, giving it a total weight, however such systems have been proposed in the past and haven't got much traction.

A reddit-clone with strong verification/validation of user accounts seems like it would fit the bill. I can imagine a system with a small monthly fee to participate, subreddits with paid moderators (read: reviewers), voting system that would float good papers to the top, and of course comments. The pay-to-participate barrier would hopefully keep the quality high but at a minimum cover the hosting costs. And run by a non-profit foundation.

devurand··on This Page is Designed to Last
Good ol' localroger. I never knew I wanted to read singularity fiction that included zombie rape and forced incest until Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Int...

http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html

devurand··on Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality
Sign-up wall prevents reading the article. Here is an outline.com link for this article:

https://outline.com/4MwGTX

devurand··on Found hidden safe, should we crack?
I am glad I wasn't the only person thinking about LPL for this. I wonder how much he would charge for a internet consult and recommendations on tools. Might end up being way less than the try-every-combination-or-we-drill-it locksmiths that are an hour awway
devurand··on Show HN: Testing HN titles against a neural network
"The future of emulation in compiler optimization LLVM haskell"

Bad: 0.0004 - Good: 0.9996