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dmcclurg

55 karma · joined November 3, 2011

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dmcclurg··on Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life
Never confuse effort with results. Brian is confusing 20 years of professional effort with global results. According to Brian, decades of his professional effort were driven by a staunch belief that this effort was "protecting the environment", but now Brian no longer holds this belief, citing a supposedly "utterly failed" government contract with his company and three bullet points that highlight lackluster progress on the whole of the market and the supposed missed opportunity of nuclear power.

None of these results are materially affected by Brian's effort over the last 20 years. Federal and local government regulation and investment as well as corporate business decisions are responsible for reducing coal plants, constructing nuclear plants, and incentivizing "utopian energy". Brian's effort mostly falls into the corporate business decision category, but all we see of this in his article is a statement that his company failed to fulfill a $60M government contract. This experience really stands out as Brian's real inflection point, but the results of this effort are not only NOT discussed, they are--by his own admission--completely opposite of the government's perception of the results.

dmcclurg··on Soldiers speak out about being blocked from repairing equipment by contractors
I thought this was the purpose of warrant officers. By design, they have a separate hierarchy and charter for all intents and purposes. Sure, you don't get paid as much as the private sector, but you do get a lot of autonomy and mastery. There should be plenty of people who want to accept this challenge.
dmcclurg··on Tour of our 250k line Clojure codebase
I jumped to the comments first, and my initial thought was, “what would Nathan Marz think of all of this...and what is he investing in these days?”

I was honestly skeptical, reading all of this clojure-macro criticism (constructive for the most part), but trust was restored when I saw the author. Well done, sir! Excited to see the details.

dmcclurg··on Microsoft Power Fx – A low-code general purpose programming language
This is an aspiration of any monopolistic enterprise, and many in Silicon Valley glorify this belief. See Peter Thiel's book, Zero to One.
dmcclurg··on Modern Alternatives to PGP
When the Google community deprecates something as stable as PGP for reasons like "don't have common enough subset" or "can't reach the bar of safe-by-default" or "require a maintainer with deep knowledge" or "some packages are simply not used enough", be afraid. As soon as they have their moat, they will return with statements like, "you shouldn't build your own crypto library, use something stable, something tested in the wild; use our library"
dmcclurg··on Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store
All I see are people listening. Scores of legal professionals, attorneys, and judges have read through thousands of pages of serious arguments made by the right. Election officials have burned the midnight oil over and over again searching for issues after listening to complaints from the right. Journalists have spent countless hours chasing down people to listen to, only to find deception. After all of this listening, all we ever seem to find is deception. If the right doesn’t change their tune, then all the listeners can do is see them as a group he’ll bent on deception. You make your bed, and you sleep in it. Period.
dmcclurg··on Show HN: 3D Book Image CSS Generator
Well done sir
dmcclurg··on U.S. Army to integrate power cables into a tactical vest
As a former armor officer, I worry that integrating tech in the warrior kit is a complacency risk; not a problem, just a risk. For example, tank platoons rely heavily on communication devices, and when those fail, I believe teams have not trained hard enough on the analog (hand and arm signals, flagging, IR signaling, etc.). If you power communication and AR from a cable, does the soldier now carry battery backups? Does the soldier now train to two levels of contingency: digital, radio, physical? The soldiers kit is heavy enough and we barely train to one contingency so the ROI here is really important—and I don’t mean money.
dmcclurg··on Ultraprocessed Foods – A New Theory of Obesity
Is this study biased in the sense that people who cook for themselves are not represented? Does the hospital staff order everything in?
dmcclurg··on New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
Lol, indeed
dmcclurg··on New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling
That makes it a zero sum game--all or nothing. Not good enough.
dmcclurg··on Bellman's lost in a forest problem
A hiker, I mean. The distinction is not important.
dmcclurg··on Bellman's lost in a forest problem
The complexity of this problem is absurd. If the biker precisely know the terrain then he is capable of knowing where he is in that terrain. This is the basis of terrain-association.
dmcclurg··on Ask HN: Choosing between Microsoft and everything else
Like others have said. Do more research. Microsoft is the total package... for a price. Check out HTML5/XAML/TypeScript/Entity Framework/MVC if you're interested in Microsoft's mobile stack. Yes, you need to run an MS backend, but this is a good thing. I have personally found the open language ecosystem a little convoluted to navigate where MS has always seemed straightforward to me. These decisions are all very personal...
dmcclurg··on Ask HN: Choosing between Microsoft and everything else
This couldn't be further from the truth.
dmcclurg··on Exposed Webcam Viewer
Yep, that is the library...grad of '07
dmcclurg··on Is there an HN Web Service
Thanks vyrotek
dmcclurg··on Is there an HN Web Service
iambot, I was wondering if there is a bona fide web service for Hacker News, like a WSDL document, endpoint, etc.. Specifically, it would be called a syndicated web service in .NET.