dmvinson

Rainmaker | El Segundo, CA, ONSITE | Software Engineering | rainmaker.com

https://www.rainmaker.com/

We're building a cloud seeding system using in-house developed UAVs, operational software, and radar validation to create more rain and end water scarcity worldwide.

You can apply by reaching out to me directly at darrion@rainmaker.com.

This is what opencode does for me. One harness for all models, standardized TUI, and they're rolling out a product to serve models via API with one bill through them

What are the new file format initiatives you're referencing here?

This solution seems clever overall, and finding a way to bolt on features of the latest-and-greatest new hotness without breaking backwards compatibility is a testament to the DataFusion team. Supporting legacy systems is crucial work, even if things need a ground-up rewrite periodically.

Lazy trees is a long awaited change for many, without it flakes are essentially unusable in monorepos. As a one-time Nix user, Flakes definitely don't seem like an ideal solution but the Nix community lets perfect be the enemy of better too often, and it has the largest following of all the solutions out there (niv being another). Given that, I hope lazy-trees and other improvements that make it actually usable get merged into Nix upstream.

If the NixOS/Nix maintainers don't like flakes/DetSys (which I think is somewhat valid!), they need to put forward a canonical way of pinning channels, otherwise there's not really an alternative standard for the community to build around. The usual answer of just use niv or some other esoteric solution that a subset of hardcore Nix users like isn't enough.

Naomi Wu has been talking about this for a while [0]. She lives in China, and has flagged this multiple times on Twitter, apparently without much response from the Signal team to her frustration. The issue seems to be that Signal simply sets the incognito flag when users are typing in the app, which kindly requests keyboard apps to not track the input. Unfortunately, since most American made keyboards for chinese writing are slow and difficult to use, most Chinese citizens use keyboards made by companies made in China, which does not provide much reassurance w.r.t adherence to the incognito request. Your concern seems to be spot on, and it'd be worth Signal at least making this clear to users when they first begin using the app.

While the answer from most technical users will be "just switch keyboards", it's also widely accepted that defaults matter and unless Signal makes an active effort to discourage people's default choice, the larger purpose of privacy will be somewhat defeated.

[0] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/119769534457579929...

While assurances from the founders make (classically) liberal idealists all warm and fuzzy inside, they aren't worth much until there is a controversy to use this post as a measuring stick on. At that point, we'll have a more clear idea of exactly where they draw the line, which I'd be interested in knowing as a supporter of the company. Regardless, Substack seems to have high quality built in off ramps to the point where deplatforming someone from Substack won't have the same memory holing effect that it does with social media.

The best (and worst depending on which side of this future controversy I find myself on) part of Substack is the lack of switching costs. No one is staying on Substack for their barebones content editor, and retaining your own mailing list (and now custom domain!) makes firing up a Ghost newsletter easy. Their other value adds like legal support and revenue advances will most likely never be given to anyone of guilty of sufficient offense to be kicked off the platform, so that point is moot when it comes to the limits of their free speech ideals.

How did you know it was Clojurescript? Pretty awesome to see Clojure getting more use. It feels like a leap forward every time I even play with it.

Optimizing for efficient, capable teams is a difficult problem, and seemingly untenable above a certain size by nature. With that in mind, the obvious answer (especially in software) seems to be to keep teams as small as possible. Netflix's strategy is higher half the people, pay them twice as much, and give them as much autonomy as possible according to the CEO's new book. The obvious counterpoint to that strategy is it leads to overwork and will inevitably devolve above a certain size as well.

For a more radical strategy on keeping company size small, I like how the startup Stedi has taken a crack at innovating on this. Their entire tech stack is structured around AWS offerings, mainly serverless. The idea is that by paying a premium to Amazon, they can outsource all server management, scaling, etc. issues which typically take up tons of engineering bandwidth. Presumably, Amazon's round the clock experienced team will also be able to handle it more effectively than they could. In the meantime, Stedi can now avoid hiring for tons of jobs and keep headcount as small as possible, enabling engineers to only work on things that matter.

While I'm not sure how Stedi's strategy will play out, it is one of the few opinionated stances on company organizational philosophy that attempts to take advantage of recent evolution in cloud offerings, and internalize the consequences of those improvements.

Yeah, here is what I'm working with as of now. Moved recently (like everyone else) and still getting an office setup, but this is the basics. As far as height, I'd say it's a very ergonomically sound setup when in kneeling position with the cushion in between your feet. Laptop just below eye level, arms level, etc.

I think the biggest benefits are it forces you to move and adjust a little bit more than in a chair, and forces you to use your muscles to sit properly much more. Would highly recommend to anyone. https://ibb.co/XYN3HFx

The coffee table is https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lisabo-coffee-table-ash-veneer-... The sheepskin is from sheepskin town, but any cushioning that softens the floor for your ankles/knees is good.

https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/furniture-free-ahs13/ is an example of someone doing this in their home. Personally, my setup is a coffee table along with a zafu (buckwheat hull filled floor cushion) and sheepskins or a zabuton to cushion the floor a little. It's very comfortable, although I'd like to also have a standing desk to go with it. Coffee tables tend to be a pretty good height for this purpose if you want to avoid purchasing something custom. Besides that it's just a regular desk setup, albeit missing drawers or storage on the table.

Scott's book is about how bottom-up complex systems are destroyed and reconstructed as top-down centrally planned organized systems in order to become more "legible" for the destroyer (the state). The general theme is the state can't understand how certain traits of the system are actually adaptive because it views from the outside. These traits are seen as irrational, so the state destroys the system and rebuilds it in order to make it rational, and thus understandable and legible in order to optimize for extracting a resource of some sort. Legibility in this context is used almost pejoratively to say most beneficial elements have been destroyed to optimize for one parameter, often ineffectively in the long term. Scott Alexander has a pretty good review if you want a deeper dive into the book's examples of this process. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...

I think you would be very interested in Roam Research if you’re ever looking for a high tech solution again. Only recently entered public beta, but it seems to by nature organize notes very easily and fluidly. https://roamresearch.com/

I respect your point and semi-agree, but as someone who ran a small business in high school that usually involved reverse engineering obfuscated Javascript, I think you're overstating how hard it is to follow the logic of Javascript blobs. Yes, whole program flows can be insanely difficult to follow, but narrowing in on the logic of key functions is often what one needs when trying to learn from other's code.

Yes, it is a ton of work to step through and understand minified and obfuscated code, but it is a skill that many people learn and do if there is motivation. On your second point, I think the key is that the people who do have a reason to detangle the logic of minified JS can be very impactful. I consider open viewing of Javascript as similar to noncompetes in California. It allows one to view competitors source code (if you have the motivation to work for it), which ultimately allows you to learn from and adapt their best practices. Yes, this can have negative effects, but it also may allow for a smaller company to leapfrog a larger incumbent who is too lazy to do some part of their processing server side. I could probably learn a lot about how to write (and block!) analytics tracking by reviewing the Google analytics javascript source code for example.

(Disclaimer: I've never looked at Google's analytics .js files and that may not be possible for some technical reason unknown to me)

The source for GNU and Linux is viewable by everyone, which negates the inability to view what is happening inside a binary. This is the problem Javascript source maps are meant to solve for the web, and I would welcome WASM more if part of the standard was a requirement for a source map when browser Dev Tools are open.

This feels like another step away from the free and open web many people are clamoring for. Distributing opaque binaries with websites instead of Javascript is a step past even the obfuscated minified javascript files meant to be confusing. At least those can still be debugged, stepped through, and explored freely by the end user if they want to learn or reverse engineer. Is there any tool or standard being worked on to make .wasm files coherent for users who have to run the code to view websites? This feels like a step backwards in so many ways, even if it is a technological marvel.

I think he made a logical leap based around the US political parties and wealthy elites' influence over the fourth estate - sanctioned political debates on CNN, sources of information with perceived authority such as Fox News, etc. While I also think it's explained poorly, there may be a connection here to his point about the largest advertisers (politician and large corporations) who fund the media which is meant to check them.

Ben Thompson continues to amaze. Pointing out the pointlessness of controlling the impact of tech by limiting Facebook's influence is important. Authoritarian China's biggest advantage is its ability to pick winners and multiply their impact by leveraging how decisive their decision making can be. Where this fails is at finding local maximums. The winners China picks will be the best of what's available right now, which for a while has often been a Chinese clone of what's working in America, adapted to local preferences.

America's startup culture and competitiveness is our biggest advantage, and so I wish the US and EU would do more to force tech. companies to fight it out instead of picking winners by regulating the industry and controlling what Facebook and Google can do. Instead of just putting cumbersome regulations like the GDPR around user data, also dictate companies above a certain size have to have open APIs and easily exportable/programmatically accessible user data. Obviously this must be balanced by granular controls, but how can upstarts be incumbents when the data moats are so large. The APIs of Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are pretty abysmal and continue to become worse with no punishment. Yet, that programmatic access to data is probably the only way an upstart could compete outside of a complete paradigm shift.

Thank you for the context, but I find it hard to believe that the HK Chief Executive was not influenced by or seeking favor with China when making the law. Also, this seems to ignore the question of Taiwan's sovereign status and assume they are part of China.

Speaking more factually, China has used unrelated charges to arrest and imprison political dissidents for years now. This is a known phenomenon, and likely the reason behind the protestor's concerns about extradition. The promise not to use the law for political crimes is worthless knowing that history.

I think the issue is more about Apple's acquiescence. My guess is protesters require a VPN at this point to access the map's server regardless of it they do so through the app or the website. The technical barrier is there regardless, but the fact that Apple is making clear what their values are worth merits discussion.

I would like to think the public back-and-forth over this app is a sign of internal conflict within Apple over whether or not to list the app on the App Store. Unfortunately, it seems more likely that everyone is against removing it but too scared of China's retaliation to act on their convictions.

If you think you're competitive but your resume is being filtered out. Referrals get you past initial online coding challenges with most companies automatically.

  In 2014, GE’s corporate security learned that Mr. Zheng 
  had copied more than 19,000 files from a GE-owned 
  computer to an external storage device, according to 
  the FBI affidavit.
  
  In late 2017, GE discovered he had saved about 400 
  files on his desktop computer using encryption software 
  not used by the company.

I don't understand why GE would keep him employed after the first offense. Can someone who understands corporate bureaucracy explain this? Especially knowing that he was literally running a competing business in China while employed at GE.

What portal to fight traffic tickets are you referring to? Never heard of this but sounds interesting

How rigorous are Japan's laws/punishments expected to be for this? Relative to the Volkswagen emissions scandal which, correct me if I'm wrong, led to decently harsh punishments for those involved at the top level.

Best service for paywalled articles from my experience https://outline.com/TF7GJv

The article doesn't really go into the thieves' backgrounds at all strangely enough. How did Katana end up in the bank heist business? How did he acquire the skills to turn making fake bank transactions into an "art"? I always wonder about the kind of person who ends up in these criminal dealings and where they come from.

Instagram Stories seem like a logical extension of Instagram itself. Adding a pure photosharing section to Facebook or something like that in order to copy Instagram seems much more redundant and difficult.

To be fair though, the minds of Facebook have much more incentive to find a good way to do so than I do

I think Instagram has much better business fundamentals than Snapchat though. There was nowhere near as much of a struggle to monetize Instagram as Snapchat from what I recall.

I wonder about Instagram's success if they had decided to reject the Facebook acquisition. While there's no way to know who got the better end of the deal, it would be better for the tech ecosystem to have more large players and their success feels inevitable in hindsight.