drawkbox

The only measure of C++ skill is years using it really and the industry. Game development will give you skills in C++ but you'll always have more to learn. It is one of the only places where you will be pushed into new areas and need the performance. You'll have fights of memory, string classes (custom vs standard), template hell, all sorts of C/Obj-C library integrations, network, compiler tours and many more adventures.

We used lots of C++, Objective-C and even Objective C++ (g++ mixing Objective-C + C++, connecting to C++ engine) in a custom game engine that worked on mobile for lots of shipped titles. It is powerful and fun. I have 5-6 years using it everyday across games and media apps, bits across the rest of years, but so much territory uncharted.

I actually like C++ but it is like a lightsaber, it can be dangerous. Most apps still run on C++ at some level, even virtual machines. C++ is the stick shift manual transmission of programming languages. I'd build more in it beyond games if allowed and use it on personal things quite a bit.

In my opinion, if you can work daily in C++ for some years that all other languages are easier from there. The understanding of the machine is better from memory to stack/heap to performance, cpu/gpu bounding, networking, and the sheer power of the root of all applications. C/C++ are where the machine meet code just above assembly, there is maneuverability there but also danger.

Fun fact: Objective-C was created before C++. Objective-C all they way back to 1981 but officially 1984. [1] C++ all the way back to 1982 but officially 1985. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C++#History

Yeah agreed. Spaced repetition is just a formal procedure of testing + time that taps into already prevalent repetition function to promote information to a higher place in your mind. The brain thinks if it hears about something frequently, it is more important. If those are spaced out you can stretch that but it is also naturally how we learn.

Spaced repetition is based on iterative learning, small bits compounding to refine skills/memory. The point is to get it into a higher point in memory by regularly revisiting. Spaced repetition tunes into the natural repetition/learning cycle at a point that becomes muscle memory almost. Once it is in there, the spacing can grow and it can bring that all back up.

In usability for instance three or less items feels simple, over seven feels complex. When you repeat something about seven times, whether that is immediate or over time, it moves to a higher importance in your mind/memory. When you stretch these out you can train your brain via spaced repetition but it all comes back to that it is a regular iterative practice and doesn't have to be the exact specs of spaced repetition.

We are habitual creatures so if you can get a pattern going of regular learning of a topic, it becomes easier to process in small chunks over time. You can also use this to program or promote ideas and products as people when they hear things over a certain amount of times, as you mention, it moves up the importance in their thought process.

When working on a side project for instance, if you work on it just a little bit everyday, or a medium amount every week, it will keep rolling. If you take large breaks you have to work to reload that information and it starts to stagnate. Small, repetitive and many times, spaced iterations, compound into shipping products if you set it up right. That can be used for almost anything from education to career to hobbies and more.

At the core of spaced repetition is the spacing (time + testing) but really the small bits that are easy to repeat. Small bits of info regularly is almost more important than the spacing, "testing" size almost more important than the "time".

The spaced repetition index cards techniques are all about this, small bits of info tested over time, stretching the time to make it last longer. This is why cramming doesn't work very long, you have to revisit regularly and over a certain amount of times with space in between and they have to be smaller chunks of information to remember, you can't really do that when the thing is due tomorrow. Our current work environments look more like cramming projects rather than open/closed spaced repetition and that is a problem.

Writing is part of the creative process.

Writing it down helps to solidify an idea into the heap from the stack, maybe even take it from hot storage to cold storage. It allows you to jot it down while it is still fresh and offload it to focus on it later. This is super helpful in ideas, jokes, thought streams, todos, one pagers on some projects, etc. It does help you remember but also allows you to move to the next thing for now.

Writing down ideas is like a sketchbook, ideas/actions/iteration of thoughts both good and bad. It is important to write thoughts down though because how many times have you had a great idea and you are like "I'll never forget this" and then a while later you are wondering what that was or you entirely move on because life moves fast.

Creatives, writers, comedians, developers, or just projects, are better when writing is involved in ideas to realization of those ideas.

Writing it down and notes is a form of brainstorming. Brainstorming allows ideas to be spontaneous and allows improvisation to get to better ideas. Even writing down bad ideas because somewhere in it is something good.

I use notes apps but more now just a repo (super easy with github.dev everywhere) and notes have easy history that way and you can freely add/remove without feeling like notes are lost. When I use notes apps or even Google Docs, yes they have history but it isn't as fluid/quick as github for that. The important thing is find something that works for you that makes the barrier to writing it down almost non-existent. It needs to be very easy to write things down in between busy days and to capture these fleeting moments.

Spaced repetition is how we truly learn everything when dealing with it a little bit every day.

A really great, fun game on this is from Nicki Case called "How To Remember Anything Forever-ish" [1]

Additionally, the site has some other amazing games that really should be part of everyone's education and are Oregon Trail like in their impact.

One of my favorites is the "Evolution of Trust" about game theory. [2] Probably the best game theory game out there.

As an aside, you can program yourself and people with spaced repetition. Lots of propaganda uses it heavily but it can be used for good and bad. If you hear small facts everyday or small bits of promotion/propaganda everyday, it can over time evoke an pavlovian like response to the information, either good or bad. Using it can also bump up things you want to know about, and be aware when external information is being pumped.

Basically spaced repetition mimics how you'd naturally come across something repetitively and the learning becomes automatic, it is iterative.

Educational games like Nicky Case makes are awesome and really do help simplify and solidify certain topics so check them out. [3]

[1] https://ncase.me/remember/

[2] https://ncase.me/trust/

[3] https://ncase.me/

Monty Python's Life of Brain

The Library of Babel is a website created by Brooklyn author and coder Jonathan Basile, based on Jorge Luis Borges' short story "The Library of Babel" (1941). The site was launched in 2015.

https://libraryofbabel.info

Luckily libraries existed before copyright / IP was too top heavy otherwise they wouldn't exist. This content and products are part of culture. An online library should be allowed to exist. You can go to public libraries and in many they have ebook checkout systems. Why not Internet Archive, one of the most valuable online resources next to Wikipedia and data sources.

I use AI/ML for ideas today. I love the simple input/output of the chat style, it will win for most things just as keyword search is the best for search output.

I use it for re-writing content better, writing ideas, simplifying text (legal/verbose -- simplifying terms is a killer feature really) and context even though trust is limited of the output it is helpful.

I love the art / computer vision side of AI/ML. Though I only like to do that with tools on my machine than rely on a dataset or company that is very closed, that is harder to do with AI/ML because of the storage/processing needed.

I hate blackboxes and magic I don't have access to, though I am a big fan of stable unchanging input/output atomic apis, as long as I have access to the flow. The chat input/output is so simple it will win as it will never really have a breaking change. Until commercial AI/ML GPTs are more open in reality it can't be trusted to not be a trojan horse or trap. What happens when it goes away or the model changes or the terms change?

As far as company/commercial, Google seems to be the most open and Google Brain really started this whole thing with transformers.

Transformers, the T in GPT was invented at Google during Google Brain [1][2]. They made possible this round of progress.

> Transformers were introduced in 2017 by a team at Google Brain and are increasingly the model of choice for NLP problems, replacing RNN models such as long short-term memory (LSTM). The additional training parallelization allows training on larger datasets. This led to the development of pretrained systems such as BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which were trained with large language datasets, such as the Wikipedia Corpus and Common Crawl, and can be fine-tuned for specific tasks.

Google also gave the public TensorFlow [3] and DeepDream [4] that really started the intense excitement of AI/ML. I was super interested when the AI art / computer vision side started to come up. The GANs for style transfer and stable diffusion are intriguing and euphoric almost in output.

In terms of GPT/chat, Bard or some iteration of it, will most likely win long term, though I wish it was just called Google Brain. Bard is a horrible name.

ChatGPT basically used Google Brain created AI tech, transformers. These were used to build ClosedGPT. For that reason it is NopeGPT. ChatGPT is really just datasets, which no one knows, these could swap at any time run some misinformation then swap the next day. This is data blackboxing and gaslighting at the up most level. Not only that it is largely funded by private sources and it could be some authoritarian money. Again, blackboxes create distrust.

Microsoft is trusting OpenAI and that is a risk. Maybe their goal is embrace, extend, extinguish here but it seems with Google and Apple that Microsoft may be a bit behind on this. Github Co-pilot is great though. Microsoft usually comes along later and make an accessible version. The AI/ML offerings on Azure are already solid. AI/ML is suited for large datasets so cloud companies will benefit the most, it also is very, very costly and this unfortunately keeps it in BigCo or wealthy only arenas for a while.

Google Brain and other tech is way more open already than "Open"AI.

ChatGPT/OpenAI just front ran the commercial side, but long term they aren't really innovating like Google is on this. They look like a leader from the marketing/pump but they are a follower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Brain

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_(machine_learning_...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TensorFlow

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeepDream

> valuations are still insane

Most of the value from the pandemic pump has already been dumped. Some valuations are already too low.

In terms of companies, term sheets have already been halved in many cases or withdrawn. As always the scrappy and research and development focused companies will win.

The slowdown will probably keep going for a while due to the bigger reason, geopolitical market and trade changes. The funding inflows and outflows have changed dramatically and companies that relied on sometimes foreign authoritarian money will be hurting the most, that was the risk and it is present. Though this is also increasing investment in markets and manufacturing in the West. Long term growth will be immense. The market is almost falsely being held down at this moment due to these influence/attack/change vectors.

Went to Chappelle + Rock and the no phone policy was a problem. It was a ticketmaster event so everyone had to check in with the tickets (digital) and the checkin then immediately power down phone and put in the pouch took 1-2 hours. The lines were insane at the beginning to lock and end to unlock, it was a horribly slow process and the pouches are just funky. Phones are very personal and putting your phone in a pouch that had another phone, that is a bit rough it just, no thanks.

I get they want people to enjoy the show and really not record it, there are problems though.

A major problem with no phone events is that you can't easily find friends in the event, we had to meet up with people and only knew their seats. People were in various areas and coordinating all that like the 90s was a task.

The biggest problem though is people with kids or elderly or assistance needs, being without the ability to receive or send messages in those situations is bad. Someone in our group had a family member in hospice and another with a babysitter, that time was a bit less enjoyable. Just having a phone on vibrate is nice to be able to check out and enjoy the show without worry.

A lower issue but one that stings a bit is you can only take pictures/videos outside the event. Once inside you never can even take a picture/video of anything. So the event history is just outside and since friends were inside those moments are only in memory not pictures/video. I love to get some experience shots at events/festivals/fairs/concerts etc, it can take you back.

Around that time I went to two other non no phone events that were much smoother and I have photo/videos from.

At Adam Sandler they did allow phones and just told people to stop recording, that was much easier. Concerts that are no phone also lose the option to do the lights on final songs or moments, that is fun. Sandler had everyone do it on the Chris Farley song.

Smashing Pumpkins / Jane's Addition around that time also allowed phones and recording and it was great.

All the events were cashless and many people just like to bring their phone to pay. Well you had to get out the credit card or use the wristband. That is another annoyance.

So my review of no phone events is they are bad and unnecessary, they delay the concert fun with lines, make contacting friends harder and take away from the experience, make paying harder, add a massive pouch you have to carry around with your phone in it. If an event is no phone I'll have to really really like the act otherwise I'll pass. If they want to stop people recording just have a no record policy if you want but don't hinder friends/family/memories.

Funniest part is there are tons of recordings of the Chappelle/Rock event and most from the boxes where the policy is lax. Another reason not to like the policy, only the proles in VIP and GA have to adhere. The event was great though, Chappelle, Rock, Donnell Rawlings were all hilarious, Blackstar (Mos Def) was good as always and opener Rick Ingram was hilarious as well. I just wish I could have maybe snapped a shot at least of the final part where they all got on stage. It was amazing to see Chappelle and Rock like 20 yards from where we were sitting.

No phone policies at events -- delete.

It isn't often one person or a group like the "Traitorous Eight" [1] go on to make entire industries and new platforms. They did it though and that included Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. Moore and Noyce later split from that and made NM Electronics which became Intel.

This was back when engineers/product people ran things and competition via skill not just funding was the driving force. Imagine a new company today fully controlled by the engineers/creatives/product people, it happens but not as often. We need to get back to that.

The Moore's Law is an interesting case study in creating a term/law that supersedes you and inspires your self interest but also the interest of the industry and innovation. The root of Moore's Law was making more products and cheaper, allowing more to use computing.[2]

> Prior to establishing Intel, Moore and Noyce participated in the founding of Fairchild Semiconductor, where they played central roles in the first commercial production of diffused silicon transistors and later the world’s first commercially viable integrated circuits. The two had previously worked together under William Shockley, the co-inventor of the transistor and founder of Shockley Semiconductor, which was the first semiconductor company established in what would become Silicon Valley. Upon striking out on their own, Moore and Noyce hired future Intel CEO Andy Grove as the third employee, and the three of them built Intel into one of the world’s great companies. Together they became known as the “Intel Trinity,” and their legacy continues today.

> In addition to Moore’s seminal role in founding two of the world’s pioneering technology companies, he famously forecast in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year – a prediction that came to be known as Moore’s Law.

> "All I was trying to do was get that message across, that by putting more and more stuff on a chip we were going to make all electronics cheaper," Moore said in a 2008 interview.

> With his 1965 prediction proven correct, in 1975 Moore revised his estimate to the doubling of transistors on an integrated circuit every two years for the next 10 years. Regardless, the idea of chip technology growing at an exponential rate, continually making electronics faster, smaller and cheaper, became the driving force behind the semiconductor industry and paved the way for the ubiquitous use of chips in millions of everyday products.

When he did become successful he also gave back.

Moore gave us more. Then when he made it he gave even more.

> During his lifetime, Moore also dedicated his focus and energy to philanthropy, particularly environmental conservation, science and patient care improvements. Along with his wife of 72 years, he established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which has donated more than $5.1 billion to charitable causes since its founding in 2000. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_eight

[2] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/gordon...

Same thing happens when autocracies with closed systems and closed markets who pump propaganda about Western liberalized democratic republics with open markets and open systems.

The systems that highlights and addresses problems with more transparency is the one that will be more robust and not blow up, adjustments can be made and it is a pressure release valve.

The problem wasn't really the bonds, it was the influx of 3-4 times the money from 2019 to 2021 that essentially made SVB make basic and bad decisions chasing profit. The influx was essentially a pump and then they leveraged themselves to current markets not future even with a safe vehicle. SVB's whole premise was that interest rates wouldn't go that high, a very bad bet in high inflation.

The dump trigger wasn't even an action/attack it was the lack of additional influx of VC/private equity/sovereign money, probably mostly from foreign markets that slowed or stopped, that tripped them up.

Then larger investment groups filled with startups like Founders Fund and Union Square Ventures doing a margin call across all their funds/investments caused a big enough dump that it was over. The run was started at this point and days later the bank is over.

Ultimately this is SVBs fault, but also regulators because concentration like this where they are responsible for so many companies and one type of money VC/private equity, is an attack vector just sitting there. It wasn't wise for investment groups to run the bank either because now this harms companies across the board, but may also be a consolidation move, shaking out companies they don't back.

HBS is even realizing too much optimization/efficiency is a bad thing. The slack/margin is squeezing out an ability to change vectors quickly. This is happening from supply chain to credit to food and more.

The High Price of Efficiency, Our Obsession with Efficiency Is Destroying Our Resilience [1]

> Superefficient businesses create the potential for social disorder.

> A superefficient dominant model elevates the risk of catastrophic failure.

> *If a system is highly efficient, odds are that efficient players will game it.*

It is CLEARLY time for some anti-trust busting at the funding level.

[1] https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-high-price-of-efficiency

> "- In 2021 SVB saw a mass influx in deposits, which jumped from $61.76bn at the end of 2019 to $189.20bn at the end of 2021.

Would be interesting to see where that money came from. That has all the markings of a pump before a dump, the dump being 2023. They didn't even have to dump, they just had to stop the pump to auto dump once the interest rates went up.

SVB opened themselves up to an attack vector and one thing the banking industry likes to do now and again is consolidate and shakeout. That amount of inflow in good times can make you do funny things. The better way to go about it is be scrappy always, and expect the attacks.

There were way too many companies in this bank, it had too much concentration of startup/VC/PE money. Regulations will probably have to be made around this now more robust.

HBS is even realizing too much optimization/efficiency is a bad thing. The slack/margin is squeezing out an ability to change vectors quickly. This is happening from supply chain to credit to food and more.

The High Price of Efficiency, Our Obsession with Efficiency Is Destroying Our Resilience [1]

> Superefficient businesses create the potential for social disorder.

> A superefficient dominant model elevates the risk of catastrophic failure.

> *If a system is highly efficient, odds are that efficient players will game it.*

[1] https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-high-price-of-efficiency

Same here. I love Last.fm for the scrobbling and history of what I listen to. I also scrobble to Libre.FM and a custom one but Last.FM is still my favorite.

Currently at 94,000+ scrobbles since June 2007.

You can scrobble from almost anything including the Last.FM client, WebScrobbler [1] and some streaming apps have it built in like Spotify.

[1] https://web-scrobbler.com/

There is a "Tomato Timer". [1] Looks like it was bought recently.

[1] https://tomato-timer.com/

Any "secure" encrypted messenger that allows more than 1 to 1 connections will always have the potential for the "ghost user" problem.

System level some use additional connections/recipients for spam/moderation and the moment you allow any invisible/visible group users in, there is a massive potential for an exploit.

Additionally you have the potential for forking off messaging to other users at the system level for either oversight or spam/moderation/other. Some of the compromised systems out there use this very well.

A sneaky way some of these "secure" messaging apps are also doing this is ghost participants in the chat that can essentially syphon off the messages even without a compromised client. The ghost participant is always under the guise of moderation or anti-spam or telemetry or some other proprietary shim.

> The code shows that the messages were secretly duplicated and sent to a “ghost” contact that was hidden from the users’ contact lists. [1]

Lots of "secure" messaging apps do this for intel and surveillance and not just the white hats.

Other areas that "secure" messaging apps have holes in is the anti-spam/moderation systems that need to view messages and in the clients themselves who have access to the unencrypted content. This is also taking place in other client apps as well: VPN, password managers, extensions, wallets, even build systems and more. Many like VPNs have logs sent elsewhere but deleted locally -- access to entire machine and all network access. People are way too trusting of "secure" systems/apps that are very common today based on trust.

All of these apps/systems would pass code checks, reviews, security inspections and essentially be encrypted/"secure" though a copy is sent off to another area for review. At runtime the leak is in the direction of the data.

Then you also have governmental oversight that opens up holes that can be exploited.

On Ghost Users and Messaging Backdoors [2]

> to add a “ghost user” (or in some cases, a “ghost device”) to an existing group chat or calling session. In systems where group membership can be modified by the provider infrastructure, this could mostly be done via changes to the server-side components of the provider’s system.

> I say that it could mostly be done server-side, because there’s a wrinkle. Even if you modify the provider infrastructure to add unauthorized users to a conversation, most existing E2E systems do notify users when a new participant (or device) joins a conversation. Generally speaking, having a stranger wander into your conversation is a great way to notify criminals that the game’s afoot or what have you, so you’ll absolutely want to block this warning.

> While the GCHQ proposal doesn’t go into great detail, it seems to follow that any workable proposal will require providers to suppress those warning messages at the target’s device. This means the proposal will also require changes to the client application as well as the server-side infrastructure.

> (Certain apps like Signal are already somewhat hardened against these changes, because group chat setup is handled in an end-to-end encrypted/authenticated fashion by clients. This prevents the server from inserting new users without the collaboration of at least one group participant. At the moment, however, both WhatsApp and iMessage seem vulnerable to GCHQ’s proposed approach.)

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7veg8/anom-app-source-code-...

[2] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/12/17/on-ghost...

Acquisitions from the acquirer side always tank the stock, the acquired always get a bump. The down market and the $20B spend is why it is down.

From an ADBE perspective, this actually is a good long term move and shouldn't be such a hit.

From Figmas perspective, I am sure this was one of their hopeful outcomes.

If people here don't like the outcome, then I wonder if they know what type of game they support. This is the game with VC/growth/exits.

Yeah we used to talk movies all the time. Six degrees of Kevin Bacon was intense. Knowing about upcoming movies makes movie people boast. Fun groups of people, lots of people work at a theater as well, every summer new batch and lots of people working at any one time.

Worked at a movie theater in high school and college as well that used film. It was amazing.

Everything you say about it being a thrill. Building the movies and keeping some frames after splicing the movie reels/trailers together was great [1]. It did feel in some weird way like part of Hollywood though really it was just the very end of the line. So right on those Xenon bulbs, you had to wear a special suit that looked like the cover of The Thing or like you were in radiation experiments, it was freaky to change. There were stories of them exploding or bad things happening, never did but everyone was always like "a bulb went out" and kind of looked at each other with dread deciding who would change it.

A cool aspect was seeing the info on the upcoming movies prior to IMDB. This info was hard to come across unless you worked with movies and it was exciting to see what was coming up, felt like insider info.

Every Thursday night I had to build the movies and then watch them then or Friday to make sure for any scratches. There was nothing to rent for years after working there in high school and most of college. Though I loved seeing everything come out a day early.

Fun fact: Movies back in the day were built backwards that is why the previews are called trailers in old school film, they go at the end as the film feeds in forward, but the build machines reeled it from end to start. In the projectors we had the trailers and reels go in order then you'd feed the film from the platter into the center part that would ebb and flow through the shock absorbers/gates as needed [2][3][4][5]. It was fun to watch the projector feed in until the last few wraps. The reels would be delivered Thursday night in 2-3 containers, then you'd have to build late into Thursday night / Friday morning. Sometimes a movie distributor would mess up and it would have to be done Friday morning. I worked Thurs night and Friday morning all the time.

I remember building Pulp Fiction three times as it returned to the theater. The first time I built it I glanced in while it was playing and thought maybe the reels were out of order as films that were from other theaters or re-released sometimes would be out of order. The movie was just that way, Vincent was dead then alive at the end.

We used to all hang out at the theater on the roof for various things like Thursday night or Friday night late night movies, when we built them we'd bring in drink and smoke and it was a blast. I let all my friends and family in for free. My Mom and Aunt watched just about everything as well as many of my friends.

There were lots of people that worked there and cycled through so lots of parties and different characters. The pay sucked but it was a fun job. Not to work concession but being on floor wasn't too bad, though later in high school and college I got to be supervisor then manager and it was just a chill job. I could do homework in between movies and after the last showing. The theater had 10 projectors and usually there was 30-50 minutes in between all the rushes, lots of time to chat and get to know people. I met my wife there!

The projectors we had were good. We didn't have a Hell's Angel to maintain them but there was a dude that was from India that fixed all the projectors in the company, it was a United Artist chain theater. He worked his magic when one of them would go down.

The worst thing to happen is a platter on the projector might have a problem and then you have a mess to clean up when it unravels [6]. We had a few trouble ones that the slack was off and it would spin off too fast at part of the movie. Larger movies that sometimes happened. You'd get a complaint about a movie and go up in the booth and see it on the floor. Then you'd have to pass out free passes. Projectors usually had three platters, it would play from one to the other, larger movies would fill up two of the three platters and you'd have to switch them at the midpoint. Got pretty good at making that almost seamless.

The projector booth was just rad. It was dark and all the projectors just felt like movie magic [7]. The sound of projectors is really peaceful and calming almost like waves or wind through trees. It was college so working and school, one could craftily sneak in a 10 minute power nap and it was damn wonderful. The booth you could spy on the entire theater as well, each theater and the lobby, concession and managers office. It was like being Sauron or the all seeing eye. The booth also had access to the roof so it was fun to go up there. We sometimes would watch fireworks on 4th of July up there or just hang out and chill.

Working there was a bit like Waiting... the movie, but was a great group of people. I sometimes think I should write about all the characters there or make a show of it, maybe a movie.

[1] https://www.roxytheatre.net/images/booth%26basement/1003-spl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#/media/File:No...

[3] https://www.sprocketschool.org/wiki/Platter_Systems

[4] https://www.roxytheatre.net/pages/Projectionbooth/booth3.htm...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#/media/File:Mo...

[6] https://davidecrowley.com/wp-content/uploads/Minor-platter-m...

[7] http://www.film-tech.com/warehouse/pics/smgc/smgc57.JPG

Naming is so key to getting the right vibe for a feature/product/codebase.

This is a perfect encapsulation of the feeling when naming a variable: https://twitter.com/jenmsft/status/1381006038590099456?lang=...

> sends off a vibe of we'll probably hire you if you wow us

Same with interviewing/take-home/whiteboard. It is just a better realistic view of the company. It not only makes it a "wow us" for the worker to the workplace, it is also the workplace to the worker. It is a two way street with a more realistic sample. It also reduces the friction of locked in employment.

Creative/programming/product/design are all creative fields, most projects/products like that have more flex/contractor style arrangements based on projects/products not necessarily the company such as movies, music, books, etc. Most of my career has been in games/interactive/agency style projects/products so it may make more sense there.

You can't judge creativity and product shipping capabilities with a take-home/whiteboard/interview very well. The sample is much smaller. The better way is the body of work and a real test that is longer or closer to the actual work and timeframes.

After I went more free style I got my own insurance. Then I usually do not go with any employee health plan, it changes yearly anyways and adds friction to changing jobs/contracts. If more people did this we could solve this.

It does suck that when you are on your own you have to either join a group or be rated at the individual/family level. If we fixed grouping in health insurance this would be much better. Grouping like how Medicare does it across all private insurance would be much better.

The great thing about not taking work insurance is no extra cost, can easily go from contract to contract or full time for a while, and with your own company it can be expensed. The only downside is the part work would pay for, however you don't get any say in the type of insurance or what companies. You can ask for a small bump in pay to help cover it.

Companies would prefer not to have to deal with health insurance as it is a competitive weight in the US. Private insurance and public options, both separated from the employer is the way to go.

We don't get our home/auto/life insurance from work, why do we get the most personal type of insurance, health, from employers. Not only that healthcare bound to the job leads to all sorts of problems, ageism, harder to change jobs, harder to compete with other countries and more.

If developers starting doing this more, we alone could change the legacy employer/healthcare coupled system.

Contract to hire is the way to go, even if a short time. Most jobs are like that anyways, the first weeks/months are still part of the hiring process. This tests the worker in the actual environment. The contract could even be remote and sectioned off from the larger enterprise, just like any contractors added currently.

The important part of contract-to-hire is it shows how the person will communicate while working, which is not really verified in any way with a take-home or whiteboard setup.

Going straight to full employment is like going from strangers to marriage, contracting is a dating phase.

As someone who has been freelancing/contracting for a long while, it is much preferred to full-time employment and essential ownership anyways.

I personally don't mind take home tests, everything you do you can learn from and this gives you somewhat an idea of the type of company you are working with (not necessarily the work). Though they should be paid, as people that are in demand would be more willing to do them as well as the company more invested in reviewing them. However, in no way is the take home test a good indicator of how this person will ship product.

Software went from DLL Hell [1] to Dependency Hell [2]. Only now there is a dependency war so it is much more dangerous, and so many more dependencies.

Dependabot has to be used because of the threats. However everyone automating and moving to latest is also a threat. SolarWinds/VMWare/USGov hack [3] was all related to CI builds and automated "trust", ended up infecting tens of thousands of systems that thought they were secure with SOC2. SOC2 ends up making enterprises "trust" many third parties. What happens when dependabot is an attack vector as well...

The log4j/Log4Shell [4] issue shows how long exploits can go on without detection or automated fixes. Node is filled with dependency issues and that is just the known exploits besides all the "telemetry". [5]

Any third party or dependency is a potential attack vector, and dependency saturation is adding lots of tedium to shipping. So much time goes to just updating libs it is a bit of a tragic comedy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLL_Hell

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_federal_gov...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log4Shell

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_(software)#Notable_breakag...

The other side to this is that businesses tend to follow the leaders of the industry. So if engineer salaries were getting too high, they start a "freeze" which then cascades down to medium then small companies. However, the goal wasn't actually a freeze, it was to lower salaries, increase the pool of candidates and they can then find talent better. In a sense it is manipulation of the labor market and businesses that just follow the trends.

On the labor side, if talent is looking for work right now, they might accept less or even stay around longer during change in fear.

For VCs, this allows some time again for lowering investments, letting others play out and decreasing valuations.

While there is a slowdown and some macro market conditions, those are always exploited for companies looking to contain labor costs and increase availability.

There are some geopolitical elements going into it as well currently but in that case really it would make sense to hire more as the pools have shrunk due to division.

It is just another game really, there is no slow down or "freeze" there is a tightening, and the goal is constraining costs and increasing the pool of talent.

If I was in charge of hiring right now, I'd look at this current market as a huge time to increase hiring if you are set for multiple years. If a round is up soon, you might have to pull back. The "freeze" is a buy low moment of the market.

Good points though many platforms/languages have similar issues, just C++ has been around longer and has been used the most. C++ has always been a sort of peak language and probably always will be because like C, or machine code directly, everything else is built on it: virtual machines, apps, compilers, platforms etc at the root.

C++ is one of those things that when you grok it and can ship with it, everything else is easier. The years I have spent on C++ I have enjoyed because everything else looks easier and how performant it is. It is fun to code in as well. There are many ways to do things in C++ and that is a feature. I also feel like people use less dependencies and do more custom code in it but that may just be a gamedev thing. I like that style over using thousands of dependencies and less ability to control memory. While maybe it can be unsafe if done incorrectly, it surely has less attack vectors at the dependency level like other software today.

Additionally, it seems like C++ is still a language where programmers/developers control the products over all the middle layers that control modern software, like the hellscape that is project management of software today.

The example to me looks like C++ is still nicer, I don't get the hate on C++ but then again most of the native work I do is gamedev.

The benefit that C++ and Carbon can run together is a nice feature. It is like Objective-C++ (using ObjC + C++ together) or Swift/ObjC that worked well in gamedev as well when you needed to wire in a C/C++ game engine into iOS. For Android the NDK.

I think any C++ replacement has to be compatible with C++ but at that point isn't C++ still the root? C++ will never go away and it is actually a great language that is powerful. Then again I have spent lots of time in gamedev where that matters and most libs are going to be C/C++ for the foreseeable future.

Just learn C++.

You'll probably need to learn C++ to understand integrations with Carbon anyways. Carbon seems like yet another language you'll have to learn that is built on and tries to replace C++.

Fun fact: Fun fact: Objective-C was made in 1984, one year before C++ (1985).

> "So in the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet Union found itself trying to pit its land and resource advantage against the continental United States' more temperate climate. With space and the atom having been harnessed, why not the world's oceans? Why not the weather itself?"

Soviets always wanted a warm water port and to warm the Arctic for trade routes and making Russia more able to have an advantage on their land which is 63% frozen.

> It's important to note that Borisov wasn't a mad scientist or anything of that sort, and his work was of interest to the Soviet government, which was already funding a wide range of research looking to warm the Arctic. It was all aimed at solving a simple problem: Russia is too damn cold.

> You might laugh, but while Soviet Russia was blessed with the largest land mass of any nation on Earth, much of it resource rich, putting that land to use was stunningly difficult. Currently about 63 percent of Russia is buried under permafrost, and as the CIA World Factbook notes, even today it is a significant barrier to development of Siberia.

It wouldn't have been good for climate for everyone else, even Russia long term.

It also seems climate change and global warming Russia thinks benefits them at least then, maybe now as well. [1]

That is an interesting idea considering the oil/gas export leads to that and all that permafrost which would cause massive carbon releases.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/28/what-is-behind-...

The video "Sorry, this content not available in your country" and the back button / close action "Leave site" edit confirm are nice touches to highlight the madness of the modern content experience.