Hacker News Reader

dsuthon IBM announces $3B research initiative

Software optimisation will become important again.

dsuthon What's the scariest thing in the world? Ask your teenage daughter

It's more like telling people who live in dangerous areas not to walk around looking scared and confused. Which we do...

I have to agree with the sentiment expressed elsewhere in the thread, that bullies bully for different reasons. The only time I have been bullied, avoidance and not showing a response worked, because the bully had low self-esteem and was looking for acceptance from his peers by picking on smaller kids. When he saw that he wasn't getting anywhere with that, he stopped.

dsuthon The Data of Hate

That's pretty much inevitable, over a long enough timeline.

dsuthon The power of lonely: What we do better without other people around

Not good and not bad. I wouldn't compare the two as it's a false dichotomy. Just as some tasks are better done in pairs, others are better done alone. You can work as part of a team, but also individually.

dsuthon Ask HN: 16-hour work week jobs?

The cleverer managers I've worked with typically include a factor of ~ 70-80% on worker office time. So in a typical 8 hour work day, 6 of those hours would be productively spent on a task at hand.

For an engineer who is sitting at his or her desk, focussed on a single task, I think this is reasonably accurate. Obviously there are a lot of things in an office environment which can further conspire to reduce the amount of productivity much, much lower.

dsuthon Daskeyboard 4 Professional

Blues are very loud. Depending on your environment obviously. Quiet office, or personal study near a bedroom (if you share it with someone)? Stick to browns.

dsuthon Daskeyboard 4 Professional

Never noticed that problem, although I do habitually click my mouse to wake from sleep...

dsuthon Daskeyboard 4 Professional

Your coworkers must be really sensitive (or mine are really tolerant). I've used brown switches in a Filco Majestouch for over a year, never had any complaints. I don't bottom out the keys, but there's a noticeable clack when the keys come back up to full extension.

IOW, I don't think brown keys are unreasonable for shared work environments; they're not much louder than a standard Dell rubber-domed KB.

The blue switches in my DasKeyboard at home however... I think I'll have to upgrade just to get something a bit quieter.

dsuthon The Curse of Smart People

Convincing poorly educated people of something is not hard to do. A large part (or side-effect sadly) of education is critical thinking skills. Lack of education leads to easy followers; something that has been preyed upon numerous times throughout history.

dsuthon Tell HN: I want out

This:

"Right now I'm working 14 hour days and everyone gets mad when someone tries to leave while the others are working. There is no FREEDOM. The whole point of this venture WAS FREEDOM. Beers at 2pm? Sure! Not "um we have 8 pages left to design for tomorrow, nobody is going anywhere" says one of the developers."

is caused by this:

"I don't have the spine to delay my clients or deliver anything less than perfect and it's breaking me."

YOU set the tone for the company, and the pace of work, by managing the deadlines. If your style of management is just to roll over for every client, make ridiculous promises, then foist that onto your programmers, of course they will respond in the manner above. Because you have set the expectation that it is feasible to deliver, and that this is how things are done.

If you want a more relaxed environment, blow the deadlines out by double, THEN start setting expectations for work lower. Organise a company day off where you all go off go-karting or something - no exceptions. But don't do this in the face of deadlines, or you'll just look completely out of touch, and put everyone else under more stress.

dsuthon How can an introvert Asian engineer like me make friends?

Introverts frequently have some good tools at their disposal to 'fake' being an extrovert - mostly observation and empathy. Being extroverted is really just putting the effort in to talk to people, and make them feel good about themselves. This builds rapport, and makes people want to talk to you more.

The best advice I can give is to look at how more naturally outgoing people communicate, and then emulate it. Ask lots of questions to get people talking about themselves. Make lots of eye-contact to encourage people and convince them that you care about what they're saying. Reply showing you're listening. Share random stuff about yourself in breaks of conversation (doesn't matter what it is really, anything personal you share also builds rapport).

You don't have to be the star of the party, but being an engaging convserationalist will help you to make excellent connections with people. The more you talk to people, the more you'll learn. If you share the things you learn with similar people, they'll get the impression that you're a social hub, and want to share more with you (because you have more to share with them). It snowballs pretty quickly.

This coming from an out-and-out introvert who has learned when to flip the switch. I was on a 10-day business trip with ~20 people recently, and towards the end confided to one of my new friends that the whole thing, while excellent, was pretty taxing on me due to my introversion. He was so shocked, he looked like I'd slapped him! Pretty funny :D

Edit: This probably goes without saying, but if you do the above, make sure you factor in downtime. Introverts playing extroverts is a very tiring game, you will probably need a day or two every now and then with next-to no interaction to recover.

dsuthon Zelda: The Wind Waker – Tech and Texture Analysis

It always did look amazing. To be honest every new Zelda since has seemed like a downgrade in terms of graphics and animation. Just wait till you get to swaying platforms over lava lakes!

dsuthon Zelda: The Wind Waker – Tech and Texture Analysis

Yeah, this is my biggest problem with Wind Waker, and why it's not the best Zelda - it's just too easy. Adding a couple of tough dungeons would've made it much closer to OoT's difficulty. We shouldn't be aiming for games that everyone can complete - and I say this as someone who doesn't complete a lot of games.

dsuthon The Dyslexic Programmer

Many people do this - take a look at any children's show where they read books out. Typically the spoken words don't match the page exactly, but do carry the gist of the story. I do the same thing when I read to my kids, my brain summarises a sentence very quickly, and I repeat it in my own words without thinking.

I think this is just part of spoken communication - our brains short-circuit more formal written patterns into 'normal' speech patterns.

dsuthon Types Are The Truth

... It's happening again!!

dsuthon Types Are The Truth

I couldn't decide whether this was an incredibly deep post that I'm missing, or just a very obvious by-product of compilation.

dsuthon Can I drop a pacemaker 0day?

Then this is where the pressure needs to be applied - at the certification process. It needs to be made a legal requirement to attain certification (if not already), and the certifiers need to follow best practices for vulnerability detection. And it needs to be an ongoing, open process.

dsuthon The boy who stole Half Life 2 source code (2011)

Nice black-and-white view of humanity. I felt for this guy, because it could easily have happened to me, and my upbringing was probably a paradise compared to his.

Especially in the case of juveniles, we (as a society) should be understanding of minor indiscretions, and look to guide kids onto a better path. Thankfully the German justice system seemed to get that.

dsuthon TrueCrypt suggesting migration to BitLocker?

That's my take on it as well, even though it fails the Occam's razor test. This all sounds like a very understated way of saying "we can no longer develop truecrypt with impunity, and the only other options are closed source, and highly likely to be compromised out of the gate".

dsuthon Stanford study finds walking improves creativity

Having seen a few people spend their (rapidly failing) final years with emphysema and related health complications due to smoking... I can't say that you'll live well to the end necessarily. I hope you avoid that fate, random internet stranger, but there are ways to improve your chances...

dsuthon Facebook acquires Oculus VR

To think that he actually believes any of what he just wrote is... difficult. I dunno what Facebook pushed in front of him, but to me Occulus is now nothing more than a footnote in the quest for immersive VR. How disappointing.

dsuthon I Hunt Sys Admins

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."

-Nietzsche

dsuthon Larry Page: I’d Rather Leave My Billions to Elon Musk Than to Charity

I don't think that gives Page enough credit. I'd phrase it as "Charitable organisations aren't effective enough to deserve my money". Elon Musk is, above all, a do-er. He has shown the capability to not only think big about very relevant problems, but implement solutions. I suspect it's those qualities that give Page confidence that his money would make more of a difference in Musk's pockets.

dsuthon Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism and Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit

It's so sad to see things like this twisted around by people with too much time and an axe to grind. I don't think anyone expects to put down a mat and claim 'Mission Accomplished' on building a meritocracy. Or any other vision statement from a company or person.

The whole purpose of these statements is to represent an ideal to strive for. Things like this are exactly what give militant feminists and other PC groups a bad name.

dsuthon Prominent GitHub Engineer Quits, Alleging Gender-Based Harassment

This is not helpful. Either there is a problem at Github, or there isn't. Couching it in terms of a general problem across the industry is not helpful.

Is the leadership at Github sexist? You can't just handwave that question away and say "Of course it is, it's a well-known industry problem.", when a specific event has caused that allegation to be made very public. Talking about the event in question gives rise to understanding, generalities and vague tweets do not.

I don't want to attack the messenger here, but all we have to go on are a series of tweets which do not, by themselves, present a very clear message. She claims to be harassed by the leadership for two years... whilst defending them to feminists for the same time? And then in the next tweet, it's only the events of one day which have caused a problem.

It's very hard to get a consistent story out of the information at hand, which is why people are asking for a better explanation. Since Horvath has made this public in the first place, I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.

dsuthon Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

Perhaps your government felt that there would be non-financial benefits to supporting efforts to make affordable electric cars. Can you not think of any?

dsuthon Elon Musk: To the People of New Jersey

An apt analogy. I moved from Linux-based machines to Macbook Pros. I love the ability to tinker in Linux. I hate the requirement to tinker in Linux, just to get normal desktop stuff working.

dsuthon I am not an introvert. I am just busy

Genuine LOL, well played!

dsuthon At the RSA Security Conference, Things Get Testy

I guess that would technically mean "Who thinks the US can listen in?", which would mean that he's attempting to downplay the possibility that the US tapping things is a relevant concern, and all these international competitors are just using the NSA as a convenient scapegoat, to drum up business.

Which actually makes sense when you consider that he's part of the machine, and just toeing the party line.

dsuthon GCHQ intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users worldwide

Translation: "We are shocked, shocked to learn that GCHQ were intercepting our traffic! Certainly had no knowledge of this fact, nope, nosiree...".