epsylon

One of my favorite song from Swedish artist Vintersorg is Algol, which is about the eponymous star system.

    Algol, demon, capricious your brightness
    shifts from day to day - rises, abates, intesifies
    again, sometimes triumphant and sparkling,
    sometimes pale and faint. For a long time
    we've searched with wonder for the key
    to this mystery, the right element to
    your eager and changing, queer temperament.

    Now we've dispearsed the haze of the riddle:
    you've got a companion on your journey,
    like a slave, a faithful shadow he
    constantly follows you on the desolate
    path, he circles and sneaks quiet around you, closely.

    Never have we seen his guise, dark, parches,
    stiff and cold, but still we know he exists;
    like ashamed he hides behind you - free
    and merry you shine - until he once
    again crawls out of the darkness and
    covers you. And your glare becomes
    pallid and dull, and your mind cloudy.

    [Chorus]

    And similars there are - many Algols
    wanders in the space - maybe even
    more among us on earth. Sunlight spirits
    darkened by a shadow, young princes
    concealed by old slaves, doublesouls,
    divided creatures - a blissful son of the
    light indissolubely linked with a bitter dark demon.

    [Chorus]

His lyrics talk a lot about science in general, astronomy, philosophy and nature. Also, fun trivia: Vintersorg, despite singing mostly black metal, is a primary school teacher.

Your numbers are also false for motorcycles (which all run on gas and not diesel which is the subject of the conversation here). My BMW's 800cc rotax paralell twin does exactly that (4.5L cruising on the highway). Even the 1200cc boxer does that AFAIK.

That's what bouncers are for.

"Making of" paper is here: http://www.netsq.com/Documents/MakingOfGoogleAPT.pdf

I'm counting at least 12 HN apps on Google Play. What does your own has that the others don't?

The idea that floating point isn't deterministic is patently false. If it wasn't, that'd mean that every computer adds random noise to the calculation. That's nonsense. This myth seems to be propagated because fp is hard to work with and has a lot of quirks: its non uniform division of space, the x87 extended precision mode, the various rounding modes... But none of that stuff is intractable.

(Many games have shipped with fp in networked code. see http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/flo... and look for previous discussion here on HN, reddit...)

The biggest problem with "unlimited vacations" is that companies that offer these kind of policies cannot organize and compute their employees' workloads without using an arbitrary number of holidays, which will probably be set to the minimum.

Your manager will give you yearly (or quarterly) objectives with 10 or 20 days of vacations in mind, so if you use your right to unlimited vacations to take more than that, you will most likely be off your target, and that will be reflected upon your pay raise at yearly review time.

A fixed (and high) number of holidays is the only way to go.

> * I take more vacation now than I did when I had 2/3/4/5 weeks a year of stated, paid, vacation.

And how much is that?

When I worked at a BigCo (in Europe), our holidays amounted to around 10 weeks per year. Senior employees (with more than 10 years) would get even more (around 12). Which means you can take a week off every month. Now that is a lot of holidays. And these were enforced, you had to take all of these (for legal reasons, the company has to either pay the holidays to you, or force you to take them, and most of the time financial reasons dictate that it's better if they don't pay you).

Does unlimited vacation cover that?

What baddox says is true, but I have to add that there is a noticeable difference in timbre between the same note played at two different places. So if you find yourself with the choice, you have to use your own judgment to decide which fingering you think sounds better.

Yet even the most competent programmers will have UBs crawl into their code where they do not expect them. Sure, C has less pitfalls than C++ ; but it has its own as well. (see previous discussion on HN "What is C", John Regehr's blog, ...)

The difference between C and C++ might have to do with that: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ios/ios_base/sync_with_st...

I oppose any usage of my taxes to compensate the rackeetering taxi drivers. Never ever have I taken a taxi in France (I'm French) that didn't charge an exorbitant price while imposing me to listen to their racist and self-important rants. Their profession should die and make room for something better.

There's still an opportunity loss.

> Having said that, I certainly hope that this does not become some sort of thing that people spend a lot of time worrying about, enforcing, or baby sitting others.

If that is the case, then that precisely proves the usefulness of such a code.

You could also dynamically link.

But Microsoft is a large organization, with deep pockets! Is time spent crafting meaningful challenges for each team really that much more than, say, the man-hours that each team will have to spend to interview candidates?

> Valve is certainly interested in Vulkan, partly as a means to target Chinese Dota players running Windows XP.

That seems like a far fetched theory to me. AMD and NVIDIA haven't released drivers for XP for ages. Vulkan support in Source Engine is nowhere near done, if it has even started. In the meantime Chinese players will move on...

> There are plenty of successful studios that have their own in-house engines.

None of which develop for Mac.

> If the millionaires wish to remain millionaires, the money cannot be idle. It has to be invested in value producing activities that generate a return.

So what? Investing is not giving. Investing may generate wealth, but if there's no redistribution, the rich will get richer and the poor will stay poor.

I'm curious nobody mentioned the problem that is Skype. For many companies, NSA snooping means that Skype cannot be used for any sensitive stuff (which translates into a defacto company wide ban).

It's interesting to note that these come from various ex but also current employees. Talks a lot about the culture over there.

> "The random mass firings of 2013 tanked moral, and the stream of talent leaving the company during 2014 didn't help."

I think this one is talking about the departure of Michael Abrash (and several others) to Occulus.

Bethesda already get financial returns in the form of increased sales due to modability.

I like it! What did you use to layout your CV?

I bet there are equally many Go programmers at Google who argue that the "right way" imposed by the Go design team isn't that "right".

Such as well paid executive jobs when they leave politics.

> I'm also not sure French culture is preserved that well in France. Sir Colin Davis was a better Berlioz interpreter than any French conductor I ever heard (and I was born 50km from la Cote St Andre), and even traditional Haute Cuisine is better abroad (particularly in Tokyo - see Apicius).

You can't drop assertions like that while hoping that being French makes you automatically right about French culture. You have a right to your opinion, but please just don't proclaim them as if they were universal truths.

Completely agreed. The worse argument is the one about the backlight not being red... If you care about that kind of thing you already have a bedside luminotherapy lamp. Which means you will use it to read (which is way more comfortable). The backlight's primary function is to counter the effect of the sun in daytime park / balcony / beach / etc... reading. You need a lot of luminosity, and certainly not weak ass red lighting.

Boar is also delicious when cooked well !

The one book that I first thought of when I read the OP's original question was Mathieu Ricard's L'Art de la Méditation (an English translation aptly named The Art of Meditation is available).

At some point in my life, while I was going through severe depression, I got interested (by the folks on HN) into looking more into Buddhist philosophy and meditation. This little book, quick to read, made me realize that our selves are not what we think they are, and that our emotions are impermanent, that we can deal with them by simply acknowledging them instead of letting them overthrow us. It's a brilliant simple idea, though it is harder to put into practice. (I am still not quite managing to be a regular meditator to this day)

This little book changed my life, and I've now bought it or lent it to several people from my friends or family in the hope that it may have the same impact on them as it had on me.

Game developers call that principle "Data Oriented Design".