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fphhotchips

1,746 karma · joined June 23, 2013

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fphhotchips··on Pac-Man, but you're the ghost
> Horrible controls.

Interesting! I found them mostly ok, but I was playing with a keyboard. They definitely remind me of the controls of Pacman games I grew up with where (as sibling comment notes), you have to decide where you're going before you get there.

I wonder if tweaking the input buffering or adding some frames after the turn where you 'snap-back' would help, similar to ghost jumps in Mario.

fphhotchips··on Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms
Which, ultimately, is not such a big difference to the reason we split up work for humans, either. Human job specialization is just context management over the course of 30 years.
fphhotchips··on I'm returning my Framework 16
This is the first time I've ever even heard of unofficial screen upgrades even being _possible_, and I'm at least two standard deviations from the mean on the "likes to tinker" scale.

I can't even begin to think about how a laptop screen upgrade would go. Who's manufacturing them? How do I get just one? How do I make sure I don't spend a month waiting for shipping and get a fake? How do I make sure the housing is going to fit right? How do I make sure the pin outs match?

... and etc etc. An official upgrade pathway eliminates all of that. Sure, it's not bringing you back to "average person", but Framework have been super clear that's not who they're after. They want people in my bracket. To be honest, as a cohort, we've proven we're willing to (over)pay for this kind of thing, too. It's why the PC Market still exists despite graphics cards being overpriced by about double.

fphhotchips··on Pebble, Rebble, and a path forward
One thing I'm confused about in this whole thing is what makes Rebble think they have a right to the data in the first place? They scraped it! "We don't like you scraping the data we scraped" doesn't hold water for me, whether Eric retained it or not.
fphhotchips··on Framework Laptop 16
I understand there's two versions of requirements for the NVidia 50 series - the higher end 5070Ti and up, and the lower end 5070 and down. What's the chance of releasing a 5070Ti/5080 version?
fphhotchips··on Two new PebbleOS watches
It can be a bit difficult, particularly now that some phones are getting more demanding about re-authorising before it will go through. Tap-try to get fingerprint scanner working-tap again is a much less fluid procedure than tap-go.

The position thing is just something you get used to. There's not that many reader models in active use and most of them are pretty good about marking where the nfc reader is these days.

fphhotchips··on We were wrong about GPUs
> There's still plenty of hardware-specific APIs, you still debug assembly when something crashes, you still optimize databases for specific storage technologies and multimedia transcoders for specific CPU architectures...

You might, maybe, but an increasing proportion of developers:

- Don't have access to the assembly to debug it

- Don't even know what storage tech their database is sitting on

- Don't know or even control what CPU architecture their code is running on.

My job is debugging and performance profiling other people's code, but the vast majority of that is looking at query plans. If I'm really stumped, I'll look at the C++, but I've not yet once looked at assembly for it.

fphhotchips··on ESET recommends Linux if your unsupported Windows 11 PC can't update from 10
The full featured version doesn't even run on Mac OS. Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Mac are all pale imitations of their Windows counterparts.
fphhotchips··on The Pythonic Emptiness
Certainly "there should be one, and preferably only one, obvious way to solve a problem" hasn't been the case for a while, or maybe ever. See: tfa.

Perhaps it's just because I'm not Dutch.

fphhotchips··on Get me out of data hell
Melbourne is easily the worst city in the country for this. Most of the tech sector is in the very large enterprise space lead by the banks, and as a result it's who you know and whether you went to Melbourne Grammar or Geelong Grammar that will determine which company you work for once you reach a certain level. Sydney is better just because there's more smaller stuff going on, and because CBA is better than NAB and ANZ combined on tech. (I hate Sydney otherwise and am based out of Melbourne)

Some places in Melbourne get real work done, even in the data sector. They're hard to find, but they exist.

fphhotchips··on How 'Factorio' seduced Silicon Valley and me
People look at me funny when I say this, but it's true.

I work in performance - a space where we're thinking about threading, parallelism and the like a lot - and I often say "I want to hire who play with trains". What I mean is "I want people who play Factorio", because the concepts and problems are very very similar. But fewer people know Factorio, so I say trains instead.

I think I know why it's enjoyable even though it's so close to work, too. It's the _feedback_. Factorio shows you visually where you screwed up, and what's moving slowly. In actual work the time and frustration is usually in finding it.

fphhotchips··on Boeing 787s must be reset every 51 days or 'misleading data' is shown (2020)
I feel like it's not the RAT you'll notice from inside the plane, it will be the silence from the engines. That combined with at least a momentary flicker of the lighting (I'm not sure if a RAT on a 787 will run cabin lighting but I doubt it), and you'll know.
fphhotchips··on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
> Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer says "most people" in Australia do not see Assange as a journalist.

The Downer family have recent history in misjudging what "most people" in significant chunks of the Australian public think. Chunks, for example, like the electorate they're trying to be members of parliament in.

fphhotchips··on Half-Ass It
I've been taking this approach more recently. Something shipped is 100% better than nothing at all, even if it's 25% worse than if I whole-assed it.

It's been working, in that the 'leave room for others to step in' has worked well, and those others have filled the gaps with new and interesting ideas that I likely would not have done even had I whole-assed it. At the same time, those people weren't equipped to whole-ass something from nothing.

fphhotchips··on Daylight Computer – New 60fps e-paper tablet
Not shipping internationally is a pretty frustrating decision. This device is almost exactly what I want, but I can't buy it because you... can't put it in a DHL box with a different country's name on it?

Congrats on the launch, but this is kind of a kick in the nuts.

Mild edit: I checked a UK address and it turns out you can put it in a DHL box with a different country's name on it, you just can't print the word Australia on the box. Nice. If this is because the device can't stand up to kangaroo rides, can I have one if I assure you that I won't take it with me when I hop to the shops?

fphhotchips··on Apple and Google deliver support for unwanted tracking alerts in iOS and Android
I disagree. There's a clear disclaimer of who they are, and they're responding to a specific criticism.

Their comment at the top level also has that disclaimer and while it's written in a bit of a marketing tone, it adds substantive value to the discussion.

One major value of HN is that we get people who are actively involved in building various pieces of technology directly engaging with the community. When there's a strong disclosure of who they are, that's almost always a good thing. (Of course, some organisations don't encourage that disclosure and that's a little more ambiguous).

fphhotchips··on macOS Sonoma 14.4 might break Java on your machine
Let's not pretend that Mac OS is immune to a bit of the old upsell too. Core OS that features only work when paired with iPad/iPhone. iCloud is actively difficult not to use. The sidebar with the Apple shares and news apps.
fphhotchips··on macOS Sonoma 14.4 might break Java on your machine
The third party display thing is dead on.

I have a $2000 AUD LG monitor that Mac OS just occasionally decides to overdrive (or something) and cause instant but temporary burn in. I'm not the only one - you can find others on Reddit.

fphhotchips··on Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone
> budgets exhausted at EOY

Nope! Often there's money left over for whatever reason, and in many places if you don't use it this year, you'll lose it next year. Nothing like walking out of a decrepit meeting room in November and then back into the same meeting room in late January but now it's kitted out with 3x50" TV's and a studio quality camera.

> yourself and your potential customers taking vacation time

Only if all the important initiatives have been finalised before the end of the year! The buyers have targets they're supposed to be hitting also, and often one of those is "purchased a new CRM/ERP/WTF for implementation in FYx+1".

fphhotchips··on Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone
> A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of

It's funny that you say this then go on to accuse others of never having had jobs.

I've worked around enterprise sales for years and it's entirely possible for reps to go 3 quarters without closing business if they're in a strategic patch or they're trying to build a new vertical/geo. Sales cycles run anywhere from 6-24 months of you're selling enterprise software of any substance or scale, and unless you're getting hot deals from the last person, you're going to be starting most of those at 0. That's why we have ramps.

That said, there are definitely metrics you can look at to see if someone is on the right path at the 3/6 month mark. It's just not necessarily closed business.

fphhotchips··on Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone
> Q4 is always the busiest time for sales.

Yes, but not if you're still ramping. The sales cycle for Cloudflare is probably 6-24 months. Unless you've stepped in on a deal that's basically about to close, you're not going to be closing just because it's Q4.

fphhotchips··on Show HN: Advent of Distributed Systems
When I clicked this it took me straight into a page with code and an explanation with a bunch of assumed knowledge. It's not very self-explanatory.

When I came back here, it the additional context of your text post made everything make sense. Can I recommend that you start with that on the page itself? Even a quick explanatory modal with a "don't show this again" checkbox would help a lot.

fphhotchips··on E3 Is Officially Dead
What makes any of those things more or less valuable than playing a video game?

Volunteering, sure, but the rest are just as self indulgent as any other pass time. Just because you value them higher doesn't mean you should discount the things that other people do to enjoy themselves.

fphhotchips··on In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge
This just isn't the case for me. I don't wake up when I skip breakfast, and if I don't eat throughout the day, I invariably end up exhausted by 3pm only to wake right up 45 minutes after dinner. I don't doubt your experience, but I certainly don't share it.
fphhotchips··on Tech CEO sentenced to 5 years in IP address scheme
The vendor that appears on my Credit Card statement is Amazon. The organisation who sets the commercial terms is Amazon. The website is completely Amazon branded. The goods are usually stored in a big warehouse with "Amazon" written on the side and delivered by someone engaged and paid by Amazon. The box that arrives has "Amazon Prime" written all over it.

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, Amazon is selling the item.

fphhotchips··on Microsoft completes $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard
Not only is AoEII doing really well under Microsoft, it's doing so despite taking a couple of goes to get it right in the modern era. Most other companies would have given up when HD edition got a bit of a middling response.
fphhotchips··on Pixel 7 WiFi does not work in certain countries
1. Man I hope that's not an employee or they (should be) about to have a terrible Monday.

2. "Do you travel? Potentially to places where it will be hard to get roaming data? Fuck you!" -- Google

fphhotchips··on Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users
Excel doesn't do half the Excel things, PowerPoint doesn't have reader mode, the list goes on. Anyone who thinks Office for Mac is any good hasn't used Office for Windows in 10 years.
fphhotchips··on Microsoft has not stopped forcing Edge on Windows 11 users
This is the worst answer. Office for Mac is horrible compared to the same for Windows, as is plenty of other very common software - if it runs on Mac at all. It's also much worse to administer from an enterprise perspective, so it's probably not supported by the wife's IT team, and if it is it probably would have some horrible software on it that makes it unusable.
fphhotchips··on Knightmare: A DevOps Cautionary Tale (2014)
Your original comment is somewhat unclear. Are you advocating for leaving old code in because the system works and it's more stable that way, or taking it out to force the necessary refactoring steps and understanding that will bring?
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