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gruntledfangler

42 karma · joined August 25, 2023

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gruntledfangler··on No more O'Reilly subscriptions for me
At one time I worked at a research institute. It had a huge library that was only partially filled. One of the directors wanted to buy every developer their own Safari subscription. The cost was quoted at around $4K/mo IIRC.

I pointed out that it would be far more cost–effective to simple let us request hard copies of whatever books we wanted, and then they would just stay in the library. No one worked remotely at the time.

We ended up getting Safari subscriptions for everyone.

gruntledfangler··on Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?
I’ve worked at many bars and restaurants. The best ordering interface I ever used was at Pizza Hut circa 1999. It was a monochrome TUI (orange). It was ancient-looking even then.

The speed was incredible once you got proficient. Once you got the muscle memory down you could punch in any single pizza order in less than a second. Even something complicated like different toppings on the halves was NBD. Pizza Hut was always coming up with these ridiculous gimmicks and the system could accommodate them seamlessly. Just incredible.

This system probably quietly saved the company millions in its time.

gruntledfangler··on Comic Sans typeball designed to work with the IBM Selectric typewriters
“You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”
gruntledfangler··on Ask HN: Is anyone still using Dreamweaver?
Spry assets
gruntledfangler··on I am (not) a failure: Lessons learned from six failed startup attempts
> Why don't the banks care? Because they treat the cost of fraud as just another cost of doing business, and they pass it along to you, the consumer. And they do it in a diabolical, stealthy way that you don't notice. But that's another story.

Desire to know more intensifies

gruntledfangler··on Earth Is on the Brink of Breaching a 7th of Nine 'Planetary Boundaries'
“The health check will also serve as a “mission-control center” for decision-making, per the statement, by using satellite data, A.I. and multiple scientific disciplines—as well as the wisdom of Indigenous peoples, which is something the researchers hope to incorporate more of in following editions”

Just in case you were considering taking this seriously…

gruntledfangler··on Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
“ Lab diamonds are a testament to the principle that what nature can do, man is capable of doing better.”

Profound hubris in an otherwise interesting article.

gruntledfangler··on I Snuck into Ken Kesey’s Fiction Class (2017)
That article was, at most, 5% about Ken Kesey and his course and had very few insights outside of the author’s opinion of him. Most of the article is about the issues of some other woman.