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knl

82 karma · joined May 10, 2014

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knl··on Namecheap: Russia Service Termination
While I agree that we need to put sanctions against bad actors, I see that many of the actions being carried out are either media influenced or could be percieved as PR stunts. Namely, are you asking the same from the people in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and US? Because at the very same time, these countries are bombing other countries and killing the civilians there. We should act the same to all bad actors, not just select few.
knl··on Turbulence Equations Discovered After Century-Long Quest
I’m not a native speaker, so this might be a dumb question. So far, I always associated word “discover” with “something is there, someone just managed to stumble upon it while wondering around”. Thus, I find the word’s use quite strange when it comes to scientific work, especially equations —- the authors probably didn’t wonder around and invested quite a lot of work to come up with the equation.

Does it make sense to say “someone discovered an equation for X”? If not, what would be a better word?

knl··on BetrFS: an in-kernel file system that uses Bε trees to organize on-disk storage
I don’t think I dismissed the value of the paper. I pointed out that implementation may not be that good, and best paper award and quality of the implementation most of the time are not correlated.
knl··on BetrFS: an in-kernel file system that uses Bε trees to organize on-disk storage
Sorry, but this is nonsense. Look at the chubby implementation and the subsequent paper - implementation and edge cases were the hard part, that took a lot of skill to get right. The algorithm is important, but labeling one as easy is far away from real world experiences.

I never assumed that PhD students can’t code. They can and they are pretty good at that. My point is that their incentives are in writing papers and running experiments that support claims in their papers, not produce reliable software. It might be reliable, but mostly it’s not. When we use tools build by PhD students, it’s usually when there are companies/startups built around it, and that is what I refer to as having skin in the game.

knl··on BetrFS: an in-kernel file system that uses Bε trees to organize on-disk storage
The sibling comment described it well. In addition, the majority of github commits are done by the people that are listed in the alumni section, while they where PhD students. There aren’t many commits from people listed as current members, and last significant commits are from the last year.
knl··on Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project
As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I saw a complete jackass reaction that tarnishes the reputation of repl.it.
knl··on Ask HN: Best self-hosted CI solution?
GoCD had a release two months ago, why do you think it’s not maintained?
knl··on The Honest Troubleshooting Code of Conduct
Dunno, I can't speak with certainty that I wouldn't stay and leave, as everything depends on the situation, but switching to a less demanding job and lower pay seems as something that would benefit me in the long run. My mental health and family are worth any price difference, that is, they can't pay me that much to stay in a shitty situation.
knl··on The Honest Troubleshooting Code of Conduct
Thanks for clarifying, and really sorry that you had to go through all of that. As I read, I see that there were many factors at play, some of them personal, some of them cultural -- in my country, the health insurance doesn't depend on employer, for example. But on the other hand, I also saw some people here killing themselves to work, mostly not to let down others.
knl··on The Honest Troubleshooting Code of Conduct
Why going through all of that (honest curiosity)? 4 people quit and you had panic attacks just to deliver something for a company that didn’t care much. Wouldn’t it have been easier that the whole team left early on? Your mental health would be way better, as well as of your teammates.
knl··on Bitcoin as a Battery
Ah, I love how people love to paddle flawed ideas in order to protect their mindset.

This article goes into great depths to explain all the fallacies when it comes to energy and bitcoin: https://www.ofnumbers.com/2021/02/14/bitcoin-and-other-pow-c.... tl;dr is that bitcoin is just wasting energy and no amount of text will help improve that situation. It should be outright forbidden.

knl··on Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” (2014)
Ironically, this website does the same...
knl··on The US is using the Guardian to justify jailing Assange for life
If that is true, shouldn't the current administration just let him go? Because, you know, the head of the administration just loves Putin?
knl··on A Pipeline Made of Airbags
Maybe people do notice, but it’s not easy to report back? Or they notice the system runs slowly? Or they just accept the fact that all systems (extrapolating from several banking, public service, and publishing sites) are crap, and need to live with it?
knl··on Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer
Maybe if you read the article and follow the provided links, it would be revealed to you ;)
knl··on Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer
Isn’t then the court statement illogical? The judge admitted he lied, yet the appellate court states that they uphold the original verdict because Dozinger bribed the judge?
knl··on Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer
> Through a controversial discovery process, Chevron obtained, among other things, Donziger’s private diary entries. But the company’s central piece of evidence was the testimony of their sole witness: Alberto Guerra, a disgraced Ecuadorian judge who’d been removed from the bench over allegations of corruption and who had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars and other benefits from the company. After meeting with Chevron’s lawyers 53 times, Guerra testified that Donziger and his team had offered the judge in the original trial a $500,000 bribe and had ghostwritten the 2011 decision against Chevron. In a related case three years later, he admitted he had lied in his testimony.

Maybe because of the above?

knl··on Chevron Is Trying to Crush a Prominent Climate Lawyer
The article also states that this Ecuadorian judge later admitted he had lied about the bribe, and has met with Chevron 30+ times before the trial.
knl··on Michael Dell Gets $12B Richer with Break from Public Eye
But during this time company also invested money and paid salaries to their employees, so the figure is higher. That is certainly better than just parking the money somewhere, no?
knl··on A note to our employees
I'm not a native speaker, but doesn't "We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training" mean that trainings teach how to do sexual harassment, not prevent it? Shouldn't it be "prevention of sexual harassment"?