marklubi

> One of the things I've tried to teach people I've mentored over the past few decades is the principle of "Sharing is better than assuming." If you know something, share it with other people.

Definitely agree with this in principle. My son and I play pool (billiards) competitively. As you get better, almost nobody shares any tips because it's very competitive. I've taught him to be better than that and we have a great league team where everyone is helping the others grow.

In the mentoring (not just teaching) realm, I like to guide them into asking the questions that gets them to the answer they're looking for. When the connections in their mind light up, it's amazing.

> Beginners have to be nurtured through lots of context that builds up slowly.

My son is 17 and very interested in programming. Had to explain to him public, private, internal, and also static the other night.

I then joked, you should ask your teacher about recursion tomorrow. He's with his mom this weekend, but I'm anxiously awaiting hearing how that went.

> what gives the most satisfaction (even though this kind of satisfaction happens very rarely) if I discover some very elegant structure behind whatever has to be implemented that changes the whole way how you thought about programming

A number of years ago, I wrote a caching/lookup library that is probably some of the favorite code I've ever created.

After the initial configuration, the use was elegant and there was really no reason not to use it if you needed to query anything that could be cached on the server side. Super easy to wrap just about any code with it as long as the response is serializable.

CachingCore.Instance.Get(key, cacheDuration, () => { /* expensive lookup code here */ });

Under the hood, it would check the preferred caching solution (e.g., Redis/Memcache/etc), followed by less preferred options if the preferred wasn't available, followed by the expensive lookup if it wasn't found anywhere. Defaulted to in-memory if nothing else was available.

If the data was returned from cache, it would then compare the expiration to the specified duration... If it was getting close to various configurable tolerances, it would start a new lookup in the background and update the cache (some of our lookups could take several minutes*, others just a handful of seconds).

The hardest part was making sure that we didn't cause a thundering herd type problem with looking up stuff multiple times... in-memory cache flags indicating lookups in progress so we could hold up other requests if it failed through and then let them know once it's available. While not the absolute worst case scenario, you might end up making the expensive lookups once from each of the servers that use it if the shared cache isn't available.

* most of these have a separate service running on a schedule to pre-cache the data, but things have a backup with this method.

Said a little more crass/simply: A people hire A people. B people hire C people.

The first is phenomenal until someone makes a mistake and brings in a manager or supervisor from the C category that talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

If you accidentally end up in one that turns out to be the later. It's maddening trying to get anything accomplished if the task involves anyone else.

Hire slow, fire fast.

Might be a problem with Adblock, but also, Firefox just released an update that blocks social networks.

I run a couple different privacy add-ons for various different levels of blocking things, but the Firefox update has seriously broken a lot of stuff

> It's not gonna pass any legal scrutiny

Probably going to cost a lot to get to that point, probably more than they will scam you for. They're after the quick hit that gets them something right away while also believing that you won't take it that far.

It's like knowing how to pick a lock vs just throwing a rock through the window that's next to the door to gain access. They both get you there.

They have you acknowledging something at that point. Doesn't really matter what it is when they can take it out of context.

Edit: Many of them are scammers, they don't play by the rules.

I make them hundreds of thousands a year even with their commission from my app sales. Still don't have a contact there (same with Apple).

They're happy collecting their commissions and avoiding you. The only good thing is that (for the most part) the payment method is just a password/faceid/touchid away.

Just to add on, never say "yes" when you get a call from an unknown number (or maybe from all numbers, just be careful).

"This is he(or she)", or "who are you trying to contact" handle most situations.

Just don't let scammers get you saying something in the affirmative.

I worked with someone a little over a decade ago who worked directly with Jobs when they were building the NeXT computer.

He had two interesting things to say about it. It was one of the hardest jobs he's ever had because the standards were so high, and that he would do it again in a heartbeat.

That Reynolds 853... drool. When I raced mountain bikes a couple decades ago, that was what my hardtail was made of. Just 20.5 lbs for a steel frame bike was nuts at the time, and that bike was a rocket ship.

Still have it. My son wanted to try it one day, his response was "that bike wants to go fast"

Edit: I also had aluminum (too stiff) and titanium frames (too flexible, or floppy as I called it). The 853 was excellent

Many cities use TPMS monitoring/fingerprinting on highways to gauge traffic levels. Wouldn't be shocked if they started using that for traffic light timings

Interesting physics to know.

Most of the places that care about the clear ice around where I live purchase pre-frozen cubes or spheres.

They come from the vendor with each one individually vacuum sealed in a long strip. Cut one off the strip, open it, and slip it into the glass.

Probably not worth the labor to produce the cubes themselves when there is a simple, deliverable, solution available.

Shocking, not shocking. Worked for a company more than two decades ago that ran a lot of shortlines.

Called out several different vulnerabilities that I found while researching how to make things more efficient (the company owning the tracks get charged for the car lease while it's on their tracks).

Nothing came of it though. They were more worried about replacing infrastructure after several cars toppled because the ties had rotted.

Rigid in the air is akin to crashing. Same goes with snowboarding. It's a weird 'what do I do now?' situation because they're not sure how to finish.

Have a plan, finish it.

I always appreciated the truck scene with the water ripples in the glass.

The backstory of the production of it is interesting. Involves a guitar.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/jurassic-park-guitar-wa...

Sorry to hear about losing your father, it's certainly hard to fathom. My dad lost his at a young age as well.

I would give my life (or anything else) for my son or anyone else in my family or group of friends. No questions, no hesitation.

Some of us live our lives that way. Would rather give my life for someone I care for, than live knowing that I didn't try to save theirs.

Edit: I live my life with no regrets. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. A decision was made given the information available at the moment.

Crap article. Please flag it so people don’t waste time reading it.

As an adrenaline junkie, this is like a Big Bang Theory version of the stereotypes that people have of something that they aren’t.

Live big, or go home. If you haven’t experienced the rush, you don’t know what it’s like. If you haven’t trained enough to understand the risks, you haven’t done the minimal amount that you should have.

Until I had my son, I didn’t expect to live past 40 (lots of broken bones and parts were involved, whatever, inconveniences).

My son changed my life though, and now I live mine for him.

I miss it dearly, but he would miss me more.

While similar, I think the culture more involves the attitudes that's been fostered by the company itself (likely decisions made by their board and upper management).

Most of my colleagues are really nice and friendly one-on-one or even in a group. However, the culture problem is across all departments (~500 employees).

There's a poor attitude that's a result of a perverse options and bonus incentive structure. At least for the software teams, it results in shipping a product regardless of the quality. Essentially, as long as your group ships the bare minimum of something that was planned for that quarter, you get your bonuses.

They're a software company and they don't even have a QA/Test team.

It's a toxic culture and they wonder why there's massive turnover.

Culture is a fourth one.

Currently working towards the end of a contract/earn-out at a company where people just toss stuff they don't want to deal with over the fence for others to handle with usually zero communication about why/what/how. Just suddenly get a new project with no context. Also, three different bosses in two years because they keep leaving.

Second worst company I've ever worked for.

The worst one involved multiple c-suite executives that would throw objects at employees when they didn't get the answer they wanted. Thankfully I wasn't under contract there and got out ASAP.

> I don't get tempted to smash the sell button during major dips, I get tempted to smash the buy button.

Same. Not quite dollar-cost averaging, but when I'm confident in the long term outlook of a company, if they dip, I like to buy more.

Just before the COVID lockdowns, I sold everything and went to cash for a month or so. Bought back all my previous positions right about the bottom of the dip. Massive gains on that one... hard to time things that well all the time though.

Edit: One additional thing is that you can't be emotionally invested in the investments. That's just a recipe for poorly thought out choices, and ultimately a disaster

This would be like cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Apple profits from phone sales. The more distribution channels, the more phones they can sell, and more organizations spending the money to advertise iPhones.

If Apple bought a cell carrier, they would be in direct competition with the other carriers. Worst-case, they would likely get dropped from the other's lineups. The less worse case, they wouldn't get advertising/promotion from their competition.

In an app, if you have a string of network requests to your own services, there's no particular point in logging multiple (or any) 'no internet connection' errors. They won't make it to you, and having those doesn't provide much value. That's an end user problem.

I have plenty of monitors to ensure my services are available (four-nines uptime for almost a decade). Internet unavailable errors are useless to log.

Totally agree with finding the source of the bug (there are some that I've spent weeks tracking down, there are millions of people that have my fixed code on their devices).

If you've going to catch an error with a noop, there better be a comment explaining why you're not doing anything. It's not often, but sometimes, failing gracefully is just swallowing the error and moving on.

Having interviewed a number of graduates from code camps, they're definitely just chasing the salary.

Most of them have no actual passion for computing, their scope of knowledge is superficial, and they're asking for six-figure salaries out of the gate.

I had a relatively simple coding assignment (shouldn't take more than 15 minutes) that I would use to weed out those that were just copying and pasting sample code. It required a very large number of values and added an additional profiling step to it. The sample code wasn't performant with a very large number of values, and was painfully slow to use unless you made minor adjustments to a few things.

Worked with Brent for a number of years more than a decade ago. Excellent engineer and all around good person. Congratulations to him on his retirement!

Perhaps consider seeing an upper-cervical (Blair) chiropractor. I know I'm probably going to get dog-piled for mentioning the word since so many people think it's nonsense... a lot of the practices are, but the Blair system is very effective.

My girlfriend at the time told me I needed to try this "new pillow that's the best." I woke up with a kink in my neck and an ear that was screaming at me (2300 Hz for those masochists that want to know what it sounded like).

Took around four years to track it down and get it mostly solved.

The screaming is gone most of the time now, but occasionally I'll move a certain way and it will suddenly come back. A firm press with my thumb in a particular spot on the back/side of my neck for a few seconds will be enough to get it to go away.

So many people complain about the high cost of housing, but the government keeps adding more and more requirements, regulations, and hoops to jump through.

Currently in the process of expanding my non-attached garage, and had to expand power and add a breaker box to it. Was required to include an EV circuit as part of the baseline to reach code. I have zero interest, or need, for an EV circuit in this garage since it's used to house collector muscle cars. Don't want it, don't need it, still have to pay for it just to be able to do the expansion.

(don't get me started on how long and how many back-and-forths the permitting process took)

To be quite frank, “vibe coding” is junk. Don’t know what they’re doing and get poor results.

Spent several hours troubleshooting some support emails yesterday. As it turned out, they were using AI to try to write the code, despite having very clear documentation for how to use our API (never had this many problems in ~15 years of it being available).

Finally figured out what was going on when they sent me a GROK analysis of the problem that was completely wrong. In addition, GROK wouldn’t have had access to the documentation unless they were given credentials. So many levels of trouble with this one.

Doesn't matter if they don't sort other things out. The physical buttons they do add are tied in to the operating system.

My son thought I was crazy when I complained about the window down buttons not registering when I fully pushed them down, and the defrost buttons not working on the first press, until he experienced it a couple of times himself.