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matthias509

166 karma · joined December 2, 2020

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matthias509··on Octopuses, crabs and lobsters recognised as sentient beings under UK law (2021)
Why? Lots of sentient animals kill sentient animals of a different species. Why should humans be different?
matthias509··on Firefighters forced to smash window of driverless Cruise taxi to stop it
One reason carjacking is rare is because people don't foolishly stop for obvious carjackings. If an autonomous car has trouble telling the difference between a carjacker and a construction worker, then it will be much more likely to get carjacked.
matthias509··on Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
I think it’s more like removing captain from a giant ocean going freighter. Everything will be fine till one day it runs aground or hits an iceberg.
matthias509··on The case against CS master’s degrees
My personal experience is that I was paid by my university to get my master's degree in the late 90's. Since I was a teaching assistant for an entry level programming class (in Java at the time). I got a tuition waiver and a stipend which was enough to cover my living expenses.

One surprising benefit was that re-learning the intro stuff well enough so I could teach it crystalized my understanding of some fundamental concepts like the difference between the stack and the heap which I kinda glossed over my first time through.

At the other end of the continuum, I was able to gain a level of skill in parallel and distributed programming and network programming much deeper than undergrad.

Was it worth it? For the price of $0 and 2 years, yes. If I was paying full price, not sure.

And do those who say the degree erodes, fundamental concepts endure. A race condition is still a race condition and a socket is still a socket even all these years later.

matthias509··on The computers are fast, but you don't know it
I’m guessing you are thinking of cache lines where CPUs will read/write data in 64 byte chunks from memory to/from cache.

As you said, being aware of this lets you optimize away cache misses by controlling the memory access pattern.

matthias509··on Apple Could Kill CAPTCHAs with Private Access Tokens
It is not true that Apple will know what web sites were visited. The article states “the device manufacturer or attester only knows the minimum amount of device data required for attestation. It doesn't know the destination URL or the user's IP address.”
matthias509··on Google Will Eat Itself (2005)
You can try HERE WeGo. Add free and you can download maps for use offline.

Disclaimer: I work for HERE Technologies.

matthias509··on Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study
Also, choking people get bruises to the abdomen when someone performs the Heimlich maneuver on them, and people with cancer get pumped full of chemicals which just about kill them. That treatments also cause harm is pretty normal in medicine.
matthias509··on Regular blood donations can reduce “forever chemicals” in the bloodstream: study
So your solution is what? Don't donate blood or plasma? Have only humans who aren't exposed to PFAS done blood or plasma (which don't exist anyway)?
matthias509··on Amazon worker chat app to ban words such as “union”, “pay raise”, “slave labor”
High salaries for tech workers are not a new phenomenon. So if programming were truly a skill a large number of people could just “pick up”, it would have happened already.
matthias509··on The Future of Kubernetes
We use Ephemeral Inline Volumes backed by LVMs on a local ssd. TopoLVM can make this trick possible.
matthias509··on Frawk: A fast, JITted, statically-typed AWK written in Rust
> I'm talking about the proliferation of DSLs like Awk in the world of Unix

I get that there is a learning curve for Unix. However, a complaint about a "proliferation" in the context of a tool which is decades old seems a bit off. The response here of "just install Python" doesn't work for $random_unix for a variety of reasons. Such reasons include lack of root access or business rules which prevent modification (such as for a production system where you do have root access).

> Python can be substituted with another Turing-complete language. Why not just use libraries and abbreviate them for command line use?

This suggests that we take a tool such as awk which is decades old, stable and efficient and replace it with an equivalent implementation based on an interpreted language. This process would take years to complete and then would end up with a tool which consumes more resources and is slower than the original. I don't see the payoff here.

matthias509··on Dllicious – shared object usage analysis on Linux
Imagine the other extreme where every single executable on the system statically linked libc. Assuming libc calls are pretty common(which I think is safe) I would expect the cache to get trashed.
matthias509··on Dllicious – shared object usage analysis on Linux
Saving disk space isn’t nearly as exciting as saving CPU cache space which is much more precious. That means that something like libc will almost always be in cache from something calling it.
matthias509··on Farming Co. Says John Deere Is Monopolizing Repair Market
All the implements which farmers use, planters cultivators, etc have gotten larger over the years as the scale of farms have grown. A 40 year old tractor likely isn’t going to have the horsepower to work with these new implements. Also, the old tractor is likely to lack a cab which could mean no climate control for you.

Both of these would be serious issues for operating a modern, large scale farming operation.

matthias509··on Order your rapid tests from the USPS (US only)
There are a few news stories out there indicating that because Omicron grows better in the throat that also swabbing the throat helps reduce false negatives. Though the official word would be to not do this since the tests were officially only developed tested with nasal swabbing.
matthias509··on John Deere unveils fully autonomous 8R tractor
Case International Harvester https://www.caseih.com is also a big player.
matthias509··on John Deere unveils fully autonomous 8R tractor
Not a farmer but worked on one growing up and my in-laws farm several thousand acres. The existence of a competitor to JD is one thing, the distance from farm to dealer is another. If the competitor dealership is 75 miles away and JD is 20 miles away that can be a major factor.

Being able to get service in the field quickly is critical during planting or harvest. During these times downtime can be exceedingly expensive if the farmer is trying to beat some change in weather.

And sure you could try and get someone other than the dealer to work on it, if you can find them. But trying to find this person when your equipment is broken and you are burning money isn’t a great option and the dealer will probably favor servicing clients who bought equipment from them.

matthias509··on Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories
I’m still rocking my aluminum hardtail Trek I bought in college 25 years ago with the (gasp) three front derailleurs and the Rockshox Judy front fork. I had no idea that the tech had changed that much since I don’t ride seriously any more.
matthias509··on Reporter may be prosecuted for using “view source”
This is saying that someone is hacking if they read text in a pdf which was “redacted” by changing the style of the text to be black text on a black background.
matthias509··on How Python List Works
One point which I think bears mentioning with respect to performance is that even with O(1) access, the performance in the real world of a list implemented by a list of pointers vs a contiguous block of memory will be very different. This is because programs often iterate over lists and a list implemented by a contiguous block of ram will have MUCH better cache locality.

AFAIK, this unfortunately wouldn’t be possible to implement in Python though because I don’t think there would be any way to know how much space to allocate for each item in the list.

matthias509··on Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
Mosaic release date maybe? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser)
matthias509··on Ask HN: How to learn proper systems programming?
Another interesting rabbit hole to explore is the compiler. Back in the day I wrote a toy compiler for a college course and used this text book: "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools". a.ka. "The Dragon book", but I would look at some of the other books here like "Modern Operating Systems" before this.
matthias509··on My thoughts about the Principal role
This. If I’m not helping junior devs get their work done, I am failing as a PE.
matthias509··on My thoughts about the Principal role
So don’t let yourself get removed completely from the deliverables. Keep in there. Take some tickets off the queue and work them so your skills stay sharp. If you are worth your salt, this contribution will be noticed by other ICs on the team and your boss. Just realize that the IC role isn’t primary for you. Provide useful feedback in reviews to keep dumb stuff from happening. Make sure your team is working on the right things.

And yes, the PE contribution is harder to measure and the risk is there that others won’t see it. If you aren’t comfortable with that risk, then don’t go for the PE role.

Which is OK! It doesn’t have to be “up or out”. For me PE is as high as I want to go. I have no desire to deal with the stress and risk of moving up past PE.

I’ve also intentionally moved from a PE at my precious job back to being 100% IC in my current company and then a few years later back to PE where I am now. I did that to build up a slightly different, more marketable skill set.

matthias509··on The problem with ‘follow your dream’
> Most children aren't data-driven.

Most people aren’t data-driven.

Parents, teachers, guidance counselors etc are also part of the problem.

matthias509··on My thoughts about the Principal role
This is a fine line for me as a PE. It is good to help the team grow. However, I like to do the PoC sometimes so that I can keep my skills sharp and my opinions grounded in reality.

If I just sit in my ivory tower dishing out advice, the advice will eventually become useless.

matthias509··on My thoughts about the Principal role
I am in a PE role right now and I 100% agree that the PE is the hub. I like that. I see my role as being a catalyst. I make things move along faster and more efficiently. I like seeing growth in others on the team.

Also, it’s ok if you don’t like that. If you would rather just be in there getting your hands dirty solving that one hard problem with no interruptions, then I think you should do that. You’ll be happier. Probably the increase in happiness is worth it even if you have to “pay” for it with a slightly reduced salary.

matthias509··on Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction (2019)
One of the things I’ve done with my children to help them develop interests not based on immediate internet gratification is to not give them cell phones till high school.

I view cell phones as just too addictive for young children. This has given them the opportunity to cultivate all sorts of interests like books, legos, playing outside, etc. I’m not saying that cultivating these interests is impossible in the world of tech, but it’s even harder for children to resist tech than it is for adults.

matthias509··on New study detects lottery-like behavior in cryptocurrency markets
So high tech crypto is the solution to making trading with the developing world easier? Aren’t these the same sorts of places which struggle to have reliable electricity, let alone internet access?
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