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maxidog

1,111 karma · joined July 15, 2012

http://locometric.com
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maxidog··on Can gzip be a language model?
Did you check MiMo correctly performed this unfamiliar task before posting this comment?
maxidog··on The Beauty of Roundabouts
I have no idea what this means but I love it!
maxidog··on It's OK to hardcode feature flags (2025)
I’m currently reverse engineering a large enterprise app and the feature flag bloat is truly astounding. Imho excessive feature flag complexity is a symptom of management who are indecisive and mistrusted by the developers.
maxidog··on Long division verified via Hoare logic
Lol, thanks for that, was worried I was being too negative!
maxidog··on Long division verified via Hoare logic
I studied “computation” at Oxford 92-95 while CAR Hoare was still there and basically all they taught us about computers were these formal methods. They actually thought it would revolutionise programming and looked down at anything else as “hand-waving”. Think the syllabus was abandoned only a few years later thank goodness.
maxidog··on Apple TV 4K Gets A12 Bionic
Actually it goes straight back to the Apple TV remote without having to unlock. Not sure what the time limit is but it works after the device has gone to sleep and otherwise locked itself.
maxidog··on How Covid brought the future back
6% return peak bubble to peak bubble is in no way reassuring.
maxidog··on The Quantum Origin of Time
Am I unusual in being constantly surprised when people assume time's arrow in everyday conversation? I can never quite accept the sheer oddness and asymmetry of it.
maxidog··on Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development
Nope, that really was the end of the story.
maxidog··on Bringing SSD Performance to the DIMM form factor
Yes, it works for writes and support is built-in to current processors. It's faster than conventional file access.
maxidog··on Bringing SSD Performance to the DIMM form factor
Is that fundamentally different from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_file ?
maxidog··on Neutralizing the iOS camera click sound through active sound cancellation
Especially weird considering the hack is totally unnecessary. You can take a picture without making a shutter sound using AVFoundation.
maxidog··on Just Tap Your Phone On Every Wall and This App Will Draw a Floorplan
Gizmodo says this uses GPS but there's no way that's accurate enough, is there?
maxidog··on Malcolm Gladwell's Reponse to the Culturalism Post
What a pros-and-cons evaluation of a culture misses is that cultures are "self-modifying code", with the weakest attributes constantly being revised. Few cultures are modernising as quickly as Korean. After all, Korean Air decided that Korean Air had a problem.

Where this process of introspection and change falls down is with expats and their children, who have detailed knowledge of and an exaggerated respect for the culture they left behind but are unable to play a role in changing it. Culture becomes a museum exhibit to these people. (I would be surprised if 'The Korean' lives in Korea.) As someone who knows lots of Koreans but few Korean Americans, I can say that after a few bottles of soju and speaking their native language, nobody is more aware of and passionate about resolving the problems in their own culture than a Korean.

maxidog··on Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole
I was 99% sure our advisors had screwed us before they came in with the 20% lower offer.
maxidog··on Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole
When I sold my company, our own advisers (not Goldman but a famous name) did something which in my opinion is much worse -- I'm 99% sure they told the winning bidder that we'd been prepared to accept a 20% lower bid from their competitor. The winning bidder, of course, then suddenly reduced their bid by 20% on the planned day of completion. The reason our advisers did this is that it was much more important to them to get future business from the buyer, a large multinational, than future business from me and my colleagues.

I feel sorry for the vendors in this case, but you don't do an all-share deal without being extremely cautious about the shares you're taking as payment. Even a pair of PhDs should have known that.

What interests me here is that we have a lot of news stories floating around at the moment lambasting financial companies for relatively minor misdeeds, because that's all journalists can pin on them without getting sued. If the real truth about what goes on begins to leak out the public reaction could be very interesting.