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metaphor

4,146 karma · joined September 7, 2015

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metaphor··on Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?
This short essay[1] (with links to 26 translations now...wow!) by CS Prof. Douglas Comer of Purdue helped me find solace when I was struggling with a comparable dilemma.

[1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html

metaphor··on The Verizon iPhone 11 Pro is Locked For 60 days. Buyers are told it is unlocked
I find it humorous that the comments on that post so ardently defend Apple's disclosure fail by citing disjoint Verizon policy and/or brushing off as obscure operator switchology.
metaphor··on Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement [pdf]
This revision was released circa July 2013. According to Wiki[1]:

On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii...

Perhaps this older revision[2] may be more relevant for the time; wasn't successful in discovering a complete revision history of the form.

Leaving it to the lawyer types to diff and discuss.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

[2] https://www.secnav.navy.mil/dusnp/Forms/sf312.pdf

EDIT: As it were, item 5 is still there.

metaphor··on Best Smartphones That Still Have a Headphone Jack
No one likes a quitter. ;-)

They'll have to pry the QWERTY keypad and headphone jack[1] from my cold, dead hands...or stop Android security updates.

[1] https://blackberrymobile.com/us/product/blackberry-key2/

metaphor··on Best Smartphones That Still Have a Headphone Jack
It's ironic how the author chose to omit one of the last viable smartphones with both a headphone jack and QWERTY keypad that still receives regular security updates[1], yet includes one whose headphone pinout deviates from the rest of standardized industry.

[1] https://blackberrymobile.com/us/product/blackberry-key2/

metaphor··on Hubble Reveals Latest Portrait of Saturn
From the image titled The Moons of Saturn (annotated)[1], what relevance do the arrows denoting "North" and "East" have?

I'm genuinely dumbfounded by the concept of cardinal directions in space.

[1] https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1917b/

metaphor··on Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200
Thanks for the reference. I'm not Canadian, but it was very enlightening to browse through and surprisingly well organized.
metaphor··on How Did a Nissan Leaf Beat a Tesla Model S in a Race?
> If anything he Club number is suspiciously low

On a relatively short test course in the hands of legendary racer Keiichi Tsuchiya, the ND[1] was 1.431 seconds slower than the Abarth[2] in best lap time comparison...seems about right when linearly scaling over VIR's length, and given the Abarth's better factory torque and suspension tune.

Otherwise, in general agreement.

[1] https://youtu.be/0bUzzpzmWJU?t=290

[2] https://youtu.be/0bUzzpzmWJU?t=483

metaphor··on Japanese Settlement Found in Forests of British Columbia
The article noted the following:

> But it is the third site, which seems to have transitioned from a logging camp to a thriving village, that fascinates [the archaeology professor] the most.

Must be a real privilege for your grandfather to share that bit of vivid history with you. My grandfather would have been a young adult during WW2, and the small island that both he and I grew up on has a deep history with the Japanese which had a direct impact on its indigenous population; he supposedly spoke fluent Japanese as a consequence, along with Korean (by birth), the indigenous language (married a local), and eventually English (after American occupation). Unfortunately, he was unable to speak coherently by the time I was in my late teens and old enough to be interested, so the only history lessons I've gotten of the time were second hand, passed down from the stories he told my father.

metaphor··on How Did a Nissan Leaf Beat a Tesla Model S in a Race?
To be sure, the C&D reference cites the following:

  RANK CAR (MODEL YEAR)               TIME
  136  Mazda MX-5 Cup Car (2016)      3:06.4
  209  Fiat 124 Spyder Abarth (2017)  3:16.9
  211  Tesla Model S P85D (2015)      3:17.4
  227  Mazda MX-5 Miata Club (2016)   3:20.8
  241  Mazda MX-5 (2006)              3:29.3
A bit unfair to compare the performance of a ND cup car to the P85D even if it does have a sealed 155 HP factory motor. But given the Fiata bested the Tesla by half a second, I'm confident a ND with modest ~$600 suspension upgrade on OE Potenza S001 rubber at VIR would meet the challenge...or maybe even a stock 2019 ND2.
metaphor··on How Did a Nissan Leaf Beat a Tesla Model S in a Race?
They're called berms and yes that's normal. Race cars will have properly tuned dampers and suspension to handle the high frequency oscillations generated when rolling over them. Drivers use the stripes to gauge corner entry, apex, and exit when taking a line.
metaphor··on How Did a Nissan Leaf Beat a Tesla Model S in a Race?
Jump to 30:00[1] for a summary of results. Leaf edged out the Model S by 7.441 seconds. Fastest lap was 1:52.271 by the Leaf; for comparison to more traditional cars[2].

What's strange is all this Model S thermal issue talk, yet the driver posted his fastest lap in the 13th. How can this be explained?

Then there's this remark from the article:

> Clearly, [the Leaf driver] was keeping an eye on the temperatures and adjusting driving accordingly to finish the race before power loss occurred.

...and this[3] depicting the Leaf gauge cluster with 42% remaining at the end of the race. Was the Leaf driver even really trying? His right arm occasionally chilling on the door sill and casual commentary throughout the race was kind of funny.

[1] https://youtu.be/N-9tBPObpHk?t=1800

[2] https://fastestlaps.com/tracks/sugo

[3] https://youtu.be/N-9tBPObpHk?t=1832

metaphor··on Need a USB Cable? Build One
> Actually I'm not sure, I don't know much about the spec...

See the USB 2.0 Cables and Connectors Class Document[1], in particular, 4.10.7 Test Group '6'.

Why speculate when the USB-IF has made their standards both free and readily accessible?

[1] https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/CabConn20.pdf

metaphor··on Burnout is real – how to avoid it
Z73 appears to be "Problems related to life management difficulty". I presume they meant something more explicit like coding under Z56, "Problems related to employment and unemployment".
metaphor··on Children of a Thailand tribe who see with clarity beneath the waves (2016)
> She did notice, however, that the European kids would experience red eyes, irritated by the salt in the water, whereas the Moken children appeared to have no such problem.
metaphor··on A mosque rebuilt once a year
> La Crépissage is the one day of the year that women are allowed to enter the mosque...

Is this practice generally considered normative in the Muslim community?

For 5 years, I lived within walking distance of the largest mosque in my city and it never once struck me that this was a thing.

metaphor··on HDMI Capture and Analysis FPGA Project (2015)
@walterbell submitted this, so intuition tells me I should be paying attention, but all I read is someone struggling with single-link digital video implementation on a FPGA and a sponsored advertisement for a tool that doesn't quite make sense in context.

I think I may have had one too many drinks tonight. Did I miss something?

metaphor··on Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?
> That the higher up the org chart someone is the busier they are. So what you spend 40 hours a week thinking about they might not spend 45 minutes thinking about.

Respectfully, that's a proverbial crock of trite bullshit perpetuated to game the naive/inexperienced.

If the next level above me couldn't spend at least 45 minutes thinking about the general problem I've been trying to solve in the past week, then that person:

a.) is stretched way too thin (which should be pretty obvious); or

b.) seriously needs to GTFO for the sake of the rest of the team.

P.S. As a de facto (not even official) technical lead on a US$3mil+ project that I've been assigned to, I spend at least 45 minutes a week sitting on a toilet bowl thinking of ways to improve the performance of my team while literally taking a shit. What's your project manager's excuse?

metaphor··on SVG Icons Using MIT License
How would you differentiate content from code when the thing in question is as meta as SVG?
metaphor··on Reddit AMA: I'm a Former Amazon Fulfillment Center Employee
> Why does Amazon not put more bathrooms in the warehouses, so it doesnt take 10 minutes just to walk there and back?

Not my industry, but I wonder if building code requirements for contracted facilities construction has anything to do with this. Would be interesting to hear perspective of civil engineers on this, in particular, those involved with standing up fulfillment centers.

For example, a few observations from the 2017 Florida Building Code[1]:

Minimum 1 lavatory per 100 and 1 drinking fountain per 1,000 in occupancies classified for storage (per Table 2902.1). Natural inquiry that arises in my mind is what the specified occupancy of the fulfillment center in question is.

In occupancies other than malls, lavatories normally located not more than 1 story above/below the target space, path of travel not to exceed 500 feet (per 2902.3.2). However, there's a possible exception for factory and industrial occupancies which allow this requirement to be waived with approval. I wonder if Amazon has pursued this exemption when contracting the construction of their fulfillment centers.

[1] https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/FBC2017/chapter-29-plumbin...

metaphor··on Court rules against Oracle in Pentagon 'war cloud' litigation
> GovCloud is AWS and Azure right?

Nope[1].

[1] https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/#/product/aws-govcloud/versu...

metaphor··on Court rules against Oracle in Pentagon 'war cloud' litigation
Not defending Oracle, but in government contracting, it's par for the course and happens a lot more than you might expect. Given the magnitude of this contract and its single award nature, I would be even more surprised if no one protested.
metaphor··on Court rules against Oracle in Pentagon 'war cloud' litigation
This article sure did a shitty, non-existent attempt at citing its references.

From the cow's mouth, here's the original JEDI Cloud solicitation[1]--which includes the latest amended SOO[2] and Oracle's pre-award protest[3]--and the actual court order[4].

Doesn't seem like anyone is really talking about it either, but it's worth noting that this isn't some gratuitous "here's $10B, we're locking ourselves in for the next decade, go buck wild" ordeal. This ID/IQ contract has a 2-year base with 3-, 3-, and 2-year options for the remaining years, and a maximum $10B cap iff the government exercises all options.

Here's to hoping the government doesn't royally screw themselves over by dropping the ball on CDRLs A007 and A014.

[1] https://www.fbo.gov/index.php?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=386...

[2] https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=845d0652768ef4a4749231d39a...

[3] https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=6cd8017d52d2b832855c41fb74...

[4] https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2018cv...

metaphor··on Court rules against Oracle in Pentagon 'war cloud' litigation
> In any case, this is commercial litigation. Not protesting per se.

By this, what were you referring to?

metaphor··on There’s more than one way to write an IP address
> IPv4 addresses are also syntactically valid host names.

Curious...from the philosophical intent supporting the normative language[1] (my emphasis added):

However, a valid host name can never have the dotted-decimal form #.#.#.#, since at least the highest-level component label will be alphabetic.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#page-13

metaphor··on Let's build a circuit that displays an image on a VGA monitor [video]
Except they're not. He's using 74161 counters; that's a MSI device, not just primitive combinatorial logic and flip flops.
metaphor··on FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches
This line caught my attention:

> The FBI said its system is 86 percent accurate at finding the right person if a search is able to generate a list of 50 possible matches, according to the GAO. But the FBI has not tested its system’s accuracy under conditions that are closer to normal, such as when a facial search returns only a few possible matches.

What the GAO study[1] actually said:

> However, we found that the tests were limited because they did not include all possible candidate list sizes and did not specify how often incorrect matches were returned. ... The FBI’s detection rate requirement for face recognition searches at the time stated that when the person exists in the database, NGI-IPS shall return a match of this person at least 85 percent of the time. However, we found that the FBI only tested this requirement with a candidate list of 50 potential matches. In these tests, 86 percent of the time, a match to a person in the database was correctly returned. The FBI had not assessed accuracy when users requested a list of 2 to 49 matches.

According to FBI, a smaller list would likely lower the accuracy of the searches as the smaller list may not contain the likely match that would be present in the larger list.

In other words, their acceptance test procedure was gamed from the beginning.

[1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/699489.pdf

metaphor··on Tesla loses three vice presidents in a week
You've missed the point. I believe the parent is talking about a 7th generation platform with a fundamental design flaw, not weather seal degradation. Price of the vehicle is completely irrelevant, but to be sure, these types of problems exist in just about every exotic on the market.
metaphor··on Senate passes bill to decrease grid digitization, move toward manual control
There exists a very distinct line between routine/exercise and war.

You may have missed the opportunity to experience this distinction first hand, but I can assure you with the utmost confidence, the meta does indeed change.

metaphor··on American Suburbs Swell Again as a New Generation Escapes the City
> ...3-400k can buy a house in extremely nice areas in flyover states, why not find a nice one, buy that and live relaxed?

Although the general sentiment is agreeable, there's nothing relaxed about maintaining a $400k home. I like to think of it as a different class of stress that's decoupled from work that pays the bills.

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