metaphor

All of the above; being a mid-career IC/TL with visibility into actual outcomes in prod has organically matured a deep respect for boring technology---warts and all---especially when cumulative NRE is well into 10-digit territory.

I'll be glad when legacy support hits EOL though, if only for the indirect consequence of unambiguously seperating wheat from chaff as we embrace a new tech stack approaching stability. Although it isn't the case, it sure has felt like we've been operating like cost center baggage these past few years.

> With seven rooms photographed so far, my repo right now is 53 GB, since I'm storing all of the photos that go into each focus-stack, as well as the raw (xcf) versions of each shot so that I can edit and color-correct without repeated JPEG compression.

I wonder how the author manages this bloat if he has to pivot to a different workstation. LFS enabled in his GitLab instance? Shallow clone? Just swallow whole??

We still operate hundreds of legacy (2nd and 3rd gen) systems with Alpha hosts running OpenVMS in airgapped prod environments across the country.

The portfolio of apps we developed/maintain for these legacy systems have all been ported to their modern replacement systems years ago, but we still regularly release updates targeting legacy that maintain feature parity with modern releases.

> Sounds like Bartell's in the Seattle area.

To be sure, Bartell's is a subsidiary of Rite Aid.

Yes, keyword hopefully...over some indeterminate time horizon...but surely not a mere 6 months after emergence from a legal proceeding that took a year to resolve.

Commodified OTCs are hardly raking in compelling margins relative to filling scripts, so it's unsurprising that some Rite Aids are operating as the parent reports.

> I have two pharmacies in my town, but they're both owned by RiteAid which can't keep inventory on the shelves.

Rite Aid filed chapter 11 bankruptcy almost 2 years ago.

> In the USA, the egg shortage is primarily due to bird flu, which led to the culling of over 40 million birds last year.

So that's, what, roughly 10-15% of egg-laying birds across the country? It takes less than 6 months for a chick to mature to egg-laying hen.

This source[1] asserts per-capita egg consumption was already realizing proportional decline for years since 2020 peak.

The real game[2] being played has a distinct smell.

[1] https://unitedegg.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/UEP_Website...

[2] https://doi.org/10.7275/cbv0-gv07

> Nope. The lightning current won't go through the battery, it'll just melt the conductors in the charging cable.

This strikes me as a direct consequence of galvanic isolation provided by isolation link stage in prevailing architectures, something the article proposes to eliminate.

I'm struggling to imagine how a magnitude of surge energy sufficient to "melt the conductors in the charging cable" while directly coupled to a charger and without galvanic isolation leaves an EV's battery unscathed in such an event. What exactly isolates/protects the battery again?

Lightning strikes...how do EVs currently guard against it?

- With galvanic isolation baked directly into onboard charger, I'm thinking worst case outcome is charging infra and isolation link get fried, but that really expensive EV battery remains safe.

- Without galvanic isolation, battery goes...boom? Hopefully without you or your family waiting inside the vehicle under some false pretense of safety.

Yes, let's point to an industry with arguably the lowest barrier to entry as basis of good faith comparison to implicitly deny the existence of consolidation[1]. /s

[1] https://i.insider.com/5d0b8e5f638af2560c013925

> 281% increase in total staff

Nit: 181% increase

I do wonder what percentage of said "staff" are really just students working to fulfill student responsibility[1] for pennies on the dollar.

[1] https://financialaid.stanford.edu/undergrad/how/student.html

> A well designed embedded systems based on microcontrollers can be very reliable.

The objective measure of what qualifies as "well designed embedded systems" is inherently gray; and where industries have seen some semblance of consensus as a matter of unconditional need, it has always been accompanied with the tears of executives complaining of non-trivial expense.

> Electronics can certainly be made to have appliance-like reliability and consistency.

To be sure, when measured against prevailing market trends, this is objectively not a good thing. For safety-critical systems like a vehicle's brakes, I fully expect much more than the superficial considerations I would normally give to appliances.

That's a significant low ball estimate relative to BLS statistics[1], which pins national median annual wage (circa May 2023 dataset) at $137,380.

For the DC locality specifically, median annual wage is $170,350 with a location quotient of 3.5 (!!)[2].

To be sure, this is just base wage, which explicitly excludes things like holiday premiums, weekend premiums, overtime, shift differentials, bonuses, etc.

This also doesn't include that oh-so-sweet defined benefit pension. The most ambitious civil service employees absolutely love gaming the shit out of this by lateral transfer to a high cost of living locality (e.g. DC metro area) for the last 3 years before retiring (at age 56) and moving to relatively low cost of living areas (e.g. Florida).

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes532021.htm

[2] The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration.

> Assuming it is accurate...

Why assume with some random .com TLD source when authoritative data is both public[1] and direct from the cow's mouth?

[1] https://www.faa.gov/jobs/working_here/benefits#collapse5386

> If he had the game to do over again with today’s technology, Mr. Rotberg said, he would change it even more: instead of a monochrome display, a color vector display could be used, and newer microprocessors and cheaper memory could add realism and complexity.

Considering this article was published in 2022, this design mindset just feels...well, twenty years outdated (alongside N64 discontinuation circa 2002)?

Hadn't even thought about until now, but the initial distribution pivot from carts to optical media must have really changed how the proverbial game was played on both development and business fronts.

EDIT: Just noticed that the article was originally published in 1982...missed that context cue.

> This article was first published as "Battlezone: war in 3-D." It appeared in the December 1982 issue of IEEE Spectrum as part of a special report, “Video games: The electronic big bang.”

> This ∞-shaped curve is called a 'leminscate', and ϖ is called the 'lemniscate constant'. I'll show you the leminiscate in my next post.

Two of these...do not belong?

Estimated reading time: 134–170 minutes

Definitely not a casual Monday evening digest.

Critical reading: 222 multiteam systems

Blindly decomposing the buzzword:

- team := at least 2 individuals

- multiteam := at least 2 teams

That's a naive implied floor of 888 individuals in context.

It isn't difficult to infer that the Alabama installation in question is Maxwell AFB. But where on Maxwell AFB can one realistically find a high concentration of captains? Squadron Officer School[1].

Reasonable? Sure; I think the authors very easily pass the sniff test here.

[1] https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/SOS/

I can see your attempts to generalize, i.e.

  Acquisition := Most useful when we're studying
  Application := Most useful when we're working
  Cognition := Theoretical knowledge
  Action := Practical steps

...but in my mind, the older quadrant labels were immediately insightful at a glance.

Glad to learn that you've given your system a discoverable name though; for years since that PyCon presentation, I've informally recalled it as "the idea by that Django documentation guy".

Take a look at the Hugo Novella shortlist authors associated with Tor from 2016 to present[1].

I poke at this specifically because Hugo shortlist authors---with the lesser Novella Award serving as gateway---tend to generate exceptional sales figures relative to their peers, and Tor authors have had a statistically overwhelming shortlist presence over the past decade.

Filtering on non-female authors:

- Dexter Gabriel (P. Djeli Clark) wrote three unrelated novellas, all of which were shortlisted. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 was a warmup to his Nebula-winning novel A Master of Djinn. Arguably the most notable example, but doesn't quite fit the implicit business strategy I was alluding to...more like take random novella shots and further develop the thing that sticks, as opposed to committing two novellas to a strategic theme while reserving the option to follow up.

- Victor LaValle got a lot of attention across the board with his novella nomination, but jumped ship to a Penguin Random House imprint for his breakout novel The Changeling that was produced into a television series for Apple TV+.

- Kai Ashante Wilson wrote two related LGBT romantasy novellas; one was shortlisted. Sales clearly just wasn't there.

- Daniel Polansky...doesn't have a wiki page. Nomination was for a single standalone fantasy novella.

- Neon Yang and Nino Cipri identify as "they". Both were nominated for LGBT fantasy novellas; the former's Tensorate appears to have hit better sales metrics relative to the latter's LitenVerse.

- Adrian Tchaikovsky was already a reputable science fiction author riding on laurels, so doesn't fit the implicit business strategy; his nomination struck me as more "traditional".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novella#Wi...

Teixcalaan earned two Hugos for Weller in short order; of course people have heard of it.

However, it shouldn't be surprising that it's little known to the type of crowd that Murderbot Diaries is likely to appeal to...perhaps even more so when audiobook is the preferred consumption format for such short novellas as many commenters here have expressed.

If it's a masterclass in anything, it's proven to be a low-risk, revenue-generating productization formula with options that I've noticed Tor has leaned heavily into for roughly the past decade, e.g. Seanan McGuire, Becky Chambers, Ursula Vernon, Nghi Vo.

I found it effortless to go along with the idea of a gender-ambiguous construct antihero throughout All Systems Red, but trying to carry the consistency of that descriptive ambiguity after a certain point in Artificial Condition required way too much squinting by my mind's eye.

Before learning that this[1] was a thing, I honestly would have interpreted your remark in passing as figurative rhetoric.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_Cit...

Relevant context[1] of the underlying meta.

[1] https://technicaeditorial.com/cash-for-citations-the-newest-...

Very noticeable jitter in bicycle front tire too.

> No mention of Peter Watts' Blindsight?

It was a Hugo nominee and actively reprinted under Tor Essentials label; probably doesn't qualify as a book "you may never have heard of"...but to be fair, anything by Andy Weir or Hugh Howey probably shouldn't have made the list either.

So what's stopping them from jumping ship to supposed greener pastures in Edmonds[1][2]?

That a IAM union machinist would even consider a voluntary career pivot to the retail antithesis of "Buy Union-Made & American-Made products" because of a window sign says a lot...no exaggeration necessary.

[1] https://harbor-freight-tools.careerarc.com/job-listings/harb...

[2] https://harbor-freight-tools.careerarc.com/job-listings/harb...