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mwfj

3,309 karma · joined March 2, 2012

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mwfj··on Files Are Hard
No offense (I have no idea who you are and how much you know), but...

Do you feel you are you competent enough (in e.g. SMTP and MIME) to distinguish between MIME-encoded base64 inline images (super rare) and references to images on external web sites (a lot more common)? Which in the case of old web sites are quite likely to stop working if you revisit old mails.

Did you make the effort to verify that it was the first type when you witnessed this?

mwfj··on Files Are Hard
It is certainly the google service that I use the most. In a decade of quite heavy usage I remember one outage of a 1-2 hours (with no data loss). To me this is the gold standard that the rest of us should aspire to. :)
mwfj··on Theremin’s Bug: How the Soviet Union Spied on the US Embassy for 7 Years
This article that is linked from there is quite fascinating to read:

http://www.moogmusic.com/legacy/pulling-music-out-thin-air-i...

mwfj··on How Azure scaled to 2,000 employees on GitHub
And they even named their product in a way so that people could understand what it is about! That is so unlike them!
mwfj··on How a little bit of TCP knowledge is essential
This can be generalised. It is also one of my favorite ways of doing developer interviews. Do they have a working/in-depth knowledge of what keeps the inter webs running? So many people have never ventured out of their main competence bubble, and that bubble can be quite small (but focused, I suppose).

For all I know, they believe everything is kept together with the help of magic. I guess I don't trust people who don't have a natural urge to understand at least the most basic things of our foundations.

mwfj··on Things I wish they told you about Emacs
It is possible to use something for a long time and still be aware of its shortcomings.

(I have been using emacs since 1996.)

mwfj··on Things I wish they told you about Emacs
Emacs is nice. But it's also a fractal of bad usability design. :/
mwfj··on 507 Mechanical Movements (1868)
The title reminds me a lot of the Elektor series of electronics books from the 80s - "301 circuits - practical circuits for the home constructor".

Probably mostly familiar to Europeans....

mwfj··on Microsoft BASIC for 6502 – Original Source Code (1978)
You know, in case you are working on any competing BASIC for some hot new microcomputer coming into the market later this year.
mwfj··on PlayStation 4 Tops One Million Units in First Day
iPhone models have a lifespan of 1 year. Game console models have a life span of 6-7 years.
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