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oldbbsnickname

334 karma · joined October 3, 2023

SJC->ATX

SRE platform engineering and support at scale: Rust, Elixir, Erlang, C, and the usual stack friends

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oldbbsnickname··on Nishinomiya's 1.3 meters tall "Manbow Tunnel"
This is how being 2m tall feels all of the time. :]
oldbbsnickname··on Apple jacks prices to juice profits because $19.3B a quarter isn't enough
Until it's more expensive than premium satellite was, or $200/mo all-in. (Or $300/mo in today's USD.)
oldbbsnickname··on Apple jacks prices to juice profits because $19.3B a quarter isn't enough
Yep. And most US-based actors are still on strike. There's no new content except what's already in the can. Paying more for less.. hell no. Cancel button.
oldbbsnickname··on Safety benefits of roundabouts
Yes, some residential ones are absurd. This one would've been better as a 4-way stop because there's no way to see traffic from all other sides due to the angles and obstructions. https://maps.app.goo.gl/GWoqaxNfVanXLymp6

One went in here where people normally drive 60 mph:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ugnm36mkeHs2zpu7A

On Clark straight through, I would look for approaching traffic from either side or ahead and would cut across the hatched area, mostly maintaining speed. It's honestly better than stop signs or stop lights.

oldbbsnickname··on Safety benefits of roundabouts
Roundabouts for high traffic areas are good. The problem is when they are overused in low traffic areas where they create obstacles to efficient continuous motion, increase pollution, and waste time.

PS: One place that doesn't do proper traffic design (or architecture): Texas. They insist on placing massive concrete dividers everywhere and have camouflaged by wear obstacles in the middle of paths that are injurious to bicyclists. It's nothing like the Netherlands where there aren't many random, dangerous surprises.

oldbbsnickname··on Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results
Must be a different fiefdom. There are pockets that are still techbro. (I wished I hadn't picked said fiefdom.)
oldbbsnickname··on The Luddites Warned Us About Google
I don't understand your question. Co-ops led by other values other than treating customers as the product to exploit. Do you not understand democratic socialism?
oldbbsnickname··on Nix Survival Mode: macOS upgrades won't break Nix anymore
You're providing a synthetic filesystem to every process? If so, that sounds absurd and over-engineered.
oldbbsnickname··on Nix Survival Mode: macOS upgrades won't break Nix anymore
No sale. Too much complexity and too many side-effects.
oldbbsnickname··on Nix Survival Mode: macOS upgrades won't break Nix anymore
Baloney. chroot and execvpe work with mere temporary directories. This is roughly how homebrew does "isolated" builds. You don't need virtualization, but you may want it.
oldbbsnickname··on Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results
Not always. IC7-9 can make ~$800k-$1.2m TC solving tough, uninteresting problems with massive impact. Most ~IC8's come across as total assholes, which might be a requirement in some tech cultures.
oldbbsnickname··on Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results
Technically-adept people are a tiny minority of society, and also a tiny fraction of UHNWIs.
oldbbsnickname··on Meta Reports Third Quarter 2023 Results
They're spending $10B/yr on servers alone without any product or plan for their use. It's a waste of money if there isn't a roadmap, which there still isn't.

EDIT: I work for Meta as an IC6.

oldbbsnickname··on Nix Survival Mode: macOS upgrades won't break Nix anymore
Homebrew is deceptively simplistic in a "worse is better" way, but their management is arrogant, make poor engineering decisions, and causes headaches at scale beyond individual web developers who don't notice the subtleties of system entropy or configuration management. For example, their recipe system doesn't respect local changes and insists on querying their API "cloud" for package metadata. Useful options for package configuration were removed. Parallel downloading and installation doesn't happen. Every invocation of the brew command is slow, having to traverse ruby and bash. It sends telemetry by default. There are a bunch of side-effects that aren't handled. Formula inclusion is decided not by subject matter experts but by "Wikipedia editors" who decide arbitrarily.

Nix solves version and configuration dependency hell problem by allowing multiple versions and configurations of the same package side-by-side. Unfortunately, it also still wants to make system-wide changes on macOS. It also has the "problem" of less wider accessibility because the functional nature is more complex.

PS: I have worked in client platform management and engineering at scale.

oldbbsnickname··on Nix Survival Mode: macOS upgrades won't break Nix anymore
I'd switch to nix package management on macOS if it were completely isolated to a single user, didn't demand use of sudo, creating /nix or other global changes, or running anything as root. Unfortunately, like Homebrew (except with some changes), MacPorts, and Fink, they seem to be set on global system changes that don't scale.
oldbbsnickname··on Judas goat
Jeep N Chrysler, dab nabbit.
oldbbsnickname··on Judas goat
And there are 2 wolf dog hybrids in our building who have the opposite effect on mostly women and children.
oldbbsnickname··on EBCDIC Is Incompatible with GDPR
> "No, I'm sure I'm in your system. Try this other spelling."

Every Turk, Russian, and Serb enters the chat.

Transliteration without deterministic, reversable fidelity sucks.

PS: I have a "normal" given name people spell 4 different ways and surname people spell 3 ways. ]: I always spell them out. Just be glad your last name doesn't have 4 "y"s as their legal American name like a former coworker.

oldbbsnickname··on The Luddites Warned Us About Google
Although the Unabomber also correctly identified systemic problems anti-efficiency, anti-technology, and/or terrorism are absurd, immoral, and untenable reactions to antitrust, profiteering, automation, and/or worker exploitation.

One prescription, although not a panacea, is profit-sharing, worker-owned co-ops of tech workers. Confederations of co-ops by tech trade or area could rival or supplant MAANGs but without the perverse incentives of publicly-traded companies and their defenestration of ethics or mercurial abandonment of valuable employees.

oldbbsnickname··on Lockheed Martin Dark Ice: a quantum magnetometer geopositioning system
Make some assumptions, find the relevant equations, and plug in the numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field

oldbbsnickname··on Stripe founder's "absurd" way of measuring engineer productivity
Many "journalists" (talking head reporters) are business, communications, poli-sci, or equally fluffy majors rather than English and/or journalism majors. And there is no qualification to be a blogger, other than often taking money from sponsors without disclosing it or pitching their own wares as "news".

That's a shame a system of one exam deters people from their dreams. Is there another exam or another path elsewhere?

oldbbsnickname··on Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans
Fox claims it's a better henhouse guard than humans. But of course. Their insurance company isn't an unbiased source.

I'll believe this when there's independent evidence. Also, I want to see evidence to see data for all pilot AI driving products: traffic collisions, injuries per collision, arrive sooner or later than humans, and pedestrian injuries rate.

oldbbsnickname··on Otis: Tropical storm to category 5 hurricane in 24h
2018 Camp Fire survivor enters the chat.

Let me tell you about PSPSes and living on generator for weeks at a time for 4-5x per summer. Home insurance tripled. Bounced to SW TX after 45 years.

oldbbsnickname··on How to run 50% faster without external energy (2020)
Yep. I think I saw these on the TV show "Beyond 2000".
oldbbsnickname··on Gaming Companies Flag 'Highly Skilled Hackers' as Emerging Piracy Threat
The author must've been born in the 00's because nothing before their time exists.
oldbbsnickname··on Gaming Companies Flag 'Highly Skilled Hackers' as Emerging Piracy Threat
Just today? Did the emperor get new clothes?
oldbbsnickname··on Ukraine's American Missiles Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters in Single Operation
And they're $1.5B RUB / $16 m USD each and it takes a long time to make 1.
oldbbsnickname··on Ukraine's American Missiles Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters in Single Operation
Exactly. Reaching net positive attrition and preventing resupply will make it possible to bring the conflict to an eventual conclusion.
oldbbsnickname··on Ukraine's American Missiles Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters in Single Operation
I'm okay with risks created by UXO from cluster submunitions in the precision targeting of Russian bases. Such high-risk systems can be used responsibility which is why for calls for outright bans are myopic.
oldbbsnickname··on Windows CE's final day
Symbol barcode scanner PDAs used to run Windows CE also. IIRC, there was a cheaper PDA-like version with a laser scanner usable instead of the bulky industrial pistol-grip ones. I'm sure UPS or FedEx still use WinCE-based devices to do their job.

I'm curious. Does anyone know what model / OS Amazon fulfillment centers use for their field force handheld devices?

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