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pdubs

377 karma · joined August 25, 2011

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pdubs··on SQL Join Types Explained in Visuals
I've only used them while using certain frameworks to dynamically generate queries referencing multiple tables. They end up getting turned into an implicit inner join though. The following queries are equivalent.

  SELECT a.*, b.*
  FROM a CROSS JOIN b
  WHERE a.id = b.a_id
  
  SELECT a.*, b.*
  FROM a, b
  WHERE a.id = b.a_id

  SELECT a.*, b.*
  FROM a INNER JOIN b ON a.id = b.a_id
IIRC .NET's Entity Framework will (or at least used to) generate queries similar to this as well.
pdubs··on Factorio 1.1 is getting close
I mean yes, but also no. I was skeptical that I could get into the game after reading about it, but I played the free demo [1] and got hooked. After "beating" it about 80 hours in I've lost a bit of interest because it seemed a bit more like work than play to really scale things, but the 80 hours of enjoyment was worth it. Might come back to it at some point and try to make a megabase or try some mods.

[1] https://factorio.com/download

pdubs··on Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates
Carbon tax
pdubs··on The Fall of Eclipse (2016)
JetBrains does a pretty good job making this a bit less painful. They have a license server you install that dishes out floating licenses to IDEs. Floating licenses are released after 2-3 days, so if someone isn't using the product it doesn't consume a license.
pdubs··on RethinkDB needs a new home
The main issue is that most companies won't spend the time or money to do a full legal analysis and simply don't allow AGPL to be used in projects.
pdubs··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2015)
JAMF Software | Minneapolis, MN or Eau Claire, WI | Onsite

Software Engineer (all levels)

QA/Test Automation Engineer

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/jobs/openings/

We help organizations succeed with Apple! We're looking for software engineers with Java and/or iOS experience to help build the Casper Suite, a leading Mac OS and iOS management solution. At JAMF Software we work hard to turn great ideas into great products and services for our customers. And we have always been devoted to providing the best customer experience. Our team brings passion and dedication to this mission, and we seek out these characteristics in people looking to join us. Together, there's no telling what we can accomplish as we continue to provide our customers with best-of-breed OS X and iOS management software–software that has become the foundation for transforming education and business.

pdubs··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2015)
JAMF Software | Minneapolis, MN or Eau Claire, WI | Onsite

Software Engineer (all levels)

http://www.jamfsoftware.com/jobs/openings/

We help organizations succeed with Apple! We're looking for software engineers with Java and/or iOS experience to help build the Casper Suite, a leading Mac OS and iOS management solution.

At JAMF Software we work hard to turn great ideas into great products and services for our customers. And we have always been devoted to providing the best customer experience. Our team brings passion and dedication to this mission, and we seek out these characteristics in people looking to join us. Together, there's no telling what we can accomplish as we continue to provide our customers with best-of-breed OS X and iOS management software–software that has become the foundation for transforming education and business.

pdubs··on IE Web Development Support Moving to Stack Overflow
25GB of (I'm guessing) LZMA compressed text. That'll expand to a bit bigger than 25GB.
pdubs··on Uber protest gridlocks London
"Despite the protest Uber said it had seen the number of people downloading its app increase by 850% compared to last Wednesday."

Uber gets some free publicity it seems.

pdubs··on Programming Language Breakdown for the HealthCare.gov Website
Most if it is in Java, which is pretty verbose in comparison to many languages.
pdubs··on Apple set to get Beats in $3.2B deal
Sony MDR-V6/MDR-7506 http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-150-over-ear-headp...
pdubs··on Amazon Snags Older HBO Shows For Web Streaming
Too bad there's no first-party app for hardware-accelerated 1080p/DD5.1 streaming on Windows like there is for Netflix and Hulu...
pdubs··on Researchers recover typed text using audio recording of keystrokes (2005)
Some of the previous work on this involving timing attacks against SSH [1] is particularly interesting because it's so obvious in retrospect, but no one saw it when SSH was being designed.

[1]http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/ssh-use01.pdf

pdubs··on I don't want to be a Real Programmer
Never more relevant... http://xkcd.com/435/
pdubs··on Moto 360
If you look at the difference in surface area between traditional men's/women's models of the same watch [1] there's a pretty massive difference in what you'd be able to do with the space. However, you do see more women wearing men's watches now, so I could see it catching on.

I think they will need to hit a pretty big number for battery life. A "40-hour power reserve" (what most mechanical automatics have) would be a big step towards being taken seriously as a watch instead of a gadget.

[1] http://www.omegawatches.com/collection/seamaster/aqua-terra-...

pdubs··on Blackphone
>(For a humorous take on nation-state threat models, read the hilarious usenix article This World of Ours by James Mickens: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thisworld...)

"Security research is the continual process of discovering your spaceship is a deathtrap" has to be one of the most apt descriptions of security research I've ever heard. What a great read!

pdubs··on Results of the SQL Performance Quiz
No query optimizer would look at this and say "1M rows? Let's group and aggregate before filtering." Not to mention, the question specifically states that a=? would return 100 rows and a=? and b=? would return 10.

Regarding O(1), the first query would be some form of O(n log n) or O(log n) depending on the table/index data structures.

pdubs··on Results of the SQL Performance Quiz
Regarding #5: >That caught me by surprise. Both options “roughly the same” and “depends on the data” got about 25% — the guessing probably.

I don't think it was guessing so much as reasoning that fetching 100 rows (and filtering by value) instead of 10 rows doesn't have significant real-world impact unless the row data is particularly large. I'll admit I didn't think of the out-of-index lookup, but my main thought was 100/1000000 vs 10/1000000 isn't a big deal unless the DB is running on an abacus.

pdubs··on Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion
Unless I'm misreading this decision it merely upholds the FCC's right to classify ISPs as "information services" instead of "telecommunication services" because the Telecommunications Act is a bit fuzzy and leaves a lot up to the FCC. The FCC could decide to reclassify them as telecommunications services due to industry changes and I believe that this case would serve as precedent for them to legally do so.
pdubs··on Newegg Launches $50 Amazon Prime Competitor
Generally AMEX is known for better customer service, but YMMV. AMEX is often seen as a good choice for people looking to build credit because they're often willing to give out a 3x credit limit increase (without a hard credit pull) first 90 days after getting a card, and then every 6 months after that (up to a point and assuming you're using the account and in good standing).
pdubs··on Sony’s 2001 offer from Steve Jobs to run Mac OS on Vaio laptops
The VAIO Z used to fill those requirements. Looks like the VAIO Pro replacement for the Z now has all ULV processors. :(
pdubs··on Mint now lets users keep track of their Bitcoins
If you keep categorizing transaction from, say, checking to credit card or savings to checking as transfers it'll pick up on it after a bit and automatically categorize them.
pdubs··on Use SQL subqueries to count distinct 50x faster
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT ...) is a very different thing. It's counting distinct values of a particular column in a result set and totally not a square peg/round hole situation.
pdubs··on Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down
UMN also allowed some Schedulizer website (now defunct :() to pull their schedules so you could just plug in your courses and search for optimal schedules.
pdubs··on HTC One X and One X+ will not receive KitKat; stuck on Android 4.2 forever
The HTC One S (released at the same time as the One X) didn't get anything past Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. I've taken my money elsewhere.
pdubs··on How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood
>Netflix cooperated with my quest to understand what they internally call "altgenres,"
pdubs··on Personal backup strategies with cloudberry and amazon glacier
I know Crashplan will let you mail them a hard drive for the initial seed. I think other services have this too. The solution posted isn't really much less than Crashplan from what I can see.
pdubs··on SpaceX Successfully Completes First Mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit
>Just makes me sad that they're not publicly traded

I used to think that too, but then I read about Elon's opinion on that and changed my mind. Being privately owned allows them to take huge risks and whether the inevitable catastrophic failure. You can't really do that when you have to be accountable to millions of shareholders and market pressures.

pdubs··on Why You Should Never Use MongoDB
It's not quite what you're asking for, but SQL Server Tuning Advisor will recommend indices. Hell, SSMS recommends a missing index if you display the execution plan for a query. Oracle has a tuning wizard too (though I've no experience with that one).
pdubs··on NSA Files Decoded: What the revelations mean for you
I agree...except that if you select any text it prompts you to tweet it. For readers that compulsively select text as they read (like me), it's infuriating.
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