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ragall

551 karma · joined June 15, 2013

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ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
Indeed, those doing frontend work would not interact with Borg or the SRE tools directly, but they would use Blaze, Critique and all the development toolchain, which is still much above anything available on the open market.
ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
You have no clue what you're talking about.
ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
Angular is not a developer tool, it's a UI framework. Closure might qualify, but it was not a general tool used by the entire company. The developer tools we're talking here are Critique, Blaze, Forge, Sigma, etc...
ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
> GCL is a whole nasty programming language. They came so close with Piccolo and Gmon but still made it not Python.

The GCL designers made several mistakes in its design, but the worse was the lack of a versioning that would make language evolution easier, as well as interoperability between different versions. GCL2 solved some issues, mainly cleaning up the interpreter. Still, BCL is IMNSHO by far the best infra language there is.

ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
> I think the internal web tooling was pretty good compared to anyone but AWS circa 2016 but by 2020 when I left it felt a bit antiquated.

In 2015, the SRE org started project "Prod 2020", with the goal of unifying the SRE stacks and modernizing the web tools. It was quite successful.

If by "web tooling" you mean the tools for producing public-facing HTML services, those were used by a surprisingly small percentage of developers.

> But BCL is still the worst language I've ever used.

I'm an SRE and I think it's quite likely the best infra language I've ever seen.

ragall··on Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs
The process was, as we were informally told during orientation, that "Preview" means some SVP thinks this has a chance of going over the minimum threshold of 200M worldwide users and is willing to put his weight behind that product, and "GA" means the product has gone over that threshold and will be "supported" until it goes back below the threshold at which point competing SVPs will start sharpening their knives, preparing to stick them in the back of the SVP that is currently in charge of the product.
ragall··on US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
Sure, a privacy screen makes things a bit more difficult for surveillance, because the camera would need a line of sight at a low angle, but once the code is known, the attacker can force a fingerprint and input the code.
ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
Reputation is collective prejudice.
ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
I used to think that way when I was young and with plenty of free time. Nowadays I want stability more than anything else and I'm fine with software that's 1 year old. The only problem still present is how to buy a new laptop and have everything work from the beginning.
ragall··on Pizza, pasta, potatoes, protein – how Italian children became so overweight
I vecchi hanno così tanto potere politico ora, al punto tale che stanno facendo chiudere i campi di calcetto degli oratori, lamentandosi del rumore. I bambini non hanno più dove andare all'aperto senza infastidire qualche adulto.
ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
What you call "reputation" is just your prejudice.
ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
> Has it not occurred to you that the job of manager has changed in this time?

Maybe, but that still doesn't answer the question. In my many years working for a FAANG in Europe, almost all good managers were non-US, even in the sister teams on the US side. On the US side, the best managers I've worked with were, with a few exceptions, first generation immigrants from India, Iran, Lebanon or various European countries.

ragall··on Who does Anubis actually stop?
> How big of a deterrent is a millionth of a cent per page going to be? A non-existent one.

In practice, this would seem to be false, according to the admins of said sites.

ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
Rather, you're the one stuck thinking this is about yourself. If you read more attentively, you'd see I carefully phrased my reply to avoid mentioning you.

You say you aren't good at it, but have you ever tried ? I suppose not, so you'll never know if you'd have been good at it. This is not a quality that comes innate, it's something that one must learn and cultivate.

The important thing here is the observation that engineering companies used to be filled with engineers that were both *technically competent* and *willing to become a manager*. That's much rarer nowadays. Why ?

ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
In an organisation made of mature people, some of the highly skilled people would recognise the need for them to become people managers (not Architects), and so the organisation would benefit from managers who were actually competent, having done the work themselves before.

I see complaints about companies not promoting from within their ranks, and choosing MBAs for managers, but the grim reality is that the engineers themselves don't want to step up and grow up.

ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
And furthermore, in the last decades engineers have become infantilized to such a degree that most don't want to learn to be a good manager and prefer to stay Peter Pans for ever. I believe it's an outcome of the 80's and 90's "nerd" culture because, if you ask the elders, it didn't use to be like that in the US, and it's much less prevalent in Europe (but alas that's far from being the center of the software industry).
ragall··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
Upstream developers declaring a release as "stable" isn't sufficient to make it so. Distros and users are the ones who decide what is stable and what isn't.
ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
Your words betray your prejudice, nothing more.
ragall··on US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
That can be helpful only if surveillance cannot film the screen directly, and surveillance relies on the position of the fingers. Given modern 4k cameras it's unlikely the latter can be done but not the former.
ragall··on Monumental solar observatory in New Mexico
It took Charles Ross 50 years to build it.
ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
> Put differently: are you making decisions based on principles that are crafted with the goal of CHANGING the world? Or are you making decisions based on principles that are crafted to NAVIGATE a dynamic, fuzzy, ever-changing world?

Why would the latter be better than the former ?

ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
> The last Codeberg story that popped up here just this week was something about them banning Bitcoin. At that pace you should worry whether you're next.

No. LLMs and blockchain are the same kind of shit.

ragall··on I regret migrating to Codeberg
> The FSF defines four freedoms, and they are all pretty clearly being violated by the no LLM policy.

No they're not. The four freedoms apply only to software licences.

ragall··on US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
There's a problem with that too: it would often force the owner of the phone to input the code when outside a secure environment, so a simple video surveillance could obtain the code.
ragall··on Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models
> but it takes effort and dedication to accomplish that as a customer

Yes, that's true and IMO the main reason why even people with the money end up buying the same bad products: they often don't have the time to learn and form a taste.

ragall··on Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models
* Iron Heart (UK): https://ironheart.co.uk

* Naked and Famous (Canada): https://nakedandfamousdenim.com. They also have a cheaper brand that uses the same Japanese denim but the garments are made in China (https://theunbrandedbrand.com), which is still better than Levi's.

* 3Sixteen (US): https://www.3sixteen.com

* The Flat Head (Japan): https://privateandco.ca/collections/the-flat-head

* SugarCane (Japan): https://sugarcanejeans.com/

* TCB (Japan): https://tcbjeans.myshopify.com/

Most of the Japanese brands are hard to get outside Japan, and flying to Tokyo is often the best way to get one, otherwise you're stuck with buying online but you have to know well what you're doing because Japanese denim is almost always unwashed, meaning it will shrink after use so you really have to know how much higher a size to order so that it will fit you well after 6 months.

ragall··on Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models
> But then why Nike/Adidas/Quicksilver/etc cannot bring back clothes from the 90s?

They can, but people wouldn't want to pay the price. When adjusting for inflation, clothes today are much cheaper than 30 years ago, and the main producers of high-quality cotton (Kazakhstan and Egypt) are having continuous drought problems so the best raw material is even more expensive.

The combination of customer expectation for low prices, and more expensive raw materials, exacerbated by lower production volume, means that very few would be willing to buy. As an example, take a look at the high quality jeans market: there are a few niche companies in Japan, Europe, US and Canada producing jeans at the same level of quality as 50-100 years ago, in some cases the exact same model as, say, a 1950's Levi's. Those jeans start at $200 per pair, but go even up to $400-500 and the manufacturers are barely surviving.

ragall··on 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling
There's no irony. A given name does not constitute a mandate to use it any particular way.
ragall··on Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
Your prejudice knows no bounds.
ragall··on Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
That's not how things work in most countries in Europe: the land registry is the authoritative source, and there are no bearer titles any more.
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