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scubaguy

79 karma · joined July 26, 2011

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scubaguy··on Life and Death in a Wuhan Coronavirus ICU
The original article (chinese version)

http://china.caixin.com/2020-02-05/101511802.html

scubaguy··on Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?
Participating in selection bias!
scubaguy··on Strftime's alpha-sorted man page vs. well-meaning people
I would propose that when you create a library, you think of other programmers like web designers think of end users. In addition to simplicity of the API, efficiency of the code, and proper encapsulation, you think, "How can I prevent users of my library from making mistakes?"

It's not an accusation that the author of strftime didn't have this mindset. Rather, it's to say that we should be more mindful of studies on human behaviors against programming APIs.

scubaguy··on Parents in poorer countries devote more time to their kids' homework
You can spend time on homework in many ways: Getting your children to think about problems from different angles; Understanding where they struggle and should spend more time; Understanding where they are fine and let explore on their own; Learning how to set the appropriate guidelines to foster good study habits.

It is amazing how even two kids from the same parents can vary greatly in personality and how they learn. It takes time and energy to find the best way to nurture each child.

Oh yeah, and it feels good too. Remember that time when you spent hours explaining something to your kid and he suddenly got that "Eureka!" look? It's hard to quit that.

scubaguy··on Reading Aloud to Young Children Has Benefits for Behavior and Attention
Off the top of my head

Rosie Revere Engineer and others from the same author

The Fairy Bell Sisters

Magic Treehouse

Junie B Jones

Princess in Black

Ling and Ting series

The Golly Sisters

Sisters (comic book)

Harold and the Purple Crayon

scubaguy··on Why People Dislike Really Smart Leaders

  my family would often chide me for using "big words"...
  The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned...
That sounds terrible. You are not allowed to be yourself around your family. It must've been especially tough for a kid.

However, keep in mind that communication goes both ways. If the way you speak and carry yourself bothers your audience, then you should change the way you speak around them.

As an immigrant, I have thought about this a lot. Changing the way I speak isn't necessarily, as Holden Caulfield calls it, "being a phony". I can speak a completely different language in order to relate my thoughts to different peoples. It's not a stretch to choose different english words to help my partner understand me.

scubaguy··on XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available
"Who uses touch screens for development?"

I do! While the kids were watching TV, I was sitting next to them coding a personal project. As I was scrolling through documentation on the web, sometimes it was just easier to use the touch screen than to use the trackpad. I remember thinking to myself, "Whoa, I didn't think I'd use the touchscreen on this laptop".

If I had my quiet space with an actual keyboard and a mouse, I would not use the touch screen. But I no longer have that luxury and I found myself appreciating the touchscreen on my laptop.

scubaguy··on Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power
Do you have data that backs that cleanup is inarguably expensive? This article, which more concrete, suggests 5% of revenue is required to be saved.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

scubaguy··on Reddit and Facebook Veteran on How to Troubleshoot Troublemakers
The "without telling anyone else" part is potentially the problem.

Imagine you committed time and energy to build a decent system - not perfect, but most people are ok with. You feel a sense of ownership on this system. Then one day, a coworker of your tells your manager that he has built a new system in his off time. He also made a conscious decision not to discuss the effort with you. How would that make you feel?

scubaguy··on I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think
If you find yourself saying something uncomfortable under pressure, this is probably not the right place for you.
scubaguy··on Bill and Melinda Gates 2016 Annual Letter
Relevant http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi...

"One of the most common stories about aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption. It is true that when health aid is stolen or wasted, it costs lives. We need to root out fraud and squeeze more out of every dollar....

"We should try to reduce that. But if we can’t, should we stop trying to save lives?"

scubaguy··on Removal of Unsafe in Java 9 – A disaster in the making
I read this article yesterday and I really dislike how it is worded. The "this engineer" has a name, Donald Smith, this is what he said:

"If you're using Unsafe, this is the year to explain where the API is broken and get it straight.... Please help us kill Unsafe, kill Unsafe dead, kill Unsafe right, and do so as quickly as possible to the ultimate benefit of everyone."

It reads like a request to have a discussion on Unsafe, to talk about it and find solutions. Unfortunately, I don't see anyone pointing out why Unsafe should be kept around on that thread (http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2015-Apri...).

And this quote from Oracle shows an effort to do things right:

http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/discuss/2013-October/... "This is definitely something we plan to propose for SE 9. I expect to see a JEP from the current maintainers of sun.misc.Unsafe..."

This (http://blog.codefx.org/java/dev/how-java-9-and-project-jigsa...) seems like a more balanced article on the situation.

"So far we focused on the problematic aspects of Project Jigsaw. But that should not divert from the exciting and – I think – very positive nature of the planned changes. After reading the documents, I am impressed with the scope and potential of this upcoming Java release. While it is likely not as groundbreaking for individual developers as Java 8, it is even more so for everyone involved in building and deploying – especially of large monolithic projects." near future. (This is far too small to require a whole JSR.)"

scubaguy··on Facebook Unveils Facebook at Work
Don't forget Hipchat/Slack - IM

How about putting emphasis on "have to" instead? For most people, the advantage of these services is that you get very good services for little cost. It's simply cheaper to use 3rd party services. That why they've become so popular.

scubaguy··on Why Most Unit Testing is Waste [pdf]
This is not a good example, because in this example, Mockito is used to mock a very simple class (DateTime), which should not be mocked at all. It is also used to verify that the dependent object is called exactly twice, which may be unnecessary.

This is more of a problem where a library is not used well. Mockito is a very good library, this example really does it disservice.

scubaguy··on Why does it seem like threading and fibers in Node have been abandoned?
IO is asynchronous, but code execution is not asynchronous. If a block of code is doing intensive math for 100ms, then that blocks the whole process, and potentially other IO, from executing in that 100ms.

Perhaps you should think of node as "event-driven" rather than "asynchronous".

scubaguy··on Apple hides a Patriot-Act-busting "warrant canary" in its transparency report
Isn't this sort of futile? Say Apple removes the section about "... never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act" tomorrow. What does that tell us? That Apple did in fact receive such an order in the last 24 hours? Perhaps, or perhaps they were instructed to remove that part of the transparency report and Apple complied.

And even if we do know that they received such an order, what does that tell us? Does that tell us that the US government is targeting someone using iClouds? Or maybe it tells us that the US government issued a pointless order just so they can void this so called "warrant canary". It tells us very little.

Ultimately, unless corporations-as-persons have the right to speak freely about government orders it receives, we can only assume that everything transmitted through the Internet can be intercepted and given to the US government.

scubaguy··on Eclipse committer on Android IDE switch to IntelliJ
Love that we're seeing more choices in terms of Android development. This can only be a good thing!

I was very frustrated the last time I tried going to IDEA and I wrote about it on my blog (http://www.fisharefriends.us/wordpress/2013/01/27/intellij-i...). My observations:

. It seems to take a long time to “warm up” before IDEA runs as smooth as Eclipse.

. Eclipse is stupid about detecting when you changed a file from outside of Eclipse; IDEA is not. Eclipse is very annoying when you use Emacs/vi/OxygenXML as an additional editor.

. “JetBrains :: IntelliJ IDEA” is a stupid, stupid name.

. Emacs key bindings in Eclipse is better, alt-w and ctrl-y “just works”.

. Maven projects is poorly integrated into Eclipse’s concept of “projects”.

. I miss the native “choose file dialog” you’d get with Eclipse.

. I think the new version has incremental compile like Eclipse, but it doesn’t seem to work by default.

. The Maven daemon in IDEA used around 300MB of memory and continually consumed CPU resources.

. The keyboard stopped working for some reason.

My experience was with the community edition, perhaps I should give the professional edition a try. But at $200 and having had such a poor experience with the community edition, it is a hard sell.

scubaguy··on Do Elite Colleges Discriminate Against Asians?
It's pretty clear the point is not that discrimination against Asians is a secret. The point the author is making is that this kind of discrimination is wrong.
scubaguy··on JSON in Postgres and Node
Personally, I'd like the ability to make a transactional update to records in different tables.
scubaguy··on What Being a Handyman Has Taught Me About Male Insecurity
In addition to a 9-5 job, some people also have to drive the kids around, shop for groceries at multiple places, and other things that more well off people can pay others to do.

When you make good money, you have the option to learn and try new things. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy you the luxury of not being accused of "not willing to learn, try, and logic out things".

scubaguy··on Android tablets: It's the browser
I think Dolphin is noticeably faster than Chrome and I appreciate the fact that it supports plugins. However, I recently noticed that it auto plays HTML5 videos which is quite annoying, whereas Chrome requires a manual "start" (at least on USA Today's mobile site).
scubaguy··on Wireframing Tools Suck
If there are better tools, I'd like to know. If there isn't any better, this sounds like the perfect opportunity for someone insightful to reinvent the industry.
scubaguy··on A business meeting
The author is clearly a good communicator, even then he can be frustrated by coworkers who dismiss what he has to say because of the stereotype that engineers are lousy communicators.
scubaguy··on It's like JSON. but fast and small.
Except when performance is important.
scubaguy··on Laws of Physics Can’t Trump the Bonds of Love
I know. It's like when people say "money makes the world go 'round." That's just factually wrong.
scubaguy··on IntelliJ IDEA 12 Released
Usability, in fact, is why I prefer Eclipse to IDEA. I've tried IDEA before but it always felt like a Swing app. From the obvious, like the way file dialog works to the subtle, like how the UI reacts, makes Eclipse feel more usable to me.
scubaguy··on New Project: Nashorn – Lightweight High-Performance JavaScript Runtime in Java
It means algorithms runs 1.6x faster within Rhino. A JVM implemented in Rhino that runs Rhino within the JS-JVM will run even faster - roughly 2.56x faster.
scubaguy··on MongoDB Gotchas and How To Avoid Them
Spring Data - MongoDB's ORM provides a nice way of doing this.
scubaguy··on Nexus: The best of Google, now in three sizes
>> It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10

Maybe this is for consistency. I find it a bit of a mental shift when I used the Nexus 7 with the tablet UI. I assume I'd prefer the status on top look & feel on the Nexus 10 as well. I know not everyone prefers status & notification on top, but I'm used to it and I like the consistency of it across phone & tablet.

scubaguy··on Apple Turns on iPhone Tracking in iOS6
From Apple's press release http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Locat...

    1. Why is Apple tracking the location of my iPhone? 
    Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. 
    Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.
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