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torqueTorrent

35 karma · joined March 15, 2019

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torqueTorrent··on The San Francisco plague epidemic of 1900
Supposedly they're having a feces epidemic in San Fran lately. ianad, but it seems like that could promote plague resurgence?
torqueTorrent··on Why don't we have Wayland on Raspberry Pi yet? (2018)
On one hand, there are some things that are simply too complex to attempt implementation with bash a script.

otoh, there are many things that could or even ideally should be kept simple such that a bash script is the best practice, most simple, proven, reliable solution.

torqueTorrent··on Comparing JVM alternatives to JavaScript
It can be useful to keep it simple and try to stay exclusively with HTML-latest + ES-latest + CSS and avoiding external JS libraries as much as possible. Using the latest versions of just the basics (HTML, ES, CSS) can help minimize what only recently required the addition of external JS libraries.
torqueTorrent··on We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
In my experience, this is a new development in the software industry. In the past, the software industry was far more constrained when it comes to talent acquisition. I vividly recall an old-guard software CEO in the mid 1990s lamenting the beginning of the dot-com era: its overwhelming demand for engineers and seemingly skyrocketing staffing costs. I've been in the industry for decades and to me this feels like an effect whereby there is now a massive, seemingly endless stream of candidates for recruiters or companies to choose from. I can only imagine there are many problems that can arise from an environment whereby there are effectively an infinite number of candidates. Analysis paralysis for instance?
torqueTorrent··on Chinese spies stole trade secrets from Dutch chip machine maker ASML: report
>> Hire local poeople and treat them as if you need them.

Wow! What a concept!

alas, that'll never work.

torqueTorrent··on Former student destroys 59 university computers using USB Killer device
>> training staff not to plug random USB devices...

Nothing like some high-consequences IRL training!

Perhaps curricula for the Inspector Clouseau police academy?

torqueTorrent··on Former student destroys 59 university computers using USB Killer device
When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail!
torqueTorrent··on An app that limits technology in online dating
That doesn't sound exploitable by stalkers whatsoever! </sarc>
torqueTorrent··on Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything
Two-thousand zero zero, party over oops, out of time.
torqueTorrent··on Facebook shareholders are getting fed up with Zuckerberg but can’t do anything
>> don’t understand why anyone has trouble leaving

I also find it puzzling. Then again, as with cults or other bottom feeding fads and the increasingly ubiquitous, various and sundry addictive mires and dark patterns, to avoid the trouble in leaving, it is best not to enroll in the first place.

torqueTorrent··on 5G Is Likely to Put Weather Forecasting at Risk
No worries, I reckoned that a misunderstanding must have occurred!

Still, I couldn't resist a vision not unlike the penultimate and electrifying golf scene with Bill Murray & the bishop in Caddyshack.

torqueTorrent··on 5G Is Likely to Put Weather Forecasting at Risk
hmm your comment makes it sound as if I had said that my professor recommended reckless abandon such that we should climb the tower in swimwear during a heavy rain after cranking the tranmitter to maximum?
torqueTorrent··on 5G Is Likely to Put Weather Forecasting at Risk
In school, we used to learn about the RF service technicians returning with stories of dead birds and other such phantasmagoria in and around the sweet spots of the feedhorn, antenna, transmission line, transmitter or other such sensitive areas of high power microwave operations.

Professor also admonished us that such technicians must always be infinitely certain that the transmitter is not operational at the time of service.

torqueTorrent··on Is Anyone Listening to You on Alexa? A Global Team Reviews Audio
Shouldn't people be having fun with or trolling these always-listening systems by speaking gibberish, in tongues or reciting custom sea shanties that reenact purely fictional accounts of high crimes on the open seas?
torqueTorrent··on 540M Facebook Records Exposed
Alas, the 21st century provides the opportunity to address the growing scourge of using sounds or combinations of letters that communicate meaning without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.
torqueTorrent··on 540M Facebook Records Exposed
They were moving so fast that they broke things, badly!
torqueTorrent··on You probably don't need that hip web framework
> ...way over used where they aren't needed...

Bingo! Engineers love to change things like Scotty said, but they also blather on about if it aint broke, dont fix it?

torqueTorrent··on You probably don't need that hip web framework
"When you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

There is a tendency for mgmt to sign up engineers to a vision quest with pre-established non-negotiable requirements whereby the customer expects what would be tantamount to solving all the world's problems in one easy to use, intuitive SPA that 'just works, always'. This is a big factor in the endless new framework releases, mutually-exclusive complexities and vulnerabilities.

torqueTorrent··on San Diego Implemented City-Wide Streetlight Surveillance
TFA said they wanted to account for parking spaces where people had vacated their parking space before their paid time was up.

That would be like McDonalds digging through the trash to account for the uneaten food.

I wonder where this kind of accounting goes on the balance sheet? Maybe part of the Richard Pryor fund?

torqueTorrent··on You Have to Pay the Right Person
Even after Tim Cook said none of his best people have the obsolete degrees everyone covets, the focus and priorities of software interviews is perpetually: "please tell me your LinkedIn profile?" or "what was your college degree in, again?" as opposed to "oh you have precisely all the mad skilz to remake the world in Linus's image".
torqueTorrent··on Facebook Calls for Government Regulation
That gum you like is going to come back in style.
torqueTorrent··on Burnout caused by chronic stress is widespread
> ...a zero-planning world now...

JIT is for more than just compilers these days!

torqueTorrent··on Burnout caused by chronic stress is widespread
I'd buy that for a dollar!
torqueTorrent··on Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries
The discoveries through big-data analysis and visualizations can be endlessly counter-intuitive, mindblowingly unpredictable but also dynamic and powerful, even visceral when you have massively voluminous data that can be fed into systems like Tableau where you can actively tweak data queries, aggregations, transformations and visualization types.

The result can often be something akin to: "wow, who could have ever predicted that this data would extrapolate out to show such a unique visualization or trend"

torqueTorrent··on Told U.S. security at risk, Chinese firm seeks to sell Grindr dating app
The endgame vulnerability of a dating app containing PII including STD infection status, falling victim to insurmountable abuse or gaming via automation, AI or ML could rapidly or stealthily generate fast spreading health epidemics with extreme precision and strategy.
torqueTorrent··on IBM purged ‘gray hairs’ and ‘old heads’ as it launched Millennial Corps: lawsuit
> This has to be the worse piece of advice....

I agree.

The attitudes at the top of the pyramid are such that they require those at the bottom to be the docile, nice guy who adheres to the golden rule, morality and humility while those at the top are continually improving their ruthlessness in competition with their peers.

torqueTorrent··on On Internal Engineering Practices at Amazon
In my career I've experienced alot of engineers that had a desire to shy away from command line or command prompt tools, shell, CMD.exe, batch, scripting, cron and related 'traditional' automation, in favor of GUI, IDE, html, browser etc.

I've even had some young sexy angular-wizard type engineers that had the ear of mgmt sarcastically respond with statements like "I don't do command line".

This article and my experience with AWS development and Amazon leads me to believe this entire company is led and staffed by such engineers.

torqueTorrent··on South Korea accepts geothermal plant probably caused destructive quake
Perhaps this could be thoroughly tested by performing high-pressure hydraulic fracking in very close proximity to gas pipelines.
torqueTorrent··on Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash
I agree wholeheartedly and routinely run concurrent intensive smoke tests on real-world HW as well as smoke tests on finely-modeled virtualized environments.

Even with the best modeling and virtualization, a true and thorough, 100% 1:1 approximation with the real world at runtime can likely never be attained for a myriad of reasons.

However, when lives are on the line, this gap must be closed in some manner so as to provide a greater degree of confidence.

Even the most thirsty organizations with lesser consequences for their failures are usually conservative enough and risk-averse enough to know better than to release without thorough (and relatively inexpensive) testing.

My old boss used to tell stories about back in the mainframe days whereby he would send customers fancy, branded and shrink-wrapped finished-product but containing blank tapes for the latest release in order to buy a couple of weeks of extra dev time if he thought the software wasn't ready to escape.

torqueTorrent··on U.S. Firms Are Helping Build China’s Orwellian State
It used to be that part of the unwritten contract of the 'Golden Rule' in our culture was a recognition that adults have access to things that are dangerous or that could deprive each other of life, liberty, property etc, and that therefore these implements must be handled with care such that bad outcomes do not occur for anyone.

The free market has seemingly granted a reprieve from such unwritten contracts and any form of conscience and now allow all implements to be systematically leveraged in the favor of investors seeking returns.

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