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verinus

316 karma · joined June 11, 2015

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verinus··on Watching "Grizzly Man" with a bear biologist
Being stupid and selfish should not be celebrated at all but warned against!

He did not understand bears, just saw them how he wanted them to be and actually did them a severe disservice!

Going outside of you comfort zone is valuable though, but only if done with knowledge of your own limits and consequences!

e.g. I live in the Alps and we have much too many stupid tourists' emergencies in the mountains due to ignorance than should be. They know nothing about the mountains, the tour, how weather is up there, what equipment and clothing to bring and wear and completely disregard advice of locals. Then Mountain Rescue risk their lives and health to get them down. Most of them volunteers no less!

verinus··on Ask HN: How to manage phones and PCs for elderly parents?
You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.

OFC you need an updated system that has all known security holes fixed to run homebanking apps.

Also, as a dev I would only support one config and not a myriad of different devices and operating system versions (APIs). Livelong. For 3$ purchase price. On all devices. For the whole family.

And imho Apple devices are supported much longer than most Android ones...

verinus··on Write Dumb Code (2018)
to me it seem you have bad experience and I agree that this kind of simple may be the wrong kind of simple ;)

but: for me simple is to have a short and concise solution of a problem/ requirement that does exactly what is required and not more.

verinus··on Write Dumb Code (2018)
for me I try to find the simplest solution that fulfils the requirement I have for the task on hand. No fancy abstractions/ design patterns- most of the time you don't need them, and when you do you certainly need them in another way, completely different from the one you chose. Abstraction based on sample size one and "foresight" is a sure mark of a noob :)
verinus··on Clean your codebase with basic information theory
I was thinking about code along the same lines: we are modeling, not writing text. This just happens to be the best way to express our models in a way a computer can be made to understand it, be formal enough and still be understandable by others.

What current languages are bad about is expressing architecture, and the problem of having one way to structure our models (domain models) vs. the actions/transformations that run on them (flow of execution).

I strongly disagree on the global variable side though...

verinus··on Losing my son
and I find your judgement on this quite disturbing, even arrogant.

there is a reason nearly all religions take a stance against killing, even killing yourself!

and for me it starts with: who am I to judge somebody should rather be dead than alive? do you REALLY know?

verinus··on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
I am certain in some areas it has. but on the other hand in others it has damaged it- screentime is an awesome feature measuring "destroyed" productivity ;)
verinus··on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
sure, but to such a fundamental amount? or was it IT- the internet is not IT, super computers and simulations, databases and so are not the internet...

I like google but google is only as good as the stuff out there, and then finding useful content (that is not popular) is hard, and getting even harder the more content is produced.

greed in the form of ads also don't help much...

verinus··on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
science was there long before the internet, and if history teaches us one thing it is, that gaining fundamental knowledge takes time- often generations (where one generation must die for new ideas to spread)

so no, the internet may be good for lots of things, but it would by no means replace the groundwork required over centuries to come up with modern medicine...

verinus··on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
esp. when it comes with all the stress of modern work with all the real time communication, social media pressure, constant advertising.

now that I have kids, I grow increasingly conscious towards the effects this has on them.

verinus··on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems
I think your view has a distorted importance of medicine because you have never lived a live without it. And with that I mean felt the emotions of people going through it, like when your mother dies because of childbirth when you are a kid, your siblings die, because of infections.

Like we have today in all the anti-vaccination guys esp. in better-to-do households that are responsible for measles outbreaks even though it was deemed extinct. People from areas where it was common to have all these kids' diseases, we are not afraid of are much more pro vaccinations...

I can remember a time without the internet and while I really think it is great in many ways, humanity could do fine without it...

verinus··on Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
This is so theoretical it will never work in an acceptable way. Because of who will decide is responsible and on what grounds?

What will come of it will most likely be analogous to the Communist system where just a central committee was in charge of making all the decisions. and to be quite clear: this system failed utterly and completely. Without the capitalist west there would have been famines in DDR and the east.

On what I agree is, that we need a strong state factoring in stuff like ecological consequences via taxation- so the decision to buy or make stuff is distributed.

verinus··on Golden Rules of Interface Design (2013)
I disagree. Disabling an action that is not feasible in the current context IS helpful, but ONLY if you provide an explanation on WHY.

UIs that simply disable certain actions without telling me why always infuriate me :(

verinus··on Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
interesting that this company could stay in business.

over the long term I would think that two things will happen: good devs will leave the company while the remaining fight an uphill battle maintaining code until the customers leave.

but ofc sales and incentives in general are a whole different area of problems.

verinus··on Go: What we got right, what we got wrong
thank you for that link. what a diamond of interesting stuff!
verinus··on Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
But I think it has a lot to do with how profit is made: if you sell machinery for example that has a software part you are a cost factor, even if software is required to run it. Think of it as an in-house supplier that could even be outsourced. Not that I think it is feasible, but upper management does. And as long as they do, you won't rise far building software in such a company...
verinus··on Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
ofc individual experiences might differ! it certainly depends on the company and leadership. From my experience in a bigger one understanding ended when leadership was needed in software areas, but leadership was recruited only from the other domain...
verinus··on Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets
this.

first company is good for starters to get to know others.

third should be avoided if you want to stay in software and not transition to management. You will always be seen as a necessary evil, your problems not understood while others working on core products will be perceived as an asset.

second one is the one to make a career in software dev.

verinus··on Product Owners Are Not Backlog Managers
well, this seems detrimental to a discussion because as far as I know the term "product owner" was coined by SCRUM and has therefore a defined meaning other than say Product Manager...
verinus··on As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit the workforce
Interesting difference: here in Europe, it is mostly agreed on that childcare should be free, like any education.
verinus··on Cooler screens
well in here in Austria we have tripple-glass-sheet windows that can be easily opened...
verinus··on EU member states still cannot agree about end-to-end encryption
much rather: he had to spend significantly more for them to do so...
verinus··on Why aren't there more 80% jobs?
which also has to do with distribution of wealth, where the US are especially bad at.

just an example: you do not pay for education in europe, much less for childcare (in most countries), much less for health care and so on...

verinus··on A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy
well, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some only perceived.

So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.

verinus··on Glove80 Ergonomic Keyboard
a sidenote: I did use a switchtester a friend lent me and thought I had found my favorite switch only to realize, that typing on a switch-tester is vastly different to typing an actual keyboard. :(
verinus··on A retiring consultant’s advice on consultants
this.

same for machine producing industry and software...

verinus··on SolarPi experiment 2: Finally something that works
and it's also about the learning experience!
verinus··on “Clean” code, horrible performance
compared to hourly rates of devs- even around the world? really?
verinus··on Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs
even image one that does not require water, electricity or chemicals! ;)
verinus··on Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs
they work just fine. Less energy, water and chemical consumption is always a welcome effect.
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