Communitivity

Cool project.

That said, I never send the same resume to everyone. I tailor a resume for each job I apply to. This doesn't mean leaving off positions or lying. It does mean taking the work done in a position and giving it a slant toward the target job.

For example, let's say I created a web app that shows a sales dashboard, with stats visualization, from raw daily sales data.

Job 1 (applying for Front-End) - Created monthly sales dashboard web site using React, MaterialUI, SASS, Node, Riak, and D3. Dashboard provided grid-based summary over individual weeks, months, and years. It also provided configurable line graphs and pie charts for various sales metrics. Data pre-processing done with Sci-Kit. Later added sales prediction using Machine Learning.

Job 2 (applying for Data Analysis) - Analyzed raw daily sales data to determine data cleansing needed, and created tool pipeline using Python NumPy, SciKit, and scikit-learn. Integrated pipeline into Riak data source ingest, and then built sales dashboard web site to visualize the data. Provided ML model for sales prediction built with scikit-learn, with XX parameters. Model achieved YY accuracy with only a ZZ mean error.

Same work in both, but I highlight the tasks most relevant to the target job.

Other thoughts are that Latex is a good way to get a well laid out PDF resume (PDF is not the web, you should have two versions of your resume), and I agree with other commenters - the final product needs more polish if it was actually going to be used to produce a resume to send in (I think it's fine as a proof of concept though).

Interesting effect if you try !debug, which gives and error, and then say add debug

Several of us are noting the less than 5% success rate in finding definitive evidence of shots fired, and calling the tech a failure.

I disagree, because of the importance of preventing active shooters. With this kind of system you are going to want to lean toward false positives vs false negatives.

There is definitely a lot of room for improvement though. Improvement could come through better ML use/training, better sensors, and better human in the loop analysts.

I am firmly with Benjamin Franklin, in that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.". But Franklin himself was in favor of collective security, and Franklin said this in support of the state's authority to provide collective security ( https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou... ). Also, these sensors monitor public spaces, where no expectation of privacy exists.

So I am for more sensors, video cameras on the sensors, more ML on the sensor data, and better training for analysts, but I am also for complete transparency on where sensors are and how they are used, with a publicly released report from annual external party review of police conduct in the use or abuse of sensor data.

"I'm now wondering if in something like Sora that can do a kind of physical modeling, if there's some conserved quantity in the neural network that is _directly analogous_ to conserved quantities in physics"

My first thought on reading that was that if there was it would be interesting to see if there was some way it tied into the concept of us living in a simulation, i.e. we're all living in a complex ML network simulation.

Many people at RenFaires and music festivals use Stripe. This is going to wipe them out as customers. Also fully remote businesses. It's clear to me Stripe wants brick and mortar businesses, or online businesses that have an office. Which I find sad, because they're abandoning a bunch of customers depending on them. Though it is an opportunity for some startup to cater to those customers.

This should provoke swift, hard, and overwhelming reactions from G7 countries. The undersea cables have to be inviolate or we'll see this happen all the time, with major negative impacts to internet stability and effective international commerce.

I do not see us reach AGI within the next ten years at last, probably in the next 20. Deep Learning and LLMs have taken us down a road that provides many such cheat codes, but is not AGI, and is ultimately is self-limiting in getting to producing an AGI.

I can see more people adopting a neo-amish style approach though as LLMs become more prevalent.

The problem I also see is that as the backlash increases against LLMs in specific, and AI in general, the marketers will mention AI in their product descriptions and web sites less and less. I think it will get to the point where you don't know whether a product uses LLMs or not. Alternatively, it will get to the point where LLMs are ubiquitous, and you can't easily find products that don't use them.

As a result, I think they are a part of life now. We can't ignore them, legislate them away, or decide not to use them without major impact on our lives. Instead, we need to legislate responsible use, legislate attribution and compensation, and learn to recognize the signs of GAN generated content.

Some of the other commenters hit the nail on the head. The reason is the removal of women's rights previously taken as a given. Also a consideration is the negative view/actions of some police in these states toward anyone who is considered non-standard or non-Christian in any way (e.g., at one point my daughter was close friends with a Muslim African-American).

This is America, so according to the current laws those states have the right to do that. I personally think it's wrong, and would never subject my daughter to that, but my only option is to vote with my money and my feet - so I don't go to conferences in those states, and will never live in those states.

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.” ― Winston S. Churchill

As a parting thought, I admire Nikolai Tesla, and Alan Turing. Tesla was suspected of being a communist and was in love with a pigeon. Turing was homosexual.

How do you think either of these legendary minds would have fared had they been born in and lived in Texas? Would they have survived to do what they did?

What would our world be like today if it had none of their publications or inventions?

I have used professionally Darcs, Mercurial, Subversion, and Git. I love distributed version control systems, and I love Git.

However, Pijul looks interesting, nice work!

Pijul has a number of stated strengths over Git, and looks like the version history is implemented as a CRDT from my first impression. Some of the statements make me wonder how many conflicts occur in real use. If they are equal to or less than the number it produces, great. If more than what Git produces, that's a barrier to adoption, as merge conflicts are one of the biggest pains when using Git.

For me though what appears one of its biggest strengths (commutative workflow) is also its biggest drawbacks. There are so many teams that are trained in git workflow and are used to it, that getting them to switch to a completely different style of workflow in sufficient numbers will take years.

Git compatibility is a key missing feature. Git had this with Subversion, and I think it's a big reason why Git won over many of the Subversion crowd.

Many security specialists via security as described by the CISSP material (Certified Information Systems Security Professional). Loosely speaking, that means ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the system (including data received, data stored, and data sent).

Viewed in this light a bug that enables a successful Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is a security bug. A bug that causes a DoS or DDoS, but is not exploitable, would not be a security bug (e.g., some idiot added an infinite loop to the startup code). That's where issue triage comes in, a bug should never be assigned before its triaged. Sometimes triage results in 'we don't know enough' and someone gets assigned to evaluate the bug to answer specific questions before triage can finished. After triage is get assigned - or even better, a developer with a matching skill set chooses it to work on for the next release/sprint/etc.

What is the difference between an invention created by a person that was informed through AI outputs, and an invention created without any use of AI? An invention is an invention. If it is novel then someone put in the work to get it , such as possibly training the model and definitely the prompts. Most likely the invention as spit out by the AI is not going to be usable as is. Anyone seen the six fingered hands some image AIs make? So a human will need to revise it, modify it, and test it by building a working prototype.

In my opinion, the human should get the patent. Anything else smacks to me of a knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "AI bad!", though there is certainly a lot of that reaction going around. AI, or more properly LLMs, are a tool like fire - nothing more, nothing less. Does it invalidate the patent if you use CAD/CAM in the creation of your invention? If not, then neither should using LLMS.

There are situations where no bugs is an important requirement, if it means no bugs that cause a noticeable failure. Things such as planes, submarines, nuclear reactors. For those there is provably correct code. That takes a long time to write, and I mean a really long time. Applying that to all software doesn't make sense from a commercial perspective. There are areas where improvements can have a big impact though, such as language safety improvements (Rust) and cybersecurity requirements regarding private data protection. I see those as being the biggest win.

I don't see no bugs in a distributed database as important enough to delay shipping for 5 years, but (a) it's not my baby; (b) I don't know what industries/use cases they are targeting. For me it's much more important to ship something with no critical bugs early, get user feedback, iterate, then rinse and repeat continually.

Could someone ELI5 why there is a Mozilla Foundation (a non-profit) and a Mozilla Corporation (a public-benefit but for-profit)?

I hear "Refining the company’s vision and aligning the corporate and product strategy behind it" and I feel like I am back at Booz Allen (not a bad thing necessarily, for an org who's goal is to maximize profit).

I have been using Firefox and its lineage since Mosaic. Only time I don't is when Firefox can't handle a website, or when required to use Chrome by work.

That's even during the times when it was slower than Chrome, or had less features, as I considered using something other than Firefox a moral hazard[1]. That's because I felt I needed to support it's mission of a free open source browser with the goals of an open web, open source software, and user rights.

Cut to today. Firefox is funded mostly by Google fees for search defaults, according to what I read (81% in 2022) [2]. There is a Mozilla Foundation and a Mozilla Corporation. Presumably the Mozilla Corporation hires developers, is everything they write Open Source, or are there some proprietary bits?

I did find that the Mozilla Corporation is a public benefit company, which is something. I also found it is a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation (no idea how that could work). However, the announcement [3] of the Mozilla Corporation does not mention the rationale for why a corporation is needed in addition to the foundation. I wouldn't think revenue exceeding a certain amount would be it, because it's not profit if it goes right back out in awareness campaigns or developer sponsorship, right?

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moralhazard.asp

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#:~:text=it....

[3] https://www-archive.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2005-08-03.htm.....

If you are younger and willing to be patient, government service can be a good fit. You put in your time you 'retire' from government service with a decent pension and go to work in industry (either for a contracting firm, or in commercial world).

They are desperate for people, since the posting says remote as well as no education requirements.

A few things to note though. First, the first year is probationary, so it's much easier to get rid of you during that first year (after that it's difficult to get rid of gov. employees). Second, they tell you the hours may involve on-call time as well as travel overseas by commercial or military transport (you may be going to some fun locations, and/or some not so fun locations). Third, all remote is a rarity and the policies on remote change often - what's all remote today could easily be all on-site next year.

The pay is GS-15, which is the top of the general schedule. After that you get into Special Executive Service (SES). GS-15 comes in several bands. The lowest pays around $155k, the highest around $183k (I am using DC, Maryland, VA rates). You could make more in the commercial world or the contracting world, but in gov service you have more stability and better pension.

If you are over 40 gov services makes much less sense, because the big benefit of the pension is that you can 'retire' before you actually retire, after a certain number of years of gov. service. This used to be a lot better, before the FERS system. You can still put in 20 years and maybe get an early out retirement at age 50, or 25 and get an early out at a younger age, but getting an early out is not guaranteed. It's based on number of positions needed, how top heavy the ranks are, etc. If you can't get one you need to stay in until one of (a) both of Minimum retirement age (MRA) of 57 and 30 years of service, (b) 60 and 20 years of service, (c) 62 and at least 5 years of service.

Kudos. Making a video like this is hard, because you bare your soul and discuss what you did that you could have done better.

In an effort to help you in the future, here are some things I noticed:

- 'just quickly fix this'. I cannot enumerate the number of times a junior dev has come to me bemoaning a code break because he 'just tried to fix this', because I've lost count. Anytime you find yourself using that phrase or something similar take a step back put down the keyboard and think through all your assumptions about why this is happening. Write one or more tests to verify each assumption. Once you've verified your assumptions (you will find some were wrong > 50% of the time in my experience) you not only know your assumptions (or revised assumptions) are correct, but also have a much better mental model of the problem. Now break the problem into small pieces, and possibly break each of those into small pieces. Address bottom up.

- Always have backups, and implement them with a backup plan that works. Don't just (I'll backup the data periodically as I think of it - this is the plan of many). I prefer nightly incrementals and a weekly image backup.

- The site was offline for two years. Uptime and adoption momentum are key. So is honesty. This is a hard situation though, and every person will address it in the way that suits them best. I think I would have put a notice at the top of the page that was only visible to returning visitors, saying "We are sorry for the inconvenience. We are suffering early growing pains. Our database is corrupted and our backups were insufficient, so past data is unavailable. We are working to ensure this does not happen again.", cleared the data, and kept going.

- The site concept is interesting but two questions seem unanswered (you maybe just left them out of the video. The first is how you intend to incentivize users to come back to the site (gamification, cash prizes, discounts, lots of options). The second is how to monetize. Without a way to monetize it this is a cool side project, not a side hustle. You might be able to build up enough adoption so someone big buys you (like Wordle) and then you don't need to worry about monetization. But you can't count on that, I'm not convinced that's a good strategy to plan on.

I had a thought while reading this, and I don't know if this would be the case but...

If it works by you hover over a link and Google gets the content in the browser behind the scenes and sends it to the mothership, where it's summarized and the summary then sent back to you to be displayed by the browser, then you may be accessing the linked page using your stored credentials, which give Google access to content they wouldn't otherwise have access to.

I came up with 'Yaks', plural of a type of beast of burden/farm animal. Probably not the solution, but I didn't see the solution on the post, just a Swedish word suggested. What was the solution decided on?

Ok, I conflated 'looks like' with 'sounds like'. Still curious about the solution though.

I recently had a conversation with a senior React dev about Redux with years of React experience. I mentioned during a dry run that you can clear the store, if a local storage store (default), with localStorage.clear() from the dev console. Response: "Cool, I didn't know that.". This guy is good at creating UIs, but that's an example of 'How this works' knowledge I'd of expected him to have. It's a pervasive epidemic of learn just what you need to ship, instead of learn what you need to ship a quality product and hone the tools in your toolbox.

I agree with the opinion, but not the timeframe. I would say the quality has nosedived over the last 8 years, based on my experience as the tech interviewer for potential new hire interviews across the last 12 years on different projects.

The last 4 years I've gotten comments from co-interviewers of 'you ask the hard questions', 'you are tough'. These are in response to questions such as 'What are your thoughts on composition vs inheritance in object oriented design', 'What are the arguments for Java as a better language than Javascript? How about the other way around?', 'What's a progressive web app, what aspects of React and what react-related libs help with creating one?'. These were all directly relevant to the positions being interviewed, and some of those were for senior engineer positions.

These are questions that I think should be answerable by any senior frontend engineer, and most senior software engineers.

I don't care if I get downvoted for this, I have to respond to being labelled a scaremonger, and this blatant acceptance of the Japanese government's view.

There are two sides to the "facts" regarding the Japanese release of the Fukushima water. I presented a hypothesis, presented both sides, and suggested scientific analysis that if done could confirm or fail to confirm that hypothesis. To call that scaremongering shows a lack of understanding of the English language, among other lacks.

Yes, Japan says the ALPS treatment system removes everything except Tritium, and it says the level of Tritium is safe to drink according to international standards[1]. However, as shown below there are a number of organizations who do not agree with or trust Japan's assertions of safety.

Panels on public policy in Japan also point out that there are no studies on the long term effects of Tritium[2].

Greenpeace and 6 UN Rapporteurs (the people UN special committees have appointed to report on their proceedings) condemned the water release as potentially further harmful to the people of Fukushima and the marine ecosystem [3][4][5].

U.S. National Association of Marine Laboratories expressed their opposition to the plan and stated that “there was a lack of adequate and accurate scientific data supporting Japan's assertion of safety" [6].

On a personal note, I've worked on three different U.S. military bases. All three had problems with groundwater contaminants from jet fuels and other things. All three had tests that certified 'the levels of contaminants are below danger levels and the water is safe to drink'. The majority of the people I knew at all three bases drank bottled water. On two of those bases I was explicitly warned I shouldn't drink the water, to get bottled water, when I start work on the base.

The definition of safety is also suspect when the people defining it have a vested interest in whatever it is being safe. Japan's release of the water has to be viewed as safe, because if otherwise then the implications and consequences from the rest of the world would be untenable for Japan.

[1] "The subcommittee on handling of the ALPS treated water report" (PDF). Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. 10 February 2020. pp. 12, 16, 17, 33, 34. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 December 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.

[2] Ōshima, Kenichi; Mitsuta, Kanna; Gotō, Manashi (2021-04-11). "福島第一原発のALPS（多核種除去設備）処理汚染水海洋放出問題についての緊急声明". 原子力市民委員会 [Citizens' Commission on Nuclear Energy]. Tokyo. Archived from the original on 2021-04-11.

[3] Greenpeace International (13 April 2021). "The Japanese government's decision to discharge Fukushima contaminated water ignores human rights and international maritime law". Greenpeace. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 15 April 2021.

[4] Tuncak, Baskut; Fakhri, Michael; Voule, Clément Nyaletsossi; Calí-Tzay, José Francisco (2020-06-09). "Fukushima: Japan must not ignore human rights obligations on nuclear waste disposal – UN experts". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (press release). Archived from the original on 2020-06-15.

[5] Orellana, Marcos A.; Fakhri, Michael; Boyd, David (2021-04-15). "Japan: UN experts say deeply disappointed by decision to discharge Fukushima water". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (press release). Archived from the original on 2021-04-15.

[6] "Despite opposition, Japan may soon dump Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific". www.science.org. Archived from the original on 2023-01-25. Retrieved 2023-01-26.

There is a corollary. You need to learn how to build quality software. You also need to know what level of quality vs completeness tradeoff you need to make.

Imagine I have a deadline of Jan 15th to demo features x, y, and z to senior leadership (who then will make funding decisions that could impact my project), and I get to Jan 15th with x, y, and not z - or worse, none of them working fully. But the code quality is high, there are no TODOs hanging around, no extra development focused logging, no duplication of code, no leaky abstractions.

That is a 100% fail in leadership's eyes, unless you have a really good story on why z didn't get shipped (and code quality is NOT that).

All those things I listed will have to be addressed at some point, and the longer they go without being addressed the harder they will be to address. But if you need to do that to meet deadlines, then you do it.

Of course, if you are in a place where leadership allows you to work from a backlog and demonstrations and features to demo are scheduled not arbitrarily based on leadership's schedule/interest, but on the features that are newly shipped since the last demo, then you are in luck.

At the end of the day the important thing to remember is that you are not being paid to build software. You are being paid to provide a solution to your customer's problem. Other than CTOs and some forward thinking leaders, they don't care about the software. They care about whether the problem is solved, did it cost me more or less than expected in labor and materiel, and is it compliant with necessary laws/regulations.

I remember seeing this when it first came up (I looked it up, 1993). Somewhere in the late 90s I lost track of it. I'm very glad to see it is online. It is currently getting hugged to death, however it is available at the Internet Archive. The very first archived version of this page (1996) is https://web.archive.org/web/19961221052744/http://pespmc1.vu....

I would like to see not just code, but also a discussion of the tradeoff decisions made when creating that code, and a discussion of what could be done or looked at next.

Even with an example written for an article, if it's non-trivial then there will have been trade-off design decisions. In some ways, understanding the reasoning behind tradeoff decisions to make when using an SDK is more important than an example that shows me what arguments to use when calling a specific function.

For example, you have an article about Python and your checking the size of the array. Don't just tell me it's len(my_array), explain the decision to do that.

As an aside in case your interested, as I understand it the reasoning is to implement length via a strategy pattern: any object which has a concept of length can implement a __len__ method, and len() will then use that method to get the length, which allows a lot more flexibility without having multiple ways to do length.

Some thoughts... 1. There is no tech stack in the world you can safely deploy and forget about for months or years. Security updates are needed, OS updates cause changes, browser technology changes, and your users change. Even setting aside security, let's say you build something that becomes popular, you've no IC lock-in, and you don't add features / adapt. Sooner or later someone is going to create a clone that does add features / adapt and you will start to lose business.

2. Adding new features is rarely 'easy', because you have to test it with the other features, do deployment, support older versions of the app (if possible), etc. Still, some stacks make it easier than others.

3. Simple deployment once you've configured your automation is an area where there has been lots of progress. You can look at Puppet, Chef, Docker containerization.

4. Dependencies change. Typically you should view changing dependencies like you would adding a new feature: have a justification for it, do full testing, and only then deploy.

5. Open Source is easy to find, and there are a lot of good quality candidates.

6. One commenter recommended to use what you know. Within reason, that's good advice. However, the old adage of 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail' applies. Use the right tool for the job.

7. For the front-end, I recommend client side JavaScript, either Lit or React using Vite. Svelte shows promise, but is not fully mature enough yet to be acceptable when you're solo and using it in production.

8. For the back-end, I recommend Rust. It's reliable, it's performant, and there is a good ecosystem for it. If you go that route, I recommend Axum or Tide for your Web server, fronted by Nginx. You could also go NodeJS (or Deno) and Express or Next. A JS back-end though means you're at the mercy of the NPM ecosystem, which is rife with abandoned packages. Rust could get like that, but seems to be more well pruned. If you go with Rust and want easy new features, a REST based API using a plugin architecture can work well.

9. I recommend 3 repos: front-end, back-end, devops. Your deployment scripts and other things go in devops. Your front-end, if you follow 8, will be Javascript. Your back-end, if you follow 8, will be Rust.

Btw, Rust comes with some caveats. If you don't know it already it has a steep learning curve, however the benefits of learning it are high. You also can use an existing hardened version of Rust made by Ferrous Systems, called Ferrocene (I've no relation with them, other than maybe wanting to work there someday).

https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/

I've seen accusations of planned Russian expansionist policies based on actions regarding the Ukraine. I've also seen reports on resource scarcities within Russia. Encouraging many kids might lend credence to planning attempts to recapture more of the old Soviet Union, given those two things. But, it's one indicator only.

Better analysts than I will need to look at all the indicators and try to predict what he'll do. I don't see Putin as a 'Crazy Eddie'. That's a specific indicator of someone who out of nowhere will turn do an unexpected behavior for no apparent reason, from Left Hand of Darkness. There's a Russian version from The Hunt For Red October, or earlier, 'Crazy Ivan'.

I think Putin is motivated by some combination of nationalism and greed, possibly in equal measure. In some ways this makes him less dangerous (we can predict), others more (greed can make people do horrible things).

The person I most feel sorry for is Linda Yaccarino, CEO and head of advertising at X. She was sitting in the audience when he did this. Imagine how awkward her near-term conversations with advertisers who were with X as of last week will be.

I hope I am not user 2. Innovation through war happens, but it happens faster if we focus on innovation itself. Also, the innovations that happen in war are predominantly weapon-focused.

It is good to be able to defend yourself. However, if you have a high belief that your neighbor will attack you, then it's a good idea to ask why. The answer is usually ideology or resource scarcity, more often resources or a combination.

If you solve the problem of scarcity of resources, then there is a much reduced desire for war. Climate change is going to make food and land more scarce, leading to more conflict. Population growth is going to do the same (though we're seeing some signs that might be self-limiting in some countries). If we poured into space colonization and climate change half the money each year we spend on defense, we'd stand a good chance at solving those problems. I don't have the math in front of me, but I think half would be about $500 billion per year, counting regular spending and special aid packages. That's 20x NASA's budget for next year, or put another way, 20 years of NASA research at current funding.

I'll take a look at it, thank you.

No. I wasn't trying to argue, but stating what I perceive. My perception is that our society has become more apathetic and depressed than before, and we seek distractions. Focusing on solving real problems that could be existential threats to humanity (climate change, all our eggs in one basket/planet, etc.) is the opposite of a distraction. Yet we as a people cannot sit still, or our apathy becomes impossible to ignore, so we find something. A war, just or unjust, is an easy something to find - there is always someone who we deem needs protecting; always someone we deem needs punishing.

Some kind of external 'work' is necessary. War is the easiest form of such work, easiest meaning requiring the least momentum to get a society behind it.

I would love to see us go to war on climate change, but that's not likely as long as we have charismatic politicians fighting to build a base by stirring hateful emotions. Whether that hate is against abortions, Palestinians, african-americans, muslims, or others.

As a society I think we have become more apathetic, more sad, and as result more interested in things that distract us from how bad it is. As a result people like Musk gain a cult following, and much attention. We want to do amazing things against climate change, we want to colonize the rest of the solar system..but NASA's budget this year was $30.9B, next year it's $25B, and over the last two years Musk has lost around $180B (Over 7x the NASA budget for next year).

Our problem is not the technology. It usually isn't. It's our prioritization and attention to avoid uncomfortable truths.