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SaltyBackendGuy

893 karma · joined February 6, 2017

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/saltyforareason; my proof: https://keybase.io/saltyforareason/sigs/haxdbKKK6LYFg44GP8qHNHizIvfqdUbPvphirMb04vE ]
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SaltyBackendGuy··on Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters
I am honestly a bit disappointed it couldn't do basic things, like play X on Spotify. To be fair, I accidentally activated Grok for holding the voice command button too long (which is another UX issue - i.e. 2 voice command interfaces).
SaltyBackendGuy··on MacBook Neo
I might be a dinosaur but I just can't stand laptops that have touch screen...
SaltyBackendGuy··on Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston
This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

SaltyBackendGuy··on Capital One to acquire Brex for $5.15B
Hopefully they had the confidence/insight to negotiate properly. I went through BN$ exit (was employee 19) early in my career and unfortunately, only select people at the top got retirement money. The most frustrating part was the Big Co. execs that came in much later, did literally nothing, and got a massive payday. Lesson learned though...
SaltyBackendGuy··on ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
> Trump has been the only one that the corporations couldn't buy

Hasn't he accepted donations from many mega corporations? My assumption is that a corporation wont donate money, without the expectation of ROI.

SaltyBackendGuy··on A Brief Introduction to the Basics of Game Theory
Tragedy of the commons / bounded rationality for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

SaltyBackendGuy··on Why is the Gmail app 700 MB?
Meet still works on Pixel phones as a solution/parity for FaceTime. I wonder if it's bundled in the web build or they're the same build under the hood.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Claude in Chrome
More billable hours.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Reverse engineering a $1B Legal AI tool exposed 100k+ confidential files
Something I've found useful is just reaching out to past employees. Usually folks that don't work there anymore will be more transparent. Only challenge is getting someone to respond to you, but you'd be surprised how many folks will talk if you don't come off like you're trying to sell them something or a bot.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Rockstar employee shares account of the company's union-busting efforts
This made me laugh. I tried Epic because I got a free game that I was interested in, but could only play it on the Epic Game store. After a week, I was no longer able to login no matter what I tried. So anecdotally, your statement tracks with my experience.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15
> For one there is no indication that parents are any more literate in regards to digital practices than their kids

This one hit me recently. My 4th grader has a friend who is on tik-toc and has a phone. Me, living in a bubble, where other parents I've met are terrified of social media and phones for their kids, was shocked when I met the mom and she wasn't aware of all the negative impact of social media. But, like with smokers, you can tell them it's bad for you but it's up to them to quit.

It's absolutely a collective action problem.

SaltyBackendGuy··on Nasdaq 100 set for worst week since April meltdown
One of the scariest quotes I read from Why Markets Fail - John Cassidy, is a quote from a big wig at a large financial institution.

While acknowledging being in a bubble the quote was "While the music is playing, you have to get up and dance".

SaltyBackendGuy··on Ivy League psychologist: 'Bring your whole self to work' is bad advice
Isn't this just baked into the social fabric of humanity?
SaltyBackendGuy··on Poker fraud used X-ray tables, high-tech glasses and NBA players
Exactly. You want zero risk asymmetric payouts.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
This is my take as well. Nothing will improve until we roll back Citizens United.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Why more SaaS companies are hiring chief trust officers
I am the Chief Apology Officer.

"We're really sorry it broke again, it wont happen again.. again"

SaltyBackendGuy··on America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
> But worth a shot.

Worth betting the entire US economy on it?

SaltyBackendGuy··on I played 1k hands of online poker and built a web app with Cursor AI
Aggression generally wins the day but pay attention to the size of the bets and their position. Generally, you want to make a lot of small bets to show action (they can fold for a minimal investment) and leverage table position to make other players make hard decisions.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Open Source Society University – Path to a free self-taught education in CS
As a somewhat accomplished self taught outlier as well, my perspective is slightly different.

While it's absolutely possible to no have a degree and succeed in megacorp, don't discount the randomness (luck) involved in getting the right experience and meeting the right people at the right time of your career (and aligning with market demands).

Please don't hear this as "you didn't work hard to get to where you are". I certainly believe that folks like us, self taught, are able to work hard and teach ourselves what's needed to get to the next level because we cannot rely on credentials to carry us. A lot of things still need to go right for us to be successful, more so than folks with formal education, especially in the early stages of our careers.

SaltyBackendGuy··on Some Command & Conquer games are now open source
Ah got it.
SaltyBackendGuy··on EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, along with other games
IDK why but it ironically brings me joy to find typos in old code. Maybe a reminder that we're all human (well back when code was written by humans /s).

https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection/...

SaltyBackendGuy··on EA Open Sources Command and Conquer: Red Alert, along with other games
This is what you're looking for right?

https://github.com/electronicarts/CnC_Remastered_Collection/...

SaltyBackendGuy··on School smartphone ban results in better sleep and improved mood: study
> We can bring that back. I agree with all of your points. I am not 100% sure how to do this (if anyone has guidance I would appreciate the insight). My personal anecdote is that my 8yo goes to school with other children who's parents have a low understanding of the impact social media is having on them and their children. I was shocked when my daughter came home and told me that her best friend had an iPhone and a Tiktok account. I spoke with her friend's Mom about it and she said that it's fine because she follows her and sees everything that she's doing on it. I respectfully disagreed but this is very real. I expect that over the next couple of years the majority of her friend's socializing will move into messaging apps. I am terrified.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Preferring throwaway code over design docs
+1 for "How Big Things Get Done". It changed the way I run projects. I got lucky in the sense that I was able to convince my corporate overloads to allow us to have separate Discovery and Delivery goals, on the premise that discovery is cheap and delivery is expensive (the former significantly reduces risk of the latter) and we show our work. Discovery goals come with prototype deliverables that we're ok not shipping to production but most times lay the foundational work to ship the final product. Every single time we've found something that challenged our initial assumptions and we now catch these issues early instead of in the delivery phase.

We've fully embraced the "Try, Learn, Repeat" philosophy.

SaltyBackendGuy··on LLRT: A low-latency JavaScript runtime from AWS
We've found it really nice for worker queues for specific workloads that fire infrequently'ish.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Analyzing Starfield’s Performance on Nvidia’s 4090 and AMD’s 7900 XTX
IMO the quest lines and the powers are very Skyrim'y. Combat is undeniably Fallout without vats, which I think is a good thing.
SaltyBackendGuy··on How Postgres Triggers Can Simplify Your Back End Development
We use PG Notify at work extensively and it's the source of a lot of pain and suffering. Not because of the functionality itself, more so because what we did to ourselves by using it in the way we did.

I think this could be great for certain projects, but there is a lot room to put yourself into a situation that's hard to maintain if you/you're team doesn't possess the right amount of discipline around documentation, developer tooling, observability etc..

SaltyBackendGuy··on How I use Notion to manage everything
I just started using Logseq and I am blown away with how amazing it is.
SaltyBackendGuy··on Ask HN: Employers, why do you want us back in the office?
> I believe most employees simply put in less hours when working from home

From my experience and observations I've gathered from my teams, my conclusion is the opposite of this. I have to regularly tell folks to watch out for burnout and it's ok to wait until Monday.

SaltyBackendGuy··on 10 years of FTL: The making of an enduring spaceship simulator
I listen to the soundtrack while working. It's truly amazing.
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