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Tehdasion Building a highly-available web service without a database

Hmm, but the problem with having in-memory objects rather than a db is you end up having to replicate alot of the features of a relational database to get a usable system. And adding all these extra features you want from those dbs end up making a simple solution not very simple at all.

Tehdasion Scrum is a cancer

> They then claim that pure "Scrum" or "Agile" has never been implemented anywhere.

They are right, however the conclusion that should be drawn from this is that the most likely outcome of your organisations implementation of agile will be equally as poor, and that it should prolly be skipped.

Tehdasion Human Shader

Basically, yes. A shader is basically a function which passes in the x,y coords and spits out a color, and this is done for every pixel on the screen.

So a simple shader would be something like (in pseudo code):

function shader( x, y ) { if( x > 0.5 ) return white; else return black; }

would color one half of the screen black, and the other white.

Tehdasion Vale's first prototype for immutable region borrowing

I dunno about the GP, but it's a JPL guideline to never use dynamic allocation after initialization. So it's not unthinkable. I'd suspect that many microcontroller programs might have to be really careful about using the heap just because they just don't have the memory to allocate that much. https://www.perforce.com/blog/kw/NASA-rules-for-developing-s...

Tehdasion A FactoryFactoryFactory in Production (2017)

That's the punchline, nobody knows what it does or why it was needed.

Tehdasion Most tech content is bullshit (2020)

Never specifically heard about this terminology until now, but after looking, yeah, I can see why ppl prefer 'artificial' keys to natural ones. From the animal shelter example, for people it uses email as the 'natural' key, which immediately runs up against 1,2,3 and 7 in https://beesbuzz.biz/code/439-Falsehoods-programmers-believe...

Tehdasion I hate almost all software (2011)

"The software serves the business' bottom line period."

Making big assumptions about what the software project here. Given the article was mostly complaining about software developed for developers by developers, I don't think we can blame the suits for this one.

Tehdasion Why F# evangelism isn't working (2015)

> Agreed. Tweaks: I don't think C++ is going to be relevant for much longer, Rust solves the problem space better.

I would say that in the domain of game development C++ (which is where I'm guessing that most new C++ development is done) has such a moat that Rust in it's current form will not be able to displace it.

Tehdasion SFUSD's delay of algebra 1 has created a nightmare of workarounds

I'm sure in every educational system you can use some form of metric to exclude low SES students and conclude that the system isn't behind or failing.

Tehdasion Disqualified from a National Web Design Competition for Using GitHub

> Rules are rules are rules, and they must be followed,

Contra, "rules" are only effective when they are enforced, and when push comes to shove, most of the keepers of the rules will just discard them when it gets in the way of things they really care about.

Getting the enforcers of stupid rules to waive away rules so things can get done is a valuable skill in anyone's tool chest.

In the article's case, the teacher was being a pain. He didn't consult the team when the disqualifying issue was found, nor did he consult with the TSA to clarify or get an exemption from the rule. The real lesson is to avoid or work around these types of people in any endeavor, they don't want to work with ppl to advance the cause of their organisation, they just love their rules.

Tehdasion 'Too many employees, but few work': Pichai, Zuckerberg sound the alarm

> Even they will carve out some niche and pretend (even to themselves) to be doing useful work. ... You'll find the odd developer that's maintaining some internal app by themselves.

In my experience, internal apps need far more love. Maintaining internal apps is far more useful than most 'real' work, just because it can be a multiplier on so much other 'real' work.

Tehdasion I 10x'd a TI-84 emulator's speed by replacing a switch-case

Tangentially related, but I remember reading years ago a piece from a graphics driver developer (nvidia maybe?) that one of the reasons why the opengl driver was slower than their directx driver (I believe) was that the structure of OpenGL was such that you had to put a massive switch in the code which really hurt performance.

Tehdasion Botspam apocalypse

> And they value engagement over content quality, which is the entire reason comment-tree/vote-based systems have been pushed heavily over web-1.0 threaded forum discussions as well.

While they certainly do value engagement over quality, I suspect that the systems are put in place because they don't scale in terms of manpower, and they don't trust their users to do formalize the structure of the site.

Tehdasion The European central bank is trapped

"Ofc and I left France the day I realized it was impossible. Not because of the high roller bankers but because the people literally cannot accept a balanced budget to live within our means."

https://tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/households-debt-to-gd....

vs.

https://tradingeconomics.com/france/households-debt-to-gdp#:....

Tehdasion Imagen, a text-to-image diffusion model

Still has the issue with screwing up mechanical objects. In their demo checkout the wheels on the skateboards, all over the place.

Tehdasion My seatbelt rule for judgment

The reverse is also quite true. You can get a thing which just seems too slow/fiddly/buggy/etc, but it's in an area where you are unfamiliar with, so you pass it off as just your misunderstanding of the thing. Whenever you investigate more on it, you find that there are ways ppl use it that avoid the problems that you are having with it, or that pieces of the thing make a certain amount of sense the way they are. Then as you learn more you begin to understand the underlying reason that the thing is the way it is, and you realise that it's not you. Poor decisions were made in the design of the thing initially (or at least decisions which once valued the right things, but now do not), and have become baked into the DNA of the thing so it could not be fixed without major changes that nobody wants to do. It's at that point, you realize that the emperor has no clothes, and certainly didn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I find this is particularly the case when the design flaw is particularly bad, the developers end up adding complexity to work around the flaw, which has the effect of hiding the flaw, making it alot less obvious to the novice.

Tehdasion More than 1k Dutch residents plan to throw rotten eggs at Jeff Bezos' superyacht

Another one: Boat stands for Bust Out Another Thousand.

Tehdasion Dick Smith (Entrepreneur)

"In the early days DSE was like Jaycar." Not that surprising. The origin story of Jaycar is that when DSE was being sold to Woolworths DS took aside an exec at DSE and said that Woolworths were going to run DSE into the ground. He advised the exec to start up his own rival chain, which he did, and thus Jaycar. Still, whilst Jaycar appears to be quite successful, DS wasn't entirely right, it took 34 years for the brand to die.

Tehdasion Truths about video game stories

Should be noted that for Portal it didn't even have a narrative really, just a games long monologue. It was closer to Notes from the Underground than most game narratives.

Tehdasion The ‘semi-rich’: Millions of high-income Americans may not feel wealthy but are

"The net worth of that group ranges from about $1.2 million to $20 million per household, Stewarts says."

In Australia apparently all you have to do to get into this group would be to actually own a paid off house. :/ I think this says far more about housing then wealth inequality though.

Tehdasion There is no 'printf'

> I wouldn't recommend anyone choose C as a language for new software

Unless you are doing firmware where all those constraints are still around, and you have to deal with whatever compiler the vendor supplies for their microcontroller, which will almost certainly be some variant of C.

Tehdasion Financial Secrecy Index

Of course, those are two prime characteristics you want in a tax haven. You want it to have rule of law since you don't want your money/assets/secrets expropriated or exposed, and you don't want a new regime to come in to do the previous for their benefit. Just as long as the haven is concerned about their laws, not other countries laws.

Tehdasion SnakeOS: Bootable x86 snake game in Rust

Obligatory comment about how an operating system is "system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs" and not just a program that executes at startup.

Tehdasion Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

So basically it's 90+% of debt for housing (scroll down to the pie chart):

https://www.finder.com.au/australias-personal-debt-reported-...

I'm including 'Investment debt' cause who are we kidding? It's all investment properties.

Tehdasion No-code startup Bubble raises $100M

Well it would be nice to have a no-code solution that elegantly can be moved into a coded solution, but I suspect that a company that makes no-code software has little incentive to help ppl stop using no-code.

Tehdasion The Miami condo collapse is a reminder of America's artificial land problem

> There is no one enjoying ill-gotten gains here.

Well if it's found that the construction/design of the building is at fault, then it will be the developers.

Tehdasion ProPublica's tax story

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/technology/apple-tax-bill...

Not for individuals, but when you are a high net worth individual, it's all the same.

Tehdasion Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches

In one of the states of Australia, there is a law that mentions someone by name: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/bill/cab2014300/ Was done as a stopgap just to make sure that it was impossible for him to leave jail.

Tehdasion Being good at coding competitions correlates negatively with job performance

For Advent of Code, you lose a minute of time for every wrong answer. Also in most how-to-leaderboard guides it's heavily noted that making mistakes (ie. bugs) is going to cost you the most times (anecdotally, I'd agree with this). Those who leaderboard have to write bug free code.

Tehdasion Being good at coding competitions correlates negatively with job performance

Also, for any given title, ppl on HN will come up with anecdata to support it's assertion.