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adamrmcd

395 karma · joined September 28, 2011

DevOperationalizationing all the things!

adam [at] array [dot] org

http://twitter.com/#!/adamrmcd

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adamrmcd··on The Story of the Game Genie, a Cheat Device Nintendo Tried (and Failed) to Kill
I remember the first time I learned about the Game Genie.

I was 12 when I walked into our local game store late one night and saw Super Mario Bros 3 being played on the big screen, except Mario had 99 lives, jumped higher than the screen, and looked like a beetle throwing hammers. WTF!

I asked the guy playing how he did it, and he replied with one word, "genie". I was so floored by what I was seeing, I didn't even think to ask any follow up questions.

I spent the next three months searching every corner of that game for the Genie, like he was a super secret character built-in. I only stopped after finding the Game Genie for sale at that same store :D

adamrmcd··on CT scans of AirPods evolution
I cannot fathom why they would they remove previous scans/links. Maybe to enable a paywall archive?

It's super slick how they showcase the object as you scroll down, but flattening it into a single URL and only making one scan available per month restricts your audience appeal.

I only first heard of this site when they did the lego minifigs last month. Did they publish any other scans prior to that?

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
Working on a hardware startup. Building an epaper based tablet. In fact, one of my test PCBs just arrived earlier today from OSHpark[1]. Still a WIP but I'm looking forward to cooking some electronics tonight on a hotplate :)

I love doing this work. (Electrical engineering, firmware design, cloud backend, etc.) I just really wish I went to school for the EE though.

[1] https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/FBeESNgs

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?
Good analogy.

It really depends on the needs of the individual contributor. For example, if you know what needs to be done, and you're blocked for one reason or another, let me know.

The key here, and the point of my original post, is communication. Any kind. Sure, some managers don't listen, but also some direct reports don't speak their mind.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: What do engineers never talk to their bosses about, but should?
Feedback on how I am doing as your manager.

This isn't a dictatorship, it's a partnership. What can I do to change/help you?

Most of my team is quiet on this sort of thing. Perhaps it's cultural? (Is this common for individuals who grew up in eastern Europe?)

adamrmcd··on Why Carmakers Can’t Transition to Newer Chips
I'd love to see Ken Sherrif do a teardown of some vintage ECM.

https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/when-did-cars-get-comput...

(tldr)

> So instead of one clear answer, we have three possibilities: 1957 Rambler, 1958 Chrysler or 1968 Volkswagen.

adamrmcd··on No One Wanted A&W's Third-Pound Burger (2016)
Or a 113 grammer!
adamrmcd··on I made an eInk newspaper
The base eink display doesn't take common image formats natively. Instead images need to be dithered and encoded in a specific format to convey the greyscale or color map. The backend architecture is likely used to convert an html rending into the EPD binary format.
adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Why are e-ink note-taking devices so expensive compared to iPads?
I have one as well. For me the killer feature is the ability to copy/paste your own handwriting.

I'm on the device 6 of 8 hours in a day, constantly taking notes of my meetings and conversations. Frequently I write sentences in the wrong order, and have to rearrange them for logical/linear understanding.

Sure, you can do that on a Slate or iPad, but neither feel or sound like you're writing on real paper.

It is just so satisfying to use.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: Show me your half baked project
I just signed up for your beta. I receive about 500 emails a day in Outlook for Mac, and every few months I have to rebuild my entire inbox due to search/filter anomalies. Need a way to purge past months/years while maintaining accessibility.

Unless I'm missing something, the only way to do this is to move messages to a local mailbox, but it's still locked to Outlook.

adamrmcd··on Cyberpunk 2077 Removed from Playstation Store
As someone who has purchased the PS4 version to play on a PS4 (amateur) console, I found the game passable, yet "distracting". I've accepted to continue playing the game after the January/February patch.

I am a little confused by the wording here,

> therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store.

Does this mean that anyone who purchased a digital copy gets a refund? Will we retain a license to play the digital game?

Or maybe CDPR/Sony have given up on ever releasing a PS4 (amateur) build of the game that works?

adamrmcd··on ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle (2018)
Nor coffee or other "normalized" liquid stimulants. The coffee sweet-spot-of-productivity is so difficult to attain, or even find. Is it even worth experimenting with if other avenues have failed?

It would be interesting to hear the author's thoughts on this, and on alcohol.

EDIT: ...and on exercise.

adamrmcd··on I tried to adjust the time on my alarm clock
I've done something similar with an esp8266 + 14segment alphanumeric display[1].

That being said, NTP only returns GMT. You still have to hardcode your timezone and whether DST is active or not, right?

[1] https://github.com/adamm/esp8266-clockradio

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer?
> Is there anyway to keep oneself occupied with technical stuff in a managerial role?

It's been 1.5 years since I transitioned from a Solution Architect role and into a Technical Manager role, and I still struggle to keep myself out of my devops-team's kitchen. I'll still offer advice and direction based upon my past experience, but try to maintain those "teachable moments."

But for me, the only way I could fully scratch that technical itch is to pick up some hobby electronics projects at home.

Ironically, most recently I ended up building an Arduino traffic signal light for the office, interpreting data from our Sensu/Telegraf/New Relic APIs, just to show my team when our servers are struggling. Heh

adamrmcd··on The Economics of Writing a Technical Book
I think I had the same publisher. Two books done in 2010 & 2011, same basic results.

What's worse, once they hit the shelves they were already out of date. The publisher had no interest in a second edition.

But, the books look aweseme on my resume/linkedin. Today, I'm on a career path I wouldn't be considered for if it wasn't for these projects.

adamrmcd··on Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?
I follow 1..3 daily. I also have this.

4) Be humble. Redirect upstream praise for your team's work onto your team directly (away from yourself). Accept criticism for your team's work directly onto yourself.

5) Expect to do less actual programming, but still keep ownership of one or two components (UI, DB, etc) for up to 1/3 of your time. This helps to maintain an ear-to-the-ground on ongoing features/bugs and to communicate intelligently with the technical team.

adamrmcd··on The Final Countdown for NPAPI
That's perfect! .. Insta-bookmark!

Although I did find Chromium 38 did work to get me back online, this uptodown site will prove useful for other tests requiring full Chrome.

Thanks!

adamrmcd··on The Final Countdown for NPAPI
I had to resort to Firefox 24 on OS X, however I found a Chromium 38 build. Guess that'll do for now.

http://www.freesmug.org/chromium

Could not find any older builds of Chrome for OS X

(updated to say I'm on OS X)

adamrmcd··on The Final Countdown for NPAPI
I understand the reasoning behind this, but this is super annoying, since:

1. I am required to use GWT 2.5.1 for our java webapp

2. I choose to use Chrome on Mac OS X

3. Chrome 39 just auto-updated to support 64-bit on OS X

4. Chrome 39 stopped supporting NPAPI

5. GWT-2.5.1 and the GWT Chrome extension are not 64-bit compatible, and require NPAPI.

6. I have a major deadline this week finish styling our webapp

I've heard that enabling SuperDevMode can workaround all these problems, however I'm just an HTML5/CSS3/GWT-UI-Binder developer, not a Java/Eclipse/GWT expert. PITA.

(Perhaps I should enhance my calm and work on some LaTeX or Python)

adamrmcd··on Inactive Account Manager
I have no idea when this was announced, if at all. I just came across this "Inactivity Account Manager" and thought of it as a "Dead man's switch" solution.

Under the "Add Trusted Contact" section, you can write a personal "atonement" email to whoever will receive your data. At least that's how the message to my wife is turning out :|

adamrmcd··on Maksimovic v. Sony of Canada class action settlement
From the email I received today from "Sony Entertainment Network":

[...]

The Sony Entities deny any claims of wrongdoing in this case, and the settlement does not mean that the Sony Entities violated any laws or did anything wrong.

WHO'S INCLUDED?

The Class includes everyone who resides in Canada who had a PSN account, a Qriocity account, or an SOE account at any time prior to May 15, 2011.

WHAT DOES THE SETTLEMENT PROVIDE?

There are various benefits, depending in part on what type of account(s) you had:

Inactive PlayStation Network Accountholders:

If you used any of your PSN accounts any time from January 1, 2011 through May 14, 2011, but you did not use them after that through January 24, 2013 because of the Intrusions, you can get a payment equal to any balance of paid virtual currency in your account wallet if that balance is at least U.S. $2.

Active PlayStation Network Accountholders:

a) If you paid other companies for certain media services that you could not access through the PSN during the PSN outage from April 20 through May 14, 2011, you can get 3 free PS3 themes or a 50% discount on PlayStation Plus for 3 months. Up to U.S. $100,000 in total benefits will be available, on a first-come, first-served basis.

b) If you participated in the PSN "Welcome Back" program that followed the April 2011 service outage, you can get either a free game for your PS3 or PSP, 3 free PS3 themes, or a 50% discount on PlayStation Plus for 3 months. If you did not participate in the PSN "Welcome Back" program, you can submit a claim for two of the above benefits. Up to U.S. $1 million in these benefits will be available, on a first-come, first-served basis; claimants who file claims thereafter can get a 50% discount on PlayStation Plus for one month.

[...]

Generous.

adamrmcd··on HTML 5 Notifications in Mountain Lion
I don't understand how the anonymous blog author identified that this is feature new in "Mountain Lion" specifically, as this is a window.webkitNotifications is a javascript API introduced and adopted only by WebKit.

In other words, my copy of Chrome 20 running in Snow Leopard runs this site example fine.

I think he/she meant it's new in Mountain Lion's Safari.

adamrmcd··on Eric S Raymond's Setup
> The desktop ensemble is rounded out with Logitech speakers and a hefty subwoofer, as I like intricate music playing while I hack (Liquid Tension Experiment playing now).

I would have liked to have heard what else he listens to. Never heard of this band but they sound like Dethklok meets Antiloop or something. Very interesting and cool.

I always find I can work better to "progressive instrumental" too: no lyrics or vocals.

adamrmcd··on Google I/O 2012 Redirect Checker w/ Gmail Support
I found this C# example on pastebin.com through a Google Alert email notification for the term "Google I/O 2012". Unfortunately, there is no license or copyright associated with this program, nor is there any indication about who wrote it, nor do I have any clue whether it actually works! So, I submit this to Hacker News as a "fair use" example of what one anonymous developer is doing to be notified of the pending Google I/O 2012 announcement.

So, not being a lawyer, would this code automatically fall under the Public Domain? I couldn't find any statement on pastebin.com to state who owns anonymous pastes. Regardless, there's nothing proprietary in this example that hundreds of other developers would have probably already created in other langauges like Perl, Ruby, Python, Bash, etc.

What have other HN readers coded to be notified for this event? :)

adamrmcd··on Tower.js - JavaScript Framework for Node.js modeled after Ruby on Rails
Second. While I'm no expert, I did attend a Node.js Bootcamp this past weekend. One of the topics brought up was Coffeescript and how unwieldily it can be, especially if you mix it with straight-up Javascript, and by extension jQuery.

While avoiding any new FUD, and since Tower.js is Coffeescript and jQuery top heavy, wouldn't this inevitably lead to conflicts?

(Side note, at the bootcamp the framework recommended was Express.)

adamrmcd··on Ask HN:Any idea on list of open source software used in Apple ecosystem?
Way back in 1998 Apple contributed several patches to KHTML (KDE's browser). I think in 2001 Apple forked KHTML to become WebKit. WebKit is LGPLv2.1[1] and Apple dedicates the second-most[2] number of developers to its development, second only to Google.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit#Open-sourcing

[2] http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit%20Team

adamrmcd··on Responsive Text
A useful tool for examining responsive content across multiple displays, such as is demonstrated by this post, is http://www.benjaminkeen.com/misc/bricss/. It's a javascript bookmarklet that'll dynamically create multiple iframes, each set to the dimensions of popular device screens, and display them all on a single desktop browser window.

Great for side-by-side comparison and validation of media queries.

adamrmcd··on Responsive Text
Which browser/version/OS?
adamrmcd··on Running Dropbox affiliate ads cost me my Adwords account
Thanks for clarifying :) I was actually under the impression that AdSence was AdWords renamed. My issue happened in 2008 after all, I'm still suspended today.

Anyway, I agree that these users were committing fraud, but why ban me? I didn't condone (or even know) what they were doing until after the fact. The correct thing for AdSence to do here is to identify the offending IP addresses, cancel the credit accumulated by said IPs, and let me continue supporting the program on my site.

adamrmcd··on Running Dropbox affiliate ads cost me my Adwords account
Were you able to convince Google to un-suspend you?

I used to use AdWords on my own site, and my account was frozen because of "click-fraud". A few enterprising users on an unrelated forum decided to click my ads repeatedly, to support my OSS project. As a result I was denied the $10 of "legitimate clicks"

Any attempt to launch an appeal and contact Google seemed like the message was sent to their spam folder, and ignored.

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