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idlephysicist

81 karma · joined December 23, 2022

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idlephysicist··on IDEs we had 30 years ago
This fella has a number of interesting videos of development on System 6 using THINK C!

https://jcs.org/2022/03/05/serial

idlephysicist··on Evaluating new software forges
What is a Product Engineer? Is it just another name for an engineer?
idlephysicist··on SSH3: SSHv2 using HTTP/3 and QUIC
I'd agree with you. The readme calls out "Significantly faster session establishment" and goes into greater detail later on.

> Establishing a new session with SSHv2 can take 5 to 7 network round-trip times, which can easily be noticed by the user. SSH3 only needs 3 round-trip times. The keystroke latency in a running session is unchanged.

I, for one, can say that sometimes session establishment can take a little while but not to the extent that it would be a selling point (so to speak) for me to adopt SSH3.

idlephysicist··on GM Says It's Nixing CarPlay to Make Drivers Safer
> CarPlay will be eliminated in electric vehicles under the Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC brands. Combustion vehicles from GM will continue to support CarPlay until they are phased out in favor of an all-electric lineup in 2035.

It strikes me as odd that they would maintain to likely divergent paths. And given that they claim that this is for safety then it is even stranger that they could and would maintain two separate paths – by their claim one safer than the other.

It's almost like this isn't about safety at all :thinking-face:

idlephysicist··on YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads
> has to go to court and looses[sic] when he tries to find out from google who is advertising using his identity

I believe from the article that you linked that the case is still before the High Court and so he has not lost yet.

I wonder would the case have been better made as an instance of identity theft?

Also while you are accurate in saying that the Tánaiste is equivalent to the Vice President in U.S. terms, because they are the deputy head of government. The same being true with respect to Taoiseach. I would like to point out that they are not the same positions. While the U.S. President is commander in chief of the U.S. military, the Taoiseach is not the command in chief in Ireland – that falls to the Uachtarán (the President).

Tánaiste = Deputy Prime Minister

Taoiseach = Prime Minister

Uachtarán = President

idlephysicist··on You are never taught how to build quality software
Exactly, there's no point in a startup having _perfect_ code, great test coverage, and an excellent CI/CD pipeline if they've not gotten to market before the cash runs out.

Though I think that if leadership are not consulting the Engineers on timelines, instead just dictating the timelines to them, then there is a massive problem afoot.

idlephysicist··on You are never taught how to build quality software
> ... just piled their hacks on top of someone else's hacks so they could hit the deadline.

This sounds oddly familiar... hmm.

idlephysicist··on Polish trains lock up when serviced in third-party workshops
While passenger trains nor city buses are not likely to be used for troops transports, passenger trains and city buses would most definitely be used in the transportation of civilians to places of safety – both modes of transport could be considered critical national infrastructure in a time of crisis.
idlephysicist··on Spectrolite – Mac app to make colorful risograph prints and zines more easily
Is this link broken for anyone else?
idlephysicist··on A redesigned Slack, built for focus
I wonder how many people would like a block button.

I work at a large company with thousands of people on Slack. It is effectively unmoderated social media.

And if anyone thinks that HR are the moderators, well the buck stops with them but no HR team has the time, resources, or training to moderate a Slack workspace(s) in that way.

idlephysicist··on Apple Maps Gradually Winning over Google Maps Users, Report Suggests
One thing that I love about Apple Maps apart from getting directions in an Irish accent, is that it gives directions like a normal person.

As an example "go through these lights and at the next set turn left" rather than "in 600m turn left". It is a night and day difference.

idlephysicist··on Stéphane Graber has left Canonical
I noped out right there. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. If they cannot make a decision after two interviews (three at the absolute most) then I probably won’t want to work there.

Oh and they asked me if I would be willing to use my own laptop…

Below is the list of interview/application stages:

- Initial screening

- Personal essay

- Standardised aptitude and personality tests

- Culture interview

- General interviews

- Recruitment screen

- Technical assessment

- Role-specific interviews

- Hiring manager interview

- Executive interview

idlephysicist··on Generate invoices from the command line
I’ve had this on my idea list for years. Glad to see someone did it.
idlephysicist··on [dead]
That was an exceptionally sad read.
idlephysicist··on Ask HN: Have any managers/team leads been asked to layoff staff b/c of AI?
Yeah them (and many others) just get Alan and Imelda to do the work.
idlephysicist··on Show HN: NeoSurf – A tiny (~460k LoC) graphical browser based on NetSurf
I'd love to get this working on macOS under X11/XQuartz. That might be a bit of work.
idlephysicist··on Ask HN: How many code reviewers should you require?
Two sets of eyes is ideal.

Making use of things like GitHub CODEOWNERS files can be very useful too, allowing for certain directories to require reviews from certain individuals or user groups. For example, a directory containing the Helm Chart for a service might require a review from someone in the infrastructure team.

idlephysicist··on Ed Connor / shutterstock ‘Statistically impossible’ heat extremes are here
Not sure what this article has to do with Ed Connor or Shutterstock, other than they are credited for the cover photo.
idlephysicist··on StopTheMadness Mobile makes it easier to edit URLs in Safari
That's an interesting looking app/extension, it seems to do a lot more than the linked page implies. I had been thinking that $7.99 was pretty steep for editing URLs in Safari, but no StopTheMadness seems to do so much more.

For example (from the App Store listing): - Stops Google AMP - Removes tracking tags - Stop videos from autoplaying - Add your own site-specific CSS and JavaScript - Custom URL redirects! e.g. redirect new Reddit to old Reddit - Hides the annoying "get the app" banners.

If I find myself using mobile safari more then I might have to check this out.

idlephysicist··on GPS, UTC and TAI Clocks (2001)
I'd not heard of TAI before, the page doesn't explain how it differs from Loran-C, though perhaps some of the reference links will. I'll have to check them out.
idlephysicist··on People who use Notion to plan their whole lives
Nice, glad to hear that you have a useful and productive workflow.

Yeah at work I use what ever tech what I'm told to use, but paper is still an important part of my thought process.

idlephysicist··on People who use Notion to plan their whole lives
Yeah I've also had a similar experience with a school diary or as we called them homework journals. Though no boarding school experience.

I do also use the reminders app on the iPhone if I need a reminder at a specific time.

idlephysicist··on People who use Notion to plan their whole lives
Maybe I am the weird one but I use a diary / planner what ever you want to call it. I'll never get locked out of it, I don't have to pay a monthly fee. Personally I think that I have enough screen time as it is.

Ok yeah the search feature is somewhat lacking but from the sounds of it most of these organise your life SaaS products have the same issue.

Sure I could lose it but I'd argue that losing your access to Notion et al. is worse because you know where your data is but you're not allowed in.

idlephysicist··on How Postgres Triggers Can Simplify Your Back End Development
A colleague of mine talks about the Law of Conservation of Complexity. It boils down to "the complexity will have to go somewhere".

You can make the development of your backend more simple, by shoving the complexity into the database, meaning your backend just does less. That in itself does not make your application any simpler.

idlephysicist··on Show HN: Walkie-talkie for teams
Thank you for your reply!

The death by a thousand cuts is real. Where I work we use Slack for nearly everything, we pretty much only have email addresses to login to Slack and AWS.

I have definitely found with the diverse bunch of people that I work with, that some people are very articulate in writing and some are very articulate in verbal communication. My personal experience is that people with English as a second language (in general) prefer written communication (they also write the best docs too). While native English speakers tend to prefer verbal communication for its ease and because of their comfort with it.

One piece of advice from me to you is to be careful of relying on speech to text for two main reasons: 1. Consider proper nouns, the products or tools that your customers are building or using. An example, I say "emacs", Siri on my phone thinks that should be "IMAX". Another example is `grep`, Siri thinks that ought to be "grape". Perhaps users would be able to define their proper nouns for flowy.

2. Despite having fluent English that is understandable to the vast majority of people, speech to text systems really struggle to understand me because I do not speak in a flat American accent. Perhaps it's just me :shrug:

idlephysicist··on Show HN: Walkie-talkie for teams
This looks pretty cool. This is no small feat.

I'm not actually sure if the product _and_ company are named flowy, or if the company is flowy and the product is named talksik (from the screen recording). Your post here doesn't clarify, but I will stick with flowy for this reply.

Though I think that you'll have some difficulties in getting sales (who knows I might be totally incorrect). I say that for a couple of reasons:

1. I think with only 24 hours of history it is somewhat limited, let's say I work in Boston, what about the Friday afternoon message that my Seattle colleague sends me as I'm finishing up, I'll want to replay it on Monday morning but it won't be there. A save for later function would be helpful.

2. Let's imagine I am a potential investor, I ask you "what does flowy have to offer if Slack implements a voice message feature?" What is your answer? From your website I honestly don't know, sure it's not Slack, so there are no Slack channels with hundreds of people and that one person who hits @here, and at some companies Slack is like a social media network without the moderation or block button. But Slack offers a lot, a rich ecosystem of plugins / bots for one.

3. Slack (and Teams et al.) offer a written history (leaving aside the caveat of the edit button for the moment), if I forget the specifics of what my colleague and I agreed on last week I can go back to Slack and read the message thread, if we use flowy that history is gone without transcribing the message.

One place that I can see this tool being somewhat useful is as a secondary mode of communication between a handful of engineers. Numerous times a week I consider uninstalling Slack from my work laptop, but that would leave my close colleagues high and dry. flowy _could_ be a useful tool in combatting that. Though given that a company is already paying for Slack / Teams etc. they would rightfully be hesitant to purchase a subscription to flowy.

I am glad to see that you have screen-sharing included already because that is so integral to so many peoples workflows.

idlephysicist··on Show HN: Walkie-talkie for teams
As someone who struggles with context switching _and_ who likes to help people out and unstick them, I really feel that you're saying. I need to become more like you in that respect.

I think scheduling a time to talk and using this tool for the convo, is not inherently bad. That said though, at that point just use a Slack Huddle or Teams.

idlephysicist··on systemd 100% cpu hang? – Proxmox Support Forum
As far as I recall, Ireland is the only country to have its timezones setup that way.
idlephysicist··on Launch HN: Lago (YC S21) – Open-source usage-based billing
As someone who was once tasked with fixing a 1200 line Bash script that tabulated customer usage – it got re-implemented in about 400 lines of Python – I like the sound of this. Good luck
idlephysicist··on Netflix has job with almost $1M listed salary range, to comply with new CA law
When I elected to not fill them in, HR told me that they would answer the questions for me. This was due to a "limitation of the system".
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