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iradik

401 karma · joined February 26, 2010

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iradik··on How the Fed Is Quietly Inflating the AI Bubble While Hiking Your Electric Bill
Does this really solve the problem? The article said that municipal bond costs are higher too. Buying up these companies will take a lot of capital. Cities will need to raise money somehow to pay for electrical grid investments and equipment. Even publicly owned companies work hire private ones which means needing to pay them.
iradik··on Meta Down
Instagram is working for me but Facebook is not. What’s app working.
iradik··on Primer on FedEx's Distribution Network (2024)
I would try that but then I’d have to change the delivery location after the shipment which can create an additional “change location” delay. It still has to be delivered to a FedEx store as well unless you are going to the station which can be a trek.
iradik··on Primer on FedEx's Distribution Network (2024)
As someone who relies on overnight 2-3 times per week, I have to say FedEx expresss (air) is a logistical wonder but unfortunately the packages still have to hit the ground to get to your door. And the ground service is a joke at least in SF. I never knew this but ground delivery drivers are not employees instead they are all independent contractors. Quite often packages come several days late. The driver will also falsely mark item as delivered or that no one was available. Customer support cannot reach anyone at the SF hub/station. I once went to the station and had to wait an hour before someone talked to me. I’ve heard they’ve had many layoffs and completely shut down the Oakland hub. Also heard UPS is much better and pays drivers better (they are union). If I didn’t get a 90% personal discount thru my work I would never use them.
iradik··on Body Doubling
What’s the difference between body doubling and looking over someone’s shoulder? Looking over someone’s shoulder slows me down. Whereas someone I trust and like being nearby can be a big boost.
iradik··on The $55M saga of a Netflix series nobody will ever see
Isn't this fraud? Why isn't he in jail?
iradik··on Using XPath in 2023
No thanks
iradik··on Remembering Bob Lee
So sad. I met Bob once at an interview at Square in 2012 for the final interview. I believe he was the inventor of Google’s guice dependency injection library and the dagger library. I bombed the interview. I liked him anyway. RIP.
iradik··on The UNIX Programming Environment (1984)
good memories of playing Nethack on the University cs Linux servers. Very rich bones files.
iradik··on Ask HN: What are some good keyboards?
I love the HHKB Pro 2 Type-S (topre) https://youtu.be/CmvB7FOgyxk not for everyone. I like torpe switches. Reminds me of the old apple iie keyboard (alps switch); probably my favorite keyboard ever https://youtu.be/zwgas6McpoQ
iradik··on My £4 a month server can handle 4.2M requests a day
"If we can handle 50 requests a second that means we can handle 4.2 million requests a day."

Not really. Real world traffic won't be uniform over one entire day. 50 QPS would be more accurate.

iradik··on Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper
I love note taking on paper; the problem is finding my notes later.
iradik··on Filesystem devs should aim to make “badly written” app code “just work” (2009)
Kyle wants to add a new API called barrier() which will improve consistency and remove the need for fsync.

Linus makes the point here is that the file system API is already complicated to the point that few use or implement it correctly. Further complicating the API will likely create more problems than it fixes.

iradik··on Ask HN: What are engineers rewarded for at your company?
Mastering ambiguity and comm skills. As you move up job levels your role changes from problem solving to problem formulation. You need to be able to tell other engineers what problems need to be solved.

Not valuing technical contributions seems odd. There should always be a base level of strong technical competence that you build atop.

But technical chops alone won’t get you promoted. Also producing a large volume of work won’t get you promoted; that will get you a reputation as a code monkey.

iradik··on Why I quit a $500K job at Amazon to work for myself
Is 500k due to stock appreciation?
iradik··on [dead]
Article is hilarious.

“Sure, I could go first and release a few of my own. But the dirty pics a gay sex-advice columnist sent to his husband don’t have the power to change the world. The dirty pics the world’s richest man sent to his girlfriend? They do.

I’ve long thought there should be an annual release-a-nude-pic day. Imagine a kind of purge where all Americans would unite by mass-releasing dirty pics, thus depriving hackers, vengeful exes, unscrupulous publishers, sex-phobic employers and former K.G.B. agents of the power to destroy peoples’ lives. If you go first, Jeff, we’ll call it Jeff Bezos Day. It’s a far better legacy than wage theft.”

iradik··on Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit
Did they get laid-off or reassigned? The article is vague.
iradik··on Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?
Why do you want to sell it? My friend and I thought of this the other day as a business.

Do you do the printing yourself or use a SASS to do it?

iradik··on Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in US
Don't give up! I was told the same thing you are depressed. Doc even wanted to push meds on me. Took months of seeing specialists but ended up getting a real diagnosis which required a major surgery. Now I'm finally better but you have to work within the system which means finding a good doctor.
iradik··on Foursquare Gets $45M and a New CEO to Build Out Enterprise Business
How is 4sq worth millions but yelp is worth billions? I find them both to be very similar services. Should there really be that much of a difference in valuation between the two? Seems like one is either over-valued or under-valued.
iradik··on You Don’t Need More Free Time
This logic in the article is so shaky. Because unemployed people also feel sad on M-Thursday is a reason why an employed person doesn't need more free time? It doesn't make sense.
iradik··on Raped by a Cop, Then Forced to Relive It
I think the fallacy in your argument is that you are separating this cop from the "police" when they are both one and the same. What is the "police force"? Isn't it just a group of individuals chartered for a specific set of activities and behaviors? If one individual in a group does wrong within the charter (i.e. uphold the law, serve and protect), cat you also say that the group as a whole has done wrong? I think the concept applies to lots of things. Tire center puts on wrong tires on your car and you get in an accident, they are liable. McDonalds undercooks your burger and your kid dies, they are liable. Police pull you over, and then you die, get injured, beaten, raped without just cause etc, they are liable.
iradik··on Caffeine could limit damage of chronic stress
What happens when you develop a tolerance to caffeine after prolonged use? Study doesn't really explain that.

I'm sure many drugs / stimulants make you feel better in short term but what about the long term?

iradik··on Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
They don't have car insurance in China?
iradik··on “I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon”
I think the shocker was they put her on a "performance improvement plan" -- that's basically probation.
iradik··on Google loses data as lightning strikes
At Amazon, when resolving an issue in our internal ticketing system I recall there being "Act of God" as a reason code. Seems applicable here.
iradik··on Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
I started at Amazon in 2005 and I can definitely say it's an intense place-- I spent most of my 20s at Amazon. Amazon makes you battle-hardened, jaded engineer the longer you are there. There's just no avoiding it. That being said I worked there as long as I did because there were aspects that I did like. For example I think the opportunities there in terms of work / scale are a lot bigger than many other big companies. They are more willing to take risks on people. For example I had no college degree when they hired me. Also there are quite a lot of very smart people working there. So it's not all bad. But intense? Yes.
iradik··on pg_rewind in PostgreSQL 9.5
how does mysql failover compare in this regard?
iradik··on Memcached design and comparison with Redis
"I feel that if Salvatore Sanfilippo was started Redis by forking Memcached, community would have better in-memory caching solution today."

Article lost me here. is he saying that if the author of redis worked on memcache instead then mencache would be better? Ok.

Or is he saying redis would be better off if it had started as a fork of memcache? Bullshit. My understanding of redis is part of the reason for it was the author wanted to implement a data store from scratch, forking a mature project would have not motivated someone with that goal. Plus as a project matures it becomes harder and harder to make bigger changes. Even a small change requires tons of time. So redis would not have developed so quickly if not for starting from scratch.

iradik··on Ask HN: Has my education made me unhireable?
Get a job. But first realize degrees don't matter. Technology companies tend to value real-world experience a hell of a lot more than diplomas. I am speaking as a software engineer without any degree. you aren't fucked but you need to get a job. Any job experience at all will differentiate you from all the other PhDs out there.
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