147 karma · joined July 30, 2016
There have been a handful of indie games lately doing things in the same style, but nothing that seems quite polished enough yet.
I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess.
> And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier.
What did you switch her to?
I've done that exact project for like 6 giant pharma companies.
I don't think so. Maryland isn't the most restrictive state when it comes to firearm policy[1], but it's a long distance from "no gun control." I'm also not certain that the chance of armed encounters is terribly high in Bethesda, though I'm uncertain if those crime statistics are recorded or what terms I should use to search for them. To give a comparison, the homicide rate per capita (which I suspect would correlate to some extent with police interaction with armed individuals) in Montgomery County (where Bethesda is) was 1.4/100,000 in 2016 [2]. For Australia at large, the rate is 1.0/100,000 [3], so pretty comparable. These police officers don't seem to operate in an area that is notably more dangerous/violent than Australia.
I do, however, think the issue is cultural. Many police officers in the US seem to perceive that they are in danger 24/7, and this effects how they interact with people on a daily basis. There is a preference for an overwhelming show of force even when it's absolutely uncalled for. This probably contributes to a feedback loop that causes the general population and the police to trust each other less and be more confrontational. And I don't seem to be alone in identifying this as a problem; if you search for problems with police culture in the US, you will find a large body of criticism for the default behavior of police officers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Maryland
[2] https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/POL/Resources/Files/MCPD%... (Page 4)
And don’t forget that developers are a tiny minority of employees.
Right now I use Beyerdynamic DT770s because I heard they were very comfortable (I wear glasses, and I hate in ear phones). The ear cups are fantastic but the headband digs into my scalp. So I'm on the search as well.
I'm a contractor, working for a consulting firm, and we say no all the time. Sometimes it's not a hard no, but more of a gentle nudge in a better direction. But we often advise our clients away from certain requests because that's what we're paid for. We're the experts and they value our expertise, that's why they hired us.
I know for a fact that what you describe exists, because about a quarter of our jobs involve cleaning up after someone like that, but I wouldn't say it's a feature of contractors in general but of cheap contractors.
The first half of the book is collected published works of his (columns, articles, etc.) including an introduction to P.G. Wodehouse's posthumously published and unfinished Sunset at Blandings. In that introduction he makes it clear how fascinating he thinks it is to see a master at work. I think, based on that, he wouldn't be too upset to see that he got the same treatment.
That said, The Salmon of Doubt is very much unfinished and for me isn't the best part of the collection by far. Still worth a try, even if you just don't read that last section.
There's an interesting pop poli-sci book called The Dictator's Handbook (which despite the name draws examples from corporations and small-town governments in addition to actual dictatorships) which examines how people come to power. It generally works out to keeping the "essential" group happy. At one point the users you mention were "essentials" but they have been supplanted by other users. Apple no longer needs to pander to them, so they don't.
I don't know how likely that is. Even if carbon capture comes through, the low hanging fruit of fossil fuels are gone so now we have to get more invasive in harvesting the hard-to-get ones (strip mining, fracking, etc). It's likely that even with C02 emissions taken care of that we'll want electric vehicles and renewable power in general.
Don't let the electoral map fool you, there are very few places that skew overwhelmingly to one side. Many places may have a majority favoring one major political party, but the minority isn't that small. I live in the northeast, which is reliable electoral votes for democrats but there's not shortage of republicans around.
Not really related to job interviews, but West Point used to do a bridge engineering competition (maybe they still do) where you downloaded a software package and had to design a bridge that could withstand the highest load for the smallest cost. It was pretty accessible and kind of fun to mess around with. I never submitted any solutions, but I think the prize was a scholarship.
You definitely can't patent a corgi, but they're still quite expensive. Considering that dodo breeding is probably nontrivial, they could potentially make a profit. Depends on how the genetic engineering is funded, I suppose, and how well the work they do on the dodo applies to other animals. (If it's too dodo-specific it might not be worth it, but if work can be reused then it makes their next extinct pet even more profitable per unit)
Next was a high school teacher. She taught Java. The class was excruciatingly boring and we were essentially being taught to the test. She was not a programmer and pretty much just recited from the textbook. How did that help me become a better programmer? Since the class was trivial and she wasn't much of a disciplinarian I had 45 free minutes a day to mess around on my own in Python.