no citation, but I wanted one of these as a kid and remember them being around $100-150 USD in the early 00s
137 karma · joined May 29, 2019
[0]: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-perm...
> “Chess is not a game [in a game theory sense]. Chess is a well-defined form of computation. You may not be able to work out the answers, but in theory there must be a solution, a right procedure in any position […] If you lose at a game of chess, it must be because there were better moves that you didn’t make or didn’t see.”
> “The decisions we make in our lives—in business, saving and spending, health and lifestyle choices, raising our children, and relationships—easily fit von Neumann’s definition of ‘real games.’ They involve uncertainty, risk, and occasional deception […] Trouble follows when we treat life decisions as if they were chess decisions.”
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
1. the degree to which the code can be trusted to operate correctly and in a fault-tolerant way (i.e. “yeah that API endpoint will give you a 5xx about 2% of the time, sorry about that, just retry!”)
2. the degree to which the code optimally models the problem it’s solving, as well as how flexible it is as priors/needs change in the future and whether optimal languages/frameworks/patterns are used to solve the problem expressively.
The former has obvious customer implications — if your webapp craps out every ~20min of usage, or your API silently drops data when it can’t persist something to a data store, that’s bad, you will lose customers (and you deserve to!). Conversely, lacking in the latter could slow you down as you iterate, but you’re just as likely to not need to touch that code for a while if you’re off building new views/features/what-have-you.
I think the “don’t worry about code quality” folks are generally trying to beat it into technical founders/builders’ heads that the thing they’re building is ultimately being judged as a product, not as an engineering project... but that doesn’t mean that reliability and performance aren’t part of what may make your product valuable.
Messaging apps are more like postal services — "please deliver this message to $person" — you're describing driving across town to drop something in a mailbox directly. A peer-to-peer messaging system wouldn't have many benefits over an E2E-encrypted one (in a centralized E2E-encrypted service you already enjoy technical guarantees that the courier can't peek inside the metaphorical envelope), but would have several usability drawbacks that would drive away casual users, which the sibling comments mention.
Driving away casual users has its own problems: you might drive them away to insecure services ("ah fuck it, this thing doesn't work, I'll just DM them on Twitter"), and the lack of casual users will make your remaining users stand out in traffic analysis (e.g. state agency says "hmm, askxnakjsn is using SuperEncryptoP2PMessenger, better go make sure they aren't a dissident").
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/29/us-savings-rate-hits-record-... [2]: https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/stim...
[0]: https://www.sleeplikethedead.com
[1]: https://www.sleeplikethedead.com/mattress-reviews-casper.htm...
Button is building a better way to do business in mobile — one that doesn't rely on antiquated, ineffective models like banner ads. We raised our Series C ($30M, led by Icon Ventures) last year and currently have a headcount of ~130.
We're hiring for several positions:
- Sr. Software Engineer, Backend
- Software Engineer, Backend
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Benefits include: unlimited PTO (and a healthy attitude towards it), 401k + 3% match, relocation support, 18 weeks of paid parental leave, catered lunch, education + conference budget.
I'm an engineer here at Button. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about our open roles, and pass your resume onto our People team if there's a good fit — email me at kyle [at] use button [dot] com.
More information: https://www.usebutton.com/company/about
Keywords:
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that's a wild way to run meetings — in my current organization, finishing a meeting ahead of schedule (when appropriate) is celebrated as "giving time back".
For example, according to rules of evidence, any exculpatory statements you make to police are hearsay and therefore cannot be mentioned in a trial. The police _can_, however, try to use that information against you and then use information derived from your original statement at trial.
There's a pretty popular lecture[0] on this. It covers a lot of edge cases and common arguments against "don't talk to the police".
Free market !== unregulated market.
In order for an unregulated market to be a free market, perfect competition is required[0], otherwise you get market failure.
In the real world, we use laws to discourage behavior that leads to market failure.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market#Perfect_competitio...
According to this survey[0], only 25% of people even know what "fiber-to-the-home" means. Not a perfect proxy for "fiber" itself, but I imagine most non-technical people are not aware of it.
[0]: http://www.bbpmag.com/Features/0714feature-ConsumerSurvey.ph...
[0]: https://la.streetsblog.org/2018/11/08/santa-monica-installs-...
Modern buildings don't usually completely collapse ("pancake"), and being under a sturdy table can absorb the weight of partial collapse: as an example, an interior wall collapsing onto you. See [0].
> I would imagine basements are bad to be in, is that so?
All I know about this is that having a (code-compliant) basement makes the entire house more resilient, but I couldn't find anything about being _in_ the basement during an EQ being good or bad. Know that basements in low-density structures are quite scarce[1] in Southern California, though -- I've lived in LA for four years and don't remember ever being in one, except in large apartment buildings.
Don't try to get out of a basement if you're in one when an EQ hits. Most injuries are a result of people breaking their ankles and legs trying to move while the ground is shaking.
> I would imagine upstairs is a bad place to be too, right?
It's a tradeoff. In the event of a structure collapse, you have further to fall but less structure to fall on top of you.
> does the ground really split underneath your feet?
Yes, if you're straddling the fault line and standing near the epicenter. (You won't be doing that).
There has never been a confirmed case of someone falling into an "earthquake chasm", but it might be something to worry about if you're a cow grazing in a Bay Area field[2].
---
Take a look at this study[3] of the 74 deaths caused by the '94 Northridge EQ. It's the best data we can use to project what would happen if a major EQ hit LA today.
[0]: http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/04/tech/innovation/the-earthquake...
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-basement-side-20150509-st...
[2]: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/01/do-people-ever...
Since the hospital takes a loss in those cases (and has to, since they have to treat everyone), everyone else's cost of care goes up to subsidize the loss.