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mrlycon Your Next Computer Should Be a Desktop

I prefer desktops. It seems to me that laptops are the digital equivalent of the old three-in-ones consisting of turntable, radio and cassette. If you wanted, say, a good turntable, you ended up paying more for the other components too as upgrading only one component was almost impossible. When one broke down, the whole thing had to be sent in for repair.

mrlycon Ask HN: Do you use an antivirus?

I use Avira on Windows 7. Once a week, I run Spybot.

I do weekly backups, alternating between two sets of disks that are kept at opposite ends of my flat in case only one end burns down, as happened to a friend. The really critical must-not-lose data is encrypted and stored on SD cards on my keyrings that I keep with me all the time.

mrlycon How a Ban on Plastic Bags Can Go Wrong

Australian supermarkets have recycling bins specifically for single-use plastic bags. Don't the U.S. supermarkets have them?

mrlycon Ask HN: Programmers Above 50, Is It Possible to Have a Career Past Your 50s?

I'm 60 and my friend is 63. He does COBOL and finds jobs easily. I write Linux device drivers in C and have been looking for work for a long time.

mrlycon Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, Not Places, Parts 2 and 3

What worked for me was to do weightlifting every day. I used to run my heating at 20 degrees (68). Now I'm quite comfortable at 17 (62.6).

mrlycon Google bans 'explicit' adult content from Blogger blogs

Do you think they'll stop at Blogger or will they ban adult content from YouTube too?

mrlycon Ask HN: How much time do you spend on code reviews?

It depends on the product. We didn't have many resources when I was writing code for barcode readers so we had an informal arrangement whereby one person wrote the code and two people reviewed it. For my mobile (cell phone) base station code, we had formal review meetings with the programming team, project manager and, when he had time, the VP of R&D.

The most strict of all was when I was writing code for an air traffic control system. Every single line of my code was reviewed a minimum of three times. We spent almost as much time reviewing the code as we did writing it.

mrlycon Hidden Costs That Engineers Ignore

What worked for us was to do two versions of the program at the same time.

Version one had simple functionality. Version two had all the bells and whistles dreamt up by the programmers and the customer while we were working on version one. Those were added to a todo list for version two. They were not implemented in version one.

That kept up the flow of ideas but didn't disrupt the project. It made the programmers feel appreciated while giving us an outline for the next version so our competitors couldn't keep up.

What surprised me was that the whole team got into the spirit of the thing. When someone came to me with an idea, cries of "Version two! Version two!" echoed around the programming room.

mrlycon The Benefits of Being Cold

I used to run my central heating at 20(68). Then I started working out at the gym every day and now feel comfortable at 17(63).

mrlycon Computer intrusion inflicts massive damage on German steel factory

Confirmation bias.

mrlycon Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy: The Science of Misheard Song Lyrics

My sister always sang "But I'm only a cross-eyed octopus" instead of cockeyed optimist.

mrlycon New Universal Mobile Keyboard Works with Windows, iOS and Android Mobile Devices

$79.95 seems rather expensive for a Bluetooth keyboard as you can buy one from Amazon for only $11.57. Am I missing something?

mrlycon My First Hack. What's yours?

My first hack was a bulletin board I wrote in 1984 for a Commodore Vic-20. It had multiple message areas ("rooms"), private mail and an online game. Users could start their own rooms and make them public or private. There were about sixty rooms with topics ranging from string theory to general chit chat.

It was very popular even though it had only one dialup connection at 300 baud. The average user spent more than an hour on it.

mrlycon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2014)

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Remote: No

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: EFTPOS, Linux device drivers, mainly C, some C++ with PowerPC, Intel and ARM chips.

Resume: Electronic engineering background, wrote AS2805 library for EFTPOS terminals, wrote drivers for a mobile phone base station, medical equipment and an air traffic control system.

Email: mrlbp@bigpond.com

mrlycon Whats Your Job?

Unemployed, about to turn 60, sometimes wondering if I've retired and just don't know it yet. Used to do embedded programming for EFTPOS terminals, medical equipment and air traffic control systems. Currently doing post production on my mum's audiobook.

mrlycon Ask HN – What do you do to stay fit while working?

I go to the gym every day. I've found that I have to drive to the gym straight from work as, if I go home first, I somehow never make it to the gym.

mrlycon NSA says “indiscriminate” Facebook hacking allegations “are simply false”

The NSA is no longer a credible source.

mrlycon Ask HN: What's your favorite keyboard for programming?

Logitech K120. It replaced a Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600 which looked nice but had small function keys that were awkward to use.

mrlycon Ask HN: How productive are you?

I'd say I was the most productive when it took me eight hours to write a seven line shell script. That replaced 2,650 lines of C.

The previous programming team had written a data transfer program with its own implementation of ftp. I just used the one which was already on the computer.

It took me a while because I had to read the Unix source code to find out if my program would work. In the days before Google, and even the World Wide Web, I used a combination of Gopher and WAIS to find a publically available copy. That was difficult as it had been released only to universities with a licence saying it must be kept hidden.

mrlycon Ask HN: What do you use for file backups?

I classify my files into ordinary, important and vital. Once a week, everything gets backed up onto one of my two external drives. The important and vital stuff gets backed up onto a USB I always carry with me and the vital stuff also gets backed up onto Dropbox.

mrlycon Difference between Software Engineers and Programmer/Coders.

I see a software engineer as someone who has a lot of knowledge about the hardware and can write embedded programs, device drivers, board support packages and communciations programs. A programmer writes user interfaces, web pages, databases and various business packages such as CRM, inventory and accounting tools.

mrlycon EU has secret plan for police to 'remote stop' cars

What makes them think that only the police will be able to stop vehicles?

mrlycon Questions I'm asking in technical interviews

The questions I ask are:

1. Do you have coding and documentation standards?

2. Do you conduct regular peer reviews?

3. Do you use a bug tracking system?

4. I feel more comfortable working as part of a team, not just a bunch of people working together. Do you conduct regular team building exercises, such as weekly lunches or meetups at the pub after work on Friday?

It's surprising how many companies don't have even these fundamental quality and people management procedures in place.

mrlycon Ask HN: What are the best optimizations you have made?

The best optimisation I made was rewriting 2,650 lines of C as a seven line shell script. The previous programming team had written a data transfer program with its own implementation of ftp. I just used the one that was already on the computer.

mrlycon What's the difference between college-level and corporate programming?

As I explained to someone starting their first programming job, "In college, you get into trouble if you use someone else's code. At work, you get into trouble if you don't." In other words, always search for some code with a licence we can use before writing your own.

My experience of college code is that it may work but it rarely scales and performs well. For example, I downloaded a driver that set up the DMA, did the data transfer then tore down the DMA for every read and write. I changed it to set up the DMA for an open and tear it down for a close, leaving the DMA set up for the data transfers.

mrlycon Ask HN: Where do you get your news?

http://www.theinquirer.net/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/

mrlycon Poll: What browser do you primarily use?

Firefox with NoScript most of the time, Chrome for the very few sites that don't work with that combination even after all the NoScript permissions have been given, Internet Explorer for micosoft.com and applying for jobs when I can't risk browser incompatibility.

mrlycon Ask HN: What is the most annoying part about finding a new job in tech?

We did ours with Linux and C.

mrlycon Ask HN: What is the most annoying part about finding a new job in tech?

Clueless HR. For example, I'd been writing air traffic control software for a contractor of Lockheed Martin. When that contract finished, I applied to do the same at Thales and was turned down on the basis that there were "too many jobs" on my résumé. I explained that there were a lot of jobs because I was a contractor but they still refused to even see me. That was a big shock as I was told I got the LM job because I had a lot of experience. They wanted someone who had been programming for more than twenty years, which is fair enough when you're trying to avoid flying one plane straight into another one.

mrlycon Ask HN: How can I choose a fulfilling career?

Do what you love, what you are good at and what people are willing to pay for.

Look for a job with interesting work, nice people to work with and a financially stable company. Sometimes you have to settle for two out of three.