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rapht

477 karma · joined September 26, 2012

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rapht··on I don't want the details
> "I don't want the details. I want to know what we're changing."

This really feels like the sort of senior manager who would say "oh, this/these team/s screwed up, so here's the plan they came up with", talking about their team/s.

Speaking as a C-suite guy, "they" is about as contrary as I can think of what I expect a leader to do: it's "we", and your job is to take responsibility, both in the problems (big problems need to be explained all the way up and sometimes externally) and in the solutions (which to be comfortable with, you obviously need a sufficiently thorough understanding of the problem).

Because up the chain, I will take responsibility for it.

rapht··on Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, reduced the number of cars
This article omits so many negatives from the "cyclist's paradise" vision of Hidalgo's 2 terms that I don't know where to start. Families are the first casualties: the Paris metro is nowhere near accessible to strollers except if you are willing to go to the chiropractor after each week end, and using your car - hell, even parking your family car - is a no go as soon as there is some kind of hipster sports event or just as soon as you are after 10am on week end mornings. Local parks and generally streets are so dirty that you have to wash your children from head to toe as soon as they have set foot outside. And I'm not even talking about used seringes and broken glass in certain parts of the city. I'm actually so ashamed of my city at this point.
rapht··on Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
That is the right question to ask. My temptation is to respond "Obsession with nature is destroying humanity's prospects." Now what?
rapht··on Level S4 solar radiation event
This is an S4. Last S4 event was in October 2003.
rapht··on Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say
Sorry if that sounds offensive, but you are being a bit shortsighted here. The theory just says that shareholder value serves both as a guide to what a business should do, and as a measure of how good it has done, because that measure encompasses all others. Which is debatable but far from stupid: do you really think Apple would have sold so many i* had they been ugly? Do you really think that angry people demanding taxes, regulations, etc don't affect how businesses decide to actually go and maximize shareholder value? The actual real absent in Friedman's reasoning is "eventually": externalities always come to haunt the shareholder value, the question is when do they become tangible enough that this aligns with society's perception of those externalities.
rapht··on U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites
> And meanwhile the biggest threat to all our security, the climate crisis goes unaddressed.

That the climate crisis is the biggest threat to our security is the biggest fallacy of our times. It's not that climate change is unimportant, just that it needs to be evaluated to its fair potential consequences, compared to e.g. an all-out war.

rapht··on The complicated business of electing a Doge
Agreed. Also, could an elector be nominated to the next round? (i.e. does becoming an elector prevent you from winning the election)
rapht··on Did the Particle Go Through the Two Slits, or Did the Wave Function?
Probably it's because I'm not a quantum physicist, but the argument boiling down to "the wavefunction is an object of a probability space not of physical space" seems to make the whole article moot. Can the "wavefunction" be anything else than a _representation_ of the particule(/wave)?... but then who could ever think that a representation would actually travel in space?
rapht··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
You see the carrot vanishing... OK. But what about the stick? The whole point of Trump's policy is 'we forgot the stick, let's use it again'. I see this true for international policy but you could probably extend that to that infamous DOGE: Fed agencies must be 'productive' (whatever that means), or else.
rapht··on Cold Email Handbook
I don't know what makes you say that. Requiring a bit of market research from project proponents does not mean excluding anything lightweight or just new. What you don't want is some company being contracted because it talked to you first by whatever channel rather than as a result of some reasoned assessment.
rapht··on Cold Email Handbook
CFO's perspective: wanna sell me something, anything? you're out.

However well crafted your email is, you're an unacceptable distraction from the priorities that the company has set, the achievement of which is materialized by projects of varying size and scope. Upon starting any project of any size, people do due diligence: they assess what exactly it is they are looking for, and then research the market for it. For macro-projects, consultants may be hired to help with the process, which may lead to a proper tender.

Either way, the company contacts you, not the other way round.

rapht··on Huly – Open-source project management platform
It's the reason why it can only work at small scale: it's all or nothing. It wants to be your only communication channel. But, surprise, as soon as you live in a larger organisation, there will already be communication channels that serve part of the same purpose. Then most of the functionality become clutter.
rapht··on The quiet art of attention
Countless Buddhist books explore this in thorough detail.
rapht··on New Anti-Toxicity Features on Bluesky
The fact that you can still access hidden quotes/replies/etc from the API makes me think it's a client-side (i.e. app-only) feature.
rapht··on Is 'No tax on tips' a distraction from the fight to end sub-minimum wages?
> why would you tip a barber? because they cut your hair good? what was the base payment for then?

Let me return the question: why would you tip a waiter? because they brought your food to your table? isn't that why they should be paid by the restaurant?

Let me also state that, residing in a European city, I do tip my (cheap) barber every time I go because I feel they do an outstanding job at 20% less the price than most competitors, and that work deserves praise in the form of a tip.

In general, it seems to me that a tip should reflect something outstanding. In addition to my cheap barber, I also usually tip at fancy restaurants where the service has proved very, very high above comparables.

rapht··on Australian employees now have the right to ignore work emails, calls after hours
At individual contributor level, such schemes may work -- anyways, people are paid by the hour so anything outside hours is already dubbed 'overtime', and companies are bound to care.

At management level (i.e. top management talking either between them or with the management levels just below), where hours don't get counted (in some countries such as France, it's just 'days'), it really boils down to the top management's culture. Workaholic top management = every manager is expected to be workaholic... and Darwin does the rest: soon enough, only workaholics remain.

rapht··on Rising rates of cancer in young people prompts hunt for environmental culprit
The study seems US based only, I wonder if there's a similar trend in Europe -- that would help identifying if some of the potential environmental factors have been regulated out on the other side of the Atlantic.
rapht··on Plunk: The open source email platform
My understanding was that the main interest of SendGrid, Mailgun et al was precisely that they manage to (more or less) reliably mass send email through the great MS/Google/Proofpoint, where hitting the recipient's mailbox is less than guaranteed if you self-host.
rapht··on The case against morning yoga, daily routines, and endless meetings
Unfortunately the article mixes the ends with the means.

The key trait that seems to stand out in the most highly regarded people in history is discipline: there is no "10x work" without hard, long term focus, which requires discipline.

"Routines" have the advantage of making that discipline easier. Does it mean they are sufficient? No, and this is where the article is right. Does it mean they are useless? No, it's just one way of achieving the level of discipline needed to do the "10x work" that the article focuses on.

rapht··on Migrating Uber's ledger data from DynamoDB to LedgerStore
A primer on valuation: in many financial contexts, $1 of operating savings may be worth much more than $1 of investment.

That is because an investment is a one-off, so it's actually worth $1, but the savings are recurring, so they are worth the same number of years that a company's profits are valued. Depending on sector and investors' beliefs in the future of companies, this factor is typically in the 5-20x range. That means that $1 of savings is well worth at least $5 of investments.

Factor in anything you want!

rapht··on AM radio law opposed by tech and auto industries is close to passing
Preserve AM radio for worst-case scenario emergency, where nothing else ever is available -- that's the million year solar flare or the next nuclear winter -- of course. AM is the best at what it does, which is transmitting efficiently, with low power, including in difficult terrain, all with extremely simple hardware.

But why the heck mandate thay we can receive it in every car?? I mean, cars are important in America, but why would you need the wordt-case scenario emergency thing in every car! Mandate home radio equipment makers to support it, or mandate one receiver in every house à la smoke detectors. Cheap and easy. But every car? Crazy stupid.

rapht··on Australia 'mugged by reality' on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build
I have to say, knowing a bit more than is public about the deal the Australians had in the first place with the French and that they chose to just throw away, that I'm left laughing out loud.
rapht··on Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger
I don't know about Adobe's motives, but it sure looks like despite the "we ended the process by mutual agreement" talk, Adobe somehow walked away... otherwise they wouldn't let $1bn out of the window - unless they actually signed something along the lines "we will take responsibility if antitrust throws the deal away" but that would be quite unlikely in such a high profile transaction.
rapht··on Meta is banning people from advertising after running ads for Python and Pandas
Got the exact same with a bank located rue de Téhéran :p
rapht··on Bill to ban hidden fees in California signed into law
> The reason I think listing taxes separately is OK is because (a) it is not something that the business itself has any choice over and (b) all businesses have to tax the same for equivalent services.

(a) is really just like the price of basically all of utilities, and all the indirect taxes paid on salaries... the only difference is that they are not directly calculated on turnover. Should we also break that out? (b) is actually an argument in favour of integrating the taxes in the prices : there's no difference between businesses, thus no need to bother the consumers with it -- in the end, they will pay something that includes the taxes, wherever they go.

> I'd be OK with listing taxes up front (but I will say that restaurants I've been to always highlight any mandatory fees besides normal sales tax on the menu) but I'm absolutely in favor of breaking out the cost of government services on the bill.

You mean like basically everywhere in the world where your receipt does show "of which VAT rate A% : X, rate B% : Y, Special Tax: Z" ?

rapht··on FreeRDP: A remote desktop protocol implementation
Same here. Smooth experience.
rapht··on Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed by Mozilla
Let me repeat what I have already state elsewhere : the only way the privacy nightmare ends is when we thouroughly regulate the personal data market out of existence - meaning going one step further than GDPR and just forbid any use of my personal data except in the context of fulfilling an actual purchase or specific request by me and for communicating with me to the extent I allow it. All other uses are banned.
rapht··on Apple vs. Meta: The Illusion of Privacy
At this point, I don't really care who is to blame between Apple allowing Meta's intrusivity, and Meta or any others just being intrusive.

There is no solution other than "regulate the personal data market out of existence" - meaning going one step further than GDPR and just forbid any use of my personal data except in the context of fulfilling an actual purchase or specific request by me and for communicating with me to the extent I allow it. All other uses are banned.

rapht··on SUSE to go private
Basically from quick math, this amounts to financing 80% of the buyback through debt and 20% through presumably cash brought by the investors listed alongside EQT in the press release. (If all non EQT shareholders accept the offer, EQT will earn c.€460m in dividend, while the full cost of buying back those same shareholders, including dividend, is c.€580m.) What we don't know is how much EQT will be diluted by those new investors in the end.
rapht··on A new instrument found unusual success
I'm not a fan of patents, but in that case, it's not like some bigco seeking to perpetually extend monopolistic rights on some product - the inventor is alive, they made what seems like a genuine contribution to the world, and that contribution is very concrete and complete - not some hollow vaguely generic not directly usable "design".

So it's actually a case where patents are a good fit: the inventor gets to decide the life of their design (and make a bit of money out of it) before anyone can use it freely.

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