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ridethebike

315 karma · joined January 25, 2021

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ridethebike··on California law forces Netflix, Hulu to turn down ad volumes
you can be very much liable if you publish something damaging and false on YouTube
ridethebike··on Ask HN: What Will War Between Russia and Ukraine Mean for the World?
> After WWII Ukraine made a verbal agreement not to join NATO/EU

Thanks for reminding why I try to stay away from [geo]politics/military opinions on hacker news.

ridethebike··on I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
I personally can't speak to SV tech company. However I worked in msft and difference is staggering, it's two completely different universes.

>> ([..] most businesses these days) are driven by tech and would fall apart without it

Yup. It's like, is Coca-cola a "tech company with soda department"? Pretty sure they have programmers and some non-trivial IT infra as well.

ridethebike··on I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
Worked in several banks. "We are not bank, we are tech company with bank department" - was mentioned occasionally in each of them. What was also common - red tape, outdated software (tools, libraries, frameworks), restricted access to workstation, processes focused around pushing approvals around (instead of automation). That's why my response to "we are not a bank" sentiment above is "it's a bank, alright".
ridethebike··on Burn My Windows
So much this.

Things I need my OS to do are: run my apps (office/browser/games), connect my devices (printers/game controllers/displays), basic file operations (copy/paste/delete)

And while doing this be: secure, reliable, out of my way.

All these adding people/chat/weather widgets "innovations" (looking at you, msft) make me throw my hand up in the air and ask "why", I wish they would spend that time and energy on security and reliability instead.

ridethebike··on Burn My Windows
I remember when Compiz was released. It was mind-blowing, its sheer awesomeness was something out of this world. "ok, Windows is done" me and my friends thought, "prepare for linux dominating the desktops".

Yet ~15 years later here we are.

ridethebike··on Web3 is centralized
not sure how web3 would solve any of that
ridethebike··on GCC: The customer has nuclear weapons. They do not do “bounty”
In practice it's also very likely that customer mind boggling amount of bureaucracy, allocating extra penny might require approval from several committees.
ridethebike··on Steps Towards Happiness (2015)
As a person who grew up in farmer's family (and who's parents are still farmers) I can attest that that kind of life is way tougher than being office worker in a city .
ridethebike··on Waymo will start testing self-driving cars in New York City
Yeah, approximately 10 minutes for me to pass driving test (from second attempt). And then around a year of driving (effectively training myself) in city to get more or less comfortable with traffic.
ridethebike··on It takes a PhD to develop that
Can't recall when it was the last time I played game with no internationalization support
ridethebike··on Asynchronous Programming in C#
Async/await were officially added to c# 5 and .net framework 4.5

I think it was possible to have async/await in .net framework 4.0 via some workarounds when it was still in CTP mode but I don't recall the details.

ridethebike··on El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
Ok, good points
ridethebike··on 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
Compared to lives lost $100 is not expensive at all.

But sure, let's forget about morals for a second (lives lost and all that) and be very cold and cynical about the pricing. Still - reputational damage, political outcry, people suing the company/government for "failing to do even basic security checks like belts and shoes" - $100 million is nothing.

ridethebike··on 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?
Planes are not that expensive
ridethebike··on El Salvador adopts Bitcoin as official currency, first country to do so
This probably eliminates this whole "bitcoin is privacy and independence from government" thing but I think for majority of bitcoin buyers it was not more than just a nice talking point anyway.
ridethebike··on The End of Social Media
Nothing bad with creating fun stuff for profit.

And over the last decade youtube creators has been providing content with quality way superior compared to what more traditional entertainment industry has been producing (mainly marvel junk food, low effort remakes and SNL)

ridethebike··on U.S. workers are among the most stressed in the world, new Gallup report finds
Hi, Hope you're doing well.

Wanna grab a drink?

ridethebike··on Most hospitals aren't complying with price transparency rule
oh yeah, IRS, they still owe me $3k. Thanks for the reminder :)
ridethebike··on Most hospitals aren't complying with price transparency rule
I went to hospital and they assured me my procedure was covered by insurance and I wouldn't need to worry about that and in worst case scenario insurance would contact me. Couple of days later this hospital sent me $400 bill. It took me several phone calls to get them to acknowledge that they sent it by mistake.

Exactly same situation happened year later but with ~$800 bill.

Although doctors and medical staff themselves are ok, the US healthcare system as a whole is some incompetent clown mafia.

ridethebike··on What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour
>> They said that instead of paying $500 upfront for heated seats, they will be available as an annual unlock for say $100/year. Since they know an average owner keeps a new BMW for only 3 years, this is a saving for new buyers - isn't that great?

So what exactly is the problem here?

Isn't having the choice between several options a good thing from consumer point of view? Isn't extracting more money a whole point of company to exist?

ridethebike··on What would you pay for autonomous driving? Volkswagen hopes $8.50 per hour
I'm not sure what the problem is. Isn't extracting more money the point of basically every company?

Over the course of last 7 years living in NY I paid for rentals + uber + taxis way more than if I just bought a car in the beginning. Yet I'm going to buy a car anyway, it's simply too much hassle.

ridethebike··on Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
I actually do hugely appreciate and am amazed by technical side of Bitcoin. Yet what Bitcoin became as a whole appalls me.

e.g. one can be amazed by nuclear physics yet dislike nuclear weapons. Or appreciate chemistry by hate meth cooks.

ridethebike··on Why Can't Computing at the Heart of Bitcoin Be More Useful?
Am I correct to assume that this is Bargaining stage of grief?
ridethebike··on America has a drinking problem
I for one drink two bottles of wine while playing some slowly paced video game every Sunday night in anticipation of great new week in my hellscape of a project.
ridethebike··on On Smoking
Never smoked but always liked to get out of the office with my smoking friends for some (ironically) fresh air and a chat. There was a bit of zen in this. And hey, my lungs didn't have to pay price for it :)
ridethebike··on On Smoking
Tried hookah couple of times with friends. Still don't get it.
ridethebike··on Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer
Most of full stack web devs I know know everything but know it anywhere between poorly and ok-ish. It works more or less fine until there is some issue which requires deep knowledge of either of the stacks.

Generally I'd prefer to have front end dev + backend dev in my team over two full stack devs.

ridethebike··on Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer
Not only in writing but also in plain English. I see situations like described below over and over.

Example 1 - too much details. Morning stand up. Manager: what's the status of that new feature. Senior Engineer: well I tried to call that service but it was timing out so I spoke to Bob and he said to check with DBA on why that stored procedure but it's so slow and turns out index is missing so we tried to add it but mysql and varchar something fckn something...

Dude couldn't you just tell it's delayed due to DB and then expand if needed.

Example 2 - insufficient details I return from the meeting and discover avalanche of emails, chat messages and urgent meeting invite, all with same topic - "Blah service fails, we are blocked" but no details apart from that. On the call I get description of the problem - blah service fails and how everyone is blocked and how infinitely critical it is and what ETA for resolution would be. What endpoint? How does it fail - timeout, connection aborted, 503 response, 200 response but with error message?

ridethebike··on Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer
>> Third party recruiters are leeches

Can confirm this and it was surprise for me when I discovered it. I assumed they would try to maximize $$ in my offer in order to maximize their profit. Yet most of them were trying to get offer accepted as quick as possible. Seems like more offers with less money in each is preferred over less offers with more money in each.

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