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rs186

1,938 karma · joined February 9, 2025

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rs186··on Where are you supposed to go if you don't care about growth?
There are a bunch of mid-sized companies that

* are mostly B2B oriented

* are (usually) private

* have a healthy balance sheet

* have their own niche so they don't have to fight for survival but don't have to aggressively expand either

if you know where to look.

The caveat is that they probably are not hiring many people right now, and the bar is not low at all (even though most employees are mediocre). In the current market, many people want to work at those companies.

rs186··on Google confirms Android attacks; no fix for most Samsung users
What if an existing app gets an update that exploits the vulnerability?

For sure that's not going to happen to an app released by a major company, but there are lots of less known app created by many different developers.

rs186··on Google confirms Android attacks; no fix for most Samsung users
I never understood why a mobile operator has any say in when to apply security patches?

Does it happen with iPhones?

rs186··on Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
If you heavily rely on Word and PowerPoint. I know several companies that almost never use those products except in limited situations (legal, keynote presentation etc). All "regular" discussions/presentations take place on Confluence/Notion/Quip etc. I wish my company did the same thing.
rs186··on The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks
We talk about "probability" here because the topic is hallucination, not getting different answers each time you ask the same question. Maybe you could make the output deterministic but does not help with the hallucination problem at all.
rs186··on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
Let me explain this with a simple example:

* If a company controlled by PE goes bankrupt, shareholders (PE) likely make a profit * But if a publicly listed company goes bankrupt, shareholders lose their money

In other words, PEs almost never lose money, so they could extract the last bit of a company, even more short sighted than shareholders of a public company

rs186··on Perl's decline was cultural
Good for you, not for anyone else reading the code or yourself 6 months later. Seen too much of that.
rs186··on OMSCS Open Courseware
I imagine what it means is basically, "Before COVID, universities had to collaborate with Udacity to produce these courses and manage course credits/online degrees. Now they realized that they can easily do it themselves (perhaps at the institution level)"
rs186··on The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source
I don't necessarily disagree with "Libreoffice is junk" but that's not actually a problem, or all the problem. As the article has stated, 80% of the licenses were dropped, while 20% of the use cases continue to be supported by Microsoft Office. To me that is already a big win compared to 100% Microsoft Office.

You see, most Office users are not heavy/expert users and they only occasionally need the basic features that exist everywhere and do good enough of a job. I personally have only used Word maybe 3 times over the past few years, because almost all work documents live elsewhere, while Google Docs is good enough for my personal word processing needs (which could probably be done with Libreoffice as well). In the old days I used to install pirated Microsoft Office when I got a new laptop. These days I don't even think about it.

Imagine every company starts to evaluate how many employees actually need Microsoft Office, and then drop licenses for those who would be ok with Libreoffice or nothing at all. Microsoft would be shitting their pants.

rs186··on OMSCS Open Courseware
CMU's database courses are a famous example: https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2025/

Princeton used to offer algorithm courses on Coursera with full assignments including auto grading, I don't know if that's still the case.

I don't know enough about (or have time to learn) other offerings, but I am sure there are a few more out there. Class central should be a good place to discover those courses.

rs186··on OMSCS Open Courseware
> interviewers may still have their own opinions

That says nothing other than that the interviewers have a narrow mind and/or are ignorant. OMSCS is a very well known program, and it's their problem if they don't know it.

rs186··on OMSCS Open Courseware
In the past they made videos available via Udacity, which were removed after Udacity turned their focus to short & easy (which often means superficial) courses for enterprise training instead of "serious" university courses. I guess that was not a viable business.

Of course they did not come with any assignments, just like these courses. Can't blame them, but other universities offer much resources -- for the same topic, you can often find a course offered by another university that provides videos hosted on YouTube, full assignments and labs, even exams. The only thing you are missing is TA/office hours and the course credit. In other words, unless you actually want to earn credits and work towards a degree, I suggest that you skip OMSCS videos unless there is no alternative.

rs186··on OMSCS Open Courseware
You might as well simply claim "I don't see a CS degree has any value these days". OMSCS is not any less than a "real" graduate school program experience.
rs186··on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive
Hmm... I never bought a BMW, certainly because I am poor, but also because everyone around me who drives a luxury car keeps telling me how expensive yet unreliable everything is, while everyone who drives a Toyota and Honda almost never talks about their car. I took the hint and have been doing what is financially responsible.
rs186··on State Department to deny visas to fact checkers and others, citing 'censorship'
Do fact checkers ever "claim authority" over anything (especially in news organizations)?

Perhaps time to get that wild claim fact checked by yourself.

rs186··on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off
I don't, but I know as a matter of fact that they often make bad decisions, many of which are public and discussed extensively in online forums, books and research reports.
rs186··on It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)
Who are "people"? How would all of this start?

In terms of standard, the specs already use "ECMAScript" and don't even mention JavaScript (https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/), although TC39 website does use it frequently. I guess they could officially recommend people stop using "JavaScript", but I doubt they care.

Otherwise, the petitioner Deno here is only a small part of the ecosystem and barely controls anything (and really nobody other than TC39 controls anything, which is good). They (or anyone else) can't just shout "stop saying JavaScript!" and expect people to follow.

Not to mention JavaScript is a simple, easy to pronounce word compared to ECMAScript despite the baggage, which is probably why they chose it in the first place.

Let's say the "JavaScript" name is officially deprecated somehow. People will continue to use the name for as long as it exists.

So Deno's petition tackles these problems, addresses the root cause and appears to be legally viable. That is the "right thing to do" here. Avoiding the name does not solve the problem. It never does.

rs186··on Apple’s head of user interface design, Alan Dye, will join Meta
I avoided the entire butterfly keyboard/touch bar Macbooks by buying an older model (2015 MacBook pro, the last one with scissor switch until 2020) and not upgrading until M series. That turned out to be a good decision.
rs186··on “Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill
"create very strict laws"

Who's going to draft those laws?

Definitely not the lawmakers who could benefit from this.

See the problem?

rs186··on Anthropic acquires Bun
I bet you didn't click that link. A wrapper and an API that is built-in to the runtime and optimized for those use cases are different things.
rs186··on Anthropic acquires Bun
JavaScript ≠ frontend

bun ≠ front end development tool

hasn't been like that for many years

rs186··on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off
Hmm... "CEOs and teams" don't necessary do what's makes sense mathematically. Many, if not most of them, do whatever that sounds good to shareholders in their quarterly earnings call and ignore the reality or long term development.

If "CEOs and teams" are smart enough, they would not have overhired during 2021-2022 and then do layoffs. Who would be dumb enough to do that?

rs186··on After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where it used to be
Microsoft is just relying on the feedback they collect from Windows Insider Program (a.k.a. program for volunteers beta testers) to fix bugs before a new version is released widely.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsinsider/

Once upon a time, you were able to get a free Windows 8 license if you join that program. And yes, when I was young and naive and couldn't care less about random things breaking, I joined the program, just like when I used to root Android phones and flash ROMs every other week.

(On the other hand, corporate IT almost certainly only roll out updates half or one year after they become available, when these bugs are likely already fixed.)

rs186··on Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive
Anyone remembers the "Windows Live" brand everywhere in the early 2000s?
rs186··on Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive
You forgot the wonderful "Documents and Settings" folder.

Thank god they came to their senses and changed it to "Users", something every other OS has used for forever.

rs186··on Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive
The "move fast" bit, not "break things" bit.

https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/data-management/news/google-...

https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2024/05/23/google-cloud-accid...

rs186··on People keep flocking to Linux, not just to escape Windows
> It's hilarious that you're comparing features to GNOME-ecosystem apps.

Someone that is not me started the debate of RDP vs VNC and file pickers in the first place.

rs186··on People keep flocking to Linux, not just to escape Windows
Anyone who has used rdp for more than a few hours knows how much better the experience is compared to vnc. Most things just work. In case someone needs touch screen support, there is no comparison.

File picker has been a strength of Windows for quite a few versions. And the consensus seems to be that it is better than Mac's (based on my YouTube watch history). I have used various Linux desktops, and none of the file pickers are nearly as good as the Windows native one, in yet of being able to navigate/filter/order things and occasionally getting more information about the selection.

rs186··on Migrating Dillo from GitHub
That is an approach very few people would take. I would never do it, as I am sure it would cause me trouble than any potential benefit.
rs186··on Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI
The response would be more helpful if it directly addresses the arguments in posts from that search result.
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