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sswaner

795 karma · joined January 7, 2012

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sswaner··on Mechanical Turk shutting down September 30
“ General Research combines coordinated operations to identify and neutralize foreign actors using technological advancements, international covert operations, and networking analysis as an Internet Service Provider.”

What is so hard to understand????

sswaner··on Bob Weir has died
May the four winds blow you safely home.

It was a privilege to see him perform many times.

sswaner··on It’s time to free JavaScript (2024)
While I completely agree with the sentiment, there are 100 million reasons why it will never happen. Having dealt with Oracle for over 20 years, I have seen their predatory relationship with their customers. They will hold onto this trademark in the hope that they can somehow monetize it.

At some point they will approach companies, likely tech companies that produce a product or offering that can't be described without using the word "JavaScript". They will offer a "convenient" licensing agreement of $50,000 per year for the use of their trademark.

They used this playbook with Java, an easier path because they had something more substantial than a trademark, but the approach will be the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/165kzxg/oraclejav...

As Oracle's debt problems mount, the company seems increasingly likely to weaponize this trademark against companies—despite otherwise showing little interest in the word. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/w...

sswaner··on A graph explorer of the Epstein emails
Pretty much, at least at the semantic layer. https://publish.obsidian.md/followtheidea/Content/AI/Ontolog...
sswaner··on Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun
Perhaps just me still carrying some latent trauma, but the upside down, legs bent moment reminded me of a picture from 9/11. Not going to link to it.
sswaner··on A shift in developer culture is impacting innovation and creativity
Based on the title, I was expecting the article to be a lamentation on Jira and Scrum.
sswaner··on Woz: 'I Am the Happiest Person'
And perhaps a sense of civic duty: Those tax rates were created (hopefully) by elected representatives.
sswaner··on Tough news for our UK users
Makes Fleabag’s cafe more normal (Guinea Pigs are not Hamsters, I know).
sswaner··on Hunt for Red October 1990 (2016)
“This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.”

Overheard every few sprints…

sswaner··on A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)
Me too! I have shared this point with several people over the years and none understood this. I guess I was a WordPerfect nerd.
sswaner··on 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again
Or 2 years for Heidegger?
sswaner··on 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' Review: Leibniz Lives Again
Same. Maybe this thread can lead a resurgence of the word “Panglossian”.
sswaner··on Amazon Makes It Harder for Disabled Employees to Work from Home
Rather than call the Amazon execs liars and sadists perhaps consider that the senior execs (Andy and his directs) believe that they are responsible for crafting a successful company. It is far more plausible that they believe that while it may have worked to have remote workers, that they WANT a company that has the features of an in-office culture and feel it is within their right to take that path.

Unless you think that you would be a lying sadist if you rose the ranks to senior leadership, why do you think that the Amazon leaders are somehow different?

sswaner··on Mom jailed for letting 10-year-old walk alone to town
This makes me think of that show from Japan where parents send their 5-year-olds to go grocery shopping on their own.

And reminds me of the many times friends and I rode our bikes 5 miles along the highway to the next town so we could play video games at an arcade. Growing up in the 80’s was very different from now.

sswaner··on Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer
I am willing to pay to have the physical interface built if anyone with the machinist/electrical engineering skills is interested. My vision is to have the screen and button interface built, with a Raspberry Pi powering it. Reply if interested.
sswaner··on After 6 years, I'm over GraphQL
https://youtu.be/b2F-DItXtZs?si=rxrMwJVu95WQQt7M
sswaner··on Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
I agree that this is not a move I am happy to see. I hope I am proven wrong. I have been struggling with my love of Twilio. For years they have been one of my favorite tech companies, but I have been really struggling with them and their products lately. It feels like they have lost their core mission.
sswaner··on WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight
On many United flights you can connect to onboard wifi without buying the plan and have internet access on port 22 and apparently unrestricted UDP. This allows me to connect to an EC2 instance running mosh. Coding in vim is a great way to pass the time on a flight.
sswaner··on My dad's resume and skills from 1980
True. Imagine where we would be if that hadn’t happen. The lost opportunity is immense.
sswaner··on My dad's resume and skills from 1980
That resume reinforces the argument that the GI Bill is the best legislation every passed in the US.
sswaner··on Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?
abxytg made a list of their experiences at Apple, but that list is empty.
sswaner··on I don’t believe in sprints
In my experience, the “predictable deliveries” delivered by agile are based on behavior changes induced by the methodology. Specifically, focusing on stable point velocity per sprint focuses the team on creating sprint plans that safely deliver. This reduces the potential accomplishments of the team - they reduce throughput and delivery to a level that can be safely accomplished every 2 weeks.

I have yet to find a startup that successfully launched using agile. I am sure there are examples, but most seem to be focused on the true goal of software development: releasing features to production.

sswaner··on Police Issue Arrest Warrant for Crypto CEO Do Kwon After Implosion of TerraUSD
It will be interesting to see how these events impact confidence in efforts to rebuild Luna Classic (LUNC).
sswaner··on The Creedence Clearwater Revival Revival
Reading this comment makes me want to say “OK Boomer” for the first time (I am an old Gen X person). I can’t think of a single time since the 80’s that a Mellencamp song has had any value or impact. CCR songs keep surfacing in interesting places.
sswaner··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2022)
Thank you for your part of building Blink. It is one of my favorite iPad apps, I use it daily.
sswaner··on Oracle Suspended My Account
One constant in my 20+ year tech career is: Never trust Oracle, work to eliminate their presence wherever possible. They consistently prove themselves to be predatory and extortionist in all transactions.

Want proof: Ask them if you can convert to a paid service to make your "TOS violation" magically disappear.

sswaner··on Teams is killing my Mac every day
Curious if I had a similar usage of resources. My experience hasn't been impacted, and I use Teams all day every day. The Activity Monitor line item for Microsoft Teams was not concerning ( 566MB of memory), but then searching for "Teams" showed a total of 5.4 GB of memory consumption for various Teams processes. Not cool.
sswaner··on Remembering Apple’s Newton, 30 years on
I still have my Newton. It won me a copy of Adobe After Effects from John Knoll at MacWorld. In the presentation showing how to do special effects, Knoll offered a copy of the software to anyone who could draw a picture of Bill Gates — on a Newton. I raised my hand and scribbled a smiley face as I ran to the front of the room. Forgot I was in handwriting recognition mode. It changed my drawing to “OK” right as I showed him. Got a good laugh and the software.
sswaner··on Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
As an active cyclist that was my first thought. Auto drivers texting while driving is my bigger concern. I wear a helmet to hopefully survive that encounter.
sswaner··on Ask HN: How to move away from Google
If you are interested in moving off of the Google ecosystem then you probably won’t be happy with the Microsoft version.
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