wirthjason

There’s long been framework fatigue in frontend JS work. I feel data engineering has a lot of that now. There’s different schedulers and orchestrators. Databases, ORMs, and wrappers. Cloud providers and hosting platforms. The list goes on.

It’s overwhelming.

Good phrasing!

I’m just a hobbyist so I don’t get very involved but what would you suggest as an alternative maximum?

I’d open an Italian beef shop in Tokyo. Definitely need more Chicago food in Japan.

Nobody mentioned YouTuber yet. Hate to be the “old man shakes fist at cloud” but the world is changing. My friends kids are in middle school and they have to say what they want to be when they grow up. The list is like: president, firefighter, YouTuber.

Since there is bound to be a lot of Facebook bashing I’ll point out that they occasionally do some good. In the case of software they can be good stewards of FOSS.

I listened to this CoRecursive episode about the history of Zstandard compression algorithm and how FB allowed the author, Yann Collet, to fully open source it while other companies wanted to keep it proprietary.

https://corecursive.com/data-compression-yann-collet/

This doesn’t justify or make up for the wrongs that happen because of the social network but the company, and the reasons they want to work there, can be more nuanced.

What would make Python better for command line use? Better alternatives to argparse in the standard library?

I’m not making the argument that because it is cheap, or low cost, it is OK. Mux it’s totally right to do what they’re doing. It’s their service.

I’m curious in the economics of it. The people who are streaming have economics too, their time is worth something they could be doing something else with it. They are finding the source material, perhaps paying for it, finding a way to upload it, sharing links and distributing it, bearing whatever risks and consequences come, etc.

I don’t know much about the economics of pirate streaming. Are they doing this for financial gain, and if so what are the numbers? Or maybe they’re doing it out of the Robin Hood sense of justice, take the streams and distribute it for the greater good.

Every time I hear numbers about piracy they’re always vague, there’s no breakdown.

I wish they explained the cost model more rather than just vaguely mention they had $750,000 in unpaid bills in 2021. How much does one game game/cost them?

    Github issues, even low quality ones, are welcom here. 

This a refreshing line to read. I wonder if the missing “e” (welcom vs welcome) is intentional. It sounds like and easy (low quality?) PR.

I’m in the camp of: I like the colors and cuteness of the air (I’m a guy for what it’s worth) but I always buy the pro ‘cuz, we’ll it’s “pro”.

It’s probably more economical to buy the air at a lower cost and replace it more frequently but I dislike the hassle of moving files (the cloud has simplified this a lot), but more recently I’m concerned about e-waste.

Need to try this. I got one that’s bad. I mostly use the the Pro controller so I forget about it but there’s also times when I play Mario Party and need the joy cons for 4 people.

I love cooking but often it can be a project. When I’m too lazy or don’t want to cook (like during a Bears game) I don’t mind a frozen pizza. HomeRun Inn makes a very good thin crust. When cooked in a toaster over air fryer it gets very crispy. Topped with giardineria and cut into squares it’s a great snack.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/05ePk6RokvS1kX_UkNxvP5m6A

Interesting comment from an interesting username. Antihero, a somewhat strong IPA, from Revolution Brewing in Chicago is my favorite beer. I’ve definitely craved pizza after downing one too many antiheros.

What about “gambling” in the financial markets? Want that $1.50 call on GameStop earnings? Bets come in all shapes and sizes, including Wall Street bets.

People say things all the time that they never intend to do.

To go with the theme I’ll add another common Japanese concept: tatemae / honne. In short, what you say vs what you really do/feel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae

I heard it best explained by an old Japanese teacher. Say you bump into an old high school friend on the street. You have a quick chat and at the end he says “we should get together some time”. He doesn’t really mean he wants to get together. That’s tatemae.

If he says “we should get together some time, how’s next Tuesday at 7?” That’s honne.

One advantage of kanji is writing long tweets. You can say a lot in 140 characters when most words are 2-4 characters.

This isn’t about quality or legibility of handwriting. When wiring 馬鹿 on a computer you type the 4 characters “baka” (or the two character ばか” if your phone supports Lana input) and get an autocomplete drop-down with the kanji.

Can’t remember the last time I saw baka written in kanji and not katakana.

Perhaps that’s a good thing. There’s so much computing hardware these days that some things are basic “free”. Liberating (but also scary) implication is that we’re limited more by our ideas than the hardware, so go out there and create something cool, there’s little stopping you other than the ideas in your head.

C++ needs a “missing semester” around tooling. Most material I see focus on the core language but leave out setting up build systems, package management, clang tidy, testing etc.

I remember being in an after school philosophy club and we were discussing truth. My teacher popped out of his office, blurted out then returned to his office: “all objectivity moves through subjectivity”.

We never discussed it in the context of new media but it feels quite relevant.

Linux distros. ;)

https://ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads

Low salaries compared to the US really hurt things. My wife is Japanese, our daughter half, I studied there in college so we could reasonably have a life in Tokyo but can’t justify such a low salary. One posting on Japan Dev 11,000,000 JPY for senior level!, that’s less than many first year CS grads.

GatGPT should throw in a giant severance package — 1 years salary plus bonus? - as a deterrent to copy paste. It might also help the company reevaluate their position.

Do non-competes include money? The ones I’ve seen include your salary for that period of time. It sounds fair. You ban the employee from job prospects but compensate them in pay. Maybe this varies by industry, geography, etc.

Food is good at Chuck E Cheese?!?! I haven’t been there since I was a kid in the 80’s. All I remember was cheese pizza, which as a kid is the greatest food on earth, but as an adult I’d imagine it’s pretty terrible. They are maximizing cheapest ingredients (because kids don’t care) at nosebleed prices. Glad to hear the food is better. I think it’s a smart business decision to appeal to the adults too.

Earning tickets is pretty priceless. Took my daughter to Great America and they had an arcade with ticket dispensing games. She loved it. She’s 3 and not very good but the staffer great sports. They’d put in a coin to show her how it was played and earned a huge strip of tickets (they were pros at all the games) and then give her the tickets.

Find out what local user groups are in the area and offer space to host a post-meetup party.

I don’t know why but this comment triggered a memory of a toy I used to play with as a kid called Army Ants. I haven’t thought about this for 30 years.

They were small plastic to toy ants in military gear. Each ant had a squeezable butt, aka abdomen.

http://www.virtualtoychest.com/armyants/armyants.html

On the sharks vs dinosaurs topic, I’m curious how this applies to languages and if C++ is a shark or dinosaur. Of all the languages that seems to be one on people talk about as being on the edge of extinction (Rust, Carbon, Cpp2, etc.) but keeps on going.

I wish there was a good place to learn “the other parts” of C++, the build systems, using static analyzers, testing, dependency management, etc.

I’m thinking something like MIT’s “missing semester” course which teaches the boots on the ground part of software like how to use Git.

https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

Maybe these resources exist for C++ and I just never found them.

I think a lot of “modern” languages get this right by including these things from the start. The experience is so much better.

Curious where PornHub and other sites rank. I always hear how that porn sites are in the top X of all traffics but people don’t talk about due to its nature.

I’m always amazed that they have a data science team. It’s not something many would expect from the porn industry. I certainly didn’t expect it.

https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2022-year-in-review