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wjnc

3,684 karma · joined February 26, 2013

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wjnc··on Tesla tells HW3 owner to 'be patient' after 7 years of waiting for FSD
He should try to cancel the original purchase agreement on the grounds that now the functionality is available Tesla has demonstrated no intention of delivering it to him, thus voiding the original agreement. Normally if a judge agrees, you get a full refund without controlling for depreciation.

Class actions in the Netherlands mostly favor lawyers.

wjnc··on VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS
Buy whatever you want! Buy what makes you happy and buy two if it makes you happier! Do tell all your friends of your keen finds. But remember to buy some put options with each of your Lovely New Products! Thank me later.
wjnc··on The gold standard of optimization: A look under the hood of RollerCoaster Tycoon
Both Comanche and Settlers 1 were so magic to me as a kid. You learned to work with DOS in text mode. Most shiny on the PC was Wordperfect. And suddely your text computer was capable of displaying graphics and ... games. Hooked me for life.
wjnc··on An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
Nobody mentioned the smell of that time yet.

An acrid air, stingy for the first few seconds but then somewhat enjoyable because of the ozon. The smell of stale coffee and cigarettes lingering. The smell of wood for cabinets (instead of pressed and glued materials).

This is how I remember the university where my father worked (more coffee), the teachers room from my moms school (more cigarettes) and the IT department of the university (very strong in the 'IT-smell', but also hard on coffee and sigarettes).

You don't find those smells like that anymore. I'll leave the description of the sound in this room to the next one. This was a loud room!

wjnc··on Malus – Clean Room as a Service
Satire And Performance Art no less.
wjnc··on The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph
Nope, it cascades back to all those in the same lane who’ve not yet decided on overtaking. It’s multi player game theory. Easiest way out I can think of is punishing both those too slow and too fast to create equilibrium. Haven’t thought about what this would do to other traffic going from the left lane to the outbound right via a mass of trucks in exactly the same speed.
wjnc··on AI is killing B2B SaaS
My firm has partially transitioned through this curve. We went went from "fully externally supplied" systems, to an architecture that combines "externally supplied" (core functionality) with "low code" about 6 years ago. I would argue (as a financial manager) that that lead to a more flexible and more affordable architecture. A funny mixed bag problem arose though: the curve of business demands grew harder than that of IT-delivery. So IT delivered more value, but business keeps demanding a faster pace. If I project this line to the future AI will most certainly harm our external suppliers. We keep getting better at DIY development and "low code" will transition towards "no code". Not really "no code" of course, but DIY IT developed tooling.

The age of the business developer has re-arrived.

For the first time in my career, I can point to multi million euro external suppliers, tell my environment "that's basicly an API + authentication from X to Z, let's develop that ourselves" and get a response of "When" instead of "No". B2B SaaS is toast in my perspective, as are boutique firms delivering solutions + consulting. I can create a million euro team easily (that's like five developer years), if they deliver a successful insourcing. And now I feel like writing MBA-slop, but's it's all about growing your IT maturity. All insourced code is future maintenance expenditure. You need to balance that to the benefits.

wjnc··on Second Win11 emergency out of band update to address disastrous Patch Tuesday
I would enjoy hooking up Claude to KDE with voice control and audio feedback, but am 100% on board with that it should be 100% the user deciding to go for that folly.
wjnc··on Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy
True, but what would sanctioning producers do? I think it's not even the availability of fresh products in the supermarket, but the willingness of customers to prepare food themselves? I agree it's postmodern funny that you need to continually buy something (a medicine) to not buy somethings (fast food) that are bad for you. I've got co-workers who only eat out. Guess what? What I think are salt and fat related health issues. Sugar, salt and fat are too easy and too nice not to be everywhere.

We used to make baby food ourselves. That was like twenty portions of baby food in ten minutes, for pretty much no cost (all basis fresh staples are pretty much free: fresh carrots, potatoes, rice, onions, pumpkin). Chop some vegetables and perhaps add little leftover meat, steam it, blend it, freeze it. Philips had a great machine for that. But we were somewhat 'out there' here too. Most people give babies food from glass pots. Then I see [1]. Got healthy teens now who eat pretty much everything. We still cook most of the stuff ourselves, although time constraints are a bit harder now than a decade ago.

Same as for walking. That is the most basic instrument for health. But if you cannot go out for a good walk because your environment is car only, what can you do? You can sanction the car makers for not making us walk. But that's a bit silly? (You are not saying that, trying to make an analogy with the food producers.) I'm blessed with lots of forests nearby, with separate paths for walking, cycling, MTB-ing and horseriding. Going outdoors is trivial here.

Point I'm trying to make is that an unhealthy and sedentary lifestyle is a lot of factors working combined. That's why international comparisons are so hard (or impossible). I think the 'Boulder, Colorado'-lifestyle is comparable with my local EU-lifestyle. But all environments are different on many vectors.

[1] Nearly two-thirds of baby foods in US supermarkets are unhealthy, study finds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXyVJpTe8NQ

wjnc··on The Napoleon Technique: Postponing things to increase productivity
Napoleon ultimately was a master in Getting Things un-Done.

* Many layers to this joke. Think about his imprisonment and escape. To keep it thoughtful: The impact of the Code Napoléon is massive. With a tad bit less expansionism and a tad bit more realism and economic development large parts of the world would be "more French" now.

wjnc··on We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years
My parents once took a struggling man in. I think he stayed with them for about three years, up until the moment I was conceived and my mom started planning for a future for our family and helped him get into a housing project. For all of my life before adulthood this man would show up once in a while on his racing bike for coffee, talk and proceed to stay for dinner. He was kind, funny and a tidbit strange. His life's story had more drama than a soap opera, but you wouldn't know it. After my father died I proceeded to look for him, but never found him. I still search online for him once in a while, fully knowing he probably isn't alive anymore and probably wouldn't use online anyways. There is some story in my head that he probably showed up to my dads doorstep once on his racing bike to find other people living there, but was too shy to ask for details. A trace lost.
wjnc··on Is P=NP?
My philosophy of math muscles tingle at both sentences at about the same rate.

P=NP and P=!NP are both proven nor disproven. (There is redundant information in this sentence.)

History shows us that the historical / ‘effort’ argument is not applicable to mathematics. All proofs were unproven once until proven successfully for the first time. Harder problems need bigger shoulders to stand on. Sometimes this is due to new tools, sometimes it is a magically gifted individual focusing on the problem, usually some mix of both. All we know is that all before have failed. It’s one of the beauties in math.

wjnc··on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop
To defend OP somewhat: his throw out should be someone else’s pre-owned and then we are square.

Not in defense: This is a customer who sees itself as an ultra pro user that only wants the best on all dimensions regardless of economics. Nice that there are about a few hundred of these customers in the world. This is a market that doesn’t exist and frankly, give this customer their wish and they only have other or more wishes.

wjnc··on 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
Great advice. This works in companies as well! What is the goal of your writing and who is the target audience? Memos (they still exist) can be drastically different for different audiences. Mess this up and you end up on the wrong end of the stick.

A detailed memo is not meant for (most) senior management. They will all individually find a hook to hang up their coat of the week and you will go home a thousand questions, but without the decision you need. Give a senior management memo to technical staff and they will cry for months because you lack the technical skills to understand the problems they face. Give a sales memo to technical people, or the reverse and it will probably be flat out ignored. The key is differentiation. Differentiation is only possible if you practise writing the smallest set of convincing arguments in each memo you deliver.

wjnc··on After my dad died, we found the love letters
She has a right to seek attention? And you are right. The truth untold and the moments that never were cannot be recounted. They can be grieved and part of grief is anger.

I re-learned by my tears when reading this that the only thing that counts in life is love and connection. Connections not made are missed opportunities.

I lost a parent in my early twenties. Alas, anger was a very large part of my emotional arsenal then. Writer could have had a role model in her father. If only the truth would have been there between father and daughter. Layers upon layers of difficult interactions. Thinking about your parents death and the period of time they made you, cared for you, formed you, hindered you, burdened you with emotional baggage, is different with each passing of a few springs.

wjnc··on Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on
Clear mission, a well set up team and autonomy in execution can make most jobs fun to do? Stress (due to), lack of autonomy, lack of clear mission and bad teams and management I think are the root of unhappy work?
wjnc··on People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones
We agree.

Two bits floating in my mind: I'm in management (different sector, totally different scale) and deciding to move forward against a market as a market leader is a really scary decision. We did and changed our proposition against a trend in the market. The market mostly followed our lead. Thats what we hoped for, but sure couldn't count on at the time of the decision. So we had to make sure to have all stakeholders involved in the risk - What if most of our customers just left? Then suppose you are in management for Apple. The stakes are massive. How would you communicate this shift?

The other one is: You should take the strength of your opposition into account when making bold moves. Android / Google / the brands fabricating the products I would say (no need for the old debate) are market followers. They are good at following and produce more technical diverse products, minus the margins. If you do not expect your opposition to make the bold move first, but do expect them to follow your bold move, I would argue you should be less likely to play bold moves unless you know they cannot follow you. So game theory I think also favors the status quo for Apple.

wjnc··on People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones
With the power of M-chips, this would cannabalize MacBooks via iPad Air / Pro. They are sitting on a golden cash flow and not willing to revolutionize computing again (as the iPhone did).

Just as a N=1, I would rather pay a recurring fee in the Disney-Netflix range to Apple to get more liberty in usage from my machines. But I think they don’t dare to go those routes, because they need the broad market base and cannot extract the current cash flow from a smaller base, while setting expectations that the Googles, Samsungs can copy.

Industry leaders dilemma. Apple currently settles on market differentiation via physical products.

wjnc··on Why Fei-Fei Li and Yann LeCun are both betting on "world models"
The world of mathematics is only a language. The (Platonic) concepts go from simple to very complex, but at the base stands a (dynamic and evolving) language.

The real world however is far more complex and perhaps rooted in a universal language, but in one we don’t know (yet) and ultimately try to describe and order by all scientific endeavors combined.

This philosophy is an attempt to point out that you can create worlds from mathematics, but we are far from describing or simulating ‘Our World’ (Platonic concept) in mathematics.

wjnc··on Ticker: Don't die of heart disease
Profound point. My mother struggled with alcoholism and ultimately succumbed to that disease. In philosophy of mind they use “akrasia” and “akratic thinking” for acting against ones better judgement. It helped me somewhat getting to understand what my mother was going through at that time.

She wanted to change, tried a many multiple of times and it failed. Fault, guilt, blame are useless concepts to use on the Other. And only in moderation should they be applied to the Self. There deep disconnects between what we think, know and do.

wjnc··on Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
Haha, have you missed your etymology and poetry classes? A lesson is something you learn. A learning is an act or experience. A joke telling someone of when you’ve learned to RTFM is intended to feel like a yoke.
wjnc··on Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
Around 1997 I learned the concept of RTFM! Obviously my father already taught me to look in the DOS and WordPerfect manuals to learn about features and commands one might use. Great learnings.

Oh and:

https://visopsys.org/about/screenshots/

wjnc··on Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers
For those in workplaces that treat you well. One suggestion that is not in OP: Tell others, explain, expand, give presentations on what you went through. Not only will it help your environment understand WHAT you are doing, they then are also able to understand the WHY. I've had my share of colleagues with afflictions. Your environment must know to understand! Otherwise, you are only allowing them to react to resulting situations, without understanding of the why. Second order benefit is that if people would do this more, general kindness towards how personal situations influence business situations would rise. We need more kindness, from understanding each other. (I understand this is an advice that does not work for those workplaces where HR is the enemy, the boss is their to get you, co-workers are in a free for all for bonuses and promotions. I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations.)
wjnc··on Spyware maker NSO Group confirms acquisition by US investors
I think we imagine them to sell mostly consulting and re-using those 0-days on thousands of unconnected victoms bringing in many millions for a billion dollar valuation. This is somewhat in jest, but goes to show that the value of the zero days themselves doesn’t necessarily impact valuation much. That’s just an asset. It’s the business they have on top of that and the value it extracts that determines the free cash flow that an investor would hit with a multiple.
wjnc··on Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland
I am left wondering. Can’t people (in general) understand that Alzheimer’s changes a person fundamentally, irreversibly and forever until death follows? Many positive traits of personality disappear, the negative starts to dominate, I think mainly from fear and a subconscious awareness of what is being lost. That’s pretty much 101 of grieving when a loved one is struck with Alzheimer’s. The person has left. You continue caring for a body / a different person because of the relation you have to a former them. But please don’t connect the persons past deeds and being to the actions with Alzheimer’s.

For myself: I hope for assisted suicide before Alzheimer’s. I value me for me. Not-me I don’t value, and Alzheimer’s does not improve not-me over me. But people who cannot separate me from not-me (with whom not-me loses status for me)… I don’t care about them! (Philosophical mood.)

wjnc··on Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available
You have to balance that with how low can you expect human beings to lower their standards when faced with bureaucratic opposition. No backups on a key system would increase the likelihood of malice versus stupidity, since the importance of backups is known to IT staff regardless of role and seniority for only 40 years or so.
wjnc··on Some dogs can classify their toys by function
This post is downvoted but intruiging to me. Because a large part of this thread is people explaining what their pet can do, has learned, has been willing to learn. The thing that came to my mind is that we are interpreting the dogs behaviour, but that the dogs are interpreting our behaviour as well. We like to play with dogs, but the dog has separate preferences as well. Some dogs not only can classify, but also have their humans act differently according to their preferences. And that is exactly the Uplift angle! Who uplifts whom?
wjnc··on Learning lessons from the loss of the Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad
Most likely answer, based on [1] is that this was investigated and not a contributing factor. I infer this from thinking that investigators know for sure that the operational awareness of the watch can be impacted by watch schedules.

Training for the test versus training for operational deployment.

[1] Safety Investigations by Other Countries - https://msiu.gov.mt/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PDF-Safety_In...

wjnc··on Gregg Kellogg has died
"If you know Rebecca (many reading this won't), you know how amazing she is. She's worked with many cancer patients, though her work at Commonweal, and her numerous award-winning cook books. She would call me her "rock", but really, she's mine. I have been unbelievably lucky in life, and particularly in my relationship with Rebecca.

I've really accomplished my life goals – my family is well looked after, I've had a very rewarding career in Tech; particularly the last 15 years working with some amazing people at the World WIde Web Consortium. If there's ever a good time to go out, it's now. Anything else would just be gravy on top."

The only goals that really matter. Love, family and professional and personal joy.

wjnc··on Office CMBS Delinquency Rate Spikes to Record 11.7%
I think I can follow this artikel, but am unsure. Are these mortgages backed by the underlying real estate?

“ Among the newly delinquent multifamily mortgages was the $62 million mortgage on Park West Village in Manhattan. The 4.65% fixed-rate mortgage on the 850-unit property, built in 1950 and renovated in 2014, was originated in August 2022. In August 2025, it became 30 days delinquent.”

62 million / 850 = 80k per unit. Seems easy to cover?

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