Recent submissions

Comment · 7 years ago
GATTACA
Comment · 7 years ago
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

Mayor’s claim doesn’t seem any more credible than Watson’s. Mayor might wind up being right, but not due to any deeper insight. It will happen, or it won’t. My opinion is we will do it as long as we don’t destroy ourselves first.

He’s also conflating the migration with protecting the earth. I don’t think there are very many credible people saying we should protect the planet as we can migrate to an exoplanet.

Protecting the planet is worthwhile, regardless of whether we can flee it.

Comment · 7 years ago
What do you consider non-trivial?

I transfer money to Africa on a regular basis, and I don’t have these same issues other than the difference between published exchange rate and realized, which is about 1-1.5%. Transfer fees are minimal.

I transfer about $3,000 per month, but no I could go up to at least $10K without issue. Occasionally it can have a bit of a delay, but normally it closes in less than a minute, and I get email and text updates on the status, no calls needed.

Comment · 8 years ago
This is not new. They’ve been eying this tax for quite some time. It’s due to the difficulty in fighting over the gas tax. It is extremely flawed, but politically expedient. At some point it may make sense due to electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles, but the day that it makes true sense, not just political, is still far in the future.
Comment · 8 years ago
I would say it depends on your goals. If performance is your primary concern, then go with rust, one of rust’s primary focuses is performance.

I don’t think of Haskell as the best language for command line dev, but I’m far from expert in either language.

Comment · 8 years ago
I recently installed Mattermost open source, but will likely move to something else. This is a trial for me, but the lack of google authentication in the free version, and particularly that it is only available on the enterprise version with opaque pricing, which will likely be unaffordable for me at this point, is pretty much a deal breaker.

I understand you need to have different features for the different packages, but I think this is a feature that should be available for smaller businesses. The g suite is affordable for small businesses and startups, and I doubt it is particularly difficult to implement, so I suggest including it at a lower price point.

For me it’s not even worth continuing the trial without it.

Comment · 8 years ago
The fact that you could operate the mongo instance, but not the DB is definitely a cultural issue, or more likely a managerial issue. Definitely NOT a DB issue. I’ve worked at places where we could manage the DB ourselves, and other places where we couldn’t eve talk to the DBAs without beuraucracy. It’s all about the management in those scenarios. And the company results were as you would expect.
Comment · 8 years ago
This article really captures the risks of a rebuild. I’ve been through a number of them, all but 1 abject failures. The one success was driven by the executive understanding that the company would fail without a rebounds, and it was still 6 months late, resulted in one of the cofounders being fired, an extremely painful rollout, and the company still failed, due to other problems.

My firm belief is that when you need a rebuild, you are already well into a fail state as a company. Not to stay there can be no recovery, but it is an indication of some deep problems for the company, beyond anything the engineering department alone can resolve... and if the rebuild is not coming from the executive leadership, it is an even bigger issue as it will more likely lead to bigger problems than it will solve.

Comment · 8 years ago
My suspicion is the statistic is too vague to be meaningful. I would bet that the key here is the average person in LA commutes every day, but I suspect the person in Jakarta does not commute in a way that is easily measured for the purpose of this statistic.
Comment · 8 years ago
That's even better regeneration than Wolverine
Comment · 9 years ago
The website was down for about 5-10 min for me when logged in, although their homepage was working, and I was able to push changes. The site is now back up for me.
Comment · 9 years ago
It's almost 1984
Comment · 9 years ago
It's unfortunate that this is the sort of means by which these issues are addressed, but it's more unfortunate that are society does not take action on issues like these until these sort of means are used.

It's horrible that these were taken down, but it's far more horrible that disadvantaged populations are ignored, and put at further disadvantage.

And ultimately the files are still available in a more egalitarian way than they were before. The outcome is arguably better than the way things were before!

Comment · 10 years ago
It happens to all of us, last time I was interviewing I was asked the exact same question two days in a row, the first time I answered it without trouble, but the very next day I choked. It wasn't even a difficult question. After that the interview went downhill.

I was pretty discouraged after that, but all you can do is go on to the next one with an open mind. There are lots of great opportunities out there. A lot of interviewers understand nerves and will take that into account

Comment · 10 years ago
I don't believe a government can have concern for its own citizens if it does not have concern for people outside of its own borders.

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