DrScientist (u/DrScientist)

DrScientist commented on Jony Ive Designed Ferrari Luce EV Interior topgear.com/car-news/elec... · Posted by u/elxr

Brajeshwar · 12 hours ago

I see lots of physical buttons in the pictures. I believe that is good and the way forward.

DrScientist · 11 hours ago

I have an relatively old car that was made before the fad for touch screens, I am desperately hoping real tactile controls come back into fashion before I have to buy my next car.

Then I would have managed to avoid the touch screen stupidity entirely.

DrScientist commented on The F Word muratbuffalo.blogspot.com... · Posted by u/zdw

DrScientist · 15 hours ago

> but it seems almost inevitable as groups of any kind grow large enough and you actually can't assume good faith anymore.

I too have experienced this as a company grows, but I do wonder if it's inevitable. Sure you can't have a single person trust model anymore - but you can have a distributed trust model, or a scaled trust model.

One thing that worked really well at a big company I know was to raise the approval limit - things under a certain amount simple go through without the need for approval - this allows managers ( and managers of managers ) to focus on the bigger items, and reduces friction.

DrScientist commented on Experts Have World Models. LLMs Have Word Models latent.space/p/adversaria... · Posted by u/aaronng91

DrScientist · 15 hours ago

> what survives contact with a self-interested opponent?

In the work environment the optimal strategy will be parameterised culturally.

Companies have different cultures - both at the company level and at the country level.

In some places self-interest is the accepted driving force, in others if you behave like that you'll find yourself quietly ostracised.

For example, I'm not sure Trump understands this.

DrScientist commented on Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery github.com/puemos/craftpl... · Posted by u/deofoo

alansaber · 5 days ago

Naturally something custom creates advantage as better software mirrors better workflows. I think the more pertinent point is small companies saving money by accessing custom software on the cheap vs paying for a saas forever.

DrScientist · 5 days ago

> I think the more pertinent point

Not sure it is. Unless the Saas company is ripping you off (sure it can happen - but hopefully competition in the market would manage that over time ), then it won't be that much different from your own maintenance costs.

I always think if that's the business case for custom software ( a few quid license cost savings ) then you probably shouldn't be doing it as there is almost always a better ROI case for transformation through custom software.

So back to the bakery case. Is the benefit savings on license costs, or the fact that you can give much better estimates to customers, better de-risk supply chain issues, hire less people to operate, and improve morale via reducing busy work?

All these sort of things have to be more valuable than a few quid on licensing.

DrScientist commented on Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery github.com/puemos/craftpl... · Posted by u/deofoo

arethuza · 5 days ago

Octopus pressured us into getting smart meters and they're the folks I am speaking to to get the things to work so as far as I'm concerned they're on the hook.

Mind you, I couldn't help noticing that the meters themselves are owned by a leasing company... (there is a plate on each one explaining this).

DrScientist · 5 days ago

Again I think that's mostly the governments fault - they are setting mandatory smart meter rollout targets for the energy suppliers every year.

DrScientist commented on Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery github.com/puemos/craftpl... · Posted by u/deofoo

arethuza · 6 days ago

I'm a bit bitter about Octopus, although they did rescue us from the horrors of our previous supplier their insistence on us getting "smart" meters that can't then function as smart meters because of poor signal and are actually more difficult to read than our old meters has left me not hugely impressed with them.

DrScientist · 5 days ago

Wasn't the smart meter rollout ( and the poor choice of hardware etc ) a central government initiative. Octopus merely used their software agility to make the most of it.

ie not sure issues with the smart meters themselves is the fault of Octopus - as the meter standards are set centrally so they can still work if you switch supplier?

Back to another old adage,

"people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware"

DrScientist commented on Show HN: Craftplan – I built my wife a production management tool for her bakery github.com/puemos/craftpl... · Posted by u/deofoo

larodi · 6 days ago

Good, I will with great pleasure now reiterate my point about people now producing their own code, even complex stuff, rather than downloading potentially malicious and foreign code. Which as a tendency threatens ALL clumsy big ERP service providers selling you SAAS.

Go ahead - I'm ready to be down-voted again and again until folks realize it is inevitable, as is inevitable that many companies in the area of business software are going down down down.

DrScientist · 6 days ago

I think the real question here isn't whether roll your own software will replace large complex 'configurable' systems, but whether companies that roll their own will replace the companies that don't.

ie are the efficiency gains of having something that's exactly tailored to you enough to create a competitive advantage.

It's back to the old idea - of software eating the world.

So for example in the UK - there is a relatively new 'energy' company called Octopus - it's grown and grown and finally overtaken the old established players.

In reality it's not an energy company - it's a software company - that used it's expertise in software to overtake it's energy supplier competitors - it was able to provide innovative products in the market because it controlled it's own software - rather than 'big vendor says no'.

I think it's telling that the founder originally left school at 16 to write computer games, before coming back to do a degree etc.

ie the question is - for any particular industry what's the benefit of custom software. Does a bakery having it's own give it enough of an advantage?

DrScientist commented on What Most People Miss About Getting Promoted news.theuncommonexecutive... · Posted by u/yuezhao

WorldMaker · 7 days ago

A lot of metric-driven roles are subjective as well. Most sales funnels are intentionally a random lottery. When prioritization exists it is often influenced by all those subjective categories like "management likes you".

As software developers we often see the raw data of this. The science often even isn't that hard based on the software you are asked to write how almost none of the "objective" metrics are truly "fair".

Metrics aren't an escape from subjectivity, they just smoke screen it. Companies love "rich get richer" lotteries and easily confuse that for "objective" or "fair".

DrScientist · 6 days ago

Sure metrics can be gamed - I just wanted to acknowledge that some roles - like a forecourt car salesmen - the metrics are closer to performance reality than others.

An example of a near perfect metric is performance in an individual sport.

Your time in the 100 metres is your time in the 100m ( drug cheating aside ). However obviously that's the exception rather than the rule.

And those judgement things - like whether you are a team player etc ( you get the most sales, but that's in part by stealing them from others or actively sabotaging them ) - can also be really important ( but also unfair - they play golf at the same club ).

End of the day if a company isn't promoting on the right criteria, you are probably better off leaving - as the company isn't going to do so well long term, and your talents may be better recognised elsewhere.

That's also a judgement.

DrScientist commented on Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed sintef.no/en/latest-news/... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

IshKebab · 7 days ago

I don't see why that matters. You use the same amount of energy and the demand is smoothed out at grid scale (yes I know about tea in ad breaks).

DrScientist · 7 days ago

You can get things like cheaper overnight tariffs when the demand is lower - if you have some sort of storage system - like a hot water tank - in effect the electricity company is distributing some of that smoothing function to things like hot water tanks, storage heaters or batteries.

If you have your own solar ( either direct solar water heating, or solar electricity generation ), the hot water tank is a simple, cheap, reliable energy store.

Sure capacity isn't that great - but pretty much every house in the UK used to have one, so it adds up.

DrScientist commented on Pretty soon, heat pumps will be able to store and distribute heat as needed sintef.no/en/latest-news/... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

ZeroGravitas · 8 days ago

It also exists, as described in the headline, as a tank of heated water.

The phase change stuff has positives like taking up less physical space but it's also a much less mature tech than storing hot water.

DrScientist · 8 days ago

Indeed.

In the UK there was a unfortunate trend of ripping out these energy storage devices and replacing hot water tanks with on demand electric hot water heating ( only heat the water you need ). And new builds often have no tanks ( as it saves space in the new tiny homes ).

Very short sighted in my view - a very simple way to store energy and everyone uses hot water directly.