deirdresm (u/deirdresm)

deirdresm commented on Mary Hubbard New Executive Director of Wordpress.org wordpress.org/news/2024/1... · Posted by u/program

neilperetz · a year ago

Despite our sometimes fervent wishes, lawyers don't control clients. We are not puppeteers.

deirdresm · a year ago

If lawyers only had perfect clients, they wouldn’t have clients.

(Analogously, If software engineers only worked for perfect companies, companies wouldn’t have software engineers.)

deirdresm commented on FindMyCat – Open-Source Pet Tracker findmycat.io/... · Posted by u/popey

foobarqux · 2 years ago

One imperfect option is the Mictrack MT710 https://www.mictrack.com/product/cat-m1-nb-iot-pet-gps-track...

A bit too big for a cat. Also doesn't have bluetooth or a speaker so you can't narrow the location once you get close (you could add an airtag for that, more $, more bulk).

Waterproof.

Relatively inexpensive.

Has a documented API or you can use the Petovik app to track 1 item for free.

Can change modes by sending a command through the SIM providers SMS command or through one of the tools linked in the Petovik app (the command is only received when the device is "awake"). The modes with highest resolution allows 10 sec updates. There is also a "LOCK" mode which lets you switch to high frequency updates for a specified period of time.

Battery life is almost a day if you use "sleep when not moving mode" and set updates to every 2 minutes or so.

deirdresm · 2 years ago

Definitely too big. I use the FitBark GPS 2: https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fi...

Which is 47 mm x 30 mm x 15 mm vs the Mictrack's 46mm x 41mm x 16mm - and that 11 extra mm would make it not work on a collar. Fitbark does have Bluetooth.

deirdresm commented on FindMyCat – Open-Source Pet Tracker findmycat.io/... · Posted by u/popey

gwoplock · 2 years ago

WiFi and LTE are too power intensive for a pet tracker in my opinion. Something like LoRaWAN would be ideal. In urban areas public LoRaWAN coverage already exists and where it doesn't the coverage of one gateway would likely be far greater than a cat's roaming range. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue either as a GPS point (without elevation) would easily fit inside the smallest LoRa packet.

You'd be able to do the switch over from low frequency check-ins to high frequency with the RX slot that comes after a TX slot, but the only issue would be having to wait for a check-in before the realtime mode is activated. But with a sufficient, ~5 minute, low-frequency check-in period, I'd imagine that's a small inconvenience.

deirdresm · 2 years ago

I've got a really wandery cat whose range is about 1-1.5km in any direction from the house. We try to keep her within 0.5km as much as possible. If we didn't manage her location fairly actively, she'd probably wander farther.

deirdresm commented on FindMyCat – Open-Source Pet Tracker findmycat.io/... · Posted by u/popey

leros · 2 years ago

I've tried all the major pet trackers. Most of them are too big for cats. Many of them are just Bluetooth which doesn't help at all when your cat gets far away. The better ones have Bluetooth, wifi, LTE, and GPS.

The ones with more than Bluetooth try to be clever to preserve power and only enable the other radios in certain situations. I haven't found one that does this well yet. I would prefer they use more power and track better. For something moving like a cat, you really need better tracking.

There are a few uses cases I want to work well:

1) I want to know when my cat leaves home and then be able to find him with realtime GPS.

2) I want to find my cat when he's home. He can easily decide to nap under a bush in my yard and then he's impossible to find.

The most common one I see people using is Tractive. I personally found it literally useless. When you're close to home, it only enables Bluetooth and your phone app is basically looking for the signal strength of the tracker's Bluetooth. I found that my phone (Samsung Ultra S22) didn't sense my cat unless I was 15-20ft away, which isn't very helpful as I already have to know where he is.

The one I decided to use is JioBit. When you're close to home (based on it sensing your home wifi) it only has Bluetooth enabled but it makes a connection to your phone. I found this to work over about 50ft. When connected, you can ring a bell on the tracker and find your cat. Pretty useful. When your cat is away from home, it only updates the GPS location every 5-15 minutes over LTE which I find too infrequent. Another annoyance is that it only does GPS tracking when your cat is too far from your home wifi. My cat can get way beyond Bluetooth range but still close enough to detect my wifi and then I have no tracking at all.

What I would really like is something like the JioBit but with better connectivity. I want:

1) It to check in with a server every few minutes. Using wifi when home or LTE when not home. I want this because I want to be able to enable realtime gps tracking when I'm looking for my cat.

2) When realtime tracking is enabled, actually be realtime. Give me updates every 15 seconds at least.

3) Give me the ability to ring the device over wifi or LTE.

The JioBit can last a few weeks in its current mode. I'm willing to cut that down significantly. And I really don't mind it burning power when I'm actively trying to find my cat.

deirdresm · 2 years ago

I've been using FitBark for the last 2-1/2 years.

The catch is that my cat's use case (being mostly outdoors, mostly out of Bluetooth range, and mostly draining power) doesn't match the engineering design model of a dog who's with you most of the time and might escape on occasion. They gave me a more power-conserving build, though.

The one anomaly here is one I've noticed with Pokémon Go as well: "rounding" locations to be at the street even when the cat isn't even within BT range of the street. (For privacy reasons in PoGo's case, after multiple lawsuits.) The one time this is particularly annoying is when our fuzzball is hunting lizards in the local schoolyard at night, and the tracker says she's on the street next to the schoolyard, but she's somewhere in the middle of it.

In practice, that means I know where my little darling was 10 minutes ago, rounded to the nearest street, and use a Bluetooth tracking app to narrow it down further. Naturally, a good third of the time, she's within BT range and just Not Interested™ in moving from wherever she happens to be. (We try to keep her fed on a regular schedule to reduce wildlife consumption.)

We're going to try FindMyCat on the other cat (who currently doesn't have a tracker) and see how that goes. He spends more time at home.

deirdresm commented on IBM employee forced to stop kernel work under personal email address git.kernel.org/pub/scm/li... · Posted by u/ibmthrwy

amw · 5 years ago

The kind of dummy who enjoys having things like rent, food and healthcare.

deirdresm · 5 years ago

I'm reminded of a Berkeley CA bumper sticker:

Visualize Rent

deirdresm commented on Guitar Decomposed: 5. Mutating the Third bartoszmilewski.com/2020/... · Posted by u/lelf

thanatropism · 6 years ago

There's a def "greatest hits" effect with jazz. I mean, how awesome is "Minnie the Moocher", etc.

There's also a "trailblazer" effect which is kind of weird because it doesn't happen in classical music. Namely that we listen a lot more to Miles Davis and Coltrane than the random swing band of their age. Heck, Miles gets more props than the sublime big band swing of Duke Ellington.

deirdresm · 6 years ago

Honestly, out of all the things I've been paid for over the many years of my career, the one that gives the the most pleasure, thinking back, is being paid as an extra for The Blues Brothers.

Watching Cab Calloway do Minnie the Moocher in the 70s? Live? Paid for it? Priceless.

Working for Apple was awesome, as were the other places I've worked, but for sheer enjoyment per dollar, the Palladium in the 70s wins.

deirdresm commented on Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology · Posted by u/trianx

ammon · 6 years ago

We did user research about the profiles, but not (crucially) about the opt-out release. That was the fuck up.

deirdresm · 6 years ago

In a state that permits users to delete their entire data forever and ever, hallelujah.

golf clap

(One of the 2,000+)

deirdresm commented on Lawyer Submits Brief Partially in Klingon for Paramount Language Lawsuit drive.google.com/file/d/0... · Posted by u/gortok

saizai · 10 years ago

Compare plaintiff and defendant briefs if you like. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzmetJxi-p0VZUJaQ2ZO... has all the filings.

deirdresm · 10 years ago

Thanks! I added an index here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11698292/pvax/index.html

deirdresm commented on Programming Sucks and Why I Quit (2014) deirdre.net/programming-s... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

NathanKP · 10 years ago

Programming is nothing but transforming data from one form into another.

Once you reach a level of competency where like the author of this article you can implement any kind of transform you like then 99% of programming becomes rather boring.

Sure there are still the 1% of interesting problems and algorithms that are fun to work on, but you can only implement so many basic CRUD API's, and boilerplate business logic classes, and cut and paste website designs before you tire of that stuff.

After 30+ years of coding I'm sure the author of this article has implemented pretty much everything she has ever wanted to. It's natural that she would find implementing the same things over and over again for other people to be unrewarding, and instead desire to pursue the new challenge of designing an interesting new product of her own.

deirdresm · 10 years ago

Yep, you've got it. Once I realized I had the skill to accomplish a workable version of anything is when I started noticing that there weren't many problems I cared enough about to feel like they were worth my time.

There are things I'm interested in implementing still. I still enjoy working in Ruby, and my Python's gotten rusty, but I actually work mostly in PHP these days (because of WordPress). I keep promising myself to learn Swift, but I lack Swift-type problems to solve that I care about.

The other thing, as one gets older and has a lot more experience: how much of your remaining unknown quantity of time are you willing to spend doing programming vs. some of your other life goals?

deirdresm commented on Programming Sucks and Why I Quit (2014) deirdre.net/programming-s... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

notacoward · 10 years ago

I agree that programming as a career sucks a lot more than it used to. I understand that part of my saying so is the result of changes in me or my own circumstances. Life was better when I didn't have to deal so much with product and project managers, when I didn't have to be the "leader" creating momentum and mentoring those who don't want to be mentored. I do miss the days when I was an individual contributor minding my own business.

On the other hand, that doesn't explain everything. As the computing industry has become bigger and more lucrative, it has also become less like a gentleman's race and more like a cage fight. The primary mode of interaction has shifted from collaboration to competition. There are always more projects in any given space, creating more factions each more determined to sling FUD at each other so that their project and their investment in it stay relevant. There are more sub-sub-domains of knowledge, with those on the peaks of each sneering at the others. The environment for women has become measurably worse than it used to be; I worked with a higher percentage of women on Encore's kernel team twenty years ago than I do now even at Red Hat. It's a nasty, aggression-soaked environment, and anybody who doesn't believe that must not have read the other comments on this very page. I can tell you, it didn't used to be that way.

Programming as an activity has its ups and downs. Programming as a career has started to just plain suck.

deirdresm · 10 years ago

It was 18 years before I worked with another female software engineer peer.

I don't think most men in the industry can imagine what that would be like.