This title needs to be disambiguated. I had assumed that most musicians, and especially prog metal bands, were non-profit by default. I was curious why that had to be made explicit!
lol. No, seriously. I thought it was about a band. sigh.
Readit Newsfortyrod commented on Mastodon now a non-profit organisation blog.joinmastodon.org/202... · Posted by u/decrypt
fortyrod commented on Mastodon now a non-profit organisation blog.joinmastodon.org/202... · Posted by u/decrypt
This title needs to be disambiguated. I had assumed that most musicians, and especially prog metal bands, were non-profit by default. I was curious why that had to be made explicit!
fortyrod commented on GitHub’s engineering team has moved to Codespaces github.blog/2021-08-11-gi... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
I’ve very recently become a GitHub engineer, and I got pre-access to the beta too and I must say - my absolute favourite thing about CoseSpaces is being able to dev on a repo you don’t work on regularly and probably wouldn’t contribute if it meant having to set up environment etc. It’s really nice to just dip into a project with a working environment in seconds, make your PR and then move on.
I'm a big fan of capturing the toolchain(s) with the repo. I have had to hack this for embedded toolchains out of necessity for years (decades?) using VirtualBox on a Mac. I still have a Windows 95 VM sitting around containing a copy of Keil or something that is the only known way to rebuild the code for a certain weird-ass micro from some consulting gig in the late 90's. I wonder if it still boots? Hopefully, that customer forgot about me...
fortyrod commented on Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse? fast.ai/2021/07/19/copilo... · Posted by u/jph00
Copilot is going to really rock the numbers on lucrative unhose-your-sucky-codebase consulting gigs. I'd feel gleeful about that but those gigs are the definition of soul-sucking so I guess still no free lunch.
fortyrod commented on Why writing software is not like engineering (2008) cs.usfca.edu/~parrt/doc/s... · Posted by u/headalgorithm
This seems to broadly conflate CS and Software Engineering. The differences have been covered elsewhere. Stuff like cognitive vs. physical science, (mostly) thinking about thinking instead of thinking about things, or quotes like "A computer is to computer science as a telescope is too astronomy." To be fair, the fact that a lot of us got CS degrees, but really ended up doing software development probably doesn't help clarify matters. The university I went to had a separate degree for Software Engineering and, frankly, it looked pretty boring to me. Even though I was a full-on coder before I got there. Perhaps there is no hope?
fortyrod commented on Cheating in FPS by using a second computer to move mouse arstechnica.com/?p=177916... · Posted by u/tarunupaday
Cheating in video games is nothing like steroids. The people using steroids are equally as skilled as their opponents. Steroids aren't magic and don't miraculously give the user abilities they didn't have prior.
Both Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis were on steroids, fwiw. "True winner" is a joke.
Not really on topic, but it has been "interesting" to watch the cheating progression unfold in fitness games (Zwift, etc.) where it essentially IS digital steroids. Although often done in a very analog way, like attaching drill motors to $10k carbon bike frames to get that pro-level rush of achieving 5w/Kg for hours at a time. A Movistar contract, no doubt, arriving shortly...
Ideally have the transportees walk up the hill by themselves, summer sledding style. That way you are by some strange definition guaranteed to be net positive ;-)
I think you are on to something here. Make all elevators in hi-rises down-only and all stairwells up-only. Convert falling excess desk-jockey blubber into usable electricity while lowering rate of CV disease and generally improving fitness. Downside is probably a lot of BO that didn't exist before.
fortyrod commented on Americans Are Keeping Their Cars Longer, as Vehicle Age Hits 12 Years wsj.com/articles/average-... · Posted by u/lxm
> While the average vehicle age has risen steadily over the last 15 years, the trend accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic partly because of a drop in new-car sales, IHS said.
I'm not a car expert, but I'm guessing the dearth of driving in the past year has also affected this. Anecdotal, but I've put barely any miles on my 2013 car in well over a year, which I see as extending its life. I'm noticing my dealership has really amped up their direct-mail pleas to "come in for service," suggesting this revenue stream has dried up as cars stay in driveways.
Seems reasonable. March/April is the end of the Concept2 indoor rowing annual "season" and I noticed that I had put essentially the same distance on my rower last year as my truck.
fortyrod commented on Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career? · Posted by u/jamestimmins
I told a fairly obnoxious and (in my mind) idiotic customer to "take a chill pill" on a conference call. This did not work out well. I did call them back and apologized before my management told me too, but I'm claiming no credit there, that was just pure self-preservation kicking in. On the plus side, after that day, I (slowly!) started to understand how salespeople can be really, really good at a really, really hard job. I very much enjoy sales now and I think I have a lot more empathy for where my customers are coming from thanks to that very dark day.
I wrote about my trip bringing up the iPod software development board. Now if I could only remember what that first song was...