glesica (u/glesica) - Readit News

glesica commented on Eva – A distributed entity-attribute-value database in Clojure github.com/Workiva/eva/... · Posted by u/CurrentB

lwb · 6 years ago

> Workiva has decided to discontinue closed development on Eva, but sees a great deal of potential value in opening the code base to the OSS community.

I'm confused -- does this mean that Workiva themselves are not using Eva? Or are they still using it, but not officially developing it any more? If they were really invested in it, why would they only allow employees to work on it in their 10% time?

glesica · 6 years ago

It was open sourced because it was a cool piece of technology and it would have been a shame to keep it back, but it is no longer in use at Workiva.

Source: I work there, although I have literally nothing to do with this project.

glesica commented on Pymux: a tmux clone in pure Python github.com/jonathanslende... · Posted by u/amjith

njharman · 10 years ago

Pure Python is the difference. It runs anywhere python runs. Same can't be said for a compiled C program.

It's maybe not a "big" why, or one you care about.

glesica · 10 years ago

Isn't the Python interpreter implemented in C? How could Python run someplace that C can't?

glesica commented on The rise and decline of Wikipedia [pdf] www-users.cs.umn.edu/~hal... · Posted by u/mdlincoln

gozur88 · 10 years ago

This is something Jerry Pournelle used to complain about. He edited some pages relating to the US space program. Events in which he took part or knew the people involved. Then he'd come back a month later and find the page had been edited again with the incorrect information re-inserted. Eventually he just gave up.

And then there are political problems. The Tyson affair is a good example - Neil deGrasse Tyson spent many years spouting made-up quotes supposedly uttered by political opponents (Like this one, for instance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_jG5kKfacY). Eventually someone compiled all the nonsense and it was something of a mini-scandal. The wiki editors refused to allow any mention of it on his page, so the whole affair is mostly down the memory hole now, just like they intended.

Wikipedia is good for historical references (pre 1900 or so), and a good place to start if you just don't know anything about the thing you're looking up. But to rely on it for anything that's the slightest bit controversial is daft.

glesica · 10 years ago

> Wikipedia is good for historical references (pre 1900 or so), and a good place to start if you just don't know anything about the thing you're looking up.

Whenever I see people say stuff like this I mentally replace what they said with "Wikipedia is a general-knowledge encyclopedia." Not a dig at you, but this should have always gone without saying.

glesica commented on Google to Make Driverless Cars an Alphabet Company in 2016 bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/T-A

minwcnt5 · 10 years ago

I've never viewed these sorts of regulative barriers as anything more than a headache for Google. There's going to be some government somewhere on earth that will be gung ho about self-driving cars. Americans will not stand for the US not being #1, so regulators will be forced to do a rather quick 180 on this.

glesica · 10 years ago

Meh, Americans also don't like dying horribly and will freakout if they think something makes that more likely. The FDA is relatively conservative compared to many other countries and, especially after Thalidomide, most people probably appreciate that.

glesica commented on Gimp 2.9.2 Released gimp.org/news/2015/11/27/... · Posted by u/renlinx

Drdrdrq · 10 years ago

Great, lots of new features. But the crucial thing for me is still marked "wontfix": allow saving to external formats directly.

I often open some png or jpeg, edit it and want to save it. But no, I have to export it, confirm that I want to overwrite the file I am editing, and then confirm that I don't want to save to .xcf before closing file or Gimp. Infuriating. It makes me want to fork it just fix this nonsense, but I doubt anyone would want to go into trouble to install my fork. If gimp team don't want to change default behaviour they could at least add a setting to .gimprc: insane_export_behaviour=off. I know I would use it.</rant>

glesica · 10 years ago

I haven't used Photoshop in quite a few years, but I'm pretty sure it works (or worked) the same way as Gimp. Maybe people who do a lot of work in image editing software are accustomed to this workflow? It seems reasonable, since exporting flattens layers and such, which a professional would probably want to preserve (and may not want to risk accidentally losing).

glesica commented on How the Atari ST Almost Had Real Unix (2011) dadhacker.com/blog/?p=138... · Posted by u/pmoriarty

mietek · 10 years ago

It might be worth pointing out that there is a Macintosh II emulator built solely for the purpose of running A/UX.

https://github.com/pruten/Shoebill

A mirror of the well-known A/UX software repository, Jagubox, has been published at the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/25_12_2009_jagubox

glesica · 10 years ago

> This will probably be the last release. I won't be able to work on Shoebill going forward (by contractual obligation), so I wanted to race out one last release.

Really sad that companies put these kinds of restrictions on their employees...

glesica commented on Massachusetts’s Rejection of Common Core Test Signals Shift in U.S nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us... · Posted by u/frostmatthew

spicyj · 10 years ago

As someone who used to work at Khan Academy…

This is so sad. The Common Core standards are designed very well. They emphasize understanding over mechanics. They've gotten surprisingly bad press from parents who don't understand math and don't understand the new methods which really are designed to build intuition and understanding. But even if you have to give in and go back to the old way of teaching, why ditch the new, high-quality test? I don't get it. Maybe the schools are all afraid of looking ineffective because they know they don't teach proper understanding.

glesica · 10 years ago

I don't know a ton about Common Core (I don't have kids and I'm not a teacher). However, I know enough to agree with you that, assuming they got it right, Common Core should be a terrific thing. However, I spent some time helping a young relative with her math homework and it didn't inspire much confidence. Not because the assignment wasn't attempting to teach the things you mention (once I figured it out, I thought it was a great assignment), but because the assignment's instructions were vague and apparently incomplete. I struggled t figure out, based on the instructions, what the finished product should even look like. If they want to get parents on their side, they have to at least make it so that parents can check students' work, if not understand it themselves.

glesica commented on A billionaire targeting contrarian, underappreciated causes bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/ca98am79

bradleyjg · 10 years ago

Which is one reason that most private companies now offer defined contribution plans rather than defined benefit plans. That way a worker isn't dependent on the foresight, goodwill, or even existence of his past employer for his retirement. It is a far better for everyone involved. And if workers are nervous about investing these contributions into risky instruments they can use them to buy deferred annuities from AAA rated insurance companies and build their own "pensions".

glesica · 10 years ago

> buy deferred annuities from AAA rated insurance companies and build their own "pensions".

Which, in a post-financial crisis world, also obviously involves relying on government-backing of the insurance companies and bailouts when ratings agencies hand out AAA ratings like candy. Ultimately, only the government can guarantee people a retirement. Which is why I personally think we should say "screw it" and just guarantee everyone a reasonable (livable) payout from social security...

glesica commented on A billionaire targeting contrarian, underappreciated causes bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/ca98am79

tonyedgecombe · 10 years ago

The pensions system for US public workers does seem quite broken to me. Letting politicians with a relatively short term view control investments that have to realise a return in thirty or forty years is a recipe for disaster.

glesica · 10 years ago

The same can be said for private companies. The difference is that private companies are allowed to weasel out of their obligations and the federal government picks up their pension responsibilities... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corpo...

glesica commented on Mark Zuckerberg Will Take Two Months Off from Facebook for Paternity Leave techcrunch.com/2015/11/20... · Posted by u/markthethomas

droopybuns · 10 years ago

I don't think what you're saying reflects reality. Anyone who is responsible for making payroll is experiencing a kind of pressure that most people will never know.

"United Continental Holdings Inc's (UAL.N) new chief executive has suffered a heart attack, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, barely a month after he took on the job of improving the airline's profitability and reputation."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/16/us-unitedairlines-...

glesica · 10 years ago

Then quit and take a lower-stress job. Once you're at that point you can afford it (in fact most people in that position these days could just quit and reduce their living costs, maybe not even that). I think that's what GP was saying.