leghifla (u/leghifla)

leghifla commented on When the Dotcom Bubble Burst dfarq.homeip.net/when-the... · Posted by u/rbanffy

lumost · a year ago

I've been keeping tabs on NVidia’s venture arm. The arm seems to invest massive capital (hundreds of MM) in credible startups focused on compute scaling. These startups then spend back on NVidia chips at a 98% margin. I'd guess that they get back at least .4 to.6 dollars of profit on every such transaction in direct payment. If their are other investor partners, they could get back more than a dollar in profit for every dollar of investment.

While this is a great deal where everyone wins… it can cover unsustainable practices in the market. They can grow revenue like a fractional reserve bank - which would unwind rather quickly if the venture arm ran into trouble.

leghifla · a year ago

This make me think about a scandal pre dotcom burst in Belgium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie

The creators "invested" in foreign companies that would buy their product. They had realized that $1 of product sold was making them much more than that in the stock exchange...

leghifla commented on AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux rosenzweig.io/blog/aaa-ga... · Posted by u/6a74

echelon · a year ago

Amazon's customer service (for the web store at least) is fantastic.

Even if the core shopping/delivery service fails you, if you complain, they'll take the "customer is always right" position and make you whole. They'll refund or re-ship with no questions asked, without requiring you sending back anything or even so much as providing proof.

I'm sure some people must take advantage of that level of customer service, but it's a really pleasant experience.

leghifla · a year ago

Be cautious about calling their customer support if you have "bought" DRM stuff: you can be banned for any reason at any time.

I complained about a failed delivery (broken box, one item missing). They refunded me but then immediately put me on a watch-list, threatening to ban me if I ever complain again. I will never buy anymore on amazon.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41555898

leghifla commented on A $1k Wheelchair newmobility.com/not-a-whe... · Posted by u/bo0tzz

pkphilip · a year ago

Please see the link i sent. These are good wheelchairs. There is ZERO reason why a cushioned seat on a pair of wheels should cost more than $1K. I am always amazed at the extent to which Americans go to justify the crazy cost of medicines, healthcare, equipment etc in the US. Folks, you are being taken for a ride. Don't keep making excuses for the profiteering healthcare companies in the US.

leghifla · a year ago

How do you know they are good? Did you use one for an extended period of time?

A set of wheels and a cushion do not make a good wheelchair, if you want to live an active life. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41721976

I am from Europe and chairs are a bit less expensive here, but an "active" wheelchair is usually more than 2k$ anyway, often closer to 3k$. And some are much more than that (for instance if you want a soldered chassis)

leghifla commented on A $1k Wheelchair newmobility.com/not-a-whe... · Posted by u/bo0tzz

asddubs · a year ago

I don't doubt it, but just out of curiosity, could you elaborate the ways in which they're shit?

leghifla · a year ago

see my earlier post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41721976

leghifla commented on A $1k Wheelchair newmobility.com/not-a-whe... · Posted by u/bo0tzz

pkphilip · a year ago

$1k for a manual wheelchair? and that is considered cheap?

I have no idea why a wheelchair should be that expensive. We get them here in India for far less - you can buy pretty good wheelchairs for much less than $100. You can get powered wheelchairs for around $500.

https://www.amazon.in/b/ref=dp_bc_aui_C_3?ie=UTF8&node=11365...

leghifla · a year ago

Let me use a car analogy.

I have no idea why a car should be more than 10k. On Amazon you can get a go-kart for less than 100: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=go-kart

It is really the same comparison. A true every-day wheelchair or a "hospital" wheelchair that will make you sweat after 10 yards

leghifla commented on A $1k Wheelchair newmobility.com/not-a-whe... · Posted by u/bo0tzz

ninalanyon · a year ago

In the UK you can buy a simple wheelchair for 132 GBP: https://www.uk-wheelchairs.co.uk/ugo-essential-self-propelle...

And what look like slightly fancier ones for between 300 and 500 GBP: https://www.millercare.co.uk/collections/self-propel-wheelch...

A magnesium alloy framed one is only 450 GBP: https://www.mobilitysmart.co.uk/magnelite-self-propelled-whe...

So what am I missing?

leghifla · a year ago

You are missing the experience of being tied to a wheelchair for a complete day.

None of the chairs you have shown are suitable for daily use. Even the "Magnesium" one.

One of the most important point (beside being the right size) is to be able to move the center of the rear wheels just behind the center of gravity. Too far rear and you have very good stability (hospital chairs), but you need to use most of your strength just to be able to turn (and you take a lot of space for turning). Too far ahead and it becomes dangerous. So it must be adjustable. In theory this should be possible on a cheap wheelchair, but I have never seen it. Probably the weight ditribution is too different (most is on the rear wheel) that the chassis must be thought differently?

leghifla commented on Amazon's Secret Weapon in Chip Design Is Amazon spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-... · Posted by u/mdp2021

CamperBob2 · a year ago

Have you actually been returning an unusual amount of stuff?

leghifla · a year ago

I am on a watch-list too because of a recent problem with a broken package with only one item out of two inside. It was clearly a too light packaging for a heavy item with sharp corners. The only other problem I had was a warranty claim 5 years ago.

My account is not closed (but they "reserve the right to close it" anytime). I am glad I have no kindle or DRM stuff...

I tried to get an explanation, but just got a robot email.

I will never buy there anymore. Even if some stuff are hard to find elsewhere

leghifla commented on Spot the Drowning Child (2015) spotthedrowningchild.com/... · Posted by u/EndXA

simplicio · 2 years ago

In defense of the parents, I think a lot of drownings are people who can swim, but not very confidently, and get into the panic response described at the link and end up being unable to recover without outside help. I've seen this happen to both children and adults.

leghifla · 2 years ago

When I was about 10, I was able to swim but I was not great at it.

For some reason (I think someone dived just in front of me), I needed to stop swimming and ended "vertical" in the water. It was quite unusual for me at the time. For a moment, I tried to go back to swim horizontally on the belly, without success. Then tried on the back, no success either. After a few tries, I began panicking like it is said the the video: I was just climbing an invisible ladder... A guard finally helped me reach the border of the pool and that was over.

After that, I tried to put me under the same circumstances: vertical in the water, 2 m from the border. And then convert to horizontal swimming. Every time it was easy. To this day, I still have no clue why I was not able to do that

leghifla commented on Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging workspaceupdates.googlebl... · Posted by u/tfsh

stavros · 2 years ago

Yes, all of them. Wear headphones.

leghifla · 2 years ago

+1 And usually, the one person in the meeting not using headphones does not feel the problem: he can speak all the time and be heard correctly, while the others cannot interrupt him while he is speaking

leghifla commented on Thoughts on Testing brandons.me/blog/thoughts... · Posted by u/ingve

zer00eyz · 2 years ago

There is a lot of testing that is waste.

If you can unit test something as a unit then do it... the moment you put a MOCK in that code is waste.

That means to test your system you need to go end to end. API -> processing -> storage -> response.... Write the records and read them back. That also means your UI needs to do it to! JS keeps adding features in the browser, and none of them result in reliable testing. We need to do better.

But end to end testing is hard, our environment is complicated, it takes too long. Fix it (its fixable)! Bound your test system to run from nothing to complete in under 20 mins. Treat failed tests and long runs like production outages.

Write your end to end testing as stand alone. That means if you move your code base to a new language, your tests should still be valid and running.

Does this mean dont write unit tests? NO you should have some unit tests. Things that matrix out well (think email validation), are the softballs that should have some unit tests. Highly contentious code that business "logic" that is a dense ugly switch... unit test that, build the mocks, because if you have to touch that you want every confidence that it will pass your E2E tests.

Watch where you duplicate: Its the job of the front end to fully exercise its code. Its up to API devs to fully test their API's, to hit all their boundary conditions. Will there be duplication, sure, but its going to make clear where breakages are happening between layers.

leghifla · 2 years ago

Just a fun anecdote on end-to-end testing I did 20 years ago while working on the compression of images.

Some parts of the algorithm were easy to test, others very hard. On the easy part was loading and saving the file. I tried to test as best as I could, but the lossy part was not really tested.

Then time to benchmark the algo on some images. The results were kind of OK, but some images compressed much better than others at low bit-rate, while the content did not look much different.

On square images, everything was fine. On rectangular ones, at high-bit rates it was somewhat fine, but strange patterns like ghosts of another part on the image started to appear for lower and lower bit rates.

Of course, I searched on the mostly algorithmic parts what was going on, and failed. Only after a holiday break and fresh eyes did I found the root cause: inversion of height and width in some part of the loading AND saving.

I had "end to end" test of the loading and saving, but the error was symmetric, so undetected. Young engineer error...