mwfunk (u/mwfunk) - Readit News

mwfunk commented on GPS ciechanow.ski/gps/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

u385639 · 4 years ago

Not sure why you're getting flack it's a great question and you can learn a lot about your candidate as you work through it.

mwfunk · 4 years ago

I assume the responses are from people who didn't know that and are now offended that they would've flubbed what the interviewer considered common knowledge in their field. I could see someone thinking it's not a relevant question for certain types of positions, but anyone getting defensive about it is a little bit of a red flag. Anyone doing development relying on location services or navigation systems should have a general baseline intuition for how those things work, even if it's only the broadest strokes. If someone feels angry about not knowing this, well congratulations, you now know this and no longer have anything to get defensive about.

mwfunk commented on Charles Babbage – Passages from the Life of a Philosopher standardebooks.org/ebooks... · Posted by u/robin_reala

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Babbage's eccentricities and loopier thoughts were always more interesting to me than his writing about the things he's better known for. I read this many years ago but for some reason the part that stuck with me the most was a surprisingly long stretch articulating all the different ways in which organ grinder monkeys were public menaces. His loathing of street musicians was comical but the degree of spite specifically reserved for organ grinder monkeys took it to the next level.

It's been a while since I read it, but I definitely got the sense that that was very much how he felt and he wasn't playing it up for comedy. He wasn't the most likable or relatable guy but he certainly was passionate.

mwfunk commented on “Open source” is not broken nadh.in/blog/open-source-... · Posted by u/BrainBuzzer

chasd00 · 4 years ago

> …the only way I can foresee open source working in the way the purists want…

Well the point of open source is it works however the person opening the work wants. There’s a license compatible with every philosophy out there. Take your pick.

Open source isn’t broken because it can’t really break at all. For something to break it would have to have a concrete form to begin with.

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Agreed. It's only broken if there were some ideal Utopian open source world that we were falling short of, where if only everyone can work out some issues, then that world will come into existence.

When people are growing up it's easy to get swept up in ideas like, "if only everyone saw things the way I did, everything would be perfect and so much better than it is right now".

There will always be lots of conflicting ideas about how software should be developed and distributed and so far none of them have proven so effective that all of the others have fallen by the wayside. IMO the best anyone can do is advocate for whatever makes the most sense to them, but not make the mistake of thinking that anyone has all the answers.

mwfunk commented on A concept that took hold in the ’70s haunted everything from seat belts to masks slate.com/technology/2021... · Posted by u/imartin2k

moolcool · 4 years ago

> including possibly taking on the responsibility of ensuring stale data is retracted

SO much of the current covid conspiracy stuff relies on redacted studies. The thing is, the conspiracy theorists either think that they've been redacted because of "the man", or don't know how redaction works full stop.

mwfunk · 4 years ago

I think another big part of it is, the conspiracy theorists only need one paper that agrees with them to instantly say the gazillions of papers that disagree with them are wrong. So even one redacted paper is more important to them than all other scholarship.

mwfunk commented on Reverse-engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer's sound chip from die photos righto.com/2021/11/revers... · Posted by u/picture

aaaaaaaaaaab · 4 years ago

Calculus? Really? Logarithms are basic highschool math in my country…

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Fun fact: in the UK they call it marhs!

mwfunk commented on Should California’s last nuclear power plant stay open? sandiegouniontribune.com/... · Posted by u/bryan0

decktech · 4 years ago

I think the vast majority of Californians couldn't care less about Gavin, it's just that we didn't want the crazy right-wing talk-radio host to take over.

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Yeah there was no one even remotely credible up against him. If some insane radio host is the best anyone can come up with, I'll take the possibly shady professional politician any day. Whatever his other issues, Newsom isn't a nutjob and increasing the dysfunction of local government even more by electing a nutjob isn't going to help anyone.

Literally the worst thing I've ever heard about Newsom is that he used to date Kimberly Gilfoyle, an actual complete and total nutjob. Newsom's competition in the election were the kind of people who think Gilfoyle is a totally normal and sane human being and enjoyed her speech at the GOP convention last year.

mwfunk commented on Apple's early success stemmed from a tiny 20kb computer program they didn't make stackbit.com/blog/story-o... · Posted by u/rylandking

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Really the entire personal computer industry's early success was due to VisiCalc, followed by Lotus 1-2-3. Likewise for WordStar, then WordPerfect. It was the first thing I ever heard referred to in the press as a "killer app", which I think of every time someone here makes the claim that nobody called applications "apps" before the iOS App Store.

mwfunk commented on Willingness to look stupid danluu.com/look-stupid/... · Posted by u/ZephyrBlu

mwfunk · 4 years ago

People need to be absolutely fearless about looking stupid. Whether or not you look stupid at any given moment is an imponderable, an unanswerable question. The fear of looking stupid is more paranoia and insecurity than anything else. As long as you do your absolute very best to communicate to other people, even when that's difficult or impossible, that's the only thing that matters. If someone else decides you're an idiot you have no control over it, and if you're truly doing your best to communicate then someone else dismissing you as stupid is on them.

What's much more self-destructive than being afraid of looking stupid is feeling like you need to look like you know 100% of what is going on at all times- this inevitably leads to bullshitting and half-truths and weird circuitous conversations where it's unclear who actually knows what. Never try to conceal ignorance. People who matter and people who you actually would want to work with and work for would never judge someone for admitting ignorance or asking questions. People who don't matter, and people no one would want to work with or for are the ones who get on someone's case for asking what they think is a stupid question.

mwfunk commented on HTTP is obsolete – it's time for the distributed, permanent web (2015) ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPq... · Posted by u/Hakeemmidan

mwfunk · 4 years ago

You don't search for locations with HTTP, any more than a shipping company searches for addresses to deliver to. The problem with bad metaphors is it derails discussion, which I am arguably doing with this comment.

mwfunk commented on Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome zapier.com/blog/actual-im... · Posted by u/gscott

adventured · 4 years ago

When Jim Cramer coined it (originally as FANG) and began pumping it on his show regularly, it was just a batch of large, sector dominant tech stocks he thought should be bought at that time (with the letter ordering being convenient for memory). That's all it was. There is no greater definition, and it's bizarre to see people argue over that aspect routinely on HN, given it was nothing more than a stock pumping promotion by a slightly vacuous tv bobblehead.

mwfunk · 4 years ago

Yeah it's literally just a short list of companies that people see as being the big kahunas of the tech industry. In the '80s it would've been Intel, Microsoft, IBM, and maybe even companies like Lotus or WordPerfect. In the '90s it would've been more like, Intel, Microsoft, AOL, Sun, maybe Oracle, maybe still IBM? Hell maybe even Ebay. Lots of those companies are still around but the ones that are tend to be more mature, less volatile, and less influential on the rest of the industry now, and get correspondingly less press.

But yeah, that's all FAANG is and I'm amazed anyone thinks it's anything more standardized or meaningful or precisely defined. It's shorthand for the biggest and most influential companies in the tech industry at the moment, at least from the perspective of people on the outside looking in. If someone wants to the throw an M into FAANG I totally get it.