This is only tangentially related but the best course that actually made real analysis click for me was from Harvey Mudd, seems like a solid university: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL04BA7A9EB907EDAF
Went there, can definitely recommend
Readit Newspkasting commented on Harvey Mudd Miniature Machine cs.hmc.edu/~cs5grad/cs5/h... · Posted by u/nill0
pkasting commented on F-Droid build servers can't build modern Android apps due to outdated CPUs · Posted by u/nativeforks
Thank you for the interesting insight. This is more or less what I expected.
> suspicions were plausible but incorrect
The suspicions were not about the evil will of the engineers. It's the will of Google itself (or managers, if you want), which plays the main role here. This is exactly what causes the following:
> engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained
It reminds me a bit of Boeing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19914838
The resource constraints had nothing to do with intentionally not funding "support a competing browser properly", though, and everything to do with just not funding engineering and test work at all except to build Shiny Idea That Got A Promo.
Despite its size, Google does shoestring engineering of most things, which is why so much is deprecated over time -- there's never budget for maintenance.
So I mean in some sense yes, there's valid criticism of Google's "will" here, but that will was largely unaware of Firefox, and the consequences burned Google products and customers just as much or more in the long run. Nightingale looked past individual instances to see a pattern, but didn't continue to scale the pattern up to first-party products as well.
pkasting commented on F-Droid build servers can't build modern Android apps due to outdated CPUs · Posted by u/nativeforks
> It seems you're suggesting a very specific, targeted attack.
Yes, just like it happened with Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38926156
Former Chrome team member here. Nightingale's suspicions were plausible but incorrect. The primary cause of every one of these we looked into over the years (and there were indeed many) was teams not bothering to test against Firefox because its market share was low compared to the cost of testing for it. In many cases teams tried to reduce support burden by simply marking "unsupported" any browser they didn't explicitly test, which was sometimes just Chrome and Safari. We were distressed at this and wrote internal guidance around not doing things like the above, and tried to distribute it and point back to it frequently. Unfortunately Firefox' share continued to go down, engineering teams continued to be resource-constrained, and the problem continued to occur.
Several years ago I glumly opined internally that Firefox had two grim choices: abandon Gecko for Chromium, or give up any hope of being a meaningful player in the market. I am well aware that many folks (especially here) would consider the first of those choices worse than the second. It's moot now, because they chose the second, and Firefox has indeed ceased to be meaningful in the market. They may cease to exist entirely in the next five years.
I am genuinely unhappy about this. I was hired at Google specifically to work on Firefox. I was always, and still remain, a fan of Firefox. But all things pass. Chrome too will cease to exist some day.
pkasting commented on Toxic Origins, Toxic Decisions: Biases in CEO Selection papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pape... · Posted by u/marojejian
I’d argue that he did found the Tesla as it exists now, but if you want to discount that, you could choose XAI, SolarCity, or OpenAI.
Musk did not found SolarCity; that was Peter and Lyndon Rive.
I don't know what "found the Tesla as it exists now" means. Founding and leading are distinct. Musk has been a key leader at Tesla; he was not a founder of it or any merged or acquired company.
pkasting commented on Toxic Origins, Toxic Decisions: Biases in CEO Selection papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pape... · Posted by u/marojejian
No, Musk has not just been lucky. He founded three companies which came to be valued over a billion dollars, each in a different industry; this is more than luck.
I disagree with both the premise and the conclusion.
As far as I can determine, Musk is the sole founder of only two companies -- SpaceX and The Boring Company. The former is clearly valued at >$1B; the latter is not.
He is also the cofounder, with many other cofounders, of a variety of other companies: Zip2, X.com, OpenAI, Neuralink. OpenAI is clearly valued at >$1B; Musk was one of eleven cofounders. My assumption is that your third company is X.com; Musk was one of four cofounders, and the company then merged with Confinity (also multiple cofounders), then took the name PayPal (which had been a Confinity product). PayPal is clearly worth >$1B today. I would find it misleading to say Musk "founded OpenAI and PayPal" given the above, but up to the reader.
Whether this is "more than luck" -- in particular, whether it's actually due to Musk's good leadership -- is far from proven. OpenAI, for example, had $1B in capital pledged at founding, suggesting it was already valued at over $1B at creation time. And the skill sets required to found a later-successful company versus to lead one are distinct. Musk might well be a great founder but bad leader.
(Of course, the obvious intent of my original post was to be a snarky dig at someone I view to be an atrociously terrible leader whose success has been due to a combination of others succeeding despite his influence and simply going all-in with huge amounts of capital every time. If you're not already inclined to view Musk that way, and you believe he's actually a successful businessman who is brilliant if eccentric, then a joke post on HackerNews won't change your mind.)
pkasting commented on Toxic Origins, Toxic Decisions: Biases in CEO Selection papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pape... · Posted by u/marojejian
archive:
https://archive.is/https://www.ft.com/content/5ffe19c3-20ec-...
Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5270031
OK, I'm very skeptical of the correlational results, and feel a bit guilty posting this. But... on the other hand:
1) This is pretty entertaining! 2) Pollution aside, I do buy into the narrative that selection bias for lucky risk-takers explains a lot of bad leaders:
>Superfund CEOs, by contrast, are more likely to take high-variance internal risks — such as aggressive restructuring — that sometimes generate standout outcomes. When these gambles pay off, they are difficult to distinguish from skill. Firms, observing only results, may systematically promote risk-takers...
> selection bias for lucky risk-takers explains a lot of bad leaders
For example, it explains Elon Musk entirely.
pkasting commented on C++20 in Chromium (Talk Series) youtube.com/playlist?list... · Posted by u/pkasting
A series of four one-hour talks given internally to Chrome engineers on the new features in C++20, what can and can't be used in Chromium, and why. While some of the content is Chromium-specific, the vast majority is suitable as general learning material for any C++ coder who wants more familiarity with C++20. Each video has a link to the slides.
As a 19-year Chromium dev, this rings true and highlights a lot of reasons "why don't you just..." is rarely the start of a good suggestion.
pkasting commented on Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows geyer.dev/blog/windows-fl... · Posted by u/gyanreyer