racer-v (u/racer-v) - Readit News

racer-v commented on 20 Years of Crunch Take Their Toll on a Game Developer steamed.kotaku.com/he-tho... · Posted by u/miobrien

timavr · 7 years ago

This is a little misleading title.

He didn’t crunch for 20 years, but point still valid.

Just wondering how much crunch there in game dev vs startup vs FB/Goog/etc.

racer-v · 7 years ago

It depends on the startup.

If it's well run, you aren't working late every night and every weekend.

If it's run by sociopaths who want to keep their employees in a state of perpetual crisis in order to maximize the value of their shares, it's pretty awful.

racer-v commented on Twitter urges users to change passwords after computer 'glitch' reuters.com/article/us-tw... · Posted by u/petethomas

calebh · 7 years ago

I highly recommend using a password manager. I finally bit the bullet and started using 1Password a few weeks ago, and I haven't looked back since. It's just so much better than having to remember a thousand different passwords.

Besides securely managing passwords, you can also use a password manager to secure your digital legacy. 1Password has a feature where you can print out "emergency kit" sheets that has the information required to access your password vault. I printed out two of these sheets and gave them to trusted family members in sealed envelopes. In the event that I become incapacitated, they will be able to access my accounts.

racer-v · 7 years ago

I keep all my passwords in a text file. I can't imagine remembering them all. I suppose I should keep that file encrypted and synced to multiple devices with rsync or so. Would a password manager give me any advantage over this scheme?

racer-v commented on How Dyson Saw Feynman nautil.us/issue/59/connec... · Posted by u/dnetesn

raattgift · 7 years ago

Wow.

You quote -- without attribution -- wikipedia, and you get the antecedent wrong.

I'll italicize the exact words you quote after their preceding sentence in the Werner Heisenberg article on wikipedia:

"Godusmit was selected for this task because he had physics knowledge, he spoke German, and he personally knew a number of the german scientists working on the German nuclear energy project. He also knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans."

Note that the "he" in the second sentence is Godusmit, not Heisenberg.

Heisenberg was, according to Meitner, straightforwardly a supporter of the Nazi regime. Whether or not he was ideologically committed to the party, Heisenberg was most definitely involved in the war effort -- on the German side! [ https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/us/letter-may-solve-nazi-... -- first sentence, "The leader of the Nazi atomic bomb program, Werner Heisenberg, revealed its existence ..." a paragraph later: "Heisenberg never expressed moral qualms about building a bomb for Hitler or hinted that he might be willing to sabotage the project, the documents reveal" with a follow-up here https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/world/new-twist-on-physic... ].

Further (and much more detailed) discussion from 2016 at APS Physics: https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201607/heisenberg....

racer-v · 7 years ago

Thanks for this correction! I had hurriedly checked Wikipedia bios for each participant and completely missed the main point of Heisenberg's wartime activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#1945:_Alsos_...

It makes the story even more interesting to see Bohr and Heisenberg participating on opposite sides.

racer-v commented on How Dyson Saw Feynman nautil.us/issue/59/connec... · Posted by u/dnetesn

westoncb · 7 years ago

Those are a lot of the same people from the Manhattan project though, no?

Has something on that scale happened since, with an unrelated set of people?

racer-v · 7 years ago

Actually this conference was largely from a previous generation of scientific thinkers. According to their Wikipedia bios, Niels Bohr was the only one of those 10 names involved in the Manhattan Project. Einstein wrote a letter alerting President Roosevelt to the possibility of a German atomic bomb which may have helped inspire the project. Heisenberg was also involved in the war effort but "knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans".

racer-v commented on How Dyson Saw Feynman nautil.us/issue/59/connec... · Posted by u/dnetesn

RcouF1uZ4gsC · 7 years ago

I am always amazed by the sheer brainpower at the Manhattan Project. Has that level of talent ever been assembled before or since?

racer-v · 7 years ago

Try the 1927 Solvay Conference on Electrons and Photons:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/87a8ea/1927_group_pho...

Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, Dirac, de Broglie, Bohr, Planck, Curie, Lorentz, Einstein... the number of Nobel Prizes here is left as an exercise.

racer-v commented on How Dyson Saw Feynman nautil.us/issue/59/connec... · Posted by u/dnetesn

pokler · 7 years ago

Really? Just off the top of my head, here are some of the people that worked at Bell Labs:

Claude Shannon, Richard Hamming, William Shockley, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, John Hopcroft & Brian Kernighan. (I am probably forgetting several Nobel prize and Turing award recipients)

racer-v · 7 years ago

Some people at the time felt that C and Unix were a setback to computing compared with Lisp, in the same way that Microsoft Windows was a setback compared to Unix. Bell Labs is the canonical example of "Worse is Better", also called the "New Jersey Philosophy".

One could also argue that both Windows and Unix were necessary phases for general computing given limited hardware resources, and only now is the stateless functional paradise envisioned at MIT in the 1960's actually possible.

racer-v commented on Everyone Wants to Go Home During Extra Innings, Maybe Even the Umps fivethirtyeight.com/featu... · Posted by u/wglb

mattm · 7 years ago

The main thing is the amount of time it takes to get a call right. If there is technology available to make certain calls immediately, then I'm all for it.

Unfortunately with video review, it can take several minutes to look over which completely disrupts the pace of the game and any momentum one team may have had.

racer-v · 7 years ago

Yes, and specifically in the case of Premier League it seemed to cause problems with needing extra stoppage time. There was a recent match experimenting with video replay, and one side's manager complained that more extra minutes should have been added because of the video review, but wasn't (presumably because of TV advertising scheduled).

racer-v commented on Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer? · Posted by u/robsun

mgamache · 7 years ago

I see a lot of comments about the Dell XPS line. I like my XPS 15. But please be aware of the silly webcam placement (due to the infinity edge screen). If you work a remote job and/or have to use the webcam for communication it's really an unflattering angle looking up from the keyboard. You can have a video chat and have your colleagues check for boogers at the same time.

racer-v · 7 years ago

Absolutely buy an external USB webcam if this is the case.

racer-v commented on Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person (2017) nytimes.com/2017/12/29/ny... · Posted by u/seventyhorses

MrLeap · 7 years ago

I'm 29 and comfortable with the thought of dying. Not looking forward to it, but not frightened either. The "how" is just like anything else, practice. Since you can only die once, you have to rely on the deaths of others you care about to help you over your fear.

When I was in third grade, one of my brothers was murdered. I felt all the panic of mortality, and intense, visceral grief -- etc that you might imagine. A few years after that, a cousin was stabbed to death. I didn't know him much, and I figured that was the reason why his funeral felt much easier.

My grandmother died in 2007, she was the sweetest lady you'd ever meet. It was even "easier" than the cousin's funeral.

In 2009, an uncle died. In 2010, an aunt. Another aunt died in 2013.

Another one of my brothers always used to say that he never wanted a funeral. When he died October 2016, some family threw him a funeral anyways. I felt like I was doing his memory a solid by not going. At an earlier stage in my life, when I was more self important -- I would have been livid at the family who threw a funeral for someone who didn't want one in life. Now I know stuff like that just doesn't matter.

The pain of losing a loved one has changed from an acute stabbing sensation in my kidneys to somber waves that roll over me, then recede. Getting better at coping with the deaths of those you love helps you come to terms with your own mortality.

Basically, don't worry about it.

racer-v · 7 years ago

Yeah, experiencing a lot of "little deaths" makes it easier. These can be the death of a relative, a near-death experience, or a serious trauma that means you will never realize your previous dreams (e.g. a football player losing his legs). Your ego starts to dissolve, and you become less caught up in your ambitions. You accept that what feels like unending potential does in fact end.

racer-v commented on Sl: a mirror version of ls gir.st/blog/sl-alt.htm... · Posted by u/fredrb

effie · 7 years ago

Sort uses -t and -k, cut uses -d and -f. Your point is valid, of course - the options are not consistent across the unix tools.

racer-v · 7 years ago

Thank you, I can't even keep track of the option names for long enough to properly curse them. I wonder if there could be a kind of POSIX schema for similar options across utilities, such as

-o fieldseparator=,

-o fieldkeys=2,1,3

which could be used by any program whose capabilities require such a specifier, could be parsed from config files and environment variables, and aliased for reduced verbosity.