The etymology of patch harkens back to Larry Wall's UNIX patch tool for applying diffs to a source code base.
The etymology of patch predates software by hundreds of years.
Readit Newsralph84 commented on Hyundai wants loniq 5 customers to pay for cybersecurity patch in baffling move neowin.net/news/hyundai-w... · Posted by u/duxup
ralph84 commented on Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants mathstodon.xyz/@tao/11495... · Posted by u/dargscisyhp
Fuck it hurts me to say this as a former China hawk. But:
How does Chinese immigration work for STEM?
What does residency look like for someone making $500+ k in America?
What are the Y Combinators? (No CCP Tans.)
Right, because in China universities can totally run afoul of the central government with no impact to their funding.
ralph84 commented on Intel CEO Letter to Employees morethanmoore.substack.co... · Posted by u/fancy_pantser
Given the whole Realpage stuff for price fixing, it would not surprise me if there are similar things going on at the csuite layer with various business consultants and backroom discussions. They're all rich assholes, and naturally gravitate to the same venues.
It's all the more reason why labor needs to start being more aggressive and properly work together.
It’s called Mercer and Equifax. All large companies use them to collude on compensation.
ralph84 commented on Evolving OpenAI's Structure openai.com/index/evolving... · Posted by u/rohitpaulk
The explosion of PBC structured corps recently has me thinking it must just be a tax loophole at this point. I can't possibly imagine there is any meaningful enforcement around any of its restrictions or guidelines.
It’s not a tax thing, it’s a power thing. PBCs transfer power from shareholders to management as long as management can say they were acting for a public benefit.
ralph84 commented on Buffett to step down following six-decade run atop Berkshire bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/mfiguiere
He's not a politician, he doesn't have to.
Still, he's given dozens of billions in charity, given important counsel to the government during the 80s and 2008 financial crisis.
During 2008 financial crisis he essentially saved Goldman and General Electric both preventing further escape of capital and an even worse situation for the US and potentially world economy.
In any case, he's a capitalist who likes making money for himself and his shareholders, he ain't a medical researcher or your mayor.
Lol, his important counsel was “bail out my portfolio plz.” Saving businesses that deserved to fail using free money printed by the fed isn’t a virtue. He was also a big cheerleader for the frauds at Wells Fargo.
ralph84 commented on xAI dev leaks API key for private SpaceX, Tesla LLMs krebsonsecurity.com/2025/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Seems like a paid ad for GitGuardian. It even quotes their chief marketing officer.
ralph84 commented on Oxide’s compensation model: how is it going? oxide.computer/blog/oxide... · Posted by u/steveklabnik
I like it a lot and their thoughtfulness about it but it's a little hollow when they're spending investor money. I'd like to see how this model evolves once they're off the vc teat: when there's a bottom line to answer to, does the dynamic shift? Everyone has an on-site chef when the money vc hose is on. Valve's flat structure was exciting because it wasn't 3 vc's in a coat larping as a business, it was an actual profitable business.
Support is typically low paid because it's a lot of effort for little reward, no matter how much you pay someone in support, there's only so much impact they can have on the bottom line. The organization as an organism where every organ is as equally important as the other is a beautiful sentiment but the appendix is getting jettisoned at the first sign of trouble. Support, no matter how valued and important to the organisation it is, is never worth $200k/year on the output of 1 person.
The exception to the rule for sales is the canary in the coal mine: sales measures itself, but every role can (and will) be measured when the pressure is on, there will be competition for budget, and the support team will get squeezed until they're empty while the engineers coast. I would be more convinced that this model could survive outside of the vc bubble if sales had bought in to too. Sales as a competitive sport is cultural, not fundamental.
Anyway, not criticism, just musing, love that they're trying it, even if this doesn't work out, everyone had a few good years, it's worth a shot.
I imagine they had to introduce variable comp for sales because they weren’t able to hire even a single good enterprise sales rep for a flat $200k. It’s not a culture thing, it’s just the market rate for the role. If they paid a flat $500k they’d stand a better chance of avoiding variable comp.
ralph84 commented on · Posted by u/OgsyedIE
Good for them. Now let’s see what they do about the tens of thousands of US military personnel in Germany. I’m sure the US is able to gather much more intelligence using their presence in the country than from theoretical Windows backdoors.
It's not a bad practice to automatically dismiss any pilot who ejects from a plane (other than test pilots) except in cases which are wholly obvious equipment failures. It will ensure that for these planes which cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the pilot doesn't eject unless, yes, they really fucking need to eject.
Will this mean you accidentally fire some great pilots? Yes. But given the cost of these airplanes it is better to spend some more money on training a few more pilots.
The cost of the pilot will always be less than the cost of the plane. So why provide the capability to eject in the first place? Presumably you get better pilots when they know a problem with the plane doesn’t mean death for them or their career.
This doesn't solve fundamental problems with how America has built its charging infrastructure.
We never should have placed hardwired cables on the L2 or L3 chargers. The CCS plugs are broken about 50% of the time? It's a joke.
Rented an EV in Europe... the cable is in the trunk! You own it. Take it out, plug it into the charger, plug it into your car.
Having a bad day? Drive over the plug? Smash it with a hammer? Don't know how plugs work so you tried to kick it off your car? No problem, go buy yourself a new one. The charger still works for everyone else.
The charger HW can be agnostic. Car manufacturers can make up whatever crazy plug they want for their car, just provide the cable.
Tesla wants a 1" cable? No problem!
You want a 300' cable? Do it!
Many DCFC chargers these days have liquid-cooled cables. Not sure how that’d work with a portable cable.