Readit News logoReadit News
relaxing commented on Dangerous advice for software engineers   seangoedecke.com/dangerou... · Posted by u/gxhao
HankStallone · 6 hours ago
I wouldn't call myself an expert arborist, but I cut the firewood that provides all my heat in the winter. The safety features (mainly the goofy guard they put on the end of the bar) are good if you're a homeowner cutting some shrubs a couple times a year, but you have to take that off to drop a tree or cut pieces wider than your bar, so they aren't practical for serious work.

Fortunately, a chainsaw isn't a very dangerous tool, since it stops as soon as you release the trigger. The danger in dropping trees is from the tree itself: having one fall the wrong way or crack loose at the base before you expect it. I don't drop anything large when I'm working by myself, for that reason. I've been mildly injured by some surprisingly small trees, when something happened to bounce where I wasn't expecting.

relaxing · 3 hours ago
If you’re regularly cutting pieces of wood wider than your bar, for god’s sake invest in a bigger saw. It will serve you better in many ways, safety included.
relaxing commented on Dangerous advice for software engineers   seangoedecke.com/dangerou... · Posted by u/gxhao
potato3732842 · 6 hours ago
But at the end of the day it's all just a N-way tradeoff between body parts/health outcomes, time and money, and god knows whatever other factors you seek to define.

Nobody blinks an eye when you say you're making a financial gamble and if it pays off you'll be able to retire young enough to enjoy it.

But everyone loses their minds if you're putting up your health instead of dollars, as if those aren't fungible.

Take for example (and this is a literal example from my friend group, not hypothetical) a man in the metal fabrication business. On day one he can either buy the "cheap and unsafe" old flywheel press brake or he can take out a loan for the modern hydraulic equivalent that is much safer, but also 3-5x slower depending on what you're using it for. That's a lot of money in his pocket over time. He never lost a finger in 30yr and ultimately sold out. Now, his lungs aren't great. But if he'd been slaving away at a hydraulic press all those years he'd never have had to either take a much smaller cash out or wait so long that he couldn't enjoy the retirement.

Now, obviously there's not a direct tradeoff between disabling guards or "unsafe choices" and productivity, and there's not a direct tradeoff between "safe choices" and health outcomes. And you can always make good or bade tradeoffs. What's a good tradeoff for the self employed 40yo isn't necessarily smart for the wage laborer at 20, or the business owner who is responsible for the wage laborers.

And at the end of the day it's all safety choices to some extend, but those safety choices are also time and money choices. Do you chock your forklift every time or do you trust the parking brake? It's really easy to sit there and say chock it every time but the nickels and dimes add up, but on the flip side of that coin the health and safety risk exposure adds up too[1].

These tradeoffs are all inter-related and the people saying to "do all the safety all the time" are just as stupid as the people saying you can run a cutting torch naked.

[1] if anyone wants to make a low effort quip about the step stool and utility knife being the most dangerous tools in the shop now's your chance.

relaxing · 3 hours ago
You’re over complicating things because you have no idea what you’re talking about.

At every worksite, the equation is: how much will the company lose in lost productivity and workman’s comp if someone is injured. And the equation goes in favor of safety every time.

relaxing commented on Dangerous advice for software engineers   seangoedecke.com/dangerou... · Posted by u/gxhao
ChrisMarshallNY · 7 hours ago
Yup. One of my arborist friends was a bit reckless (very, very good, but I thought he took unnecessary risks). Whenever he would see me, he’d hold up his left hand, to show he still had all his fingers, because I’d always tell him he’d lose one.

Not sure which of us was in the wrong. He made very good money.

I remember some electricians, working on our lighting system, at work.

They worked on live (320 Volts) fixtures. Never bothered to kill the circuit breaker.

I’ve found that pro tools tend to look pretty scruffy, while amateur tools tend to look shiny.

relaxing · 3 hours ago
320V circuit eh?
relaxing commented on Dangerous advice for software engineers   seangoedecke.com/dangerou... · Posted by u/gxhao
potato3732842 · 7 hours ago
On the other hand, there's the people who make a big song and dance ritual over putting their eye and ear pro on just to impact off one bolt that'll be maybe a couple clacks of the hammer. It's not realistic to do that for every single transient noise or tap on something, the safety is just performative at that point.

I have no problem letting those people and behaviors be ridiculed.

relaxing · 3 hours ago
“It was only a couple clacks of the hammer” will be a cold comfort if one of those clacks is the one that sends a fragment of metal into your eye.
relaxing commented on macOS 26 Tahoe's Dead Canary Utility App Icons   daringfireball.net/2025/0... · Posted by u/Bogdanp
LeoPanthera · 18 hours ago
Yeah they look fine to me. They're not icons you're going to put on your dock and look at every day.
relaxing · 8 hours ago
I have Disk Utility in my dock, and I hate the icon (the old one with the tiny stethoscope and spinning HDD.)
relaxing commented on German contest to live in depopulated Soviet-era city proves global hit   theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/c420
laughing_man · 2 days ago
Do you really not understand why people wouldn't want to live in a foreign country as they get older without ever having moved or been given the option? Would you want to learn another language at, say, age sixty not because you wanted to, but because you're having trouble conducting business anymore in the language you've always used? What if you didn't like the new food, and there very few restaurants left that serve the food you like?

Is it really that hard to understand?

relaxing · a day ago
The past is a foreign country. When you’ve lived that long you’ve already experienced changes in the way the locals look and talk.

They probably hate that too.

relaxing commented on German contest to live in depopulated Soviet-era city proves global hit   theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/c420
usr1106 · 2 days ago
Not zero, but an only insignificant residual because zero is hard to achieve in real life. Also Pripyat has some illegal inhabitants.

(I don't think debugged software is a commonly used term, so no need to discuss the meaning)

Edit: Genuine question: Would native speakers call Detroit depopulated? The shrinkage seems to be about the same ratio.

relaxing · a day ago
Does desaturated mean a color with zero saturation?
relaxing commented on ICE uses celebrity loophole to hide deportation flights   jacobin.com/2025/08/ice-u... · Posted by u/JKCalhoun
mitchellh · 2 days ago
All politics aside, I want to note that this is not a “little known” thing and I’ve never seen it talked about as a “loophole.”

I’m a pilot, I know hundreds more pilots. Most individuals who own a plane (even a Cessna that costs less than a car) know about and often use this program.

It’s very much well known in the aviation community. And outside of that I’d say it would be more surprising to people that the general public can track any aircraft public or private! (Imagine everyone’s car being able to be real time tracked by license plate by anyone anytime)

Now, bringing some politics in, it does feel like aircraft movement for the purpose of public government use should be documented and available.

relaxing · 2 days ago
You’re a pilot, you can probably think of some differences in the way aircraft operate versus roadcraft, that makes tracking them a much more reasonable proposition.
relaxing commented on Fmllm: 4mb training data, 100mb model, Fibonacci embeddings, near-coherent. WTF?   github.com/henrygabriels/... · Posted by u/gabriel666smith
gabriel666smith · 4 days ago
For interim adjacent results, I published https://github.com/henrygabriels/FMLLM/blob/main/improving_l... also, but I'm this moment working on a similar suggestion (comparing coherence 'fib-associated' and just 'random' words). Any intervals that you'd suggest?
relaxing · 4 days ago
definitely random

logarithmic

primes

multiples of ten (or some other factor)

square numbers

relaxing commented on Fmllm: 4mb training data, 100mb model, Fibonacci embeddings, near-coherent. WTF?   github.com/henrygabriels/... · Posted by u/gabriel666smith
relaxing · 4 days ago
I’d like to see the experiment run with other intervals besides the fibonacci sequence, and see if the results are any less coherent.

u/relaxing

KarmaCake day1630December 11, 2019View Original