What does it mean "to take max-cash in compensation", and why does that signal a lack of character?
Readit Newsrogual commented on Every company has the same hiring criteria ethanding.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/whoami_nr
Came here to say this. I don't get why this is necessary at all - it's literaly just bog-standard scrolling content?
Boss on Windows with a click-wheel mouse: "Make the scrolling smoother"
Devs: "It's because of your--"
Boss: "Other sites do it. Get on it."
rogual commented on My Favorite C++ Pattern: X Macros (2023) danilafe.com/blog/chapel_... · Posted by u/ibobev
I understand the use case of this, but when I see it I always wonder if, and think I would prefer, some external code generation step instead rather than falling back on macros in the preprocessor. Like an external script or something.
This is what I do, these days. Whenever I would previously have reached for X-macros or some other macro hack, I tend to use Cog [1] now instead.
It's quite a clever design; you write Python to generate your C++ code and put it inside a comment. Then when you run the Cog tool on your source file, it writes the generated code directly into your C++ file right after your comment (and before a matching "end" comment).
This is great because you don't need Cog itself to build your project, and your IDE still understands your C++ code. I've also got used to being able to see the results of my code generation, and going back to normal macros feels a bit like fiddling around in the dark now.
rogual commented on uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store chromewebstore.google.com... · Posted by u/non-
Thanks for the link to the original.
Well the crappy copy does come with some extra text. (No judgement from me on whether the extra text improves the comic here; just that someone might think it does, and there's no arguing about taste.)
It's also interesting to see that XKCD itself explicitly supports eg hotlinking, and the license makes putting it into your own crappy creations rather easy. (Though I think the example linked to fails the 'attribution' requirement.)
They even edited the image to insert their own name.
In the title, how does "unique" contradict "strange?"
I think in the minds of not-particularly-literate online writers, "strange" = "bad" and "unique" = "good".
rogual commented on Kill the "user": Musings of a disillusioned technologist pastagang.cc/blog/kill-th... · Posted by u/tobr
You can see this in venerable software which has lived through the times of "designing for the user" and is still being developed in the times of "designing for the business".
Take Photoshop, for example, first released in 1987, last updated yesterday.
Use it and you can see the two ages like rings in a tree. At the core of Photoshop is a consistent, powerful, tightly-coded, thoughtfully-designed set of tools for creating and manipulating images. Once you learn the conventions, it feels like the computer is on your side, you're free, you're force-multiplied, your thoughts are manifest. It's really special and you can see there's a good reason this program achieved total dominance in its field.
And you can also see, right beside and on top of and surrounding that, a more recent accretion disc of features with a more modern sensibility. Dialogs that render in web-views and take seconds to open. "Sign in". Literal advertisements in the UI, styled to look like tooltips. You know the thing that pops up to tell you about the pen tool? There's an identically-styled one that pops up to tell you about Adobe Whatever, only $19.99/mo. And then of course there's Creative Cloud itself.
This is evident in Mac OS X, too, another piece of software that spans both eras. You've still got a lot of the stuff from the 2000s, with 2000s goals like being consistent and fast and nice to use. A lot of that is still there, perhaps because Apple's current crop of engineers can't really touch it without breaking it (not that it always stops them, but some of them know their limits). And right next to and amongst that, you've got ads in System Settings, you've got Apple News, you've got Apple Books that breaks every UI convention it can find.
There are many such cases. Windows, too. And MS Word.
One day, all these products will be gone, and people will only know MBA-ware. They won't know it can be any other way.
rogual commented on The 'AI granny' driving scammers up the wall theguardian.com/money/202... · Posted by u/occamschainsaw
This has been getting some press, but it looks like it's just a small-scale publicity stunt that isn't actually available for people to use. There's no number we can forward scam calls to to connect them to this AI, and this isn't planned:
"Rather than be rolled out on a much wider scale, however, Valcarcel said the project was aimed at raising awareness."
rogual commented on The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster zdnet.com/home-and-office... · Posted by u/belter
Fascinating strategy. It looks like they're forcing everybody into it, so it's opt-out, except there is no opt-out in the initial version of the app. They seem to be in the process of adding it now.
> In your app (for example, Word), select the app menu, and then go to Preferences > Authoring and Proofing Tools > Copilot > Clear the Enable Copilot checkbox > Close and restart the app.
> If you do not see the related button, it means this button has not been pushed to your Office version yet. Please be patient and wait for the development team to release an update.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-d...
Something about the way Microsoft writes just rubs me the wrong way.
Not: "Please wait for ... an update" But: "Please be patient and wait for ... an update"
It's not just their staff here, it's all over the docs and UI too. They can't write two sentences without saying something condescending and rude.
Like in Word, if you look for how to turn off grammar checking, they'll tell you, but they just have to add "Remember to run spell check. Spelling and grammar errors can seriously undermine what you're trying to say, especially when your boss, your teacher, or that person in HR sees them." [1]
They can't help themselves.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/turn-spell-check-...
rogual commented on Why is zero plural? (2024) ell.stackexchange.com/que... · Posted by u/not_a_boat
> You can't naively rewrite those examples with a singular
"What if there was no star in the sky?" does not sound particularly weird, and we can find instances of people using that exact phrase. If we focus on the key aspect of that statement, "no star in the sky" appears to be commonly used.
It sounds natural to me only if you're expecting exactly one star. For example:
The Three Wise Men are back. But this time, there's no star in the sky to guide them.
rogual commented on Minecraft with object impermanence aiweirdness.com/minecraft... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
There's a bit in Ender's Game where he plays this computer game that has a dreamlike quality to it. It seemed it could simulate a response to any player action, and continue the story along that path. I think in the book it was a tool for introspection, like dreams can be? I can't really remember.
Anyway, as a kid I thought, silly author, that's not how computer games work. But it turns out Orson Scott Card is smarter than me. Give this kind of thing a few years and we'll have it.