Readit Newsthomk commented on How I've run major projects (2025) benkuhn.net/pjm/... · Posted by u/thomascountz
Out of curiosity what kind of "extra" incentives did you have in the project succeeding (e.g. bonus, promotion, or stocks)? And what kind of incentives did the direct reports have?
At a certain point cash isn’t an incentive. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose become much bigger rewards. Check out Drive by Daniel Pink.
thomk commented on Honeycrisp apples went from marvel to mediocre seriouseats.com/how-honey... · Posted by u/haunter
My preferred apple is Mutsu, available from a few growers in the late season at my southern Ontario farmers market. According to Wikipedia it's been around since 1949, but perhaps it simply never got popular enough to face these pressures— either way, I find it consistently to be in the right place for me as far as a balance of sweet, tangy, and crispy.
Any idea where those could be located on the us side of the border in Detroit?
The fact this prize exists is admitting that no one has figured out a use for quantum computers.
I have heard this mentioned several times in the last decade or so : "The only thing a quantum computer definitively does better than a classical computer is simulating a quantum computer."
Whether this capability is useful is up in the air.
Note that in practice, classical computers are going to be better at factoring numbers for the foreseeable future.
Ther are plenty of well documented uses for quantum computers, the hardware is just too nascent to fully accommodate them. The most powerful quantum computers today still only have just over 1,000 qbits.
thomk commented on What contributing to Open-source is, and what it isn't suchdevblog.com/opinions/... · Posted by u/thunderbong
Id like to contribute to a large project like Linux or python by writing docs, testing or some other non development activity. Is that possible or needed? How would I go about doing that?
thomk commented on Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Car Right to Repair Law in Maine 404media.co/voters-overwh... · Posted by u/maxwell
The next law I want passed:
The "Cars can't require a network connection" law: Any external network connection must be disclosed to the user. The car must come with instructions how to disable it, (which must be a user serviceable physical hardware switch, fuse, jumper, etc). All functions of the car must remain permanently operable with no nagging of the user to reconnect, other than an optional initial prompt to inform the user of the change. 0 repercussions may be brought on the user for disabling the network connection, such as 'we can't diagnose/fix your steering because it can't connect to the network' or 'we can't update your infotainment system with your network connection disabled', as those updates could easily be done via the OBDII port.
Hell while we're at it, pass this same thing for robot vacuums, garage door openers, and 1000 other "smart" devices.
A “No network required” insignia is in order.
thomk commented on Apple's Vision Pro headset deserves to be ridiculed disconnect.blog/p/apples-... · Posted by u/cdme
That people have been wrong before for other products in no way comments on or invalidates what they're saying now about this one.
All it says is predicting the future is incredibly hard and all predictions (the ones predicting success as well as failure) are without much weight.
I don't think Apple predicts the future as much as it drives the future. Just my opinion.
thomk commented on Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer apple.com/newsroom/2023/0... · Posted by u/samwillis
When the iPad came out I thought to myself "Who needs a big iPhone? also, god what a dumb name, 'iPad'. Apple really missed the mark on that one." Welp, I was wrong then. I don't personally see myself using this but that doesn't mean it is not going to be successful. I'll just wait and see.
macOS/iOS 26 are bad enough that I've begun switching to Linux. I preordered a Clicks Communicator and Pebble Round 2. Switching from a Macbook Pro M4 to an Asus ROG Flow Z13 with Debian.
macOS 26.3 updated clang and broke my emscripten workflow.
I tried to unrar a file but the version of unrar provided in homebrew is deprecated because it's no longer signed/blessed. I ended up SFTPing the file to a Linux box, extracting, and bringing it back.
My son wanted to try a Java minecraft app on his iPhone, but it required insane workarounds to enable JIT to get acceptable performance. This isn't a technical limitation, it's put in place specifically to protect Apple's walled garden, and their precious services revenue.
Despite the thousands of dollars spent on these devices, I don't feel like we own them. We can't run code without the platform owner's permission. We are at the mercy of the platform owner, that has been making increasingly worse decisions.
I'm really enjoying trying the available alternatives. My hope is that enough of us get fed up, and develop a thriving ecosystem in the open source world. I'll certainly be contributing back the things I build.