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zmb_ commented on The West is bored to death   newstatesman.com/ideas/20... · Posted by u/CharlesW
bicx · 12 hours ago
My wife and I are unable to have children due to health reasons, and we decided not to adopt after years of hardship. Now, we’re in a better place, and I’m nearing my 40s. My brother has 2 young kids, and my parents help take care of the kids during the week. They are literal neighbors and walk back and forth between their houses.

Meanwhile, my wife and I have moved from our hometown, lived in SF for a while (focusing on career), sold normal possessions to live and travel in an RV for a year, and now we live on a gulf coast island. It’s been a great adventure these past years, but there is a deep feeling that there isn’t much of a purpose in what we do.

Raising kids seems to answer this for some, but other parents seem to become genuinely disgusted with it over time (unfortunately for the kids). From an evolutionary perspective, a feeling of purpose from raising children makes total sense. But, that doesn’t mean I must lean into all evolutionarily baked-in tendencies as a form of true meaning.

I think the hard truth is that if we want meaning, we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life. That also goes counter to the idea that we are individually special or have a destiny, which is also a hard pill to swallow for many (particularly in the Western world). However, it does open up our lives as a canvas on which we can paint our own vision of meaning and purpose.

zmb_ · 7 hours ago
> we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life

Think about what you would like to remain in the world after you are gone. Then think how you can connect with and advance those things, and act accordingly in your life. To me this has been a reliable way to find meaning in life. But obviously I don’t claim this is unquestionable or works for everyone.

zmb_ commented on Hyundai wants loniq 5 customers to pay for cybersecurity patch in baffling move   neowin.net/news/hyundai-w... · Posted by u/duxup
verdverm · 7 days ago
You missed some points

1. This is only in the UK, they are not doing the same in the US

2. Recalls are the responsibility of the manufacturer. Security lapses, even if "up to standards" at the time are not a legitimate exemption (imo)

zmb_ · 7 days ago
In the automotive industry, pretty much the whole point of standards like cybersecurity (ISO21434) and functional safety (ISO26262) is to let the manufacturer claim in court that they followed “modern best practices” and therefore are not liable when something goes wrong.

Deleted Comment

zmb_ commented on Apple Notes Expected to Gain Markdown Support in iOS 26   macrumors.com/2025/06/04/... · Posted by u/danso
pvo50555 · 3 months ago
I am consistently shocked at how bad Apple Notes is. I like the features it has and I like the iCloud sync between devices... I use it daily. But it's so damn buggy. It's a notes app! Why do new lines on a moderately-long note cause half the text to disappear until I hit the carriage return a few times? I also wish it simply converted copied text to plaintext by default rather than trying to preserve formatting.
zmb_ · 3 months ago
It is really incredible how Apple has obviously broken and buggy UX in many primary use cases on their devices, and fail to fix it for generations.

The iPad is particularly bad in this respect. For a decade it would not support the most obvious use case for a device like this: Have it in portrait mode like a notebook, show a video or book app on the top half and notes app on the bottom half. A use case that was solved by the original Macintosh. The most infuriating thing was that you could split the vertical screen into two useless, thing vertical strips---a configuration I have never seen any use case for. Even today now that there is some more configurability and you can vaguely put two apps in this configuration, there is still massive wasted space on the sides and the apps overlap.

zmb_ commented on European Investment Bank to inject €70B in European tech   ioplus.nl/en/posts/europe... · Posted by u/saubeidl
krick · 3 months ago
> they’d also fund insane-risk pie-in-the-sky academia dreams

Just out of curiosity, can you throw a couple of examples?

zmb_ · 3 months ago
The Human Brain Project comes to mind.
zmb_ commented on Working on complex systems: What I learned working at Google   thecoder.cafe/p/complex-s... · Posted by u/0xKelsey
ggm · 3 months ago
I think there are two myths applicable here. Probably more.

One myth is that complex systems are inherently bad. Armed forces are incredibly complex. That's why it can take 10 or more rear echelon staff to support one fighting soldier. Supply chain logistics and materiel is complex. Middle ages wars stopped when gunpowder supplies ran out.

Another myth is that simple systems are always better and remain simple. They can be, yes. After all, DNA exists. But some beautiful things demand complexity built up from simple things. We still don't entirely understand how DNA and environment combine. Much is hidden in this simple system.

I do believe one programming language might be a rational simplification. If you exclude all the DSL which people implement to tune it.

zmb_ · 3 months ago
Following the definition from the article, armed forces seems like a complicated system, not a complex one. There is a structured, repeatable solution for armed forces. It does not exhibit the hallmark characteristics of complex systems listed in the article like emergent behaviors.
zmb_ commented on Persuasion methods for engineering managers   newsletter.manager.dev/p/... · Posted by u/Liriel
zmb_ · 3 months ago
The article is about persuading your peers and your management to get what you need, not about persuading your direct reports to do their tasks.
zmb_ commented on Hotline for modern Apple systems   github.com/mierau/hotline... · Posted by u/tonymet
amatecha · 7 months ago
Hotline was life-changing software for me. It was pretty niche, being Mac-only, and its BBS-like nature meant each server had its own culture and "cliques" and community. Getting an account on certain servers (rather than being a lowly guest) was a noteworthy moment. I remember a couple really badass servers like one called "JADE: where some guys in a university hosted a Hotline server on the uni's insanely fast connection. I want to say it was an OC-12 connection (600mbit)? This was in like, 1998.

I still have a few friends from those days, one of whom I talk to almost every day. Unfortunately one friend I met on Hotline passed away unexpectedly this past July. I never would have expected to be making decades-long connections when I was just a kid looking for "filez" to download. <3

Actually that same friend gifted me his old PC which was my first Windows machine. An amazing and kind gesture which changed the course of my life (I had grown up only with Macintosh systems until then).

Further, I found music on Hotline that I would never have found otherwise. I didn't find much on IRC (didn't know where to look) but I made connections with people on Hotline which resulted in me being exposed to amazing music from all over the world -- another life-changing experience. Too awesome :)

zmb_ · 7 months ago
It was a life-defining piece of software for me too. As a teenager I found a server called “REALbasic Cafe” that inspired and helped me go from knowing next to nothing about programming to making my first money from shareware as a high school kid.

To this day I’m grateful I stumbled across the Hotline software and the server.

zmb_ commented on Rosetta 2 creator leaves Apple to work on Lean full-time   linkedin.com/posts/leonar... · Posted by u/ladberg
cwzwarich · 8 months ago
I was the only person working on it for ~2 years, and I wrote the majority of the code in the first version that shipped. That said, I’m definitely glad that I eventually found someone else (and later a whole team) to work on it with me, and it wouldn’t have been as successful without that.

When people think of a binary translator, they usually just think of the ISA aspects, as opposed to the complicated interactions with the OS etc. that can consume just as much (or even more) engineering effort overall.

zmb_ · 8 months ago
As someone frustrated in a team of 10+ that is struggling to ship even seemingly trivial things due to processes and overheads and inefficiencies, I would really appreciate some insights on how do you organize the work to allow a single developer to achieve this.

How do you communicate with the rest of the organization? What is the lifecycle and release process like? Do you write requirements and specs for others (like validation or integration) to base their work on? Basically, what does the day to day work look like?

zmb_ commented on Apple M4 benchmarks suggest it is the new single-core performance champ   tomshardware.com/pc-compo... · Posted by u/rbanffy
zarzavat · a year ago
I find this decision to put it in the iPad Pro somewhat puzzling. One consequence of this is that nobody is going to want to buy M3 MacBooks for a while, knowing that such a big leap in performance is around the corner.

Does Apple really sell more iPad Pros than MacBooks to make it worthwhile? I was under the impression that the iPad Pro is a somewhat niche product and the Air is far more popular.

zmb_ · a year ago
They mentioned during the presentation that they need the new display controller on the M4 to drive the new dual panel display.

u/zmb_

KarmaCake day876April 26, 2012View Original