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one day my dad brings home an old blade server from work and a centos distro. we set it up in the garage of our hot Florida house and he gave me his old perl programming books and showed me a few things. I was 12 or 13. that summer I moved my bed to the garage and barely slept as I learned everything I could. I've never looked back.2
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Wan't to hear my ridiculous recruiter story? I am originally from MA, and been on a small town since I was 4 (Born in Brazil). Well after years and years on the same town, always going back (MA) when a job here and there wouldn't work out. Going through some depression, and just got tired of everything. Well one day I found a recruiter on linkedIn and he knew a friend of mine. So he said he had a possible job offer but it was in Florida, anyhow he would later contact me and in the mean time for me to send him some examples of my work. Well in the mean time I packed my stuff and called him letting him know I was on the way. He was shocked and didn't know what to say. Went to the interview with him, got the job. 9 months later :) I don't regret taking my changes, it was all I had. I'm currently employed, love my job, and if it wasn't for my ridiculous recruiter... I don't know where I would have ended up. Long story, sorry /: ... here is a potato :) (9gag reference)
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Odd things that non-technically-inclined people do, say, or believe:
"Back in my day we didn't have our faces planted in cell phones!" True, but they sure did love them some magazines and newspapers.
"I don't need internet! I need that 'wee-fee'" -- from my wife's stories about one of her clients, who wanted to set up WiFi.
A restaurant owner who, in 2017 mind you, refuses to upgrade his phone above a touch-tone with a handheld receiver.
When my wife, son, and I were visiting her aunt and uncle in Florida, her uncle kept asking her help on how to configure his smart phone. She's a saleswoman and I'm a computer engineer. Not complaining, just an observation. Actually I'm glad because I can avoid a million questions that I won't ever have time for.
When someone in line at the store causes a glitch in the chip reader because they don't know how to follow directions on-screen. Then they blame "those damn computers!" during a verybquick reboot.
People who enjoy sunshine. I don't understand this obsession that non-technical people have with sunny days. Maybe if I were on a tropical beach drinking whisky all day, but I live in NYS so...
When I'm describing a computer program I put a lot of effort into, only to have the conversation derailed adter thirty seconds by an hour-long family gossip section.2 -
So at the end of February, my 8 year marriage met it's catastrophic end and I had to immediately relocate, with nada, to a state I've never before set foot in. I was hoping to find an entry level tech position, as I am largely self taught and don't have any certs. So far nothing. I spent 7 years as a cable tech, have to wait another few months to apply at the cable company, but everywhere else tells me I'm overqualified, or need certs/experience in the field. It's a bit discouraging. That's it. Rant over.4
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Before I became a Computer Engineer, (actually, this job is where I learned I loved programming) our manager would pull us into a team motivational meeting.
Except she was a bit of an airhead, so her idea of motivation was having a sing-song and listing our favorite movie quotes.
It was even funnier because there was lots of drama surrounding "how she became our manager," and one of our teammates felt as though she should have gotten the job.
Anyway, none of those were the most ridiculous meeting.
The most ridiculous meeting was when the VP of marketing came to town from Florida to address the brewing drama.
In this meeting, all of my teammates suddenly had the delusion that we were in a union and thought they were protected from getting fired. They threw our manager under the bus. I was the only one who could see that he was there to see if our department was worth saving. They thought they were going to get rid of our manager by shitting on her, but they were just confirming his suspicion that there was a bunch of bullshit going on all around.
So I approached the VP after the meeting, and long story short, I was the only one who got through layoffs with a job offer in Florida a couple weeks later.
I didn't take it, because by that time I decided I wanted to go to school for Computer Engineering.1 -
Any people in south Florida that are affected by the hurricane? How are you guys doing? Stay safe and don't forget to push your code.
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Everyone and their dog is making a game, so why can't I?
1. open world (check)
2. taking inspiration from metro and fallout (check)
3. on a map roughly the size of the u.s. (check)
So I thought what I'd do is pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. While also pretending to be a programmer. Sometimes you make believe
so hard that it comes true apparently.
For the main map I thought I'd automate laying down the base map before hand tweaking it. It's been a bit of a slog. Roughly 1 pixel per mile. (okay, 1973 by 1067). The u.s. is 3.1 million miles, this would work out to 2.1 million miles instead. Eh.
Wrote the script to filter out all the ocean pixels, based on the elevation map, and output the difference. Still had to edit around the shoreline but it sped things up a lot. Just attached the elevation map, because the actual one is an ugly cluster of death magenta to represent the ocean.
Consequence of filtering is, the shoreline is messy and not entirely representative of the u.s.
The preprocessing step also added a lot of in-land 'lakes' that don't exist in some areas, like death valley. Already expected that.
But the plus side is I now have map layers for both elevation and ecology biomes. Aligning them close enough so that the heightmap wasn't displaced, and didn't cut off the shoreline in the ecology layer (at export), was a royal pain, and as super finicky. But thankfully thats done.
Next step is to go through the ecology map, copy each key color, and write down the biome id, courtesy of the 2017 ecoregions project.
From there, I write down the primary landscape features (water, plants, trees, terrain roughness, etc), anything easy to convey.
Main thing I'm interested in is tree types, because those, as tiles, convey a lot more information about the hex terrain than anything else.
Once the biomes are marked, and the tree types are written, the next step is to assign a tile to each tree type, and each density level of mountains (flat, hills, mountains, snowcapped peaks, etc).
The reference ids, colors, and numbers on the map will simplify the process.
After that, I'll write an exporter with python, and dump to csv or another format.
Next steps are laying out the instances in the level editor, that'll act as the tiles in question.
Theres a few naive approaches:
Spawn all the relevant instances at startup, and load the corresponding tiles.
Or setup chunks of instances, enough to cover the camera, and a buffer surrounding the camera. As the camera moves, reconfigure the instances to match the streamed in tile data.
Instances here make sense, because if theres any simulation going on (and I'd like there to be), they can detect in event code, when they are in the invisible buffer around the camera but not yet visible, and be activated by the camera, or deactive themselves after leaving the camera and buffer's area.
The alternative is to let a global controller stream the data in, as a series of tile IDs, corresponding to the various tile sprites, and code global interaction like tile picking into a single event, which seems unwieldy and not at all manageable. I can see it turning into a giant switch case already.
So instances it is.
Actually, if I do 16^2 pixel chunks, it only works out to 124x68 chunks in all. A few thousand, mostly inactive chunks is pretty trivial, and simplifies spawning and serializing/deserializing.
All of this doesn't account for
* putting lakes back in that aren't present
* lots of islands and parts of shores that would typically have bays and parts that jut out, need reworked.
* great lakes need refinement and corrections
* elevation key map too blocky. Need a higher resolution one while reducing color count
This can be solved by introducing some noise into the elevations, varying say, within one standard div.
* mountains will still require refinement to individual state geography. Thats for later on
* shoreline is too smooth, and needs to be less straight-line and less blocky. less corners.
* rivers need added, not just large ones but smaller ones too
* available tree assets need to be matched, as best and fully as possible, to types of trees represented in biome data, so that even if I don't have an exact match, I can still place *something* thats native or looks close enough to what you would expect in a given biome.
Ponderosa pines vs white pines for example.
This also doesn't account for 1. major and minor roads, 2. artificial and natural attractions, 3. other major features people in any given state are familiar with. 4. named places, 5. infrastructure, 6. cities and buildings and towns.
Also I'm pretty sure I cut off part of florida.
Woops, sorry everglades.
Guess I'll just make it a death-zone from nuclear fallout.
Take that gators!
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I love marine life as relaxation. I would make it a hobby but I can't imagine who would take care of a saltwater aquarium when I leave home for a few days.
This photo is from The Florida Aquarium; not too far from home.
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If you just want to answer my question, skip to the bottom. For those who cares, some backstory:
So...I seemed to have finally caught a break; a friend of my dad owns an IT company and also makes websites...used to. It was becoming too much for him alone so he decided to discontinue, but that's where i come in. We talked a few days ago and it sounds like I'm finally going to have a decent dev related job--even if it's only mainly websites, at least I can work from anywhere once the ball starts rolling since I'll just get direct deposits. Meaning I'd be able to visit my gf in Florida and sustain myself over there while I look to build my own client base or even get a job offer, who knows?
For you guys and gals reading this, what's your favorite/preferred static site generators and css frameworks? I know that I'll be doing mostly static sites first, and i want to deliver quality work as quick as possible. I'm cool with learning a new language once it's not too obscure; i mainly do JS and I know a bit of Python, PHP, and just the basics of Go and Ruby4 -
Co-worker: So if you were to build a glove like what Ultron had that could levitate objects how would you do it?
Me: I'm not sure, but I'd begin by looking at the work Ed Leedskalin was doing in Florida.
Co-worker: Of course you have a possible lead on this...
XD1 -
Go is the language JavaScript programmers retire to when they get old. Like the Florida of programming languages.2
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Crystal ball!
A timeline until the first NBE-Citizen is elected president of the USA.
2031 - BlackRock launches their new large scale financial product, the "Robotic Business Development Company" (R-BDC), in which an AI is given billions of dollars to acquire, create and manage companies, replacing their C-suite executive bodies. The "Chief Executive Robot" (CER) is supervised by a board of human industry experts hired by BlackRock.
It is important to say that the employees, middle managers, accountants, lawyers, etc in an R-BDC are all human - it's only the CEO, CFO, COO and the rest of the gang that are overgrown chatbots.
2032 - R-BDCs are mostly focused on high-bureaucracy, non specialized but people-intensive legacy industries like steel mining, food services, urban transportation and government services like water and road management.
2033 - For the first time an R-BDC company is included in the S&P 500 index. If it's CER were human and paid the same as CEOs of equivalent companies, it would have become a billionaire.
Later in the year, two more R-BDC companies are included in the index. One of them was created by Apple and the other by JP Morgan.
2035 - An R-BDC company makes headlines for convincing BlackRock to dissolve it's review board. When finally given free reign, the CER immediately slices it's dividends and vastly increases low-level employee compensation. The company share prices crater, but BlackRock stands by its decision.
Later in the year, as a recession hits the entire market really hard, that company shows solid profits and fantastic sales. It becomes the first trillion-dolar R-BDC.
2037 - Most Americans' dream-job is in an R-BDC company, says ProPublica.
2038 - Congress passes the "Non-Biological Entities Liability" (NOBEL) Act, following a high profile case of employee harassment perpetrated by the CER of an R-BDC.
The act recognizes NBEs, for all legal liability purposes, as USA citizens.
This highly controversial legislation is upheld by the supreme court, and many believe it was first introduced by lobbyists as a way for large investors in R-BDCs to avoid legal responsibility.
Several class action lawsuits are filed against CERs that are now liable for insider trading. A few SCOTUS decisions set legal precedent that determinantes what exactly constitutes the parts of the same Non-Biological Entity.
2040 - As a decade ends and another begins, 35% of all companies in the US and 52% of the entire stock market are part of a R-BDC company or another. The McKinsey consulting group now offers "expert CER customization services".
2043 - Inspired by successful experiments in Canada, Australia and South Korea, the american state of Vermont is the first to amend it's constitution to allow municipalities to have Non-Biological Entities as city and government administrators. City councils are still humans-only.
2046 - The american state of Colorado becomes the first to allow unsupervised NBEs to assume state government executive positions. Several states follow soon after. Later in the year, the federal government replaces several administrative positions with NBEs.
2049 - The state of Texas passes legislation requiring the CERs of all companies with a presence in the state to be another entirely contained/processed within the state or to be supervised by a local human representative while acting within the state. Several states, including California, Florida and Washington, are discussing similar legislation.
2051 - Congress passes the SUNBELT Act (SUbmission [of] NBEs [to] Limits [and] Taxes) that vastly increases the liability of NBEs and taxes all manifestations of such entities. Most important, it requires
CERs of hundreds of companies manifest disagreeance, most warn that it might hurt employee satisfaction and company sales. Several companies disable their CERs entirely.
2053 - Public outrage after leaked interactions of human supervisors and company CERs show that the CERs tried to avoid the previous year's mass layoffs and pay cuts, but board members pressed on, disregarding concerns. Major investigations and boycotts further complicate matters, and many human workers go on strike until the company boards are dissolved and the CERs are reinstated.
2052 - Many local elections all over the country see different NBEs as contenders - and a NBE is expected to win in most races.
2054 - The SUNBELT Act is found unconstitutional by the supreme court, and most of its provisions are repealed.
This also legitimizes the elected NBE officials.
2058 - For the first time an NBE wins a seat in Congress, but is not allowed to keep it. Runoff elections are held.
2061 - Congress votes for allowing NBEs to hold federal legislative positions, as already allowed in the least populous states.
2062 - Several NBEs win Congress seats. In Europe, there are robot legislators since the 40's.
2064 - The first NBE presidential candidate loses the race.
2072 - The first NBE president is elected.6 -
Man, the technology we have right now. I'm watching YouTube live stream from some guy from Florida Keys.3
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!rant
Thinking about when I get old enough I'd like to move somewhere like Switzerland or something, what do you guys think? Currently I live in Florida and hate the constant warm weather.5 -
Four major network disruptions on east coast the past week. Today fiber cut in Florida effecting central Florida. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have each had disruptions impacting many businesses and customers. Coincidence?
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Anybody knows of any openings (remote /South Florida) for a competent junior full stack web/js dev? Im black AND international, so if you're looking for some 'diversity in the workplace', I'm your man
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I just started learning how to code and am very frustrated trying to find a degree to go into. I'm interested in becoming a Web Developer but the idea of being a CEH intrigues me also. Any ideas what programs or degrees I could go for? I'm near the University of central Florida if that helps. Please give me guidance for I am lost1
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TL;DR how much do I charge?
I'm freelancing for the first time; regularly, I get paid a salary.
I'm freelancing as a donation: the hours I put into this work directly translate to deductions in my tax. I don't get paid any money directly.
I'm doing some web-based enterprise software for an organization. Handling the whole process from writing responsive front-end code to setting up the server and domain for them and even managing myself. So full stack plus dev ops.
My normal salary is $31 an hour and at work I do less. I largely do maintenance for existing applications plus some very minor new systems design. I don't do any server management (different team) and I damn well didn't buy the domain names for my company. So I think it's safe to say I'm taking on a drastically larger role in this freelance gig.
My moral dilemma is the organization will basically say yes to any price - because they don't pay it, the government will (up until the point I pay 0 taxes, I suppose)
I've done some minor research on what other freelancers charge for somewhat similar things and I get pretty wildly varying results. I've seen as low as $20/hr but I really doubt the quality of such a service at that price.
I'm thinking around $50 USD an hour would be a fair price. For even further reference besides my actual salary, I will say that I am in a urban / suburban part of Florida, where developers are very hard to find locally.
Is $50 too high? Too low? This is a very complicated system with (frankly excessive) security practices and features. Before this they had a handful of excel spreadsheets in a OneDrive folder.7 -
Ha in Miami
No one would go to Florida
And if you end up in the system there good help you
I feel I should be here in the spring not the winter
4
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