Details
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AboutData Eng with a long history of abusive bosses and awesome projects. Got a MSc in Optimization and a couple startup failures under my belt.
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SkillsPython, C/C++, Cloud Architecture, Spark, Parquet, AsyncIO, Sarcasm, Heuristics, Optimization, Science, Academics
Joined devRant on 10/26/2021
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@scor I assumed you meant "ripe", but time do is an inexorable noose tightening slowly around humanity's collective neck, so... accidentally viable typo?
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@tosensei that might become a business! You pay a subscription to your non-whatsapp app that is essentially a "API Change Insurance", to retain devs that will update it as soon as the zuckers try to mess things up.
As long as muggle users get to send and receive messages to the tech literate, we get to escape the app. -
how have you figured out Boeing's super secret performance metrics?!?
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There is also some pervasive addiction to black box algorithms.
Not every problem needs a GenAlg or a neural network or a branch-and-bound solver, but those are soooo easy to use that you will find those even when performance should be a larger concern.
Then there is plain old laziness, hurriedness and ignorance, where people make a brute force algorithm just because it is simple to understand.
I've once saw a kid compute a warehouse layout plan using 6 nested "for each" loops, at least half of all iterations were unnecessary. Probably many more.
Yet since he only had like 1h to write it, and I took longer than that just to explain to him that "algorithm" is not just another word for "code".
(we later used some nice greedy+dynamic method that sped things up 3700%)
Thus I would blame the industry, not devs, for the rush quick-to-develop-but-inefficient-in-production software.
When energy becomes expensive again this trend will revert. -
@NeatNerdPrime thanks. I naturally haven't said any of that out loud, and I am very proud I kept my poker face. But I was surely thinking it.
@shovethisrant we'll never know for sure, but you are very probably right.
@kiki yes, ma'am -
software was itself invented as "configuration" for machines. That is what "program" means in latin: "laid out in a table" (like in a schedule)
TBH, we are all just making sequences of assembly instructions, anyway. Just like writing is just configuring chosen words in an arbitrary sequence. -
@exerceo AH might mean "assholes", but in this case it is "aspiring-Hs", H being a famous austrian-german name.
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@fullstackcircus in 10 years of inflation half a mil will be the price for a mid-sized orange
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Dude, chill. If you are fireproof, that is a great opportunity for malicious compliance.
Stupid managers won't fire you because then they will have to explain why they hired and/or kept you for so long. They would rather waste company money on nearly useless headcount than to admit that their little kingdom is larger than it should be.
You WFH? if you do, you can make some app to trigger your scripts with a click from you phone and go do some exercise and look for other jobs - the company will even pay you for it! It's like being in prison, you can make the most of a bad situation.
If you are in an office that gets tricky, but you can spend your days learning new skills and working on some opensource project - something that is so big the company can never claim ownership of it, an Apache project mayhaps. Do not work on a personal project! They can steal it from you!
But above all, don't worry! Stay sleazy! If you're bad enough, you will get fired eventually! -
Some researchers in Chile run an experiment to discover an amount that would cover unexpected expenses, including healthcare, for any members of a sufficiently large population.
They found 1500 USD of savings would cover most misfortunes, while 2500 would cover even the outliers.
That is how much I have stored, per covered person, as my personal insurance.
Now, third party insurers are in the business of making money off you.
They might be service providers or they might be quasi-scams.
Service providers should be hired when you are not sure you can perform the service yourself - medical insurance, for example. If you are not sure you can pay for your ailments, nor trust the public healthcare, then maybe it is a good idea.
Now, house insurance is useless for an apartment, and if you can afford a whole new car then auto insurance (but not accident insurance) is just a scam.
Got it? If you can afford to replace it, you do not need insurance. And you can't replace your health. -
Fifteen years ago laptops were mostly for college kids and weirdoes, most people had stationary desktop computers with big ass screens and looots of peripherals.
Then when smartphones became capable of doing most of what 75% of users were ever gonna use a computer for (digital photos, social media, email, videos, light gaming), desktops became "that spreadsheet and old-timey docs machine".
See: "The Office", the series.
At the same time, the corporate world moved from cubicles and other assigned seat configurations to large open floors where people are often not expected to sit at the same place, and also to take their equipment with them when moving.
By the time series like "Sucession" or "Billions" hit, desktop computers are for back-office nerds, the rich AH are always on the move, move, move!
And if you are using a laptop on a coffee table while plotting to overthrow someone, you want it to be very light, compact, and you might ask "what are peripherals? some streaming series?" -
You also forgot "Fish", a word that describes things or situations that are somewhat F'd
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"I work in IT"
Guaranteed to make lots of people ask you to help them with their printer or microwave or to hack an ex's insta or something -
@Demolishun eeeeeww, she must be at least fifteen years younger than me. Really hope this interpretation of yours is wrong.
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I've heard that common test-argument, "suppose that a robot has arms and legs and eyes and all the required hardware. Drop it in a kitchen and ask it to make a cup of coffee. If it figures it out, it has AGI"
But, bitch, humans can't do that. Get a western teenager and drop them in a traditional Indian kitchen, ask them to cook... anything. They might eat something raw if they find the right jar, but they are unlikely to figure out the tandoor.
So, I agree. LLMs are not the pinnacle of evolution, they are the next corporate tax tool our children will be bored with.
Maybe someday we will achieve an education system effective enough to train any toddler human into a true General Intelligence, requiring only a couple decades of training. -
@lorentz admitedly my wallet is not made of glass nor has a single battery. But it is very time sensitive, since the cards in there have an average time-before-next-expiration of, like, 6 months maximum. A mission critical ID card might take *weeks* to replace. And has absolutely no password protection. If you live in a pickpocket-friendly place (EU comes to mind), having physical financial, legal and professional media with you at all times just makes for an even harder to replace and less safe SPOF
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The house of Windows just burned through USD 1 fucking billion, with a B. Just in seed capital + opportunity costs.
It costs Microsoft about USD 0.80 for each and every single suggestion that Copilot makes.
And you pay 10 USD. Per month. For unlimited so-so code suggestions.
The cherry on top, Microsoft failed to convince 90% of the tech industry to pay for it.
Thus, they started the "let's fuck up the product to cut costs" operation. AKA "pulling an Uber". -
@SidTheITGuy Indian MPs make less than GBP 25/h. You're on the very high end. Nice!
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Have you considered moving to an English-speaking, but poor country?
Except for India (a software engineer can make, like, USD 2.25/h and they are as plentiful as rice). But have you considered Nigeria or Barbados? Plenty of places that you will hardly be making less money. You won't be rich, but at least you get to be poor on the beach. -
Have you heard about "AI hardware"? I'm betting the name will be "smartware", but for sure it will be something just as stupid.
Anyway, I guess that might be the next bubble. I should start buying domains with stupid names around the concept, and squatting on those to resell to some stupid investors -
@daniel-wu several of the in-house tech teams have gone already. Can't log in to check, but according to social media there were other teams in this last cull, too.
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Not in the US. Not in any of my home countries either, but my wife and children are citizens here, so I'm not worried about displacement. And my wife can cover all our expenses, we won't want for anything. But being laid off does suck, though. Hard time.
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@Lensflare some of those can also be a requirement for company insurance.
Like, "in order for us to insure you against hacking, all your devs must have cloud practitioner certifications!"
The certs are definitely fingerless gloves masquerading as a gauntlet, though. -
The machine can access the internet through wifi.
Thus, it must be capable of basic wifi encryption/encoding protocols.
Those include SHA256 hashing procedures.
Systems that can do SHA256 and can connect to the internet can also, in theory, be used to mine Bitcoin.
Although a simple, underpowered device can hardly find a Bitcoin on its own, if enough of those can be linked then the odds get more favourable.
That is an inefficient way of doing it, of course. But inefficiency is only a problem for those holding the bill, the one that could otherwise be much smaller.
Thus if you manage to get thousands of those machines, you could mint a pretty extra-fake penny.
That or appliance companies have the worst software devs this side of government website contractors. -
@exerceo Ticker frame does not implies resistance against bending. They can just make it with a larger hollow and made with shittier plastic.
"But people wouldn't buy it if it was crap!" If that was true, than people wouldn't buy thinner, easily breakable phones as they do right now.
Nope, what you can do is require that companies offer a 3-or-more-years warranty/insurance, and such warranty must cover accidental breaking due to bending.
People never asked for buildings with ticker walls and fire resistant materials, insurance companies did. And governments made insurance mandatory, so construction companies had to adapt. Some times the way ahead is sinuous. -
@retoor they do have some nice bridges there...
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Weird that you think you can become *rich* being a python dev.
Obsene amounts of money are all going to prompt engineers this cycle. Just as Blockchain engineers (previous cycle) are now living under bridges. -
The company that has total control over hardware, OS, peripherals and the software ecosystem is misusing that power? shocking.
PCs and Linux have boatloads of problems, but in that aspect those are features. It would be really hard to deploy a sabotage update that works as intended in such an heterogeneous landscape. -
@saucyatom , those would indeed be best practices, but we know how managers just loooove those.
For 1), it would require redundancy systems, including network connections, computing power and storage. That leads to: "what do you mean I have to pay for TWO PHONE BILLS just for my car?!? no way, I'm buying from those guys across the street, their vroom-vrooms only require one data plan"
For 2), your procedure might work for reducing update errors. That leaves cases like reported by @PaperTrail : update scheduling. Windows makes updates mandatory otherwise users won't bother. That means updating while some vehicles are moving. If the software is a mission critical system, it will lead to deadly situations.
Alternative? Deploy updates while loading petrol. One would just need the right type of connection and properly sized update packages.
So, we're doomed. -
You fired them out of your life, they had a shit performance and you already found a replacement. Block their entire access and tell them their severance is your boot up their bums!