Hacker News: creamytaco

New comment by creamytaco in "How to win the metagame (in real life)"

creamytaco — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 14:08:48 +0000

Typical zero substance self-help opinion piece masquerading as something better. Complete waste of time.

New comment by creamytaco in "Ruby: Porting YJIT to Rust"

creamytaco — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 05:08:47 +0000

Thse are all not only solved problems, but solved extremely well. Rust is a bad solution to this problem.

You should be using dynasm https://luajit.org/dynasm.html instead of plain C.

New comment by creamytaco in "Why can’t I play Ultra HD Blu-ray movies on my new Intel CPU platform?"

creamytaco — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:58:34 +0000

Not very wise to export your (assumed) copyright-infringing activity over to a third party that has complete records of who you are. Folks have been sued for less.

New comment by creamytaco in "Is the madness ever going to end?"

creamytaco — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 22:24:45 +0000

It's called "commoditization". Since programming is now a commodity, the barrier to entry had to be lowered in order to pump up the numbers. Growth at all costs!

There is still rock-solid engineering to be found, usually in domains where the stakes are high (for example, fintech), but anything web-related is best kept away from if one is allergic to bullshit.

New comment by creamytaco in "New Year, New CEO"

creamytaco — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 19:37:20 +0000

His web3 skepticism did not stop him from getting involved with "MobileCoin" some time ago, or was that conveniently forgotten?

https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/

New comment by creamytaco in "Simula One (Linux VR PC) Pricing and Kickstarter Goal"

creamytaco — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 17:39:34 +0000

I don't see how this is in any way competitive with the current options. It would't be competitive at sub-$500 pricing, nevermind $2000+.

And then there's the platform bit which is the final nail on the coffin. Let's not kid ourselves here, VR at this point in time is all about the ecosystem rather than hardware and if there is no ecosystem [or backing from the heavyweights], odds are one is going to end up with a very expensive paperweight.

New comment by creamytaco in "Ask HN: Life Changing Books?"

creamytaco — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 17:42:40 +0000

Start with:

Varela / Maturana - The Tree of Knowledge

Miller - Living Systems

Prepare to have your mind blown apart.

New comment by creamytaco in "Exa - A Modern Replacement for ls"

creamytaco — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 17:02:39 +0000

alias

.. but exa is not backwards compatible with ls OOPS

Which is why I stick with ls (and grep instead of rg and coreutils instead of shiny rust equivalent), I can't deal with the cognitive dissonance that arises from these differences.

New comment by creamytaco in "Ask HN: Life Changing Books?"

creamytaco — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 18:16:23 +0000

"I've never read anything that wasn't a bad regurgitation of ideas better presented elsewhere from this guy, and I have to wonder why he has amassed such a following."

I wrote this 2 months ago, my opinion hasn't changed. I guess there are worse charlatans out there (ribbonfarm springs to mind) but why should one waste his/her time reading chewed takes by someone who doesn't seem to have a single original thought-idea streak in him.

New comment by creamytaco in "San Francisco Mayor Declares State of Emergency to Fight City’s ‘Nasty Streets’"

creamytaco — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 13:11:51 +0000

Having lived in SF for more than a decade, I couldn't agree more. When I left, years ago, the guilt syndrome was so prevalent among well-compensated young tech workers that one could talk about mass-psychosis. I'm told it's gotten a lot worse...

New comment by creamytaco in "San Francisco Mayor Declares State of Emergency to Fight City’s ‘Nasty Streets’"

creamytaco — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 12:56:21 +0000

> that have basis on European ways of handling these sort of issues

I suggest you try shoplifting in any European country and see what happens.

New comment by creamytaco in "San Francisco Mayor Declares State of Emergency to Fight City’s ‘Nasty Streets’"

creamytaco — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 12:46:04 +0000

The world doesn't run on "well-meaning" but realpolitik (look it up). The sort of discriminatory policies you espouse besides being corrosive poison to the unifying forces that create a nation state, fail to account for competition among nations.

The USA is free to teach CRT to kids, "decolonize mathematics", destroy meritocracy in public schools, lower the standards and burden young minds with race guilt and a feeling of entitlement (instead of striving for excellence) but one shouldn't be surprised if other countries that have maintained their connection with reality leave us in the dust.

If you're not convinced, history is full of examples of ideology-driven politics leading to disaster : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

New comment by creamytaco in "Ask HN: Good books that have documented software development wisdom of years?"

creamytaco — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 22:44:13 +0000

> - Designing Data Driven Applications - Kleppmann

> - The Art of Unix Programming - Raymond

Waste of time

> Pretty much any of the programming books published by No Starch Press

Waste of time (mostly)

> 1) Learn SQL

> 2) Absorb everything you possibly can by Rich Hickey and Stu Halloway. "Simple Made Easy"

Disagree. The Clojure ecosystem is a silo and a lot of their edicts do not translate.

> ribbonfarm

Waste of time, besides being able to write thousands of words about absolutely nothing, vgr is now pushing web3 / metaverse / cryptos. Charlatan.

> You're going to learn most by immersion in an ecosystem

Wrong. You're going to learn most surrounded by people better than you. Find those people and teams and go work with them.

Background: Worked on multiple FAANGs, including Google and Amazon, also fintech, now retired.

New comment by creamytaco in "Crime, Punishment, and Chesa Boudin"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:51:35 +0000

You can keep rearranging words around trying to make reality fit your expectations, but I'd say this isn't a useful modeling strategy for going about life. This is what you're missing.

New comment by creamytaco in "Hertz customers arrested, jailed and held at gunpoint after false theft reports"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 11:37:53 +0000

I guess that's how they make money and can afford great customer service, which is also something I'm fine with: I couldn't care less what their interest rate is since I'll never ever pay interest. If that's on the agenda, then I'd look somewhere else as you say.

New comment by creamytaco in "Crime, Punishment, and Chesa Boudin"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 10:42:26 +0000

What you wrote makes me view the Guardian take suspiciously rather than the OP and also fails to address in any way the argument since you -conveniently- ignore all but a tiny fraction that you found a Guardian opinion piece to seemingly not support.

An opinion piece that's also demonstrably false by the way, NZ does not have one of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarcera...

New comment by creamytaco in "California is the only state to hide its spending – nearly $300B a year"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 10:14:45 +0000

I left SF and California years ago and started voting Republican at about the same time. The trigger was me reserving judgment and simply observing how the environment around me changed for the worst, while at the same time having to bring up two young children.

Looking at how things are today, I know I made the right decision.

New comment by creamytaco in "Intel seems awfully scared of Graviton2. Why pay for this ad on Google?"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 09:28:23 +0000

Relying on libraries written in C is not an issue if the library doesn't make assumptions about / isn't tied to, a particular architecture. Some do but most (especially newer codebases written to C11 and beyond) don't.

New comment by creamytaco in "Hertz customers arrested, jailed and held at gunpoint after false theft reports"

creamytaco — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 08:49:01 +0000

I guess you found out you can't rely on Capital One. Never had a problem with AMEX.

New comment by creamytaco in "Professional maintainers: a wake-up call"

creamytaco — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 21:32:16 +0000

Every engineering-driven fintech company I know of (having myself worked there or having friends who work there) is doubling down on every single one of the processes I mentioned.