Hacker News: scaryspooky

New comment by scaryspooky in "They Don't Build Them Like They Used To: The New Construction Shortage"

scaryspooky — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 21:20:14 +0000

Building codes themselves are driven by industry and manufacturers. This has been a huge driver for the increase in size of house, compare a 1960s era bathroom against modern code and you will find the increase in minimum sizes dramatic.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Things People Eventually Learn About JavaScript Projects"

scaryspooky — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 20:37:41 +0000

> 2. Tests: "With increasing complexity your codebase will become much harder to maintain and control — tests will do it for you." Good intentions here but be careful. Tests can cause people not wanting to refactor/fix because now they have to fix the structure of the tests. Refactor means more than changing the implementation of functions.

Isn't the entire point of tests that you can refactor the code under test without changing the tests themselves? Otherwise how do you ensure that you have not introduced bugs in the code by doing your refactor because you've changed the thing that tested the code in the first place.

A refactor of the tests should be done independently of the code under test.

New comment by scaryspooky in "The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy"

scaryspooky — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 18:10:20 +0000

Public employees are paid via taxes, so yes they do 'fund' public pensions.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Bay Area cities are cracking down on free food at tech companies"

scaryspooky — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 22:27:36 +0000

Poster you're replying to said 'new HQ' indicating their comment was about the place Amazon is shopping to build, not their current Seattle HQ.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Ask HN: Would you still do software engineering/dev if you could do it all over?"

scaryspooky — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:43:20 +0000

That's not true at all. I've rarely been turned down after an interview.

New comment by scaryspooky in "The open-plan office is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea"

scaryspooky — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 18:34:15 +0000

Have you tried just closing his door for him?

New comment by scaryspooky in "Ask HN: Would you still do software engineering/dev if you could do it all over?"

scaryspooky — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 18:11:54 +0000

I did math, graduated at the dotcom bust where all the jobs were actuarial (not my interest). Went back to school for EE, and I've found there are more jobs, more interesting jobs, and better pay writing software than being an EE.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Democrat with financial ties to AT&T just gutted California's net neutrality law"

scaryspooky — Thu, 21 Jun 2018 02:31:58 +0000

This is what bothered me about the whole Net Neutrality debate -- you had to be 100% in the camp of the Democratic party or you were wrong completely. Here we see why there are shades of grey for party affiliation.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Ask HN: Are you working on interesting technical problems?"

scaryspooky — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 14:38:13 +0000

I've always wondered who the magical developers are that did the greenfield development of every project I've been on-boarded to. I never seem to get ahead of the maintenance grind to the point of being one of those creating the mess instead of wading through the mess.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub"

scaryspooky — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 15:29:49 +0000

Or you delete Cortana and completely break all of that bullshit. Though it has made it so a Windows 10 update will no longer apply, which is a frustrating side effect but one I am willing to live with.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Mortgage rates have been rising at a pace not seen in almost 50 years"

scaryspooky — Fri, 25 May 2018 19:52:14 +0000

If you have the cash to be able to buy the house outright why would you default in the first place? Otherwise, after a default (which likely includes bankruptcy) you will be unable to get credit.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Letting neural networks be weird"

scaryspooky — Thu, 24 May 2018 20:49:18 +0000

I've often thought that JIRA workflows are Turing complete, I was hoping your list would have evidence.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Getting Laid Off in Tech: The Myth of Upper Middle Class Security"

scaryspooky — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:09:50 +0000

Your employees will rarely show up if they don't get paid and if they do they won't stick around for long. If you run a business and face a cash flow dilemma the easiest thing to not pay is yourself.

New comment by scaryspooky in "SteamOS, Linux, and Steam Machines"

scaryspooky — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 19:12:02 +0000

I never said Linux is crap, do not put those words in my mouth.

I said the Linux desktop experience has not been good to me, with any of the hardware (even the stuff I picked specifically for good support) with very popular hardware. I still use Linux as my desktop OS, and really would love to ditch Windows 10 permanently but don't feel like I can without a lot of frustration. The same as it has been for the past 20 years for me.

New comment by scaryspooky in "SteamOS, Linux, and Steam Machines"

scaryspooky — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 15:04:16 +0000

If these were issues I've only encountered on the Apple hardware I would agree. I've encountered issues like these on every computer I've put Linux on, which is every computer I've built or bought since 1996.

New comment by scaryspooky in "SteamOS, Linux, and Steam Machines"

scaryspooky — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 14:26:15 +0000

I currently run a Linux desktop (Ubuntu 17.10) on Apple hardware. The list of problems:

The camera fails to work consistently (the driver does not always load)

Audio fails to work consistently (restarting pulse fixes this)

Closing the laptop lid initially sleeps, but then the laptop wakes up a few minutes later for no reason (so I wrote a script to disable all the events that can wake the laptop up, but this in turn causes it to not wake up at all sometimes when I actually want it to)

kde plasmashell will crash if I try to use ffplay, and doesn't reliably recover so I end up needing to restart my session which loses any work I hadn't saved since I can't switch windows

These are all problems I have never experienced with my Windows laptop, nor macOS.

Anecdotes obviously, but I've been trying to go only Linux for the past decade and never felt like I could reliably do so.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Ask HN: Balancing interviewing and day job?"

scaryspooky — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 04:51:12 +0000

There are plenty of jobs that don't require Google on the resume.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Seattle's Minimum Wage Killed the 'Five-Dollar Footlong'"

scaryspooky — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:44:05 +0000

It's slightly above zero but a race toward zero.

New comment by scaryspooky in "Seattle's Minimum Wage Killed the 'Five-Dollar Footlong'"

scaryspooky — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:41:25 +0000

Not taking a stance, but this exchange seems kind of suspect:

braindongle 43 minutes ago [-]

Seriously. "the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches." No leap to conclusions about causality there. Nope. Can't possibly be that greedy bastards simply used this policy change as an excuse to make a statement. reply

igravious 27 minutes ago [-]

Haha. You and I both just simultaneously quoted the same absurdity and both followed it up with sarcasm. :) reply

mikeash 43 minutes ago [-]

I think the article grinds its axe way too hard, but I see no attempt to disguise it as neutral reporting. reply

igravious 44 minutes ago [-]

Choice quote, “Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches.” I know, right? Isn't it just awful that the working poor might get a decent living wage and decent public services. It's enough to make you puke. /s

The blog is aptly titled: "Hit & Run"

braindongle 40 minutes ago [-]

Haha. You and I both just simultaneously quoted the same absurdity and both followed it up with sarcasm. reply

New comment by scaryspooky in "Google managers kept blacklists of conservative employees"

scaryspooky — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:01:24 +0000

The title posted left out a portion of the actual articles title that is relevant.