Hacker News: shortsightedsid

New comment by shortsightedsid in "An Update on Heroku"

shortsightedsid — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:23:06 +0000

Sustaining is used in Engineering to mean that it's now post-GA and there is no further development. The platform is not End of Life but there are no more features planned.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

shortsightedsid — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:34:23 +0000

Congrats to the Memfault team!

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Interviewing my mother, a mainframe COBOL programmer (2016)"

shortsightedsid — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 19:34:30 +0000

> What’s your working environment like? - We’ve recently moved to a more “hip” location. We used to have personal desks, but now we have this “pick whatever spot is avaiable” open area. I dislike it a lot.

Somehow this resonates a lot with me even if though I've never worked on Mainframes or anything like that.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "GNU Coding Standards"

shortsightedsid — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 20:41:16 +0000

Whenever the GNU Coding Standards come up, I'm reminded of the Linux Kernel Coding Style - https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/coding-style.h... and the quote -

"First off, I’d suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it’s a great symbolic gesture."

New comment by shortsightedsid in "GPT makes learning fun again"

shortsightedsid — Tue, 02 May 2023 05:18:27 +0000

Its almost as if ChatGPT is getting to be a form of dialogic learning [1]. While ChatGPT is not yet an authoritative source, it should be possible to get to such a future. The problem is with the ethics of it becoming an authoritative source and how it can possibly unlearn (or accept change or challenges). For now, the example OP provides is without authority where they learnt about a topic taking ChatGPT as a peer.

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogic_learning

New comment by shortsightedsid in "“Inside-out Wankel” rotary engine delivers 5X the power of a diesel"

shortsightedsid — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 21:02:52 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3gzQVGEqF4 explains the details. As usual Jason's awesome at explaining the details.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Modi employs new tool in war against the English language: Hindi medical degrees"

shortsightedsid — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 16:35:14 +0000

The problem remains since many people don’t know or understand Hindi. Unlike many other countries, there isn’t one single ‘native’ language. English is the only one that currently transcends barriers. Hindi could become that in the future. Other efforts also exist such as to popularize Sanskrit.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "A Roman road built in 312 BC, is still in use today"

shortsightedsid — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 15:55:11 +0000

Are there other examples of similarly old roads or routes that are still in use today? I know of the Grand Trunk Road [1] and other examples would be cool to learn about.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Trunk_Road

New comment by shortsightedsid in "High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF/.heic)"

shortsightedsid — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 00:47:21 +0000

HEIF is basically a H.265 I frame. So yes.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "The ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is not the oldest surviving work of literature"

shortsightedsid — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 01:56:55 +0000

Hindu tradition state that it directly led to elaborate literature and rich story telling. Puranas [1] and epics like the Ramayana [2] and Mahabharata [3] were orally transmitted as well. The point being that the Vedas are pretty terse which makes it hard to understand or apply without specialized knowledge / background. The Puranas, Ramayana and Mahabharata provide context via stories etc..

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puranas 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

New comment by shortsightedsid in "The ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is not the oldest surviving work of literature"

shortsightedsid — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 04:03:02 +0000

Not sure what are simple oral traditions, but the Vedas [1] are oral transmitted. To preserve meaning there is elaborate chanting techniques. They have been written down recently, however, to really learn them, one needs to chant. They are pretty complex for sure.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Bikes, not self driving cars, are the technological gateway to urban progress"

shortsightedsid — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 17:31:25 +0000

I lived for a couple of years in Amsterdam. Cycled fine in the rain, snow or sunshine. Then again, the infra was amazing and supportive. Can’t speak for the cities you mention though but in Phoenix where I live now, cycling in Summer is impossible.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Antigua and Barbuda may vote to remove King Charles III as its head of state"

shortsightedsid — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:56:57 +0000

Interestingly, the PM in a Westminster model is actually more powerful than the President in the US mode. That’s because the PM is part of legislative and executive branch and in theory can get more of their agenda done. In practice, it can vary.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades"

shortsightedsid — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 15:04:08 +0000

This....

I have exactly the same problem with the U2 album. In general, I like U2, but that album is a pain. It starts up every now and then in my car with carplay. Especially if I have my phone on with no app in the foreground when I plug it in.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Axon wants to make taser drones for schools despite ethics board’s concerns"

shortsightedsid — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:20:05 +0000

I worked at Axon for several years. Frankly, I liked the company culture.

Rick's been pretty consistent over the years that he believes that technology can solve societal issues and that he sees things like Sci-Fi as something we need to invent. Rick's a Star Wars fan and there were several Star Wars oriented things in the past.

The engineering culture within the company itself is pretty open and a lot of things are debated quite openly. Perhaps too openly for some; not that it's something to complain about. The bigger challenge they face isn't new hardware ideas. It's their software offering that need to do well. They pivoted from TASERs to Bodycams and now are investing heavily in software. If they get that right, then it's going to be a bigger impact on policing quality/consistency/standards than just the Hardware.

Overall, I can say that it's been a good place to work. While not perfect (no company is), it's definitely pretty open to ideas and change.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Magic-trace: Diagnose tricky performance issues with Intel Processor Trace"

shortsightedsid — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 13:41:30 +0000

Really good tools and extremely expensive

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Analog Devices Expands over 1000 Linux Device Drivers to Support Development"

shortsightedsid — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 01:44:29 +0000

AFAIK TI has always been very opensource friendly. All their SOCs are mainlined and maintained including pretty old ones.

Now if Broadcom starts to be opensource friendly then that would be a real change of heart.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "What does my engineering manager do all day?"

shortsightedsid — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 22:54:20 +0000

This is a classic trap that new managers fall into. It's not the number of meetings that you are judged by. It's how effective you are in execution and how well can you drive your team(s). The meetings are just a means to the end.

I've been in management for a long time now and have managed managers. Frankly, I would cut as much as I can and skip as much as possible _while_ being able to do my job - which is to drive results, quality and other team performance metrics.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Remembering When Only Barbarians Drank Milk (2018)"

shortsightedsid — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 01:49:00 +0000

The article is definitely Eurocentric and skips South-East Asia and India. Milk, Butter, Ghee and Yogurt have been part of Indian culture from the start. E.g. references in the Vedas central to various rituals, Lord Krishna loving butter as a child, etc..

What I found really interesting is the premise that the article makes about spoilage. If dairy spoils in the warmer Mediterranean causing the inhabitants to find it unappealing, then why is it that the people living in hotter climate of India found dairy to be integral to their diet? Is it because because of Ghee which has a longer shelf life?

And Yogurt too - even today - integral to any number of Indian households.

New comment by shortsightedsid in "Ask HN: Do you still miss your RIM BlackBerry?"

shortsightedsid — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 22:42:22 +0000

If I remember correctly, the image quality on the Nokia/Windows phones were pretty good as well.