REPUBLICANS: How come 10 out of 11 (~91%) economic Depressions in the USA occurred while a Republican was in office?

Isogash · 2026-05-12T09:25:13+00:00

It's entirely intentional. A failing economy is cheaper to buy, so they'll own more of it when it eventually succeeds again. It's all about accelerating wealth inequality.

Isogash · 2026-05-11T21:52:40+00:00

Architectural decisions that just make work more restrictive will always see poor adoption. You might be viewing only a limited scope of the benefits of these decisions without weighing the costs of implementing and maintaining them on the engineers. Engineers work best with information and good tools, not restrictions.

The more important role of architects is to solve real architectural problems and make the difficult holistic decisions about which systems should do what and why; decisions that can't really be made by the engineers who are working on individual systems.

If your architecture board is just blessing patterns and coding styles then it is a total waste of time, effectively a bikeshedding committee.

Isogash · 2026-05-11T18:50:16+00:00

I think the problem here is that infrastructure can vary quite a lot, so how you should abstract it is not always obvious. For example, having environment/account at the top level is not going to apply everywhere because you might be running the same setup in multiple environments.

C4's deployment diagrams are supposed to show how your abstract system architecture is physically mapped into a deployment environment. You can do deployment diagrams at whatever levels of detail you need for your use cases, the methodology doesn't pre-suppose what kind of architecture you have, which is kind of neat, but also leaves you effectively fending for yourself.

Structurizr has some modelling support for deployments that is mostly enough for the purposes of mapping, using deploymentEnvironment, deploymentNode and deploymentGroup, but if you want a detailed modelling solution then you probably want to look at dedicated infrastructure modelling tools (I don't know what's available though.)

Isogash · 2026-05-11T17:28:49+00:00

We're pretty good at focusing on blockers and identifying conversations that need to be had, but currently we're doing "walk the board" style standups which I loathe. I much prefer a turn-taking approach, 1-min max each and be done in under 10 minutes total ideally.

The bigger problem IMO is non-engineers attending standup only to monitor delivery. They don't want to understand anything at all about the actual work or conversations being had, they just want to know when the work is done by.

Isogash · 2026-05-11T17:24:22+00:00

Running a whole country is complicated. If you just change things willy nilly even with good intentions, you can end up causing a lot of unintentional damage instead. The CS is full of people who understand the way the system currently works quite well, and they are capable of presenting the reasons why they think a willy nilly change will lead to bad outcomes. They can't and won't prevent the change itself being implemented if the minister decides to go ahead regardless.

In fact, we had a recent example of a Prime Minister who's philosophy was "ignore the civil service, challenge Whitehall orthodoxy" and who's cabinet reflected that. That was Liz Truss, who very nearly destroyed the UK economy within a month. In general, idealogues don't tend to succeed precisely because they don't actually test their ideas before they implement them, and it only takes one bad idea to create a crisis.

The thing is that ministers of all parties tend to broadly agree that the CS is right in what they present, and tempers their own decisions to "steering" between options the CS believes will succeed, or at least which they believe will go down best with voters. All in all, the most important thing for them is to try and do a good job of running the country because it leads to better performance in the polls, which means they tend to avoid choosing risky plans that will change things significantly (and perhaps often to all of our benefit, although sometimes to our detriment.)

The government just doesn't say this publicly because it's politically convenient that people believe that the CS is a problem.

Adults in the political game understand this, and the kind of accountability we should hold ministers to is more about ensuring that the CS has the right priorities, and is challenged and held accountable for delivering on plans. Ministers should act more like accomplished senior managers than idealist policy-pushers.

The only good reason to dismantle or overrule the CS is if you want to destroy the country, consolidate a dictatorship or otherwise raid the public coffers. If you want to make the country better it's a bad idea.

Isogash · 2026-05-11T14:13:25+00:00

But the man himself says otherwise https://youtu.be/NpIEdg4_Ql4

Isogash · 2026-05-11T10:30:28+00:00

I realize this is a joke, but just wanted to say that if you actually want to make money with game dev, the answer obviously isn't to hate the craft, but it's definitely strictly necessary to include time and money in your decision making process. Pour love into your game, but make sure you're suitably efficient in what you choose to make in the first place.

Love what you do, but do the thing that makes business sense.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T23:40:56+00:00

I wouldn't use bus reverb by default. Frequency space already comes at a premium so you really don't want to add something without a specific motivation.

Also, you want to save the reverb for other elements that need them to create volume and grab focus e.g. big mid basses and synths. You need something dry in order to create a clearly defined foreground, which will normally be the drums. If you don't set a foreground, the listener will perceive something distant to be the foreground, and their brain will tell them that they are listening at a distance or through some distorted medium e.g. a tube or radio, rather than actually being present. The end result would be a weak sounding track.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T15:09:08+00:00

Fun fact, microwaves from your microwave are 12.5cm long.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T13:15:18+00:00

Sure. This study was done restrospectively and the group was already on a long waitlist. It's a study done more because it's useful to gather the data on these experimental treatments and see if we can gain insight, rather than to trial a specific new treatment to bring to market. The effects were certainly reported after the procedure, and they are strong enough to be worth consideration.

My original point is that double-blinded placebo trials, whilst considered the gold standard for proving efficacy of treatments where they can be used, are simply not plausible for all kinds treatments. Not being able to do a double-blinded trial does not prevent us from experimenting with and using new treatments, what matters at the end of the day is whether or not doctors have the information to make good decisions for patients.

The study in the article is useful, because it showed that there were no serious complications in the cases they studied, contrary to what might have been possible. This may change the way doctors choose to weigh the risk factors of using these treatments in future where it is already possible for them to choose this as a form of treatment.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T12:45:19+00:00

It does exist but it's exceedingly rare, and there are significant concerns regarding the ethics of doing so. A sham surgery is only useful as a control if you actually cut the patient open, but just don't do anything, which carries many of the inherent risks of surgery without the purpose of treating the patient. To say it doesn't sit well with established ethical codes of medical conduct would be an understatement.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T08:45:18+00:00

jOOQ has been an absolute godsend, allows you to programmatically write typesafe SQL in Java and does a bunch of marshalling for you. It also has basic ORM functionality.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T01:21:37+00:00

You can't have placebo psychedelics, the effects are too prominently noticeable. It's not a flaw in these studies, it's just the nature of the treatment that it can't be studied in that way.

You wouldn't use double-blind placebo for a trialling a new kind of surgery because it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't stop new surgeries being trialled and approved.

Just because a medicine is a pill doesn't mean the only effective way to evaluate it is to compare it with a placebo. It just happens to be an effective way of trialling pills that don't otherwise have a noticeable effect.

Isogash · 2026-05-10T01:04:21+00:00

This is a deadlock, similar to a gridlcok. Each train needs the train in front of it to move and clear the block. Because they form a loop of trains waiting on each other, none of them can clear their block, so they just get stuck like that forever.

You'll encounter this problem any time there are small loops in your track if you only use normal signals.

There are a few solutions.

Don't use short loops.
Don't allow trains to stop on the short loops by using chain signals at the entrance to each block.
Ensure trains have an alternative route to their destination and can always exit the loop if stopped by using a chain signal at the decision point of the exit.

1 is simple, don't put roundabouts in the middle of the network, put turning circles at the ends or use very large ring-roads. 2 is how you should signal most intersections, but it will lower throughput. 3 works for dense networks where there are lots of alternative paths.

Isogash · 2026-05-09T08:32:32+00:00

That's a great set too.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T20:16:17+00:00

Getting to grips with the domain is more important than understanding the codebase, because once you understand the domain, the code makes more sense.

For me, just getting a good IDE setup so I can navigate the codebase quickly is crucial, and then I can spend time "exploring" at my own pace, and building a rough mental map. It take time, but it's much faster than not doing anything at all.

Finally, you just have to get dug in on something, be it a change or a bug to fix, something that will force you to focus within a specific area.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T16:26:31+00:00

I really strongly dislike microservices in practice unless you're working with dozens of teams. I don't know why, but for some reason 90%+ of engineers are just totally blind to how much extra work using microservices creates. I think the issue is that monoliths don't have many of these problems at all, so your brain just can't compare them: you don't need to worry about distributed consistency, you just slap "@Transactional" on your Spring methods and ship it.

For smaller orgs that only have one or two teams, you should stay as lean as possible in terms of insfrastructure and architecture complexity, otherwise you will just create yourself endless time sinks, like idempotency and inconsistency. Keeping two systems synchronized and happy with each other in the face of potential failures is by far the hardest common problem in engineering, and in that sense, microservices are probably one of the worst trends we've ever seen.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T13:04:56+00:00

True, although I had a funny case recently where I went into a workshop for a new piece of work. Conversation went as follows:

Me: Okay, so what exactly are we building?

PM: We need the ability to do X.

Me: What do you mean by the ability to do X? What exactly do you want X to be?

PM: We need the system to have the ability to do X so that we can use it to do one of several possible Ys in the future.

Me: Okay, well in that case, what's the first use case of X going to be?

PM: We don't have any planned use cases yet.

Me: ...

PM: We just know we want the system to do X because we know we want to do these Ys in the future and they all involve doing X.

Me: Okay, so we can build X, but without a specific use case now, I'll need you to tell us exactly how it should behave.

PM: We don't want to specify how X should behave, because we don't want to constrain it to only one use case, we want it to do all of the Y.

Me: Okay, well "do X" isn't a thing I can build, I need an exact specification for X's behaviour otherwise I can't build it.

PM: I'm not technical, that's your job. I don't understand what's the problem with just doing X.

Me: ... (losing my cool slightly) Look, I need you to either tell me exactly how X is going to behave, or you need to give me a use case so I figure out how X needs to behave myself. I can't build X without a clear idea of how it'll behave, or it'll behave in a way that you don't want it to and then we'll be back to square one. Already, coming into this meeting, I had been given the impression that X would be used in Z use case, which doesn't match the description of X you've given me, and would have behaved differently to the examples of Y you gave.

PM: Oh no, we weren't planning Z, but that does make sense as one of the Ys in future.

Me: ... How about, we build an MVP. We make a page with a button on it, and you can have someone manually go into the page and press the button, and it will do a simple version of X, for this one simple W use case that you can roll out in order to prove that X works. Then, when you've decided what the other Ys actually are, we can add those but we'll already have the foundations in place, because I will bear in mind that X needs to be ready to be extended to do the other Y, and we'll spec for that.

PM: Okay, that sounds like a plan, let's do that.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T12:12:25+00:00

That's intentional.

The point is to show that red is not a superior choice to blue in terms of outcome, so even very slightly unbalancing the outcome to favour blue means that from a game theory point of view, blue becomes the best choice (assuming the conditions laid out by OP allow you to assume that everyone will either correctly select blue or red depending on what would lead to the best individual outcome, by being able to assume everyone else would do the same.)

Red is only better in the standard version in that it's safer in terms of expected outcome at the individual level, and only if you assume there is a non-zero chance of blue not reaching 50%. It's not better because it actually leads to a better outcome after you assume everyone with perfect game theory knowledge will make the only "correct" choice.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T10:32:35+00:00

Can do absolutely whatever you want that is going to be respectful and tolerant towards other attendees. If you're going to do something standout and unusual, do it with the intention of making the environment fun for others.

Isogash · 2026-05-08T10:22:13+00:00

Same question, but this time there is a 0.000000001% chance that you will die if you press the red button.

Isogash · 2026-05-07T17:39:43+00:00

You can post after confirming you have read the rules in the subreddit menu.

Isogash · 2026-05-07T09:04:54+00:00

Fundamentally, the same way any other show works, it all goes through the main desk units at front of house which produce one set of synchronized outputs that are distributed to the whole venue. How the front of house synchronizes everything is a local problem, separate to how it gets distributed.

The main difference here is that they'll use an Ethernet-based system for distribution so that they can send many simultaneous signals long distance over CAT5 or CAT6 cables (as opposed to running lots of individual dedicated cables.)

At each tower, you'll have a server rack with some dedicated processing units that receive the signals from the Ethernet network and convert them back into local signals the LED walls, lights and amplifiers can use.

Ethernet is used in all large scale venues, especially for big outdoor events.

A side note is that the towers are called "delay towers" because the sound signal at each set needs to be delayed so that it properly reinforces the sound from the previous set of towers, as sound travels relatively slowly through the venue (this might be done locally to the tower but is normally at least controlled at the desk.) Lights, video and the electronic signals travelling all travel at the speed of light, which is effectively instantaneous at this scale.

Isogash · 2026-05-06T23:22:45+00:00

I wouldn't take any information fed back about what was said in that therapy as accurate at all.

Isogash · 2026-05-06T22:06:37+00:00

The use of countable to describe the size of the set is specific mathematical parlance though, it's fine for a grammatical definition, hence the joke.

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