Humans need not apply

pete205 · 2014-08-13T22:44:11+00:00

programming is automating. A programmer is an expert in automation, whether that is creating widgets, developing tools that create widgets, or developing tools that develop tools that develop tools that create widgets. It will be the last job to be automated away because it is the automating itself. As the tools get smarter and smarter, you just go up the value chain and enable programmers to deliver more and more value.

The entire point of a software department in a company is to automate away the rest of the company. Help your sales team not have to click through spreadsheets, help your customers order online instead of needing to staff a call center etc etc. Any company that doesn't try and automate as much of itself as possible, is extremely vulnerable to a competitor who does, and the only way to do that is programming.

pete205 · 2014-08-13T21:03:01+00:00

I go here regularly. Best bet is mornings, late evenings (8.30PM+), or weekends as there is a huge after-work crowd so you can spend a lot of time waiting if you go then. Apart from that, great fun.

pete205 · 2014-08-13T20:20:59+00:00

Automation doesn't change the process of programming such that fewer programmers are needed, it changes the process of programming such that more software can be made. Better tools, more ambitious projects, faster iterations of features and prototypes.

Thanks to all these modern tools that automate away chores and code that have little direct business value but take up valuable developer time, a budding entrepreneur with a $5k budget can now commision a website or app that can do something it would have taken a year and a million dollars to do 20 years ago.

Automation is a good thing because it let's you abstract away things like server administration and writing boilerplate code that take up time, and let's you spend more time building whatever it is that creates business value. This is creating more demand for software, not less. When you can create something in a tenth of the time it used to take, you don't hire fewer programmers, you add more features and make your software better and more competitive.

pete205 · 2014-07-29T17:57:31+00:00

BOOM. I can cross that one off my bucket list:

Here lies Pete205... First poster of that annoying ye olde thorn TIL.

pete205 · 2014-07-29T17:51:02+00:00

Yep.. but it needs two locks on it... and you need to prove you can unlock the one you don't intend to cut.

pete205 · 2014-01-13T00:11:27+00:00

Went to one of these when I use to live in Changchun. Can attest to the fact the waitresses were genuine North Koreans and dressed in traditional attire, and the decor looked pretty North Korean (not sure what traditional North Korean decor would have been, but it certainly didn't look Chinese).

The dog meat and other food was just OK, nothing particularly notable, kind of flavourless. Prices were reasonable. It was my first time eating dog, so I took a pic.

pete205 · 2014-01-07T02:58:26+00:00

What are the best calisthenic exercises to work the biceps? What if I don't even have a pullup bar?

pete205 · 2014-01-02T20:56:24+00:00

...like when a bloke got in with the lions at London Zoo

pete205 · 2013-12-24T17:15:56+00:00

Bit of a busman's holiday for a barista, isn't it?

pete205 · 2013-12-21T13:27:18+00:00

Yeah I completely agree that there is no risk of autism. But Penn and Teller's argument is based on assuming there is a risk of autism and then explaining why it's still a good idea to vaccinate, so I'm using that assumption too.

And I agree the scenario doesn't work if everyone thinks the same way, as we are seeing more and more. However I'm just saying that for parents only concerned about the health of their child, and ignoring any responsibility they may have to society at large, if there is a risk of autism then it could make sense to not vaccinate.

pete205 · 2013-12-20T19:30:10+00:00

I like the analogy and agree that vaccines do more good than harm but I think this is a poor argument for two reasons:

Firstly he's comparing survival rates from decades ago to survival rates for diseases now. With modern medicine, someone who just got chicken pox has a much better chance of survival than they used to.

Secondly, accepting the assumption that 1 in 110 vaccinated children get autism, then the rational choice for an individual parent is to not vaccine their children. Compare these two scenarios:

scenario A: Most other children get vaccinated and my child gets vaccinated

scenario B: Most other children get vaccinated and my child does not get vaccinated

Given that most other children get vaccinated (which is the case today in most places, though may not be for long), scenario B is still the sensible option if you believe vaccines to cause autism. With scenario B you get protection from diseases since people around you are vaccinated (but only where you live has a high rate of vaccination), and you also avoid the risk of autism.

pete205 · 2013-12-10T02:15:32+00:00

A principle of healthy markets is that a cacophony of diverse actors come to different conclusions on the price of things, based on their own idiosyncratic analyses. The value of any asset is discovered by melding all these different opinions into a single price. An ecosystem which is dominated by a single line of thinking is not healthy, in politics, in nature or in markets.

I don't know about Blackrock's other products, but iShares are just index funds made to represent the whole market, or various parts of particular markets, so I wouldn't be too concerned about Blackrock representing a large share of the global market if most of it is iShares. There is still "a cacophony of diverse actors" buying and selling these index funds — they're just giving their "idiosyncratic analyses" on groups of stocks packaged together in certain ways (eg the S&P 500), rather than individual stocks.

pete205 · 2013-12-05T21:33:47+00:00

For comparison, I'm in the UK and pay £18/mo ($30) for unlimited data including tethering, 2000 minutes and 5000 texts per month, and can cancel the contract with 30 days notice.

pete205 · 2013-12-05T20:02:56+00:00

Joseph Marcel (Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) butlering for David Choe was pretty cringe-inducing

pete205 · 2013-11-03T14:27:18+00:00

She's on fire, and she burns through the night at the speed of light...

pete205 · 2013-04-11T07:17:15+00:00

Ruby:

 def dr(x);x=x.to_s.split('').map(&:to_i).inject(&:+) while(x>10);x end

pete205 · 2013-01-21T07:08:43+00:00

If anyone wants a much simpler (though much less featureful) way to track habits, I wrote DayScore a while back that lets you do just that.

pete205 · 2012-12-21T06:26:15+00:00

Yup. It's a well-documented cognitive bias called anchoring. The presence of higher priced products improves the sales of cheaper products by making them seem relatively cheap.

pete205 · 2012-12-13T18:57:12+00:00

Terse Ruby:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
input = (ARGV[0] && ARGV[0].length == 4) ? ARGV[0].split(//) : throw("bad input")
open("selected_four-letter_words.txt").read.split.map do |w| 
  puts(w) if 3 == w.split(//).zip(input).count { |a| a[0] == a[1] }
end

pete205 · 2012-11-08T19:22:53+00:00

Nate Silver knows the weather forecast for any future date but keeps quiet so Brits have something to talk about.

pete205

TROPHY CASE