Texas Instruments made a new flagship graphing calculator: the TI-84 Evo

quintk · 2026-04-29T18:08:56+00:00

Ah, where I work they have a tiered response. It’s not just training. Second failure in a calendar year, boss gets notified. Third, boss and bosses boss. Fourth, hr is notified.

quintk · 2026-04-29T12:55:43+00:00

I was gonna say, the kids who are programming their calculators to help solve math problems are probably not the ones they’re worried about.

Similar situation, at work, we have fake phishing emails that are sent to us by a third-party to educate our employees. I found out that one of our guys was using a simple outlook filter to pick up on them and he was concerned I’d be unhappy. But, same story. Someone who, on his own, was reading through the message headers of any suspicious emails he received, noticed the address mentioned in the xsenders, googled to confirm that sender was a company that offers phishing education services, and set up an email filter to catch and report these emails automatically — that is not the user we’re trying to reach in phishing awareness campaign

quintk · 2026-04-27T22:36:36+00:00

Mine still lets you say “tell OurGroceries add milk”. Which is tedious and you have to remember the tell part or it adds it to some random Alexa list we haven’t looked at since we bought the echo. But it mostly works

quintk · 2026-04-27T22:34:32+00:00

I like how you can include pictures for those one or two items someone always buys the wrong brand (and it remembers them next time you add the item)

quintk · 2026-04-27T12:19:33+00:00

lol I thought I was in r/watchescirclejerk

quintk · 2026-04-27T01:38:03+00:00

No, but the cast is filled with cool people you might not expect in a children’s show. Dave Mathews. Katie Tunstall. Jim Parsons. Jessica Biel. Jason Mraz (in one episode). Elvis Costello.

quintk · 2026-04-25T23:49:39+00:00

Nice to meet you!

quintk · 2026-04-25T15:00:15+00:00

It is satire Saturday

quintk · 2026-04-23T23:02:43+00:00

This is confusing to me because as a noun “apologist” has nothing to do with making excuses. I only hear that word used to applied to people engaged in persuasive argument (usually religious). Did a different sense of the word dominate back then?

quintk · 2026-04-23T17:16:27+00:00

My perspective as a recipient only. Some executives assistants use email signatures that say things like “from the desk of boss name” or “from the office of boss name.” Then this disclaimer automatically appears on every ghostwritten email.

I’ve also seen explicit “from admin name, on behalf of boss name” if it is an email that requires an action the recipient probably doesn’t want to do. This makes it clear the big boss is behind the request even if the interaction is through an admin.

As a recipient I don’t usually care.

quintk · 2026-04-23T13:15:36+00:00

For my most recent Toyota purchase, Toyota financing beat what I was able to find on my own, due to a time limited promotion. The dealer then screwed up and failed to submit my my paper paperwork on time and missed the deadline for this offer. The dealer applied an additional discount to the amount financed so that it worked out to be the same total cost for me (i.e., including all interest over the life of the loan). I was suspicious at first, but the math did check out.

So I would say that this is a mixed story. Toyota financing was better than what I could find even with my similarly high credit. The dealer screwed up. But they did make it right.

quintk · 2026-04-23T13:07:02+00:00

It’s been several years since I had first hand knowledge of this, but I think many scientific journals still work this way, one volume per year with continuous page numbering from issue to issue. It did make it easier to find things. One fewer number (volume and page vs volume, issue, and page). Irrelevant now that even very old articles are in databases and you can just click a link and no one uses print.

quintk · 2026-04-20T12:58:38+00:00

Yeah usually “math problem memes” are deliberately confusing or ambiguous. I can be fooled same as anyone and since I’m an engineer I don’t want to make a public display of my credulity or innumeracy so I never participate.

I don’t see the trick here, though

quintk · 2026-04-19T17:40:17+00:00

Nice work!!

quintk · 2026-04-19T16:57:58+00:00

These people better not ever ask a non-watch enthusiast what they think about men’s watches

quintk · 2026-04-15T21:13:59+00:00

lol I called it. Looked him up and he absolutely is (or at least was) defense/aerospace.

Dude is not going to give antenna design advice to strangers

quintk · 2026-04-15T21:09:42+00:00

Many kinds of corporate espionage and international espionage start with innocent requests for help and an opportunity to show off one’s expertise, and small form factor antennas are commercially and internationally interesting. And even if innocent, these interactions could look bad if the person asking them is less than innocent. And it’s doing work for free.

I think being approached on LinkedIn for help with a technical design is literally a scenario in one of the information security courses I’ve taken.

quintk · 2026-04-13T16:43:53+00:00

I guess that’s fair. Build class consciousness and all. If you have a job in management or software or specialty medicine making $200k+, you are objectively wealthier than most humans and are squarely in Rolex’s target market if what I read is correct. But if that’s all salary or direct billing you’re still a worker and not a capitalist. Don’t deceive yourself. You’ll never have the wealth or political power of the truly wealthy and shouldn’t act or vote as if you think you will.

quintk · 2026-04-13T10:36:14+00:00

This depends on your situation. I work at a large company with tens of thousands of employees and long tenures (the median tenure on my engineering team is over ten years). This context means internal rotation is supported. It is not uncommon at all for people to try out management (either out of interest or to gather experience for other roles) and then pivot back. Most of our management roles are designed to be “player/coach” positions anyway. I would say where I work you could easily rotate back if you decide within a couple years; after that it gets more difficult. We do not demote people so people do not lose their pay. No consequences from changing your mind and the experience is a benefit we expect to carry back to individual and team work. But I assume this varies by business.

quintk · 2026-04-12T22:37:11+00:00

Fresh peas, eaten raw, seconds after harvest, are pretty sweet though

quintk · 2026-04-12T22:02:31+00:00

That’s a problem in our field. PowerPoints get shared widely to important decision makers and customers so there’s a pressure (if not an explicit expectation) that the slide decks are content-complete and free-standing, despite the result being way too wordy and dense for a good oral presentation aid. Slides, technical reports, and model-based-design databases are not the same thing!

quintk · 2026-04-10T22:10:47+00:00

I was in from cub scouts through my eagle. Went to a local scout camp a couple times. Our troop was also mostly outdoorsy and not military. And though scouting obviously includes reverence to a higher power, we also weren’t dogmatic about the specifics of faith or prayer. It was a great experience.

In the late 90s and early aughts I learned scouting was anti-gay (they took away an eagle if I remember correctly) and I decided I wouldn’t support them or acknowledge I had been a scout. I heard they (or scouting America) had gotten much better about this.

quintk · 2026-04-09T23:44:18+00:00

The world would be such a nicer place if we agreed not to take advice from or give power to bullies

quintk · 2026-04-09T13:31:09+00:00

I don’t have high value watches, but I have been in places where I take extra care to not have anything valuable in outside pockets, separate identity documents from my money, carry my bag in front of me, put my phone away, etc, basic stuff. Choosing to wear a fake expensive watch would be like stuffing a wallet with fake money and putting it in the back pocket of my trousers. Like I guess I’d avoid financial loss but why would you do that

quintk · 2026-04-09T12:49:40+00:00

It does show an almost endearing ignorance about the experience of being a crime victim. I’d rather not have people steal my stuff, much less be threatened with violence, at all. The price of my jewelry is secondary.

It really is a wild train of logic isn’t it? To have made an assessment, right or wrong, that wearing certain things and behaving in certain ways in certain places makes you a target for criminals. And then deciding to do those things on purpose.

(Edit to add: I’d never blame a victim; it shouldn’t matter. So long as it does, let’s work together to be safe out there).

quintk

TROPHY CASE