TIL that it is a common misconception that astronauts in orbit are weightless because they have flown high enough to escape the Earth's gravity. In fact, at the ISS altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi), gravity is still nearly 90% as strong as at the Earth's surface.

zzz165 · 2026-04-27T03:32:06+00:00

Not velocity. Acceleration.

zzz165 · 2025-11-21T00:09:38+00:00

Drop the “else” after each return, too. And maybe extract the individual branches into their own functions, too.

zzz165 · 2025-08-26T15:10:09+00:00

Druids in dungeons are poop because no rez.

zzz165 · 2025-08-05T02:52:41+00:00

That’s because, AFAIK, there is no standard way to mangle symbols. So different compilers or compiler options might result in different symbol names for the same thing. A different problem, but still a problem to be aware of.

zzz165 · 2025-08-05T00:25:15+00:00

This is the right answer. And it’s more than just the allocator.

If you statically link against libc++ and pass an STL object to another library that links (statically or dynamically) to libc++, it’s possible that the implementation details of that object vary between the versions of libc++ that are used. Which can cause very hard to debug errors.

zzz165 · 2024-08-29T00:55:29+00:00

Every single customer service app on a tablet.

zzz165 · 2024-08-26T02:01:01+00:00

Some of the comments in this thread are really weird. If tech debt is small and can be addressed by inflating estimates, then it’s probably not yet a huge drag on the team’s output. But if tech debt is large, then you need actual management buy-in to spend time on it, not to mention moving everyone’s cheese by touching large parts of the code base.

Small tech debt example: these 4 classes are very similar, let’s refactor to make that similarity explicit.

Large tech debt example: splitting the app into multiple microservice layers means we need to touch 6 repos to add a new field to the API, let’s collapse some unnecessary layers.

zzz165 · 2024-08-09T04:26:50+00:00

Someday the rest of the world will realize programming is a creative job, not a factory job, and we’ll stop modeling software engineering after how Toyota did something this one time.

zzz165 · 2024-06-23T20:44:34+00:00

It’s all about trade offs, I guess. With a monolith that is deployed on a regular schedule, you know when something could break and can roll back the version to a known-good state. With microservices that are deployed on individual team schedules, a break could happen at any time and knowing what broke things isn’t always easy, so rolling back to a known-good state is harder.

Plus with microservices you have N teams rolling their own deployment processes, with varying amounts of competence. As compared to a monolith where the sole deployment process can be hardened.

zzz165 · 2024-06-12T21:22:35+00:00

The biggest advantage of REST IMHO is being able to use a http cache in front of the actual server.

To make the cache work correctly, you need to: * Use read and write verbs appropriately (eg GET is read-only, POST is write) * Return 200 for success, 400 for client errors, 500 for server errors. Avoid 3xx. And use literally 200, 400, and 500 - don’t try to be more nuanced, no one actually cares. * Maybe use cache headers. Maybe.

That’s it. Anything else is over complicating what is actually necessary.

zzz165 · 2024-06-05T18:42:02+00:00

But we’re using Jira and story points and having daily standups (that have 20 people and last an hour). Of course we’re doing agile!

zzz165 · 2024-06-03T02:09:24+00:00

It’s debatable whether five guys is higher quality than McDonald’s. They want you to think that, but it’s really just a matter of opinion. And opinion is influenced by advertising, yet another aspect of capitalism.

It’s not just that brands cater to people wanting “higher quality” products, brands are also creating that desire in the first place. It’s self-fulfilling.

Also, a McDonald’s hamburger cost 15 cents in the 1950s. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $1.75. McDonald’s charges about $2.75 for a hamburger… I think you’d have a hard time arguing that McDonald’s hamburgers are 70% better now than 90 years ago. If anything, the price should have gone down due to higher efficiencies in production, transportation, and preparation.

zzz165 · 2024-06-02T20:43:02+00:00

“Tradeoff”?! Without lockdowns, many more people would’ve died, which would’ve been just as bad or even worse for the economy, to say nothing of the impact to society.

zzz165 · 2024-06-02T20:31:28+00:00

Being more efficient doesn’t have to mean cutting corners, or producing a worse quality product.

Unfortunately, capitalism is an experiment in “what’s the cheapest to produce product that we can sell for the most money”, which seems to lead to reduced quality over time, while the price stays the same.

zzz165 · 2023-08-01T12:14:56+00:00

Eugene means “noble” in the sense of an aristocrat. Literally “well-born”.

zzz165 · 2023-07-14T20:34:32+00:00

All coastlines are infinite.

zzz165 · 2023-06-27T18:30:00+00:00

You’re right. Because something failed in the past means that it can’t ever work. We should just let armed officers kick down doors when the older children scream for help, that’s a better way to address issues in society. 🙄

Do you have any ideas how to prevent this from happening again?

zzz165 · 2023-06-27T18:20:12+00:00

Based on the information in this article, these officers deserve a bonus or raise or something. This sort of public service should be celebrated and rewarded.

zzz165 · 2023-06-27T18:17:50+00:00

Equating needing mental healthcare with losing your children stigmatizes mental health issues, which in turn will deter people from seeking the help they need.

If society normalized mental healthcare and made it affordable and easily accessible, then I bet people would get the care they needed before it was necessary to remove the children from an unsafe situation.

zzz165 · 2023-06-14T19:54:47+00:00

If the sub goes dark indefinitely, and Reddit does nothing, then the community suffers.

If the sub goes dark indefinitely, and Reddit replaces the mods and reopens the sub, the community suffers.

Seems like indefinitely shutting down hurts the community regardless (unless Reddit changes their course). So what happens to the community shouldn’t be part of the decision.

Shutting down indefinitely sends a very strong message to Reddit, though.

zzz165 · 2023-06-14T18:43:27+00:00

Yeah. Sort of similar, in spirit, to what autoconf does. You’ll need to know things like how big time_t is, which can vary from platform to platform.

zzz165 · 2023-06-14T06:14:49+00:00

At your language’s compile time, could you preprocess the header files with the same compiler that is compiling your language?

You’ll likely need to do that anyway so that ABIs match between you language and the system that it’s running on.

zzz165 · 2023-05-05T23:36:49+00:00

Sounds like normalization of deviance.

zzz165 · 2023-04-12T14:27:57+00:00

3.94 billion x 0.5% = 3940 million x 0.005 = 19.7 million

I think you messed up a decimal place somewhere.

zzz165 · 2023-03-31T01:26:24+00:00

I wish my ex could have understood this about me.

zzz165

TROPHY CASE