gc22browsing

Firstly, why do you need your users to write and run arbitary code on your servers? If your product is such that user access is needed, then publishing an API for access would appear to be a simpler approach.

Nevertheless, if you do need to do so, why not look into using FreeBSD with jails, etc? Alternatively you could spin-up a hosted VM on their behalf and have them use that. But anybody who can program could probably do that for themselves, thus my API suggestion as above.

The US govt outsources software development to the big consulting firms. Any one of them would take 5 years and $10B to create an equivalent app. And then it would only run with Microsoft Explorer (not Edge).

There is a similar effect, but in reverse, when adding interdependent features. Early ones don't have a big impact, but once you get to a certain point the inefficiencies add up and the program becomes bogged down.

Cache invalidations and memory swapping as you approach the limits are other examples.

Academia has become big business. Over a period of 30+ years I have observed that part-time admin roles that were filled by academics are now run by full-time corporate types. Their primary mandate is to increase profits and thus inflate their own salaries.

As for successful grants, I have seen that, now, 50% of the amounts immediately goes to "overhead" and the PI needs to pay for stipends and equipment from the remaining 50%, yet there are further "transaction charges" even those activities.

The publishing, grant winning, etc are simply "KPIs" so beloved by the MBA hordes.

What I found incredible is the lack of push-back from academics against the encroaching takeover by the biznoids. Speaking of whom, they don't give a damn about research, academia is merely yet another territory to which they extend their rent seeking (for themselves) activities.

I used to work for a small systems integrator. We used on-call mobile phones, the "hot potato" was carried by the on-call engineer. Any actual time worked outside of core-working hours was paid back in the form of time-off-in-lieu. The salary generously reflected the being on-call requirement.

The other factor was that a "call-out" was not completed until the root cause was fixed.

I believe the real reason for the compassionate arrangements was that the owners of the business were former engineers and were even available to escalate calls to them if you got stuck. Our personal phones had everybody else's personal numbers in the address book, but we were never permitted to give them out to clients. Clients only had access to the "hot potato" phone numbers, which also received the various paged alerts, etc.

The problem at the radio frequency level is simply that not only is the 2.4GHz ISM band crowded by microwave ovens, WiFi and lots of other devices, but that one end of a BT device is typically battery powered and transmitting at a tiny fraction of the power of the interfering devices. In a typical office or home the moment you turn on the microwave or WiFi device you are effectively jamming the BT signal. Frequency hopping can hop it all likes and try to pick the least worse band out of all even more over-powering ones.

Ok, so X is your brother's sister-in-law. So she is sorta family now.

From your telling of the situation, X appears to have had strong feelings for you. You obviously did many things for her and she benefited from that.

You could move to another city and break all contact. X has support around her and would most likely recover from the heartache with time.

OR you could seek out relationship counselling to resolve the situation. Your explaining "in excruciating detail" suggests to me that you have not entertained any alternatives to your view of what happened.

You being concerned about X being suicidal or falling into depression, shows that you do care for her. I would recommend the professional counselling path to resolve this matter and possibly empower you and X to better deal with life's curveballs in the future.

Sadly we live in times of capitalism's perverse incentives.

Managers push hard to get one more "win" on their CV before skipping onto the next higher paid job. The company board are only interested in maximising "shareholder value" and their already bloated remuneration packages.

Developers are still evaluated on the basis of LoC! If you want your job and a chance at a bonus, then you just do as demanded by the bosses.

Any system of meritocracy based on educational attainments is tainted by the fact that only the wealthy can afford sufficiently high level of education to pass the tests for meritocracy. Perhaps a function might to weed out those who have been afforded the education and have failed the tests.

In China, there are people who sit tests on behalf of wealthy, yet intellectually less accomplished young adults. So how does that truly test for merit. As with all incentive schemes, there are those who game those systems.

People who buy and drive Teslas think they are a gift to humanity, because they are "saving the planet". They glibbly ignore the amount of fossil fuels that were consumed in order to produce their shining homage to their specialness and of course their lord, Elon Musk, on the pedestal.

The focus on money is THE cultural meme of the 21st century.

Do you ever hear of a basketball / baseball / football pro who turned down a multi-million deal? Or an actor for that matter. Nobody questions why they don't play because of their passion for their sport.

In practical terms, if you want to live where the career opportunities are, you need a sizeable income just to stay in place. They (the greedy capitalists) want you to work to live. Of course, the "leaders" don't manage because of their passion. They demand ever increasing salaries.

RISC-V is the wildcard. Although it is open, the amount of effort required to design and make SoCs that effective compete with ARM licensed designs could cost more than simply paying ARM licensing fees and royalties.

Ultimately if a lot of experienced ARM designers defect to RISC-V firms, then the balance could tilt to RISC-V. I suspect that the talk about takeovers would be causing some unease in the technical ranks.

Often managers want to hold onto the very staff who are most likely to voluntarily quit. Simple reason being that the more competent, and sometimes underpaid for their level of skill, staff only need a nudge to job-hop. Whilst the laggards are more likely to want to stick around.

Of course, in the current climate with so much bad news, the optimism about finding a new job might be curtailed.

Managers love meetings. Makes them feel important. And since nothing is written down, it allows them to deny or twist what they had said in the past.

Seems to me that the majority of people are extroverts and gain energy from social interactions. Those who are introverts and prefer to research and think are labelled as being on the spectrum by the majority.

I'm annoyed by the number of videos. What's worse is that in most cases what takes 45+ minutes on a video could be read in 5-10 minutes in written form.

Where available I go for the transcripts.