jamessantiago

Hey, what a coincidence. I've recently did some updates on my own shitty static site generator: https://santiagodevelopment.com

In my case, I stuck with markdown and still used frontmatter to add metadata to posts. Since I'm using asp.net core, I can use the markdown library Markdig which supports frontmatter, but I can also just fallback to the name of the markdown file (regex out the date and title), since I don't need much information from metadata. Adding middleware to asp.net core is fairly easy as well, so I can simply create some simple middleware to create static files as requests come through.

The only annoying case I had was how to manage syncing between git or gitlab (I created post retrieval clients for both) and already generated static files. I have a fairly forced method at the moment, where almost every generated file is wiped when a new git commit shows up, but I get to find those solutions myself since it's mine (!).

Definitely agree with the sentiments here. Although, I feel that the fact there's already working products out there makes it less incentivized to do projects like this. The new programmers I know seem to be more interested in doing something new or creating software you can't just get from some SaaS. I guess when I created my first website I didn't have that worry, there was no squarespace or whatever else, so there was the double benefit of creating something both simple and new.

For this I usually think that complexity in general is dangerous when our ability to apply our own value systems degrades past a certain point. For the 2008 financial issues we had a few financial products like subprime loans where the reasoning and economics behind these were complicated enough that most couldn't effectively regulate or understand the implications of their use.

I suppose when enough things go wrong with a complex system it's like having runtime errors popup that you can debug against and get a better understanding of what you created, but that first execution is just dangerous enough that you wouldn't want something that's complex enough to be doing anything important. Then again, we might not think something is complex enough until we start running into the "unknown unknowns" of real world usage.

Maybe a somewhat subjective qualifier for what's "complex" could be developed and then the ethical question is "is due diligence being taken to reduce the risks inherent in this complex system?"

Look into technical writing resources. One of the best resources I've seen is from proposal writing classes which you should find common with large consultancy organizations. Also, take a look at military writing guides [1]. There's some quick and simple guidance on writing for brevity and clarity in such guides.

[1] http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/p600_67.pdf

This one is a bit of a head scratcher and now I'm really curious. Isn't AI with deep learning a big part of this? And then, with AI like neural nets, isn't the whole point that you're building a model to discover hidden associations between data (tensors?) to make predictions, but that it's really hard to figure out how such a system arrives at a prediction? Shouldn't something like this be less than legal for a financial institution due to a lack of accountability? How do you protect against something like handing out subprime loans on questionable grounds?

Just like the other comments here I'd suggest focusing on mindset and health. For mindset, I'd recommend looking at stoicism such as with "A guide to the good life." In particular, the parts about accepting reality as it is, sort of like the serenity prayer. I like to think that I go into work with the mindset of giving 100% and should therefore not feel dejected by negative occurances. If I'm not fit for a task, that's ok, I'll either grow or I won't, but I can't expect myself to magically go beyond my full effort no more than I could grow beyond my height at that moment.

Also, health. It always seems to be just a little too imperceptive to really drive home how little things make a big impact. Sleep no less than 8 hours, eat no more than your recommended calories, be active for no less than 20 minutes (walking, cardio, strength, etc... ideally to your target heart rate), and foster strong relationships [1]. Additionally, try to understand what drives your behavior: why did X make me feel Y, and take control of that causation. Seek therapy and read into behavioral literature to better understand yourself.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...

You just rekindled my long time desire to own one of these. I saw them all over the place in okinawa and I have a die-cast toy car of one somewhere around here. I remember there was someone who put that longhorn decoration you see as a texas cliche on one. They definitely are pretty neat. It would be great for hauling landscaping items from my local nursery without having to get a full sized truck.

I'm assuming they don't. I guess to clarify, I'm desiring that the government not only mandates that they do use documentation and source control, but that they commit such code to a repository accessible by other departments. A minimal readme and "init" push may do the trick, but I'd want my local counsel to at least be able to pull the code for something like the government's favorite public website implementation and reuse it at lower cost than redoing it.

At the very least publically funded code should be open between government departments. There seems to be a lot of internally developed work that is unnecessarily replicated or lost just due to having no obligation or available resources to share or collaborate. Maybe there needs to be some system in place to have some sort of internal NDA or need to know check, but this seems like a good first step.

Interesting. Reminds me of the life story of a safety inspector that was born and lived in Okinawa. He basically went through a period where rice was mostly for the rich and then through WWII as a child to which americans prescribed a ration of milk and cheese to kids to improve nutritian. He was fairly short in stature and said he regretted not taking the milk and cheese as he though it would have helped him grow taller. Okinawans were famed for living a really long time though. I think the running theory at the time was due to pork and that pickle looking vegetable (can't think of the name).

Does waiting another 5 minutes really matter that much? It could be worse, I suppose, maybe there could be no elevator and you'd need to climb the stairs. Maybe there could be a line to the stairs.

Maybe this isn't a symptom of depression per se, but such anger seems to be to be a factor of discontent that still may benefit from therapy or self-help.

I'd recommend almost anything by Andy Field. He has a clear cut approach with a bit of comic wit to make the reading more enjoyable for hobby reading. His book on SPSS was fantastic, but may be a bit too specialized for what you're looking for. Check out discovering statistics:

https://www.discoveringstatistics.com/

My thought here is that there is a significant lack of outrage in weak wage growth and income disparities because the data is not relatable enough. There's certainly some protest at the most abhorrent levels of minimum wage meeting acceptable levels for a living, but shouldn't everyone from the upper to lower class be up in arms if there is such a favoritism toward executives and shareholders? Maybe something along the lines as showing what normal wage growth in tangible quality of live areas (e.g. this is the home you could afford) would look like for certain income levels might be a better way to explain this.

For powershell I've setup a master profile that manages and loads modules stored on an admin file share. Scripts are then added to individual modules (e.g. ad, exchange, etc...) on the share as needed which will prompt individuals to update their local copy. Version control, script signing, and other features would be nice, but in reality it's only one or two individuals updating the modules so it's more of a way to kiddy-ise scripts for other team members to use.

"Instead, our build system is configured to automatically build, test and push .NET images whenever the official images that we use are updated"

I wonder what that build system looks like and how I'd do the same as an app developer when new .NET images show up.

Looks like Jeff Bezos was on to something about that "Two Pizza Rule"[0]

[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-two-pizza-rule-for...

To play devils advocate: federal authorization workflows for such things can be notoriously slow and counter intuitive. I'd argue that 18F's completed projects, and any other contract company's similar attempts, would either be impossible or greatly underperformed if done "the proper way."

Of course, security is not something that can be played off as technical debt and 18F is definitely in the wrong here. However, the security apparatus of the federal government must evolve if projects like 18F's improvements to healthcare.gov are desired in the federal space. You cant have monolithic waterfall processes and agile project performance anymore than you can eat your cake and have it too.

Doom 3 was touted[1] as having some "exceptional beauty." Naming, spacing of properties, consistency, and how multiple parameterized calls were formatted are quite nice. You can see an example on github[2], but for some reason the spacing is a bit off in the web view. I'd recommend cloning a local copy and taking a look.

[1] http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-...

[2] https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3/blob/master/neo/game/a...

The title is pretty sly in mixing both past and present tense interpretations. Hard to guess whether it was going to be Hoover's infatuation with the civil rights movement or some current day addition to domestic spying shenanigans.

This looks to be the main content of the book:

http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contri...

I wonder how increases in remote work acceptance will affect emigration. If you allow remote work from anywhere it would seem like moving to another country on some sort of visa would be an instant pay increase using the foreign earned income tax break.

This was the main reason I picked up the yubikey, but I simply could not get GPG to recognize the yubikey to import my keys. I'm sure I simply missed some important step, but I couldn't figure it out with either GPG for windows or GPG in a linux VM.

I wish there more smart card devices available for use with PGP that were as widely purchasable as the yubikey.

According to wikipedia[1] this was one of the earliest websites to be created.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...

Plain text is great. There's so much you can do with it that you can't in word or even latex. I'll write all my coursework assignments in sublime with a double column layout so I can have my notes in one window and my draft in the other. I can then check it all into my git server, run stats against my writing, and see more text without the need for scrolling. I can also search the entirety of my coursework or work notes much faster which is great to find all the references I made to a specific author. I still often have to copy text into word or latex formats but if you have the templating and styles set up that can be pretty quick work. It's nice having the raw text and formatted work seperate.

Reminds me a bit of this book on a modern take on stoicism:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0195374614

Had a part about negative visualization where one would contemplate the negative aspects of life as much as the positive as a sort of counterbalance to hedonic adaptation. One would fall into a good life as being the norm and start to become overly negative about inconsequential aspects of it and hope for the next step up where the cycle would repeat. Instead, using this negative visualisation thing, one would contemplate how life would be without a paying job or a family or arms which I suppose leads to positive thoughts about having such things.

Perform market research

Entrepreneurship starts with creating a business plan. Part of that business plan is identifying your target market, your competition, and defining how you are unique. It's not so much that something has been done before but rather what sets you apart. If your concern is legal, then patents (google scholar) and trademarks are what you should be looking at. Copywrite is a bit more difficult but after performing your market research you should have an idea of what's out there. In other words, who is your target market and what are they using now that your startup is aiming to satisfy?

I love the idea of an e-ink monitor. This would be a great performance display for a headless server. Weather and news display connected to an arduino? Low power systems that expend just enough power to display some information then shutdown while allowing the display to retain its static display?

It might not be the most versatile of displays but use of this should really be in the "right tool for the right job" mindset.