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jcstauffer

Re:How Boston City Hall was born on Friday December 20, 2024 @11:58AM (#42472699)
I always think of the building (and brutalist architecture in general) as absurdist architecture, and I find City Hall to be quite humorous in that light.

The general shape lifts up and is trying to appear as if it's floating, in contrast to the material selection. Think of an Elephant ballerina, or Douglas Adams "It hung in the air in exactly the way bricks don't".

Another example is the Holman government building a few blocks away - with these ridiculous stairways through a massive open space underneath an imposing bridge of offices.

Pure absurdist humor.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/KUFh9jFkERjhp7MK9

Re:The Smith-Prmier No. 1 Typewriter on Monday July 29, 2024 @04:16PM (#41103364)
My family had one of these when I was growing up (in gray - not the great blue color you linked to).

When I was 11-12 and didn't have a computer, I used it to type up BASIC programs that I either took to school to type into the Apple ][ there, or just imagined how they worked...

Sort of the opposite of your plan, I guess...

Re:The Costs of Microservices on Monday October 30, 2023 @12:08PM (#38071382)
I would hope that there is more process in place protecting against downtime than code review - for example automated tests across several levels, burn-in testing, etc.

People are not reliable enough to leave them as the only protection against system failure...

Re:How a Heat Pump Works on Friday February 10, 2023 @09:10AM (#34739752)
I'd like to get a heat pump to replace my existing baseboard hot-water system (currently powered by an oil furnace) without converting to a heated air system.

From what I've read, that's not quite feasible yet, since current systems can't produce a high enough temperature.

What are the prospects of that technology becoming viable in the next few years?

Re:Wells Fargo Penalties Since 2000: $22,081,458,643 on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @07:45AM (#34079979)
It seems endemic to the sector.

For comparison sake, Bank of America was penalized almost 4X ($83,354,221,356) in the same time period: https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/summary?parent=ba...

I particularly like how they neutrally listed all the assets and lines of credit of Voyager Digital (the loan holder) without mentioning that they add up to just $655M (< $670MM), meaning that they are now insolvent.
Re:Asking for a date of birth (2013) on Thursday June 16, 2022 @10:13AM (#31766268)
When I registered for Lufthansa FF, the form was just numbers. My birthdate has two single-digit numbers in it, and I ended up with Month-Date backwards (US vs. rest of the world conventions - e.g., 4/8 is either April 8, or Aug 4).

It wasn't an issue, but a minor annoyance to fix it every time I traveled, so that it matched my travel documents.

Until a couple of years ago, when I was traveling back from Germany and the flight crew thought it would be nice to surprise me with a bottle of champagne at midnight on my "birthday".

They were so proud of doing this over the top "random kindness" (it was pretty thoughtful), and couldn't figure out why I was confused and annoyed. I still feel bad for not acting more excited or grateful...

Re:Apple Unveils M2 on Monday June 06, 2022 @03:25PM (#31644834)
Windows may still dominate, but 75% is far below the 90% it was 10 years ago, while MacOS has nearly doubled in the same timeframe.

As someone who can remember this never changing, that's a pretty steep slope...

I recall when they didn't put them on the passenger side.
When my son was a toddler, he referred to all heavy equipment (bulldozers, etc.) as "Err-err"'s - referring to the primary sound they make.

One of my fondest memories of this time was him walking backwards down the hall making the "err err" sound of a bulldozer backing up...

Re:NSO Group iMessage Zero-Click Exploit Captured in the Wild on Tuesday September 14, 2021 @09:02AM (#28524100)
The few most recent episodes of the "Darknet Diaries" podcast, which are relevant, including interviews with CitizenLab, descriptions of how NSO works, Black Cube, and the market for buying exploits from Argentina.

https://darknetdiaries.com/

Re:Money and Investing (1996) on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @11:18AM (#26635605)
In fact, as noted above, the article was originally written in the 90s, and this line about Trump was in the original version written long before even Apprentice days.

Trump has been a punchline since long before he decided to run for president.

Re:Ask HN: Anyone know any funny programming jokes? on Thursday January 21, 2021 @09:54AM (#25859409)
As others mentioned, I've also heard this as a lawyer taking claim from the chaos.

I also heard this from a friend that heard it from Ronald Reagan, who claimed it was his favorite joke.

Re:On the bonkers color palette of Garfield comics on Tuesday November 24, 2020 @09:02AM (#25198464)
Or Blondie?
Re:Git is too hard on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @01:59PM (#25128053)
Meta comment: this thread has over 600 comments after 10 hours (one comment per minute) - most of which are of the form "I use it this way", or "here's a better way to do that" - thus proving the point of the article.
Re:Tim Sweeney on Apple and Google on Friday September 11, 2020 @08:30AM (#24441981)
I'm not sure how that's a benefit for users (multiple app stores).

What he wants is the right to build his own App Store so that he can charge his own "tax" and (hopefully) become a monopolist.

Re:TSA tries out another biometric system on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @12:40PM (#24354984)
I find that completely unrealistic...

It will almost certainly be found on an unsecured S3 bucket

Re:Plan the Sprint, Not the Project on Thursday August 20, 2020 @02:14PM (#24226499)
This article falls prey to a very common pattern of defining waterfall as "anything that doesn't meet my narrow definition of agile". Since everyone knows that waterfall is a fiction that doesn't work, my opinion is correct.

Developing a plan is not waterfall. Designing an Architecture is not waterfall. Agile is about adapting to change as it occurs - how do you know if there is any change if you didn't start with a plan?

Good plans and designs account for risks and unknowns and anticipate (certain types) of changes and delay locking into assumptions until necessary. But not having a plan or design is not agile - it's failure.

Re:Resignation Letter on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @04:00PM (#23837025)
It may be a good idea to fire someone who participates in that behavior, but there isn’t a legal obligation to do so (IANAL).

If the behavior is because of your race and they aren’t fired, you can (successfully) sue your employer. That’s the difference.

In her letter, she asserts that behavior that fits the first scenario is illegal- it’s not.

Re:Resignation Letter on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @12:31PM (#23834035)
Note that "hostile work environment" is a legal term related to a pattern of behavior taken to intimidate someone based on a protected trait (e.g., age, sex, religion, race, disability, etc.).

Notedly, political viewpoints are not a protected trait.

Re:Quit whining about Apple and just stop using them on Friday June 19, 2020 @01:11PM (#23576540)
Unpopular opinion: the 30% that Apple charges includes customer acquisition cost.

As a thought experiment, if Hey adds In-App Purchase for subscriptions, but everyone who downloads the app has first signed up for their service due to their marketing methods (an increasing likelihood considering this controversy), then nobody will use the In App Purchase, and Hey will send $0.00 to Apple.

If someone discovers the App in the App Store due to an organic search for Email clients, then they are likely to sign up via In App Purchase, and Hey pays Apple an affiliate fee of 30% of first year revenue, and 15% of lifetime revenue after that. This is a customer that Hey would not have had if not for the App Store, so getting 75-80% of lifetime value seems better than not acquiring the customer in the first place.

I realize it's not entirely as clean as that, but cast in that way, the amounts seem merely expensive, and not egregious.

(not to defend any of Apple's behavior - particularly the most recent letter sent).

Re:WeWork’s Back Is Against a Wall on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @02:19PM (#20998422)
> Almost certainly, the video glosses over (read: ignores) the likely fact that the 47.2bn is over that 15 year average, and the 3.4bn is over the 15 month average, so this doesn't necessarily represent a shortfall in the long term.

$47.2bn/15 yrs = $3.15bn/yr lease obligation $3.4bh/1.25 yrs = $2.72bn/yr lease revenue

So, if they can manage to continue leases at their current rate, they'll be losing $400m/yr.

Re:Remove Richard Stallman on Sunday September 15, 2019 @01:37PM (#20978379)
Even if she were 18 or 25, it wouldn't really change the morals of the issue - maybe the legality, but forced sex is wrong regardless of the age of the victim, and it's not in any way reasonable to argue that he wouldn't have known the circumstances.
Hmmm - couldn't you also say that Elasticsearch is a great example of a modern microservice?
Re:The Merge on Thursday December 07, 2017 @12:39PM (#15872068)
In addition, the machines didn't have so much control of our news input and conversation the last time around.
Re:Scala Native v0.1 on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @11:10AM (#13868075)
Great! Any benchmarks on whether the Scala compiler runs faster when compiled to native?
Re:Why Coke Cost a Nickel for 70 Years (2012) on Monday June 29, 2015 @06:36AM (#9797299)
re: your parenthetical, this Planet Money episode (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-f...), describes Brazil's real, which was introduced as essentially that - an inflation-proof currency, replacing the cruzeiro, which was destroyed by hyper-inflation.
However, if they're trying to sell to people who are willing to pay for READING content, maybe it's best to have a written description.

I, for one, rarely watch videos, due to the disruption of a soundtrack to those around me (get out the headphones, etc.).

Re:Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (June 2012) on Friday June 01, 2012 @09:55AM (#4053346)
Woburn, MA - True Fit (http://jobs.truefit.com/)

True Fit, the global leader in fit personalization, delivers proven fit software to retailers selling footwear & apparel online, allowing retailers to personalize their catalog to each consumer’s personal fit and style preference.

Americans spend $300 billion on clothing and footwear every year, but less than 10% of that is purchased online and 40-60% of those products are returned. Our software is proven to dramatically reduce the number of products returned, increasing the confidence of shoppers so that they become buyers, dramatically improving conversion rates and driving huge value for our retail partners.

Led by a team of Software, Apparel, and Retail veterans, we are getting a ton of traction: We are currently live at Macys and Nordstrom, have hundreds of brand partners, and were recently profiled by WSJ (behind paywall, but see video here: http://online.wsj.com/video/82F25EDC-59F6-4330-BD76-96924F5D...).

We are looking for Ops, SW, and Machine Learning engineers (see http://jobs.truefit.com/ for detailed job descriptions), but we're expanding quickly and always interested in meeting smart people.

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