pif

Democracy working as intended: people keep voting freely, people keep getting what they want.

Nice, but still lacking proper generics (i.e. à la C++ templates) and typedef.

> It's obviously information that's stored _somewhere_

It's likely stored in the disk blocks reserved for the filesystem metadata. The disk may always appear empty, but available space will get lower and lower eventually.

A comment preventing fellow readers from wasting their time is not shallow.

> you have to deal with RAII

If you find that RAII is a problem, I pity how poor a programmer you must be...

> The CE mark is worthless, since it is a self-certificaton.

Boeing 737 MAX tragedy did happen because of self-certification abuse, still I would not call FAA certification worthless.

Quality was never the norm: cheap also beat quality with a hand tied behind his back!

Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money.

Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage.

Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily.

The software development realm is bigger than web programming.

You get that when you refuse personalised ads.

> Discord chats, AI and social media videos

A.k.a: no trustable source.

Mathematics is a tool. What make such understanding possible are the relentless, disciplined, often-pointless-looking collection and categorization of data of any kind, by generations and generations of selfless scientists.

> it’s at least a bitter awareness of the fact that the industry doesn’t care to refactor existing code

Refactoring working, terrain-tested code?!?

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

> They are renowned for their form of prayer that involves running for extended periods of time.

Mark me as atheist!

> Several times a day I'll prompt regular Claude chat to "Clone x/y from GitHub and tell me how Z works".

In principle, you should not need the source code: the AI should be able to answer by examining the binaries.

People still calling themselves developers and choosing a language that was created for poor programmers...

OK, just forbid commencial during those 3-minute breaks. Have some other kind of entertainment organised.

> About increasing teams to 48, now to 64?

I still hope we Italians will eventually be able to participate again, thus I approve the 64 team formula ;-)

> classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"

That's not a problem, in the sense that there was never any possible debate: if I make a promise on your behalf, I am a di*k.

> I think most people think of it as a free vacation.

I'm shocked that someone does NOT think so!

> pockmark the landscape of their knowledge with exploratory boreholes

I've got a PhD in particle Physics. I develop the geometry module of machine tools.

I got lost when an auntie tried to explain crochet to me.

> the meaning of existence, universe, and the like

And the child will be too young to accept 42 as a satiosfactory answer...

> Nothing works

It depends on whose perspective you consider the problem. An enterprise produces software for one reason only: make money out of it. And it works great!

if you are a paying customer, and if you can choose among a few different solutions, then you will get the good stuff. But for the rest...

1. Free apps? They just need to take ads in front of your eyes.

2. Software embedded in cars? You choose the car based on other merits, the software just needs to not by horrible.

3. Automated customare support? When was the last time you choose a fridge over another because of the quality of its customer support?

> Or maybe you pipe into xargs and pray your filenames don’t have spaces

So they wrote a new tool and posted it on HN before checking the manual about null character termination... Not trustable at all, what a waste of time!

This Italian here has never heard nothing like that. Tomato sauce can be simmered for several hours, but there is no refill.

The author is confusing visitors with customers. Refusing entry to 2% visitors? No, no! Forgetting about non-interesting 2% visitors? Not even a blink!

Luminosity, not power!

> This issue here isn't surveillance as per a signed warrant. I don't think anybody's really arguing against that.

Everybody who talks about cryptography is arguing about that! With the digital technology we have, the options are very simple: either every man in the middle can read (even the villain), or nobody can (not even the justice departments). There's no middle ground.

> every time someone wandered a week by feet from home

Remote privacy means that you don't have to move from home.

> or sent a letter

Which anybody could just intercept and read.

> Famous authors published for a whole lifetime under pseudonyms.

But someone had to know who they were and where they lived, and they could be convinced to share such information.

You see, when someone talks about "the governments" without realising that they do represent the people in a democracy, their ignorance show so much that it is difficult for them to attract any sympathy in those places where the laws are discussed.

And any phone could be tapped with a signature by a judge.