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LaserDiscMan | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?

I once worked on an in-house ERP system which had been developed over about 15 years by various developers. It was the engine of the entire company, everything passed through it. The CFO and some senior leadership erroneously blamed it for their shortcomings/used it as a scapegoat. When new management took charge, an initiative was started to replace the system with an industry standard solution. Both myself and the CTO (my boss) made it clear that we strongly felt this would not only go way over budget, but ultimately fail as a project.

Having no understanding as to the technicalities involved, the project was given the go ahead by the directors after several meetings with a vendor. After the CTO and I expressed our concerns about the scale of the project and the sheer amount of functionality involved, the vendor gleefully assured us that they were experienced with "migrations of this scale" and were more than prepared, which was music to the ears of the CFO.

Daily 2-3 hour meetings followed (for many months) to define the scope of the project. Within each meeting I sort of zoned out because it became very obvious that no only did the vendor not understand the scale of the work involved, but had started cutting corners everywhere/leaving out crucial functionality, and this was just the scoping stage, no development had even started yet.

I eventually departed the company but kept in contact with the CTO and learned that after 5 years (project was scoped for 2), the migration was abandoned costing multiple millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.

LaserDiscMan | 2 years ago | on: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option here. Very expensive unless bought used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.

CRT Broadcast monitors are somewhat of a collectors item for retro game enthusiasts.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

I once worked in a small company developing niche but expensive Windows software. The company enjoyed (probably still enjoys) relatively limited competition in it's space. During start up, the program checks for the version of Windows which it's being run on and refuses to boot if it's different to the one specified for that version.

This software was mainly sold to mid-large size companies, so although it could be trivially defeated with minimal reverse engineering, I doubt this was ever a real issue.

Every new version of Windows that Microsoft released would coincide with many customers purchasing the latest version of our software.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: The world has reached 8B people but soon we'll hit a decline we'll never reverse

I wonder how countries will attempt to deal with declining populations. Immigration isn't really a solution, as the countries with positive fertility rates (falling fast) are not producing enough children to balance the decline. I find the geopolitical implications fascinating to think about. If a country is declining and cannot tempt migrants, does it perhaps become a tax haven? Is it absorbed by a larger country (either willingly or by force)? Does it join a union of other countries to form the start of a global government?

Economically, could the deflationary pressures of a declining population lead to low/negative interest rates and hyper QE?

It's going to be interesting to see.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: The first rule of Microsoft Excel: Don’t tell anyone you’re good at it

In the earlier days of my career, I was tasked with automating a large daily accounting task. Essentially, a team of accountants was copying and pasting values outputted by the company ERP system into a spreadsheet. The ERP used an in-house database, and without intense reverse engineering it was only accessible via the internal programming language. Whilst the language did allow for File IO there was no real way to access the ERP without opening the GUI, so I wrote a dreadful little VBA script which invoked a logon for a dedicated user as a background session on a company server. When this user logged on, another little batch file opened the ERP GUI, opening the GUI triggered an action in the internal ERP language which checked to see if the username matched the special user. If so, the ERP began a vast series of complex calculations, spitting out the results to a series of files which were then read back by the VBA and populated the spreadsheet. The batch file on the background session would automatically log the session off after a pre-set time. Whilst this was all going on, the user in the spreadsheet was presented with a progress bar. If memory serves, I even had some primitive locking mechanism to prevent multiple people running this process at the same time.

I think it ranks as the most hilarious (from a technical perspective) piece of work I've ever done. To my surprise, the solution was quite robust, and was being used on a daily basis by the CFO and other accountants. Even more surprising is that it carried on working for years, even long after I'd departed the company. Thinking back to that still makes me smile :)

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: Made in America is back, leaving US factories scrambling to find workers

> The result of this on-shoring craze (modulo automation) is that we're likely to see very significant inflation, basically taking us back to the cost structures we saw in the 1980s. No more cheap Chinese or Vietnamese goods at Amazon or Walmart; if we have to Buy American, expect to pay the differential between Vietnamese and American wages, roughly a 30-40x increase.

I theorise that it might also lead to a reversal of planned obsolescence and products with a short lifespan. Companies might compete by designing goods based around longevity to justify the higher cost. Household appliances, for example, might be a once in a decade (or longer) purchase as opposed to the throwaway approach.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are some of the best documentaries you've seen?

Not sure if 7 years is going back too far, but I'll go with: Only The Dead

Does not make for easy viewing at all. Essentially a narrated compilation of Australian journalist Michael Ware's footage (first and second hand) from his time in Iraq throughout the conflict.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: Tetsuji: Remote Code Execution on a GameBoy Colour 22 Years Later

The Page Boy was a project which would have allowed for the GB Color to wirelessly send/receive email, read news/sports results, get weather reports, use a "search engine", send GB camera photos/animations to other users, and even stream live video. Mario was to deliver small voice samples throughout usage which would be updated by Nintendo.

The product was pitched by a small firm called "Wizard" to senior Nintendo executives in 99. Nintendo responded enthusiastically, but the project was terminated in 02 due to the immaturity of the telecoms infrastructure at the time.

LaserDiscMan | 3 years ago | on: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option. Very expensive unless used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.
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