WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

btreesOfSpring's comments

btreesOfSpring | 3 years ago | on: Code doesn’t have to be a mess

This is a great point. Often I find situations when working with the subject matter experts where the code unveils edge cases in the business reasoning that the SMEs haven't considered. In many of those situations, the issue can be pedantic and the code can point to a catchall. Even so, it is funny how common these kinds of knowledge gaps appear when you are tasked with transforming assumptions into a functional working entity.

btreesOfSpring | 3 years ago | on: Symbian Source Code

It feels like Garmin devices are still dependent on this era's tools. When someone asks me about issues with using my Garmin Edge 1030 for navigation, I often say it works fine enough but it is sort of like using a Symbian phone in the early 2000s.

btreesOfSpring | 8 years ago | on: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

I remember dealing with the emergency IT issues that popped up with our NYC offices after hurricane Sandy wrought havoc upon much of lower Manhattan's power grid. We were lights out for at least three days. Had to take lots of taxis to move hardware to places with electricity. Even if we wanted to be creative, the subway was certainly not a transportation option and foot was wight prohibitive. The pickup rules for taxi's were suspended during this emergency period. Taxis could pickup fares mid-ride, turn down any rider going to a undesirable destination, & charge whatever they thought they could get. Lucky for me, despite all other storm-born chaos, I was in a sweet spot for where taxis were more than happy to drive. Even so, seeing the number of people who were turned down for their destinations or who in turn declined a ride because of the driver chosen price hike was fascinating; a sort of real-time, impromptu emergent market in infancy rapidly growing into maturity.

So not to say that these ride share services have moved to remove all these kinds of consumer protections that clearly were quickly dropped and exploited once they were removed due to the state of emergency but to a large extent, I feel like I had the chance to experience the larger forces of gamification that would happen if these protections were removed and circumstances were ripe for profit. Overall I am very happy with the changes ride sharing services have brought to supplement transportation options but there are certainly a lot more of these bumps and kinks to be worked out if these businesses hope to avoid a wave of government regulation.

btreesOfSpring | 8 years ago | on: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

> people would be interested in solutions instead of blaming, finger pointing and political games.

Would anyone be interested in bureaucratic machinations over solutions? Varoufakis' ex post facto statement sounds bitter and judgemental and to be expected in the face of his failure.

If you listen to his EconTalk episode, you get a sense of an admirable and optimistic person who, when faced with the defensive positioning of EU stalwarts, represented his ideas in a naive and condescending way that denied himself and the Greek people he represented the chance to establish trust and the proper report to begin alternative negotiations in earnest. His economic ideas might be perfectly salient but his self-introduction at the bailout talks did not represent those ideas very well.

btreesOfSpring | 8 years ago | on: Review of “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis

Also of interest is Varoufakis on EconTalk[0] interview in 2013, almost two years before the Greek electoral victory of Syriza and Varoufakis taking the political position of finance minister. You might hear from this interview how Varoufakis looked at Greece's crisis negotiation-position with the EU: that for Greece, similar to the employee-management structure of Valve, there was a lack of hierarchy between peers and only a room full of equals. In that sense and through the Valve-hierarchy of equals lens, much of the tone-deaf rhetoric of Varoufakis towards his peers though the bailout talks can be interpreted with a wider spectrum of sound. Varoufakis, it seems, sincerely thought he would bring "enlightened" new ideas of successful software development management to a negotiation table of frustrated, advantaged, EU financial stalwarts.

[0] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/02/varoufakis_on_v.htm...

btreesOfSpring | 9 years ago | on: Koomey's law

They aren't directly linked. I just like the idea of cataloging all of the time bounded limits in CS. Reading the wiki entry and having forgotten the exact date for when Unix time comes to end, although knowing it is close, i figured others might enjoy seeing the 2038 date too. Based upon voting, I was wrong.

btreesOfSpring | 9 years ago | on: When “Dumb Pipes” Get Too Smart

one of the major issues of malware/spam/botnets is a direct result of the hardware ISPs provide to their customers. They should at minimum be taking on that responsibility of security upgrading their rootable hardware. If abuse@ could just be triggered by honeypots that could quickly identify hacked routers & ISPs would replace/upgrade them accordingly, at least one ugly sliver of the IoT would be addressed.

btreesOfSpring | 9 years ago | on: A textbook case in workplace discrimination

i think the article attempts to address this question by this hypothetical:

> Can you imagine what would have happened if Uber decided, because men gobble more food than women, that only women should get free catering in the company’s cafe, and men would have to reach into their wallets?

page 2
newer more