mcgarnagle's comments

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: Raising of Chicago

not to be a stickler but I think that the word would be designed. Otherwise you can apply that statement to anything, it's like saying smartphones weren't designed so much as grown organically. Just because requirements, and technology progress doesn't make it any less design for that time.

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: Elon Musk's Solution for Dodger Stadium Traffic Is Full of Holes

>The city has no responsibility to counteroffer >gamblor956

Everyday lobbyists are making proposals to congressmen, founders are pitching to VCs, people applying for jobs and asking for salaries, and there is usually a middleground that these two parties can land at.

Perhaps the mechanism in like you suggest, simply to reject the offer OR perhaps more beneficially, the city should reject the offer and ask for what it wants at the same time, and play the negotiation game.

edit: I read your profile, and I get you're a lawyer, and that you're technically right that it has no `legal` responsibility to counter ... That mentality doesn't get either party anywhere.

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: Sprints, marathons and root canals

If your team isn't delivering on weekly sprints something is wrong. Perhaps you are over committing. If you are resorting to two week springs to forgo the useless double hour loss of the sprint plan / follow up demo, then sure, I get it.

In any of the two above cases it sounds like you have a weak team on your hands. When you push to treat the subject like a marathon it makes the business people nervous.

When you are on an incremental weekly delivery cycle, and things are late, it is usually only late by one or two of those weekly cycles. BUT, If things are late on a "marathon cycle" they are usually late by a "marathon length".

You sort of have to keep in mind that there's a rather large reason that there was a push by the business people to force faster cycles. You and your team are expensive. Weekly or bi-weekly goals show your accounting department that they are receiving assets.

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: Elon Musk's Solution for Dodger Stadium Traffic Is Full of Holes

Elonrail responsibilities are to offer a good negotiation position for themselves. It's up to the city to counteroffer, say....:

1. Burying slightly deeper to accommodate larger building for the future. 2. Demolish the "test rail" after the "test" is proven to work. 3. Expand the rail after success is proven to accommodate a larger attendance

Elonrail/boring company is happy with the success of the test's outcome, the boring company will use this test as propaganda to further their goals and build larger projects, the boring company will not mind tearing down (or grandiosely upgrading) their tunnel with the new contracts it receives, and in the meantime: the region makes money from the project in the process.

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: Remains of the murdered Romanovs 'authentic'

Yes, that would be the logical thing to find fair once you forgo your current ego. Disclosure, I eat meat, and if people should critique me in the future, so be it.

Half the people in this thread are ripping on Lenin because of the things he did, even though at the time they were mostly "lawful" since he wrote the law.

We absolutely should disgrace the horrible things people did in the past, so that to not do them over again.

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: The IceCube Neutrino Detector at the South Pole Hits Paydirt

I think setting up machinery and waiting for discoveries like this one can be compared to being patient at the slot machines; it is essentially economically equivalent to gambling. Eventually, as a person living in society you may run out of quarters before you hit the "jackpot." Yes, you can use your quarters today on other things in society that are more guaranteed to bring you more quarters, but, we don't know what kind of "jackpot" is waiting for humanity until we hit it. This makes a sad, difficult decision in the life of a scientist, which is why we should have more rich people funding (since a lot of them have gambling problems any way, ie: stock market, brothels, etc)

edit: to sum up, this would be an efficient economy at scale. Some one with money already puts someone with expertise to good use :)

mcgarnagle | 7 years ago | on: The Many Ways Google Harvests Data

"Walking into a store can get you observed by stores b-z and subcontractior 1-255"

Well what about the new amazon retail store, that records your every move?

Also what about stores or shopping malls that contract their security cameras out to other companies? Surely those security companies may be doing all kinds of stuff with people's facial recognition data.

mcgarnagle | 8 years ago | on: Number of open faculty positions in CompSci exceeds candidates by a factor of 5

does the huge number of phd increases show a symptom of the bar being too low to receive a phd, or the number of qualified candidates actually receiving the phd? Same question for the compsci degree.

I know a ton of people who have comp sci degrees, but, cant write my mysql query or write a block of code, or solve some rudimentary problems, or talk through problem solving questions like rational human beings.

Same goes for other faculties. Hell, I once hired a finance major with a business degree who couldn't handle doing the books for our startup.

Just because they are graduates, it doesn't make them candidates

mcgarnagle | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Buy Me A Coffee – A free, fast and friendly way to receive donations

Not everything is made to receive $40 annually. With $40 annually you must be rolling in the cash and I should start taking serious financial advice from you. What's your secret? "for the price of one starbucks a month?"

Some people use buy me a coffee, literally to show that they are s-o-c-i-a-l and want to meet for a c-o-f-f-e-e, whether over the wire or over the table.

mcgarnagle | 8 years ago | on: Laws of UX

perhaps the author was going for the clockwork orange esc feel of discomfort so you should actively think about the ux you're experiencing

mcgarnagle | 8 years ago | on: Is Your English Accent British or American?

Yes, it would break your words into phonetics, and analyzes whether it's "american" or "british" phonetics which occur more frequently in the dialog. Unless well practiced, your phonetics likely cary over into other languages that you speak.

mcgarnagle | 8 years ago | on: Hackers invade safety system, halt plant operations in ‘watershed’ cyberattack

no, you don't. When I activate a light switch and consume more power from the grid I am not directly adding more coal/fuel to the fire/generator. This is where the warehousing analogy breaks.

Those numbers are looked at on aggregate to determine how much electricity needs to be produced to supply the population. They are directly tied into finance departments to generate your bill, sure, but that is an independent system from the production of electricity.

In the case of water supply, same thing. Just because I turn on my tap doesn't mean I am directly affecting the water treatment plant to treat exactly 1 more cup of water today.

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