roedog
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5 years ago
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on: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)
I made my largest gains in programming competence almost
10 years ago when working on a system with no connection to the internet and no cell phone at hand. I was working a development assignment on an air-gapped network. Not being able to search google every time I got stuck forced me to actually read the documentation, man pages, and reference books and think through what was going on and come up with solutions. The internet terminal was a 10 minute walk away so I treated it like a trip to the library for research only after I had spent time working on the problem myself.
roedog
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6 years ago
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on: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
A reset could be after the big one hits and we have to rebuild cities.
roedog
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6 years ago
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on: Lockheed has an opening for engineers with VAX experience for the F22
It indicates that writing and editing thousands of pages of documentation will be contractually required. Word proficiency can save a lot of pain for everyone on that team.
roedog
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7 years ago
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on: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
Ah, I wasn't thinking about their commercial business. I can imagine how that would be more price sensitive.
roedog
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7 years ago
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on: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
hmm. So they could be losing money on each launch? But, why would they would they choose to sell at a loss when they could beat the competition at twice the price?
roedog
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7 years ago
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on: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
Yep, attrition was over twice that last year at some firms in the area. Partly demographics, lots of folks who can retire do. The rest due to competition for staff.
roedog
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7 years ago
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on: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
Well, Space X costs less than half than a ULA launch. I suspect that ULA spends that additional money on large sub-contracts to Boeing and Lockheed for the Delta and Atlas vehicles. This makes me think that when we add up the employees on the subcontracts the space X staffing number will be much more impressive in it's leanness.
I hope they all join my company, we've got a lot of work they would find interesting. With the retirement rate increasing it's the time to change things for the better. I want their experience at Space X on how to do things faster and better. But perhaps that's wishful thinking...
roedog
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7 years ago
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on: SpaceX to lay off 10% of Workforce
The SoCal aerospace job market is hot right now. The driver is multiple large program starts at multiple contractors who are competing for people. This should make it possible for everyone to land on their feet. (I've reached out to my former colleagues who left to join Space X)
What's odd is why SpaceX is cutting staff with the new development underway on the larger rockets and the satellite business. I'm curious about how they're going to increase development while cutting staff. The big aero firms have room for improvement on productivity. But SpaceX has been lean from the start. I wonder how they'll get more out of an already highly productive team. That'd be something to learn from.
roedog
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8 years ago
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on: Ask HN: How did you transition out of software?
Or transition to a system test role that has embedded software with lots of real world hands on work. Your software experience is relevant. Troubleshooting is the hard and rewarding part in common with software development. For example track testing drivetrain software, flight testing gn&c subsystems, testing robotics controllers. Lots of new testing will be needed with autonomous systems.
roedog
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8 years ago
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on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2017)
Yes, many. See the company's career page.
roedog
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8 years ago
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on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2017)
roedog
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9 years ago
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on: What Are the Tricky Parts of Embedded Development?
It can also be a fun/technically challenging niche job that avoids the paperwork endemic to many jobs in large contractors.
roedog
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10 years ago
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on: Revisiting the Google Pixel C – Better, but Not There Yet
I reboot my Nexus 5 daily and have not seen these kinds of performance issues.
roedog
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10 years ago
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on: Ask HN: What is your most profitable side project?
It's not tech. It's a rental property.
roedog
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11 years ago
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on: Boeing Flies on 99% Ada
Testing flight software is very intense. 50 KSLOC of C will take a few dozen man years to develop.
As a side note on terminology, QA means a very different thing in the aerospace industry. The function of QA in this world is to witness the tests and attest that we did indeed run the test as written. Usually in the form of stamping a printed procedure as it is followed. This mirrors the process used to test the mechanical and electrical parts. The testing of the software is called verification and validation testing not QA.
roedog
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11 years ago
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on: Inside The Making Of The New “Dungeons and Dragons”
I think Mearls said somewhere that the staggered release was because their copy editing pipeline couldn't handle three releases at once.
roedog
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11 years ago
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on: What will it take to get people using PGP for email?
In a large company, such a change only has a chance if it is mandated from the top and then the mgmt team is very committed to push the change through for as long as it takes. Without both pieces it will get killed by apathy at the middle management layer and below. Without that support the technical solutions will gain no foothold.
roedog
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12 years ago
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on: Sheryl Sandberg earns $100M, but won't pay interns
Well, if Sandberg takes that position in her book then she shouldn't deserve finger pointing I suppose. But since she talks about leveling the playing field in the workforce and fixing the salary gender gap is part of that I'd say she believes that cash money is a key source of empowerment.
roedog
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12 years ago
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on: Sheryl Sandberg earns $100M, but won't pay interns
But those other big companies with unpaid internships didn't publish a book about how they believe in empowering individuals (albeit women individuals in this case). Some finger pointing seems warranted in that her company's actions do not match her words...
roedog
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13 years ago
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on: Majority in Bern council tells Swiss city to switch to open source
The last paragraph of the story talks about how
"the German city of Freiburg voted to end the city's experiments with a free and open source office suite. In that city, the IT department had been struggling for years to support both an decade-old proprietary office suite as well as an outdated version of OpenOffice. Increasing frustration by the city's civil staff prompted the city board to revert to use only proprietary office solutions"
The conclusion I draw it that any kind of software adoption depends on how well IT departments support it. In addition to lobbying budget conscious city councils it is also necessary to evangalize and train the government IT workers.
