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shannongreen | 2 years ago | on: I wrote my own smart home software

I've always been fascinated by the dissonance between what some people insist they need from an off the shelf system (bulletproof with a dedicated security team because Security is Hard, rock solid reliability because I depend on it 24/7) and what they will accept in a DIY solution (completely unsecured un-audited software with no tests and something broken every other day).

shannongreen | 3 years ago | on: Sony releases its first over-the-counter hearing aids

I'd politely suggest that if your hearing is bad enough to be noticeable, then it is definitely enough to look into getting hearing aids. Hearing aids for those with only mild hearing loss can be very discreet.

There is evidence to suggest that living with even mild hearing impairment can accelerate cognitive decline (though I don't know if there is yet evidence that this can be prevented by using hearing aids).

shannongreen | 3 years ago | on: Likely cause of mystery child hepatitis outbreak found

> Covid could've been solved in 1 month if everyone would just stay home for 1 month.

No, it couldn't. And even if it could've, that would be impossible.

Believe it or not, places outside the US did do a 'real lockdown' for a lot longer than a month, and it didn't 'solve' covid.

shannongreen | 4 years ago | on: Google mandates workers back to Silicon Valley, other offices from April 4

It really depends how you measure productivity. Does it make the team close their JIRA tickets faster and pump out more lines of code? Probably. But I wouldn't be surprised if it also resulted in more defects, worse designs, more tech debt, and more failed projects.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop someone from writing code.

shannongreen | 4 years ago | on: Wave Function Collapse library in pure C

How is it more flexible exactly?

I hate this idiom every time I come across it. I like to look at the header file to see the interface and important documentation, and this just obscures it. Depending on your compiler it can make debugging a huge pain as well.

shannongreen | 4 years ago | on: The future of programming with certified program synthesis

As someone who has to write C for their day job, I am a little bit offended by the introduction of this article, but I guess that's the point.

The code presented is trash and doesn't follow best practices - using the type system, descriptive variable names, etc. Void pointers for everything, are you serious? Of course it's hard to understand. Revealing that it's the generated code doesn't make me any more comfortable with it.

Yes, I get that you shouldn't care what the generated code looks like if you trust your input, but I don't find the predicate any easier to understand. How do I know that's correct? What if I need to debug this generated output?

shannongreen | 4 years ago | on: What if remote work didn’t mean working from home?

FWIW, I would hate working with someone like this. You don't have to be super active, socially, but treating the other people (and they _are_ people) on your team as just drones is a) not conducive to good collaboration and b) pretty damn rude.

shannongreen | 5 years ago | on: Giving Ada a Chance

> It is possible to define a struct type in C with bit-fields for the individual elements, however the C standard does not guarantee the layout and order of the individual fields.

As a professional embedded developer who uses bitfields to access registers every day, this doesn't really make a practical difference. On any bare-metal or embedded project you will rely on the behaviour of your compiler, and portability is largely irrelevant if you're accessing memory-mapped registers. Probably, the manufacturer has already provided register maps using bitfields anyway.

shannongreen | 5 years ago | on: McDonald’s Theory on How Best to Rescue Conversations 

  Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
  and you're hampered by not having any,
  the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
  is simply by spinning a penny.
  No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
  while you're passively standing there moping;
  but the moment the penny is up in the air,
  you suddenly know what you're hoping. 
  -- Piet Hein, "A Psychological Tip"

shannongreen | 5 years ago | on: Workman Keyboard Layout (2010)

I learnt Dvorak 6 years ago and now type exclusively in Dvorak on QWERTY keyboards (currently a Microsoft Ergonomic). I have never used a keyboard with a Dvorak printed key layout. I think my Dvorak typing speed is still slightly slower than my old QWERTY max, but it feels much more comfortable typing for long periods, and less effortful.

The printed keys don't mean much - to learn to touch type correctly you shouldn't be looking at the keys anyway. I used a few typing games to start and then switched cold turkey for a few activities that didn't require speed (like responding to emails). It was, indeed, very frustrating.

That said, I don't recommend switching for most people, because you will get much worse at QWERTY and when you occasionally need to type it (like on a colleague's keyboard) you will appear incompetent; you will ruin your muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts; and, because standard Dvorak is not great for programming IMO due to the position of the [{ and }] keys. But now I'm in too deep, and I know from experience how hard it is to switch so I don't want to switch back!

shannongreen | 6 years ago | on: LoCHAid – An ultra-low-cost, affordable and accessible hearing aid device

> Most hearing aids don't deliver sound directly to the damaged ear canal, but also utilise other sound delivery mechanisms. Like induction.

I don't think this is correct. All hearing aids do work this way, and I also don't know of any way that (electromagnetic?) induction could be used to deliver sound.

In a person with hearing loss, not all frequencies are affected equally. Hearing aids can compensate by

1. Amplifying the affected frequencies (this is by far the most common approach) or

2. Compressing and pitch shifting the sound to a range that the user has better hearing.

shannongreen | 7 years ago | on: Natural catastrophe review 2018

Those were just a list of obstacles, but there was no honest analysis to speak of despite the boast that he can 'do math'; e.g., the nonsense claims about transmission losses and that solar only makes economic sense in the 'ideal' locations.
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