chiph

Because if the business grows, then you will need to add servers, and reallocate each existing shard's min/max values. If you left room to grow (divide amongst 2^31 instead of 2^63) you can go a long way before you have to solve that problem. If the business turns out to be wildly successful, you'd probably set up a whole new pool anyway and migrate over (and get a new set of pre-allocated ID ranges).

This might be the perfect case to use an UUIDv7 as a key instead of a number.

Note that there are four different USAA insurance companies. Your military rank and how you got referred for membership will determine which one you join (listed highest/best to lowest):

United Services Automobile Association - Officers and senior NCOs

USAA Casualty Insurance Company - Enlisted (E-1 to E-7) and children of the above

USAA General Indemnity Company - National Guard, Reserve

Garrison Property and Casualty - Extended family of the above

I can't get past the article's paywall to view the 51% rate, but I expect your claim process experience will vary based on which company is insuring you.

I have noticed that the quality of service has declined over the past 5 years or so (which lines up with Peacock's being CEO). It sometimes takes 2 or 3 calls to answer a question with my policies these days, as they now have high turnover in the call center.

Story time: A relative of a former coworker had been laid-off from their bank job during the global financial crisis in 2008, but then picked up a position as a Colorado cannabis dispensary's CFO (their first).

When he arrived for his first day on the job, he discovered that employees were making cash pickups from the dispensaries using their personal automobiles. So they were having an hourly employee driving around in a Honda Civic with $50,000 or more in small unmarked bills the trunk. When they arrived back at the office, they would re-count the bills then store them in a plain steel filing cabinet. Like you'd buy at Office Depot.

The first thing he did was order some burglary-rated safes and got rid of the filing cabinets.

Then he called some of the armored car companies (cash-in-transit firms), and was surprised to find they didn't want his business! It turns out their main customers (banks and credit unions) were VERY concerned over getting his drug cash mixed up with their customer's cash through a mix-up inside the truck. Marijuana sales were (and still are) illegal at the federal level. Even though the cannabis business was legal in Colorado, banks are regulated at the federal level via the Comptroller of the Currency and they couldn't take the chance of their cash being intermingled.

To solve this problem he started a subsidiary armored car business and ordered new vehicles for it (had them painted with green leafs on them..) They would only be used to transport dispensary cash. He even called his counterparts at other dispensaries and sold them on using his new firm for their cash transport woes. This was successful and he now has competition in the transport business.

To continue on his entrepreneurial arc, he set up another subsidiary to manage their real estate transactions. They were having problems acquiring new locations for their dispensaries as real estate sales are also subject to federal scrutiny via the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That's because the bankers didn't realize they're not in the banking business anymore - they're in the IT business (which has a focus on tracking money).

Pascal did/does this, but eventually someone wants a string longer than the size portion can handle. Or wants the number of characters not the number of bytes.

They generally do stock parts. I was able to order a part when I was in the USAF for a near-obsolete machine (which still used core memory!) and it showed up within a week. Still in it's original EMP and environmental-proof packaging from the late 1960's.

Aircraft can get their service life extended a couple of times before they're parked for good (the B-52 is an extreme example). And the supply system eventually runs out. First of replaceable modules, then the boards, and now the chips.

My college job was at a record store that had a Ticketmaster machine. If you didn't want to pay the $2.50 fee[1] (we got only like 15 cents or something) you could go to the venue and buy tickets directly.

But since they became a monopoly that option is unavailable. Their contracts with the venues include that they get their full fee, even when bought in person.

[1] Which paid for the custom ticket printer, the ticket stock, the CRT terminal, and the central computer. We paid for the data line and donated the counter space.

Exports are used for application code which is externally called.

This was the magic moment for me, learning Windows 3.0 programming. The idea that my program is no longer master of it's world, but instead is just something that gets loaded and called by Windows.

Gas heat uses two fans - one to blow air to the rooms (often shared with an A/C system), and another smaller one[1] to supply air to the gas burners and the heat exchanger. As part of the safety system, the computer won't open the gas valve and ignite the burners until it knows there is airflow from the small fan.

When GP spun the fan it fooled the computer into thinking it was running and continuing the ignition sequence. It may be that once the burners got everything hot there was enough airflow from the thermals so they didn't have a buildup of CO. Or were just lucky.

[1] The motor is usually generic but has a proprietary bracket, which was a $1500 lesson last year

Google has code written for their Tensor processors (TPU). Will it run on the NVidia GPUs that xAI has? Because I'm thinking they're "not part of their core architecture" and it will thus be money wasted.

(I thought for sure the title was backwards - it's a strange world)

I've been reading Bob's articles since he published in Infoworld. Could his next column be "Haha I fooled you - it was written by an AI"? I don't believe he would do that. Plus it'd be sophomoric - something that a man in his 70's wouldn't do.

But the systemic risk is plain: when everyone is each other’s investor, supplier, and customer, one stumble can cascade through the whole ring.

We saw this in the early 2000's. AOL got most of it's online ads (revenue) from other dot-com companies. When the crash started, the first thing the dot-com companies did was cut back their ad spend. Which propagated through their ad agencies and into AOL. They were trading over $90 in 1999 and plummeted to $9 in 2002. Quite the fall.

When this bubble ends, someone is going to be holding the bag, and I suspect it'll be OpenAI (and similar firms). Datacenters can use their hardware for other customers (mostly). NVIDIA can go back to making consumer GPUs (which will be painful, but I believe they can weather that shift). But OpenAI is the middleman whose assets are software, employee skills, and now-worthless deals with other companies.

What helps for me was using cool/chilled water, and a swimmer's nose clip to help reduce the smell of the ingredients. If you are adding flavor drops - go with lemon and not anything blue or red in color.

One other piece of advice - stay off the internet afterwards until you're sure the anesthesia has worn off. My doctor related that a previous patient had gone on the Carvana website and bought a car while still under the effects. Oops.

That would be Joel Spolsky (Fog Creek Software) and Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror), mostly. Jeff has gone on to make several large philanthropic gifts. Joel probably has too but I don't have info on them.

I'm surprised that the font used for the "Rollerball" title wasn't mentioned at typesetinthefuture.com

I just installed it on a Raspberry Pi (with an otherwise too-small-for-any-other purpose SSD) for use at home. I wanted something with low power consumption, and I didn't want to have a single point of failure by running it in a container alongside everything else.

The only hiccup was forgetting that when pushing via the SSH connection, it will have paths relative to the home directory of my hg user.

They understand the business processes they’re digitizing.

I feel this has more importance than they think. Outside consultants would not have had this domain knowledge and would have spent months learning it. And then would have had to fix their mistakes because they misunderstood something (billed to the province, naturally)

Thank you for posting this. I have enabled them at home and work. I am really tired of having to look for a window's shadow to resize it. Which is problematic when you run a black desktop.

Having to resize a window by grabbing it just outside the visible border is so wrong.

Perhaps the VBRUNxxx.dll files were distributed with Windows later, but not at first. You had to include them in your install diskettes.

"Runs and Drives" for $4300 is a bargain. All the other features were a bonus.

There will be torque multiplication by the transmission in 1st through 2nd so it won't be as much of a dog as you think. Race car, no. But it'll hold it's own in modern traffic unlike a lot of older cars.

Out of curiosity I looked up the ratios for the mentioned 4L60 transmission: 1st is 3.059:1, 2nd is 1.625:1, 3rd is direct drive at 1.00:1 and 4th is overdrive at 0.696:1. Then you'll have the ratio in your rear differential, whatever that happens to be.

My high school car was a 1975 Impala with the 350 cubic inch small block V8. Because of the Malaise Era emissions laws, it only produced 145hp but still had decent torque at 250ft·lb. It had a huge amount of space under the hood so perhaps this could fit both the motor and battery in there? (F/R weight balance being ignored)

Your point about people comparing this against the LS crate motor is correct IMO. This will be an expensive low-volume kit until (if!) economies of scale kick in. Only bought by people who want something different to show off to their friends at the weekend car shows.

A few months ago I finished building a new media server based on UnRaid. I populated it with WD 26TB drives. At the time they were about $400 (steep, but a decent capacity/dollar buy). Now they are nearly $1000 on Amazon, a 250% increase. I just hope I don't have a drive failure.

With regards to the new Micron SSD - I wonder how they keep it cool? I don't see coolant ports on it so they must strap a heatsink on.

Do these user-configurable laptops come with a mesh bag to hold their parts? Like the camera on the StarFighter, and the modules on a Framework. Would be a cool branding opportunity.

Also a hairy man. I got a small amount done about 20 years ago because I didn't want to end up with "old man ear hair" like my relatives (TMI, sorry).

At the time, a visit was $60. It wasn't painful but I did feel a twinge/shock for each hair. Multiple visits are required because of how follicles work - they grow hair in phases. The technician would treat the ones she saw, but then I had to wait until the next growth phase to return for her to get the next batch. About 10 trips in all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_growth#Growth_cycle

So perhaps you need to present them with a more complete solution. Develop or source a faster laser cutter. And find a small factory in an area with skilled labor (central North Carolina still has people who can cut & sew). And develop a process in the factory to keep all the panels for one item of clothing together from cutting to sewing to shipping (maybe a bucket?).

It'll be a bespoke item at premium prices, no question. How big is the market for this? I don't know, but my feeling is that it's older women.

Not just oversized - undersized also happens. Most cloth is still cut by hand using large electric saws and it's just not that accurate. (caution: loud music)

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jvQHvz4GlPQ

Notice that the panels are marked out with chalk and if the operator doesn't stay square to the table, or isn't diligent in marking up the panels, they won't be consistent with the brand's standard sizing.

I mean - ideally a set of panels of a piece of clothing would be cut by computerized laser so it's accurate to what the buyer needs. But that costs too much and takes too long.

Twenty or so years ago, Levis had a program called Personal Pair (they paired with a firm/product called Intellifit) where you would step into a millimeter wave 3D scanner and get your precise measurements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1IceHjADbQ

Which you could use to get a custom pair of jeans made just for you. This failed partly because the target market turned out to be middle-aged adults (that buy fewer pairs), and not 18-25 year olds like they were hoping. Partly over privacy concerns. Partly the ability of the factory to make jeans to that tight of a tolerance. And partly because it was promoted like it was a novelty ("Consumers love it!"). Mentioned here previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2444319

But with this software - the tolerances are looser, so the clothing becomes more manufacturable. And the measurements can be anonymous - you don't feel like you're stepping into a TSA scanner for everyone to see.

I hope they are able to make relationships with multiple clothing brands so shopping from home will become less hit-or-miss. The benefit to the brands is going to be fewer returns for size issues.

I've never had a bad meal there. My favorites are the pancakes and the chicken-fried steak.

I took a visitor from Finland to a Jim's location in Austin, and they were in awe. "It's just like from the movies!" (because it was - it has been used several times as a filming location).

If you have a classic diner in your town, take your foreign guests there for the experience.

That's something that would have to be addressed at the trial by the defense attorney raising challenges.

If the DNA is present, it's present - barring any procedural mistakes by the forensics technicians (mislabeled sample, dirty lab equipment, didn't follow manufacturers instructions, etc). Or deceit by one or more members of the forensics team to implicate the suspect.

Depends on how they're using it. To find an unknown person and prove they were at a scene - yeah you'll have the 100 person's worth of DNA to sort through and then match against a (presently) incomplete DNA database. But if you already have a suspect and need to place them at the scene, if their DNA is one of the 100 then they have shown that.