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niccaluim

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Backend engineer. I helped build Twitter (2010-2014). Now I'm helping build Airware (2015-).

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Be Kind 10 years ago

3) Experience is a series of non-fatal mistakes.

Not everything is a financial metaphor.

Yes, by all means, ask for what you're worth. My point is that money is almost never the reason people decide to start looking for work elsewhere. A counter offer by itself is sort of an empty gesture that is bound to be ineffective in the long run as a retention tool.

Counter offers are a little silly. People in our industry are already making far above the median, which makes it extremely unlikely that money is the motivation behind resignation. More often it's a bad manager—there's a saying that people don't quit jobs; they quit bosses—uninteresting work, change in direction, or some other environmental factor. If you're going to make someone a counter-offer you should also be sure to address the real issue that caused them to want to leave in the first place, or they're just going to leave after a short time anyway.

FWIW the Unicode spec describes combining marks as characters in their own right. So if the intent is to reverse characters, page 21 does the job. The resulting sequences will potentially be defective but not ill-formed.

That being said, an FAQ on combining characters points out that Unicode's definition of "character" may not match an end user's, and that it's best to use the word "grapheme" instead for clarity. (And that being said, if the typical end user knows what "grapheme" means, I'll eat my cat.)

So from a practical standpoint, it's best to make sure that any input to rev is in one of the composed normal forms.

(Incidentally, the proper sequence is <base character><combining character>…, not the other way around.)

Contextual menus weren't added until Mac OS 8 or thereabouts. In all prior versions you either dragged to the Trash or used an item in the menubar.

I'd go back even further to find decent Mac UI, to the pre-X OS. Yes, it was a reliability garbage fire, but the Apple of that time really invested in usability. They published a 400-page book[1] for developers that explained the principles behind usability, showed how interface design fits into the development process, and gave specific guidelines for each type of interface element. The guidelines they publish today[2] are a lifeless husk by comparison.

[1] http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf [2] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...

What Time Is It? 10 years ago

I was about to mention that the DDHHMMZ format is used to stamp aviation weather reports and forecasts too, but I see the article beat me to it. :) Anyway here's the current (as of this comment) report from SFO if you're curious about what they look like:

  KSFO 301656Z 29011KT 10SM FEW008 SCT160 19/13 A3002 RMK AO2 SLP165 T01890128
You can see the timestamp in the second element. Once you learn the format it's second nature, really.

I think it would help if people knew why 90 seconds is the goal: because the real danger in a plane crash isn't the crash, it's the post-crash fire. I'm speaking generally of course. For something like Sioux City for example (total loss of hydraulics/controls), the crash is obviously catastrophic. But even in that case, the post-crash fire added to the death toll significantly.

I don't think passengers realize this. No sane airline would ever mention it in a passenger briefing. Can you imagine? "P.S. If we crash, get off right away or you'll be burned alive." Never gonna happen. But it's the truth, and it's why getting the f* off the plane as fast as humanly possible after a crash will save your life—and the lives of all the people who can't get off until you do because they're stuck behind you.

That's the other thing I don't think people realize. Grabbing your bag may take you two seconds, big whoop. But what if two seconds is the difference between life and death for the person thirty people behind you in line out the door? You just killed that person.