HN user

shawndumas

66,722 karma

NB: My having submitted or quoted anyone should not be read as an endorsement. I have in the past and will in the future interact with material with which I do not agree.

Staff UX Engineer at Google (all of my opinions are my own and do not represent Google in any capacity).

me [at] shawndumas [dot] com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/shawndumas; my proof: https://keybase.io/shawndumas/sigs/hEp0jqcjwi845hlFoFicqSUMkgq36PwGH4VWIphPxvY ]

Posts7,963
Comments1,105
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neonvagabond.xyz 5mo ago

Who Uses LLMs?

shawndumas
1pts1
9p.io 1y ago

Values of β will give rise to DOM

shawndumas
3pts0
www.talkspace.com 1y ago

AuDHD: Understanding the Comorbidity of ADHD and Autism

shawndumas
2pts0
neilzone.co.uk 2y ago

Reflections on Six Years in the Fediverse

shawndumas
3pts0
futurism.com 2y ago

Elon Musk Forcing Tesla to Train Self-Driving Cars on His Own Driving

shawndumas
3pts3
baas.aas.org 2y ago

"Nik": The Mesoamerican Representation of Zero (2021)

shawndumas
66pts39
damnsmalllinux.org 2y ago

Damn Small Linux 2024

shawndumas
4pts1
arstechnica.com 3y ago

Microsoft patches 6 zero-days under active exploit

shawndumas
9pts2
blog.alexisdumas.org 4y ago

What Is “Anti-Work?” – Luciferian Locutions

shawndumas
2pts1
www.linkedin.com 5y ago

Manager'ing: An Overview for New Managers

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2pts2
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov 5y ago

Dietary Cholesterol and the Lack of Evidence in Cardiovascular Disease

shawndumas
1pts0
hotair.com 5y ago

Facebook spokesman: We’re reducing distribution of the NY Post story on Biden

shawndumas
17pts2
www.sciencedirect.com 5y ago

Chromium crucible steel was first made in Persia

shawndumas
2pts0
www.nytimes.com 6y ago

How to Make a Citizen’s Arrest (2016)

shawndumas
2pts0
www.loopinsight.com 6y ago

Scott Forstall tells story about Steve Jobs, Microsoft, and a dead fish [video]

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235pts135
500ish.com 6y ago

The Great Asshole Fallacy

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167pts165
ideas.lego.com 6y ago

Lego Ideas – Lego HeroQuest

shawndumas
1pts0
inkwellideas.com 6y ago

Solo (Paper) Role Playing Games

shawndumas
2pts0
www.blog.google 6y ago

Things to know about the new Nest Aware

shawndumas
2pts0
edition.cnn.com 6y ago

World's oldest yarn fragment shows Neanderthals were smarter than we thought

shawndumas
1pts0
www.boardgameatlas.com 6y ago

A Look at the History of Shut Up and Sit Down's Impact on Board Game Trends

shawndumas
1pts0
www.politico.com 6y ago

FDA issues emergency authorization of anti-malaria drug for coronavirus care

shawndumas
2pts0
www.nature.com 6y ago

Experimental demonstration of memory-enhanced quantum communication

shawndumas
1pts0
www.nytimes.com 6y ago

An Update to the 1619 Project

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2pts0
www.inverse.com 6y ago

The source of peanut allergies has been found in a surprising place

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8pts3
playingattheworld.blogspot.com 6y ago

Identifying the Dice of the 1970s

shawndumas
1pts0
www.medrxiv.org 6y ago

Novel Coronavirus: Highly Contagious and More Infectious Than Initially Est [pdf]

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25pts5
www.cambridge.org 6y ago

Bioaerosols generated from toilet flushing in rooms of patients with C-Diff

shawndumas
26pts17
pages.stern.nyu.edu 6y ago

Operating and Net Margins by Sector

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3pts1
www.theverge.com 6y ago

An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep – and humans could be next

shawndumas
6pts5

from the dog’s pov; so much noise and so many strangers. the smell of fresh dirt, then cement, water… so much water. the kids were excited and when it was done, oh the days of swimming, fetch, and fun. soon the stress was forgotten. the hot days of cool water and the smell of the food on the grill. but then the kids grew and left. and then the adult male was gone, too. now this is a reminder of how much fetching and roughhousing we did. now she’s gone a lot too. stupid fence; at least i could swim… but no.

i feel like OP put their money where their mouth was. they dug in and did the analysis. they also capitulated and rewrote the lest interesting and easiest part of the post; the prose.

i also am seeing them engage aptly with constructive criticism and adapting the material while handily dispatching the non-constructive critiques. most of which amounts to a colossal missing-of-the-point.

they have made no out of proportion claims, no non-recreate’able analysis, used exactly the correct tools, and, frankly have addressed all of your points

i am not sure you’ll agree with anything i’ve said either so feel free to misunderstand me too

Who Uses LLMs? 6 months ago

from the article, “There's this common argument that only those who are bad at coding, or don't care about the craft of it, use AI to code. I think this is pretty clearly false. Let's look at a list, shall we?”

Yes! When you are deep in the code, your brain operates in a non-linear way. You try a solution, it breaks a test. You patch the test. You realize the variable name is wrong. You fix a typo.

Without Squash, the main branch history becomes a timeline of your mental struggle.

With Squash, the main branch becomes a catalog of features delivered.

No body needs to take a trip on the struggle bus with me...

agreed, the interest rates and the overestimation on the stickiness of the pandemic’s increase in internet usage post-pandemic are the primary other contributing factors that, imo, represent the lion’s share; even allowing that the tax changes are tertiary is a stretch much less as the primary/secondary reason

#include <iostream>

int main() { long long d; std::cout << "Enter a Julian Day Number: "; std::cin >> d;

    if (d < 0) {
        std::cerr << "Error: Invalid Julian Day Number (must be non-negative)." << std::endl;
        return 1; // Indicate an error to the system
    }

    const int DAYS_PER_YEAR = 365;
    const int DAYS_PER_LEAP_YEAR = 366;
    const int DAYS_PER_LEAP_CYCLE = 1461; // 4 years
    const int JULIAN_TO_GREGORIAN_THRESHOLD = 2299161; // Oct 15, 1582

    // Adjust for Julian-to-Gregorian transition
    if (d >= JULIAN_TO_GREGORIAN_THRESHOLD) {
        d += 10; // Account for dropped days
    }

    int a = d + 32044;
    int b = (4 * a + 3) / DAYS_PER_LEAP_CYCLE;
    int c = (4 * a + 3) % DAYS_PER_LEAP_CYCLE;

    int y = (b / 1460) + 1970; 
    d = (c / 4) - 365;

    if (d < 0) {
        y--;
        d += DAYS_PER_YEAR + (y % 4 == 0);
    }

    std::cout << "Gregorian Year: " << y << std::endl;
    std::cout << "Day of Year: " << d + 1 << std::endl; // Add 1 as days are typically 1-indexed

    return 0;
}

Compact Linux distribution tailored for low-spec x86 computers. It packs a lot of applications into a small package. All the applications are chosen for their functionality, small size, and low dependencies.

A peer of mine got invited to become a manager and was concerned about being ready so she scheduled a meeting with me and these are her notes cleaned up.

The first thing I told her was that if she thought she was truly ready--this will be no-big-deal kinda ready--to be a manager that would have been the first indication that she might not be ready.

This was a need reassurance and she is doing wonderfully.

To echo this comment, zamadatix is exactly right; I need someone quoting me about a Google project as an official representative about as much as I need another hole in my head.

As to the greater point, I want to emphasize that as a human being I want to be careful with how I communicate with others because I care about them not feeling judged, dismissed, othered, or otherwise insulted. The charge that the rules keep changing is overblown; it’s always about respecting people even if you don’t understand or enjoy them.

I know that some might still equate that with “cancel culture” but I can’t help that (and tbh that’s a discussion that we should have over beers and not on the internet).

Disclosure: I work at Google too and my opinions are also my own.

We are told internally that when we discuss Google related matters online that we should be cognizant of the what/where/how/why of our communication. Disclosing is—for me—both a reminder for myself and an attempt at a hedge against accidentally representing Google.

L4 to L5 is no cakewalk. you have to be rock solid in the core SWE disciplines and have excellent communication, organization skills, and very good leadership skills too. looking at the stats, promoted as a % of total for L4 to L5 just makes it into the double digits and only a little over a quarter of all SWEs are L5.

the SWE ladder requires/expects for an L3 to get to L4 by makes no such requirement to ever get to L5.

[dead] 7 years ago

I have a lot of sympathy for the intent of this, but—now—using the same phrase that appears all through title eight of federal law to identify an applicable individual in New York City can result in you getting fined.

So try this as a thought experiment; the slaves have no economic benefit, they add nothing to sustaining the only mode of existence the south had thus far, in fact they are only a direct drain on a crop farming ecosystem. Do you still see the south seceding? I mean are you saying that they just loved having slaves no matter what it did to their bottomline?

Slavery was not an end unto itself; it was a means to an end... namely prosperity. Nobody loves oil for oil's sake--you understand that, right?

I feel like there may be a misunderstanding.

I was not saying that oil was an historic reason for the civil war. I was trying to say that—for the sake of argument—oil and slaves are fungible with regard to the impetus for succession.

NB: I am against slavery and racism in all its forms and times. You may believe it ridiculous that I am stating this but one never knows so I wanted to be explicit.

I didn't mean that quote as a contradiction to your statement. Indeed Lincoln had a personal wish that all be free [1]. My point was that slavery was an ancillary issue to both the start of succession and the war to end it. If what powered the south's livelihood was--let's say for the sake of argument--oil and the north was looking to ban oil as reprehensible and to make it a legal obligation to use only renewable energy then the outcome would have been identical.

Yes, Lincoln being personally for renewable and himself anti-oil would certainly have affect voting blocks respectively. But I maintain that it was still only a component of what started and sustained the war; the south saw the north as an existential threat to their mode of existence. By disallowing new regions statehood unless they outlawed oil the north was severely disrupting the previous balance of power.

-------------------------------------------------

[1]: "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free." -- from the same letter

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.” — Abraham Lincoln's Letter to Horace Greeley; August 22, 1862.

a) I am an eng manager at Google b) i. yes, total comp is very dependent on RSUs which are pegged at when they were awarded. but salary too; imagine a newly hired L6 manager that has a 15 year IC at L6. ii. it’s common enough that no one would be surprised (does that help?)

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”

the colleges are guilty of a motte and bailey argument

the motte being the liberal arts/wholistic focused learning (only a philistine would be against that) and the bailey being the economically useful learning salesmanship.

Super timely as I just passed my tech and am studying for my general. It’s been a very long time since I undertook a learning endeavor that was not related to my profession. Really enjoying the process.

I’d encourage anyone interested to take a practice exam for a technician license. I was shocked at how much I picked up over the years via osmosis and got pretty close to passing the first practice test I took.

https://hamexam.org/exam/12-Technician

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

-- C. S. Lewis