Viewing profile — rmilk

I’m going to give a HARD disagree with this type of hand waving for a bug in pow(). First, how was a change allowed in such a fundamental function without significant justification…

Precisely. I have been told I have a knack for reading other people’s code. Turns out it was years of reverse engineering as a hobby in my youth that gave me the skills to sit down…

Exactly true. Was a teenage software hacker, reverse engineered many games mostly because I was a bored teenager with free time and many games I legitimately bought. Mostly it was …

Have recently started seeing “Xitter” as a reference to the site. Possibly because it can be pronounced like a crude slang for a restroom, or just to make sure everyone realizes “T…

This sounds interesting! The main reason I moved to perl instead of sed or AWK is for better control. Shell scripts don’t differentiate between variables and data (anyone else stil…

Apple tried. Recall the huge IP licensing battle from a year or two ago where Apple challenged Qualcomm on base price for royalties and what was considered FRAND given some of the …

Or adding a middle name of “A” because some databases can’t handle that a person might not have a middle name or middle initial.

I use strips from lightdims.com also available from Amazon and other places. Comes in a sheet of precut circles and squares in different sizes so you can stick it over just the LED…

Seconded. My daily walk to Starbucks is my time to meditate on my coding issue of the day, free from distractions of emails, office visitors, and meetings. Many coders I’ve met say…

Managing that risk is what the customer CFOs were supposed to do. Your average retiree or semi wealthy person knows the FDIC limits and manages their portfolio around them. This is…

At the same time, these startups all had a CFO whose job was to manage that financial risk. What if they had a late payment from customers or a supply chain delay, or were simply l…

But isn’t your CFO planning for financial risk? Do you have hazard insurance on your leased offices, what happens if one of your key employees is unavailable, a large customer is l…

Exactly this point. Every single offering brochure on those business checking accounts notes the FDIC limit. If they’re interest checking accounts, they are money market backed and…

I get what you’re saying, but how many well-intentioned startups have imploded and ran out of money the day before payday due to some unlikely risk? Lots (I was in 1-2 of them). Sh…

Exactly. Even a business checking account with interest is backed partly/fully by money market funds. Those ALL come with offering sheets clearly spelling out returns aren’t guaran…

Exactly. I got a letter from my last startup Thu at 11pm telling us they had no cash for payroll tomorrow and we were all laid off. Poor planning along with super-lean cash flow br…

There is a risk question that companies are responsible for that I see is glossed over. No, you shouldn’t have to spread your business accounts to limit them to 250k. But you must …

Exactly. If you’re forced to use SVB because of your founders, you don’t have a recourse on the bank. But there is also a risk question that companies are responsible for that I se…

Also the major players can lobby legislation to add burdens to new players that they already have in place themselves. This locks out new players unless they can invest upfront, wh…

So absolutely true. I work in an “operational facing” engineering group. We are engineering but process data (daily/monthly data processing for factory and customer requests). Havi…

I refer to it as cloverleaf when I’m doing phone support for family and friends. Seems to convey the idea to them pretty clearly.

Agreed. This is why we insist on campaign finance limits and public lists of donors. See new article just today from the UK where someone wanted to donate $300k to a US election, a…

The key point being made is that corporations give both an opaque knowledge of their funding and also a multiplier effect of that funding in a way that a wealthy individual cannot.…

Same thing happened when EMV was first rolled out. There was replay attack fraud, but the cardholder was blamed for it. But once you get enough complaints, it forces insurance and …