Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#381

Post by sidcool » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

vonseel wrote: post #261

dagw wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not (just) about social outlet, it's about growing and learning professionally. Unless your job is to blindly implement features someone else adds to a spec sheet it's always worthwhile to get professional input from people from different fields. Often they'll have unique ideas and insights that comes from having a different background and different experiences.

To add to this, in no circumstance have I ever seen developers spending 100% or even close to 90% of their time actively writing code or thinking about code and working. Heck, for most of the ones I’ve worked with, it’s probably closer to 60% productive time during office hours, with the most productive being somewhere between 80-100% busy. Just because you (the person before you, actually) are a reclusive jerk, does…

Software engineering is only part writing code. A lot of time is thinking, understanding, collaborating and designing. Also a lot of testing.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#382

Post by ericd » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #185

ericd wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why a commercial shredder rather than a $100 crosscut (Amazon Basics makes some pretty good ones)? I actually find the shredder pretty fun to use.

Most inexpensive shredders have a very low duty cycle, so they'll cut out or overheat if you shred continuously for more than a couple of minutes. That's fine if you shred a couple of documents at a time, but it's infuriating if you have a big box of documents that need to be shredded. Heavy-duty shredders capable of continuous use are bulky and heavy, which is a significant issue if you live in a small apartment.

Ah makes sense. I guess I just do it as I need to, since I don’t do the document buffering thing.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#383

Post by throwawayloco » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #186

cma wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much smoother everything would have gone if everyone had been in the same room. Definitely true, but you'd also have to watch the livestream of everyone prepping for and commuting to work for a fair comparison.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

> It's pleasant to have people around

Not always.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#384

Post by woahwwww » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 6:10 AM UTC

daniellerommel wrote: post #350

sidcool wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree. Unless there are genuine reasons to work permanently remote, an face to face interaction is always better. I also worry about the loneliness aspect of remote work. For all its downsides, the Office provides a real life socially active environment. It's pleasant to have people around, and to have water cooler conversations, or share a coffee with an employee from a totally different department. It's f…

There's a hybrid approach we use here at Wolfram where a lot of employees work remotely 99% of the time, but at least 2-3 times a year are in town for our conference, picnic, etc... We also have virtual 'meet-ups' where remote workers can interact with the corporate or regional offices for video games, activities, etc. It's not a perfect solution, but does help keep interactions and idea sharing greater than zero.

Wooooow. U guys at the wolfram cult are soooooooooooo cooooool. I envy you. How it feels to be a cult gang member ?

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#385

Post by microcolonel » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 9:49 AM UTC

I love how he just sprinkles in the Iridium satellite phone and the Comic Sans MS and makes no mention.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#386

Post by anoncake » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #166

I personally wonder what has the modern world come to, that an individual cannot take a leisurely walk without distraction, and thus feels like they must be working on a computer while getting in some basic movement for their body.

Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.

Max replies, "Why don't you ask the Priest?"

So Jack goes up to the Priest and asks, " Father, may I smoke while I pray?"

The Priest replies, "No, my son, you may not! That's utter disrespect to our religion."

Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good Priest told him.

Max says, "I'm not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try."

And so Max goes up to the Priest and asks, "Father, may I pray while I smoke ?"

To which the Priest eagerly replies, "By all means, my son. By all means. You can always pray whenever you want to."

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#387

Post by dguest » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 11:18 AM UTC

biztos wrote: post #95

Here's a guy I think of as very successful, and very smart, and yet he seems extremely tethered to his computers. Meetings while walking, and assuming nobody notices? Questioning the practicality of time spent outside? That's kind of... really... sad.

What's so sad about someone who doesn't really like to spend time outside? Personally I like going outside, but I'm a bit jealous of people who love their work environment that much.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#388

Post by hjk05 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 11:18 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #341

chubot wrote: post #138

Some pretty cool things: - He's a CEO who dogfoods his own software! Not only that, he seems to be one of its most prolific users. That's amazing. Having worked for over a decade at Google, I sometimes wonder if the founders still use the products. Larry Page used to always harp on latency (rightly), and now Google products are slower than ever. - He's a remote CEO, and supports remote working! It sounds like the com…

A former colleague went to the APS spring meeting in Boston in 2011 (I think) and went to visit the Mathematica booth there. To his surprise, he found Stephen Wolfram himself standing there and showing off some cool Mathematica features to a small crowd of physicists. My colleague was (and probably is) a total Mathematica fanboy and evangelist and seeing Wolfram himself talk to users there made a big impression to hi…

> It is kind of slow

It’s not though. You just need to make sure you aren’t computing with exact precision (the default) but use numeric precision and it’s as fast or faster than maple, matlab, R or python. Which are the obvious comparisons.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#389

Post by hjk05 » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #241

sytelus wrote: post #209

A lot of people don’t know absolutely massive amount of functionality that is stuffed in to Mathematica. It does everything from symbolic math to astronomy to economics to deep learning to biology to ... If Wolfram had figured out how to make his software free while still having sustained business, he would undoubtedly be the hero of the tech/nerd/geek world, perhaps shoulder to shoulder with Jobs or Linus or Gates -…

Sage is free. William Stein deserves a huge amount of credit. Some of the huge amount of functionality stuffed into Sage: http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/installation/standard_packag...

Mathematica never hade widespread appeal because it wasn’t even close to being affordable. Sage never had widespread appeal because it wasn’t even close to being Mathematica.

Re: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure

#390

Post by roryokane » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 12:32 PM UTC

kiddico wrote: post #379

Sorry if this is off topic, but does anyone know what model/brand of the satphone pictured in the hardware/daily gear section? Alternatively if anyone here knows that market I'd appreciate some guidance in terms of what brands to look at.

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see a Product Details box where Wolfram lists the specific products he currently uses. According to that, the satphone is an Iridium 9555 (https://www.amazon.com/Iridium-9555-Satellite-Kit-Packaging/...).