291–300 of 362 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This always baffled me. Rocket science is basically F = GMm/d^2 with m changing over time as you burn fuel and also thrust vectoring. Where is the complexity?
It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket. -Wernher von Braun
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In cases like this, the spec already exists though: in form of binding contracts. Lawyers already took that matter into their hand and created that spec. Customers agreed to it. Not translating them into technical requirements early in the process is usually followed with a world of pain.
This isn't a way that software is typically made. The contract will most likely be done and dev are not normally involved and it'll be written after the process of the software being made. I don't think in 16 years I've ever gone through a legal contract and translated that into a technical requirement. It's normally done the other way round that some requirement is translated into legalese. Reading legal documents i…
> "Working software over comprehensive documentation"
Working includes correctly working. As soon as you interface with the legal world this means to actually calculate whatever your business agreed to and not something else just because it's easier, produces some random numbers, and exists without printing to stderr. That's not working software.
This typically can't be worked out by development teams themselves, for the reasons you mentioned. And that's exactly why some kind of spec (in whatever form necessary - probably not a document of hundreds of pages but also not a one sentence user story) is needed to capture that. That's what I mean by translating and I'm not proposing to leave that to some product manager.
Of course this can also be fixed by adapting your contracts (which can be an enormous task) but for that you also need some documentation on whatever the system is doing (just as developers can't read contracts, lawyers can't read code) and will discover that many stakeholders won't agree to that and demand changes.
This is all not to be confused with doing a big design of the technical architecture and all features beforehand.
Many on HN would say that Apple's 30% cut on App Store sales is perhaps unfair. Is Amazon's 75% or 60% unfair, or is it highway robbery? Not to mention what they actually pay instead of the contractual amount.
Apple's 30% fee, in contrast, is compared to traditional software publishing models. Developers are used to being able to publish on Windows or web without paying commission to anyone.
Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.
I worked on a tool at Amazon once that incorrectly calculated royalties, not because Amazon was greedily trying to steal from publishers, but just because of general incompetence (or, lack of sufficient competence maybe). Basically, of the people who wrote the tool, tested the tool, and used the tool, none of them knew exactly how royalties should be calculated and none of them could tell whether or not they were bei…
Too bad these kind of „mistakes“ never happen in favor of the customer… always in favor of Amazon.
Can everyone please just stop using Amazon products already? I'm sick of hearing people complain about them and still say "but they're too convenient" or "I've no other option!". You do. Stop using Amazon and related products. Tell everyone you can to stop using Amazon and related products.
Do you have any audible alternatives to suggest?
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobooks
EDIT: Audible's media integration and volume levels have been sort of broken on Android for a year now so I've been vaguely meaning to switch and this is just a prompt.
Sales are broken down into AL Units, ALOP units, ALC units, Net returns, and Net Sales units. Again, these show the # of units, but not the rate you're being paid for them.
You do receive a Royalty report for each month, but it comes 2 months after the close of that month (my December one is the latest available). It does have dollar values, but it's hard to figure out how they arrived at their numbers. It's generally related to how long the book is (longer = more money), and whether the books were bought on some kind of sale (no visibility).
You kind of just have to trust ACX.
Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.
Language can change and words can take up new meanings.
The scandals that occupy the attention of the west far far overshadow the meager spying that took place during the watergate debacle.
Can everyone please just stop using Amazon products already? I'm sick of hearing people complain about them and still say "but they're too convenient" or "I've no other option!". You do. Stop using Amazon and related products. Tell everyone you can to stop using Amazon and related products.
Point me to an Audible alternative that has remotely as good selection and pricing in the UK, and I'll have a look at it. I don't like the subscription model and wish there was an alternative.
Unfortunately I don't know how libraries work in the UK.