- Are you not involved in doing the estimation?
- If you're looking for junior-ish python devs, I'd expect a good chunk of the better ones to have a python repl open and ready just as a matter of habit.
So for them, yes, it would clearly be faster to run the code than to work through it manually.
What you're doing here is selecting for candidates who are less comfortable with using the tools that they'd be expected to use every day in the role you're hiring for. It's likely to provide a negative signal.
- The article mostly talks about VA's workstations, but I got the impression that their server line was just as important.
As I recall, they were one of the earliest vendors to produce a 1u server, which was a big potential selling point for them (Cobalt's RaQ was first, but initially used a MIPS R5000 variant with a crippled cache so gained a reputation for being a bit "weird").
Unfortunately, the bursting of the telecoms/networking bubble shortly after their IPO (and a year before the dotcom bubble imploded) flooded the market with 4u servers at fire-sale prices. Rack density wasn't nearly so important back then, so VA's neater kit suddenly appeared a whole lot less competitive.
- Most academic and technical writing in the UK still uses the z form, and the OED and Collins dictionaries tend to prefer it, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
In popular writing, the s forms dominate - I've not heard the MS Word explanation before, but the most popular UK-produced word processors and spellcheckers in the 1980s (eg. Locoscript/Locospell, Protext/Prospell, 1st Word) tended to come from companies in the Cambridge area or which were founded by Cambridge grads, so would naturally have used the s spellings by default.
- As a consultant, I do actually quite enjoy proper shitshow engagements - not least because, from a very selfish point of view, it's often possible to make a really obvious positive impact, which is really satisfying.
For a situation as bad as the one described here, though, the scope for an individual engineer - no matter how experienced - to turn things around is going to be limited. The core problem is almost certainly organisational and cultural rather than technical, so it needs to be addressed at the strategic management level.
- Sure, but the main risk they'd be accepting here is that of spending an inordinate amount of time hanging around in an airport terminal waiting for a broken engine to be fixed.
It'd be hard to spin that as being anything like as heroic as the risk of being killed or maimed whilst climbing Everest!
- Support was already there, this is just about switching it on by default.
Previously, you needed to set 'widget.wayland.fractional-scale.enabled' to true in about:config - it's been working well for me in the ESR release (v140) on Debian Trixie for the past few months at least.
- Because otherwise you'd have to do a lot more planning in advance.
For instance, I called in to the patisserie this morning on a whim to treat myself to a pain au chocolat for breakfast. And I think I fancy cheese for dinner, so after work I'll nip out to the deli for some stilton and the greengrocer for walnuts and figs to go with it. I've already got fancy crackers and some good port from my last online delivery so that's everything I need for dinner.
I'm used to being able to pick stuff up according to what I feel like eating on the day. Yeah, it wouldn't be a huge quality of life reduction to have to plan meals in advance but why bother if I don't have to?
Plus, when I'm working from home, it keeps me from being entirely sedentary on a miserable, drizzly winter's day when I might not otherwise have bothered leaving the house, so it has physical & mental health benefits too.
- Sure, but that's a matter of raising capital - which, again, you would think would favour the US over the UK.
To be fair, though, the bulk of Ocado's initial investors were from the retail and finance worlds - and the difference between the US and UK is smaller in those fields than it is for tech.
- That's the thing, though - you'd think that this would result in these "heavyweight" Ocado-style home delivery options being more viable in the US than in London. And yet, they're not.
Sure, you have Doordash-style same-hour options which are largely based on someone picking stuff up from a local store on your behalf (we have lots of those too). But the Ocado/Kroger robotic hive fulfilment centres ought to be more efficient than that whilst offering higher quality by cutting out the labour-intensive warehouse -> store -> shelf -> checkout part of the process.
I think some of it comes from a feeling of "that can't possibly work", perhaps as a hangover from the failure of Webvan during the dotcom boom. Maybe with some "well, I have to use my car for everything else, so I might as well use it to collect groceries too" layered on top.
Which all points to it being a fairly intractable problem - there are a bunch of only tangentially-related issues that need sorting out before it can be become a widespread success.
- I live in inner London. I have multiple grocery shops around me - within 10 minutes' walk I have a fishmonger, two butchers, two delicatessens, three bakeries, three greengrocers, four mid-sized organic/international grocers, six patisseries, a large Lidl, and a very large Sainsbury's supermarket.
I visit those local shops once or twice almost every day to pick up fresh bits and pieces - but I still get bulky or heavy stuff delivered by Ocado (toilet roll, washing powder, everyday wine, that sort of thing).
- GDPR requires opt-in consent, so simply not displaying the cookie notice is functionally equivalent to rejecting permission.
- Network Rail deal with dozens of reports of earthworks failures, landslips, vehicle strikes, and other problems affecting bridges and viaducts every day. They have well-tested procedures in place to investigate them. In some locations, and at some times of day, those procedures involve on-call staff.
Sure, "just follow the process" is a lot less exciting than coming up with an ad-hoc response - but when you're dealing with safety-critical infrastructure at scale, it makes a lot more sense than cowboying it and hoping for the best.
- I think it's reasonable to expect that the staff involved in an emergency callout of this sort will be entitled to Time Off In Lieu, and that that TOIL will cause knock-on effects to staff rostering.
Delaying the inspection until working hours would have caused much greater disruption. Having a track inspection team on hand 24x7 to cover all potential routes would incur much higher staffing costs.
An on-call system backed by TOIL and accepting the risk of dealing with occasional re-rostering seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
- Co-codamol 8/500 (8 mg codeine and 500 mg paracetamol) is still available in the UK without a prescription. As far as I'm aware, though, it's always been OTC (over-the-counter, ie. you have to ask the pharmacist) rather than off the shelf.
The big change recently (mid 2010s) was that the pharmacist now has to verbally warn against driving, whereas previously it was just a prominent warning on the packaging & advice leaflet.
- BGP Anycast will let you dynamically route traffic into multiple front-end load balancers - this is how GSLB is usually done.
Needs an ASN and a decent chunk of PI address space, though, so not exactly something a random startup will ever be likely to play with.
- GNOME added the High-Contrast section to their HIG in 2003 - it prioritised simplicity, and used icons drawn with an "on-the-shelf" (ie. flat) perspective with overhead lighting.
Stylistically, it was a decade ahead of other flat designs - and was much more pleasant to use than the shiny 3D overload of KDE 3 / OSX Aqua / Windows XP.
- They started to be included by default for home PCs in around 1992, with the rise of Multimedia - PCs were advertised on the basis on being able to play 8fps 192x144 video clips from the Encarta or Grolier CD-ROMs that they were inevitably bundled with.
Before that, there really wasn't much else you could do with them other than games. The original Soundblasters were fairly crap - mono 11kHz 8 bit sound - so they weren't exactly hifi. There was better kit available for professional use from the likes of Gravis and Turtle Beach, but the price put them out of reach for most home users.
- When was the issue with the embossed white cover with braille text? December 1994? January 1995?
That was peak Wired: techno hippies in Prague, the new year "scared shitlist" (President Dole... President Gates!), TV watches you, General Magic, Ricochet radio modems (the very first wifi), and it still had much more of a "moody b&w" aesthetic than the dayglo nightmare that was to come.
Turns out that the name's been re-used by some sort of slop code review system. Smells like a feature rather than a product, so I guess they were lucky to be acquired while the market's still frothy.