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Showing posts from May, 2016

Tell Schrödinger I Survived...

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/via 9gag

Epic Takedown - Spelling Bee Edition

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Conducting Responsible Twitter Discourse

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/via Terry Teachout

Postgres Is Love, Postgres Is Life

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Employees Leave — Deal With (and Benefit From!) It

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Yeah, we’ve all seen the phrase “People Leave Managers, Not Companies”, right? It might have been in   an article , or   a book , but the baseline story is always —  so logically  — some variation of If you are a good manager, then people like working for you, and will stay around, but if you are a bad manager, then people do not like working for you, and will, therefore, leave It’s all so straightforward and logical, right? Well, it turns out that it is also a load of bullshit. Raghuram et al.   (•)studied this exact issue, and discovered that,   employees leave both good and bad bosses at almost the same rates . The reasoning, as it turns out is also just as logical — and as with most things in the real world, not as “simple” a story as we would like it to be. Basically, good managers   level-up   their employees to the point where they are now ripe for the picking by others. Good leadership doesn’t reduce employee turnover precisely   because of   good leadership. Supporti

Everything you wanted to know about Postgres Storage, but were afraid to ask

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Great, great  writeup here Ok, its funny In the previous section, we've said that some column can go beyond the size of a page if their types are TOAST-able. Let's do an overview of TOAST. First, TOAST stands for  The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique , probably the best acronym in the history of Computer Science. but much, much  more importantly, it goes into - just enough - detail about what is actually  going on underneath the hood to be completely worth your while Just go read it...

LaTeX - The Old CSS

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/via Tomas Petricek

Open Plan Offices Are Teh Suck

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There is a special place in hell reserved for whoever came up with Open-Plan Offices.  I have yet to find  anyone  that likes working in them.  Or, for that matter, being involved with them - with the exception of those that decide that this, this  is the silver bullet that is going to " make us as cool as Facebook "

Culture and Artifacts are *different*

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/via Vijay Gill Artifacts are easy to copy. Culture and process that allows you to easily make new artifacts, that’s a lot harder to duplicate. This leads to cargo cults like agile, microservices, containers, open plan offices and saying “but it worked for google” while crying (And no, ping-pong tables are not the answer)

Schrödinger's Lottery Tickets

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Schrödinger's Lottery Tickets - When you buy Lottery Tickets, but don't check them .

Don’t Roll Your Own Consensus

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Rolling Your Own Consensus  is clearly the blockchain version of  Rolling Your Own Crypto. Reasons for doing so that I have seen include, • I have a Better Way To Do Things  (No. You don’t.) • It shouldn’t be hard, therefore it isn’t  (Why? also, Yes, it is.) • What could possibly go wrong?  (Yup) • We’re on AWS, so net-splits aren’t a thing  (Oh yes they are) • Or outages  (Ha. ha. ha. ha. ha) • Who cares what the academics think, this is the real world  (Yikes) • We use redis for co-ordination  (Sigh) • Actually, redis-cluster  (Double sigh) Next time you’re faced with one of these, I recommend running away. Immediately. With vigor. Mind you, if you  can’t  run away, try asking some combination of 1) Is it proven? 2) Really? 3) With Math? 4) And peer-reviewed papers? For extra credit, ask if they redid Paxos or Raft,  without the un-necessary parts. And  then , run away. Immediately. With vigor.

Rolling Your Own Crypto

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(yes it is a bad  idea...) / via @mshelton

Security vs "security"

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/via Bubba Hines

Where to Eat in Helsinki

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Note : Make reservations! Well in advance! DINING Grotesk - Ludvigsgaten 10,  +358.10.470.2100 Where to go when you can't quite make up your mind.  It is a vaguely hipster-y "we have some of everything" kinda place.  The "vaguely hipster-y" part is that everything is around 20-percent more awesome than you would get.  Stick with the meat-y offerings, and stay away from the tacos though :-) Juuri - Högsbergsgaten 27, +358.9.635.732 Worth the reservation.  Actually, be sure to make a reservation.  The focus here is "sapas" (think Scandinavian Tapas), and it is terrific.  Its all modern-Finnish, with surprisingly big flavors.  Just...awesome Kappeli  - Eteläesplanadi 1, +358.10.766.3880 Not a particularly "local" kinda place, but the location is splendid (in a park, buildings on either side, glass-enclosed, simply picturesque.  The food is really really good.  This, along with Juuri and Olo fall in to the "where to g

Where to eat in Tallinn

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Note  : Make reservations.  Well in advance. Depending on the season, "advance" can mean, well, you're not getting in :-) Elevant  - Vene 5, +372.631.3132 Its an Indian restaurant. Ok, "Indian". Ok, the quotes aren't deserved, its really damn good.  Mind you, for those of us living in the US, there is precious little good Indian available, but even given that, this is damn good.  Some of the items are...interesting (Moose vindaloo?), but lord, its all good MEKK  - Suur-Karja 1719, +372.680.6688 Modern Estonian cuisine - a wee bit trendy, a wee bit upscale, and all good.  Let the waiter guide you... Neh  - Lootsi 4, +372.602.2222 Probably the best restaurant in Tallinn, and worth the acclaim.  The ambience can be somewhat "low-light", but the food is impeccable - fresh, excellently sourced, and  very  happy-making.  They're usually not around in the summers though (they move to Muhu), so YMMV. Rataskaevu 16  - Rataskaevu 1

How to get a guy in the 1800s

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That one last commit

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You know, when you said  "Its a simple little patch, won't affect anything, don't worry about it! " Yeah, that one. Commit Strip is all over it

Rube Goldberg Machine - CSS Style

Go here , and check it out! 

How to Become Gluten Intolerant

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