I think that I have clearly explained my position about the kind of extrapolation, everything-is-done-based assumptions which underlie your whole comment. I have also provided a reference to a recent, relevant event which I think that somehow supports my position in this specific scenario. Also as said to the other poster and by trying to not be rude, I don't think that continuing a conversation when our positions are so far away makes much sense. I am not a big fan of infinite loops:)
You think that the around-to-on transition is easy or that most of the required work has already been done. I think that we will not be seeing Moon tourists (even just manned landings) in the next quite a few years. Our positions are clear and this discussion doesn't seem to go anywhere. Let's wait and see who is right.
Complexity is relative and, in this specific case, is mostly conditioned by the amount of experience, the number of tests. There will always be much more control on an Earth-based whatever than under conditions which have been rarely tested, no matter how much simpler those conditions might look like. Extrapolations rarely work with engineering, much less when dealing with something as demanding as space traveling. Thoroughly testing everything is a very important step within the process of creating reliable technology. And here reliability is paramount. Another very important difference is the default safety and access constraints. If something goes wrong on Earth, going there and perhaps fixing it can be done more or less easily. What about the Moon? What would you do if something goes wrong? You have to account for that too.
How the training of the people affects the mission design is beyond me
What do you think that going in a space ship implies? That it is like using a plane? Where most of people don't experience any kind of problem? We are talking about a very relevant propulsion against gravity (provoking a high pressure which the bodies will bear) and tolerating the space conditions (provoking lots of negative effects). Healthy individuals with a bit of training should be ready to go more or less quickly. But what about problematic situations? Difficult landing or problems during the travel making the conditions even tougher. Let me put it even easier: how comfortable, problem-free, suitable-for-everyone do you think that the first plane flights were? What do you think that has been the main reason for having reached the current stage of safety and comfortableness in air travel? Fixing many problems during many years, lots of trial and error. Where do you get all that in a trip to the Moon? Is it impossible to somehow emulate the whole process, to make sure that almost anyone can get there more or less comfortably? Certainly not. I don't see this even as the biggest problem. But all that requires time, effort, investment, exactly the same than many other aspects. This is precisely the reason why I considered your assumption unrealistic.
fly-by and a landing differ only in terms of the number of refueling flights
Even by ignoring the aspect of dealing with untrained people, that statement doesn't seem realistic at all. Just the landing (and the very important taking-off!) part is perhaps the most delicate and complex one, even without having to account for the well-being of a person inside. To that you have to add all the problems associated with flying inside an (pseudo-)atmosphere and other aspects which make the conditions in the Moon or any planet different to the ones in outer space (where these ships have mostly been tested). Just look at what happened in the recent Lunar XPrize to understand how difficult all this can be.
Sending someone around the Moon is relatively difficult, mainly when that person has no special training. But the difficulty associated with making the next logical step (landing on its surface) is orders of magnitude higher. The 2023 deadline seems way too optimistic.
When I firstly saw this, I thought that it was just the typical billionaire's charitable action for the usual reasons (see some of the previous posts to get ideas). After reading "a stark opportunity to be a traitor to his class, to actually think about giving in ways that transform the system atop which he stands", I have changed my mind and started building a big Bezos statute in my own living room. LOL.
Even without knowing too much about Linus or the Kernel development community, I kind of think that I understand the guy and how difficult that working environment might be. If you mostly care about technical aspects and have built from scratch a so complex piece of software on which you take lots of pride, it has to be very difficult to deal with so many different people and interests. Nobody wants to hurt others and I am sure that this wasn't his intention, but you will always try to defend that about what you care. And I am sure that lots of people, attitudes and, more importantly, interests have systematically attempted to damage (perhaps, to improve from their perspective) this development and its original, technical-excellence-focused ideas. He might have made mistakes or chosen non-ideal means to accomplish his goals, but I am quite sure that, in general, I agree with him.
Most of people dream about doing something like Linux: your own work being so relevant for a so big number of people. I am also quite sure that Linus has been quite happy with his life/work. Despite all that, I cannot avoid seeing (from my very-far-away, comfortable place) here, in this apology but also in most of the past events who provoked it, what I think that is the worst nightmare for technically-focused-taking-pride-of-their-work people: being unable to do your work as you know, losing your independence, allowing external interests to arbitrarily condition about what you care the most. And it seems very hard. Well... I guess that having a whole life of success, a big impact in the world, lots of people supporting you, etc. do sound like a quite good compensation. But still I don't think that would want that for me.
Basically, I see all this as the usual evolution in today's society of doing something really good. Eventually and by assuming that you take all the steps to get to the highest point (building a big team, getting funding, being appealing to a big community), your work, your vision, your expectations will change beyond your control. That perspective is very unappealing to me. I am not saying that I wouldn't have loved to have built something like Linux, just that I would have never (at least, as per my current ideas) taken most of required initial steps to reach to such stage. It seems impossible to build something really big by sticking to certain principles/ideas, no matter how beneficial those might be for everyone involved. In the current money-, arbitrariness-, stupidity-driven society and when dealing with something big enough, the only ones who can do as they please for as long as they want, no matter how stupid their expectations might be, seem to be the ones in formal (= for the many, certainly not for everyone) power who rarely got there for their own merits.
Perhaps all the previous ideas aren't more that a self-denying resource helping me to be happy, but they certainly do their job. I certainly don't envy Linus and, even by assuming that he has been quite happy during most of his life, I wouldn't change places with him. I might be (kind of) poor, work a lot for a little recognition and even be still quite far away from accomplishing a big number of my main goals, but I am proud of what I do at each single step and do what I want in the way I want, in the sense of not tolerating external arbitrariness of any kind. For me, this has a very high value. In fact, I cannot think of anything more valuable than that, at least, at the professional level.
Clarification (slightly more serious than the previous one, but still anyone really needing clarifications of this sort should better avoid dealing with me at all): my aforementioned reference to bitch was meant in its casual sense of generic, genderless insult. Similar to son of a bitch or piece of shit or asshole or similar. Although this doesn't seem to be formally accepted by dictionaries (checked Merriam-Webster), I think that this is a normal use and that, at least, the intention of my original post should have been clearly understood by anyone with a minor interest in doing so.
Lastly, I want to highlight that nobody should see this new post as an indication of me giving half a fuc* (some times I put asterisks to somehow hide swear words, but I am not too good at it. LOL) about any kind of concerns from misinterpretation-prone "individuals" or ridiculous conclusions from out-of-context/against-intention isolated words. This is just an excuse to share the curious-to-me finding of "bitch" not being formally recognised as a genderless insult.
I am so moved by such a brave gesture that I have decided to stop referring to monopolies, capital, big companies, etc. as my slaves. From now on, I will always call them my disgusting little bitches. Any disgusting little bitch feeling offended by that comparison should immediately contact me such that I can come up with an even better alternative. LOL.
C is fast, but old and "unsafe" (better: difficult-to-master or non-intuitive or attention-demanding). Many other languages are slower, but newer and "safer". Practically speaking, these are the two extreme points of the performance vs. safeness trade-off. You can choose what aspect is more important for you and choose a language accordingly, but you cannot have everything.
Personally, I think that all these efforts to come up with the new safer version of C should focus on accepting the reality (do you want C-like fast? Use C) rather than aspiring to what doesn't seem possible. What about coming up with ways to ease the communication between C and the given programming language, such that anyone could eventually rely on pure C (or C++) when required? Or even coming up with a friendliness wrapper allowing to rely on whatever programming language to write C (e.g., you create the algorithm in language X and it generates the closer, "safer" version of C).
I have been sporadically using Python for some years already and never really liked it. Note that most of my experience is focused on C-based and strongly-typed programming languages. Recently, I have been spending some time on a Python project and have realised about its (newbie) friendliness.
I still don't quite understand the reason for all the tabs/spaces problems, consider it too slow, don't like the systematic need of relying on external resources and I will certainly continue using other languages before it. But I do understand now why newbies or those performing relatively small developments or those wanting to rely on some of the associated resources (although I don't like being systematically forced to include external dependencies, I do recognise that Python deals with these aspects quite gracefully and that there are many interesting libraries) might prefer Python. It is one of the most intuitive programming languages which I have ever used, at least from what seems a newcomer perspective (e.g., same command performing what are intuitively seen as similar actions).
Thanks a million times for allowing Slashdot readers to think for one moment that they can get close to the greatness, wisdom and humbleness of (a random) AC. Actually, I am so moved by your generous gesture that I have decided to start right away a foundation with the sole purpose of fully understanding and maximising all the wisdom contained in your message. Hopefully, we will have a good enough grasp of the first 5 words by the end of the next year such that we can start applying the underlying invaluable knowledge to all what we do as soon as possible. Thanks again. LOL.
Ridiculous statements delivered by an evidently programming-ignorant person aside, I have an anecdote which might help sensible people without a too deep understanding about all this to get the real implications of ideas on these lines (= absolute impossibility).
Although I have lots of experience in automated data understanding, numerical modelling, even in coming up with relatively complex algorithms taking care of a wide range of situations, my expertise on the image side of things is quite limited. More specifically, I haven't worked too much with the approaches which are more widely used to deal with these problems: neural networks. I mean that I haven't gone too depth into all these methodologies like properly understanding how (the complex versions of) their algorithms work or spending a relevant amount of time on tuning them up/coming up with good models. In fact, I have always tried to avoid this kind of trendy, theoretically-easy-to-use approaches which usually require you to spend a relevant amount of effort to understand everything properly (basically, new names and concepts to perform pretty much the same kind of calculations that many other methodologies can do) and rarely are comprehensive and adaptable enough, not more than older and more solid methodologies together with a good deal of personal experience.
Despite the previous paragraph, I am a very reasonable person always ready to update my assumptions when required. It is quite clear that all the work done in NN during the last years have allowed these systems to deliver a quite good performance under conditions like image analysis. So, I have been spending some time during the last weeks to gain a better insight into this sub-world, from both the algorithm development and parameter tuning sides. One of the first things I observed was that efficiency wasn't precisely a main concern for some of the most popular software packages; this is a relatively common situation nowadays, but here might become particularly problematic by bearing in mind the fact that some of these simulations might grow really complex/slow. Precisely improving efficiency is one of my strongest suits and that's why I decided to focus this first deep contact on that aspect.
It is still work in progress, so I will not talk too much about the specific details. The basic idea is that it is a popular, open-source package dealing with NN. It relies on well-documented theories and its algorithm, although pretty complex, is reasonably well commented too. All this together with my extensive experience on (efficiency) algorithm improvement (not too much on that specific programming language, although this issue isn't too relevant on account of my expertise and the myriad of available resources) seems to indicate that this should be a relatively easy endeavor. Logically, I had done a pre-analysis concluding that a relevant performance improvement was possible by even locating the parts to be modified. But the reality has been way different than expected...
Even after perfectly understanding the underlying theory, the main parts of the algorithms to be modified and having done a relevant amount of debugging/tests, the final solution isn't still quite there. The reason? Too complex, highly-abstracted code and (also complex) external dependencies. Similarly to what happens with many modern pieces of software, it was built to be used under certain conditions and together with certain resources; theoretically scalable and easily modifiable, but practically linked to a set of specific conditions. The whole approach didn't take efficiency into consideration since the start and, consequently, any relevant improvement on this front implies a big effort and essential modifications. Or, in other words, optimising that code by following its defining guidelines might be relatively easy, even automated in some ways; any other change can be very complex. Applying a set of more or less defined instructions is easy/automatisable, but creating those instructions or performing re
HR drone learned nothing, your resume was discarded and no further thought was given the discussion. Pick your battles.
That was precisely my battle. You keep assuming that my goal was getting that job (being hired as an external contractor actually) no matter what, but this wasn't the case. That job moved from very attractive to completely irrelevant after the first bit of arbitrariness appeared. If that company wants to ever work with me, they would have to deliver what I consider appealing (good working conditions + no arbitrariness). Perhaps they don't care at all about what I think, but that is irrelevant from my perspective and for the foreseeable future.
I have actually been seeing a noticeable evolution from pure arbitrariness to more sensible, technical-oriented hiring practices. Objectivity, reliability, fairness, what is good for the most, arbitrariness-unfriendliness, basically what I expect do tend to be the long-term winners in any context. Isolation or lack of alternatives might allow stupidity to go on for a bit longer, but we are talking about internet/the whole world and one of the most relevant and profitable activities now and in the future! Stupid expectations will certainly get extincted quite quickly. Even if this wasn't the case, I wouldn't comply with ridiculous impositions anyway as far as that wouldn't allow me to accomplish my goals.
I am not 100% sure that you got my point or I got yours, so I will better clarify why I thought that you were joking (lots of past easily avoidable misinterpretations to learn from).
Custom Solvers (2.0 now) is just a commercial name where the word "solver" is expected to be understood as the generic name associated with the verb "solve": the person who solves. So, my intention when coming up with that name some years ago was to highlight the solving + custom-made essence of my software development business (the plural doesn't make too much sense now though, as far as there is just 1 person here). If you type "custom solvers" in a search engine, you might get some results where "solver" is used in a very specific sense (mathematical/calculation engine) which isn't exactly related to my business. In any case, I do enjoy pretty much calculation-, math-, data-intensive developments and working on somehow complex algorithms.
TL;DR: the "solvers" in my nickname is expected to be understood in its generic sense.
It was about a communication problem! There was a one hour difference between what she said and she meant. There are many different ways to transmit the right idea clearly, but she chose a tremendously confusing one (actually, completely wrong; if I had followed her original instructions, I would be waiting for her 1 hour after the planned time). I was very nice and informative, by even trying to help her to avoid these problems in the future. Her reaction to all that was very bad, even disrespectful. Additionally, I don't believe in blindly fearing absolute authorities. If you want to know more about me, about my personality, you shouldn't expect me to be afraid of saying something and to deliver the exact behaviour you want. You would be hiring liars, manipulators and cowards, whose real personalities you wouldn't even know. You would be doing a terrible job.
Your post makes sense (at least, up to "why would I need a custom solver...") and does indicate that you are a reasonable person of the best kind (i.e., very practical). You clearly want to help and I do appreciate that. In fact, something on these lines might even be my answer to a person showing a behaviour like mine: accept your surrounding reality, know your enemy, don't blow against the wind, etc. If this was a competition or a game, my strategy would have been evidently bad. Most of people, perhaps you too, see this as a competition/game, I mean the life as a whole. You might not even fully agree with that definition, not to its full extent and always, but you do eventually comply with what this implies. All this makes perfect sense, but as said to others this is not what I am looking for. I am much more concerned about the way in which I accomplish the given goals than about the goals themselves.
why would I need a custom solver? LP solvers that are
Jokes aside, I guess that you understand the utility of custom-made whatever, quality-driven if you wish. In any case, this is actually very descriptive of the aforementioned (our?) differences: if you want something generic, cheap, easy, manageable, interchangeable, docile, etc., you wouldn't be looking for me. But why do you think that you could force me to deliver what you (think that you) want? Live and let live! Don't behave like me, don't hire me, take me as a what-not-to-do sample if you wish, include me in your signature (funny one, by the way), but why do you expect me to be like you?
Since the start of this post, I didn't expect anyone to behave as I do, to even agree with me. I have been relying on generic ideas since the very first moment: objectivity, honesty, fairness, hypocrisy, acting against what you are supposed to do, seeing inexistent meanings. Always by assuming that everyone wants that. My reaction to "we really know you and we don't like you" would have been "OK. Bye.". The problem here is that they were implying that their views were similar to mine and, suddenly, they changed completely for presumably no good reason (= person interpreting what wasn't there). I never criticised a different approach, just highlighted what I think that was an error, an unintended consequence. Exactly the same that I did when the chat was scheduled at a wrong time (nothing to do with grammar, but with world time differences and with you telling me at 10:00 and really meaning at 9:00). Exactly the same that I will always do in any context, by being reasonably respectful and understanding with others. Nothing of this makes me a TV-show character or my behaviour wrong. Actually, those recommending you to be afraid of arbitrariness, to tolerate/support adult versions of what makes sense among teenagers do seem closer to what TV character would do. No offense.
That is generally perceived by other people as condescending.
I cannot argue with that, if you think in that way or know people that think in that way. All what I can say is that if I made a mistake and someone would politely (and rightfully) point it out, my reaction would always be being sorry, thankful and even feeling a bit bad about it. I would never do anything on the lines of attacking (assuming condencendence when nothing of this sort is even remotely applicable to that situation or to the personality of that person does seem like an attack to me) others out of the frustration provoked by my own mistake. Much less make decisions affecting other people in a meaningful way. And much, much less, doing so by breaking what should be overall valid principles like professionalism. I can also say that I know quite a few people thinking like me, that I don't like these other individuals (feeling more or less randomly attacked, offended and immediately getting back to you, usually in a quite unfair and coward fashion) and that I don't feel like allowing their (arbitrary) decisions to have a relevant effect on me. Anyone interacting with me at any point and in any way feeling even slightly offended for something I said/did is more than welcome to ask me for clarifications. If you prefer to unilaterally (mis)interpret whatever and affect me in any way, you should better be ready to take responsibility for your actions in case you were wrong.
So who exactly lost out by you not getting the job? Well, for one, you did! And now the question becomes: if you find yourself in a similar situation again will you respond in the same way?
I didn't lose anything, even won a marginal amount of knowledge. I cannot say that the company lose something either, but I would have certainly been very good at my work (by assuming that the advertised conditions were actually there). In the exact moment when the whole process moved from very clear, descriptive, reasonable into obscure and probably subjective/prejudicious, my interest in that company/job disappeared completely. I am currently doing a very relevant effort precisely to avoid certain kind of behaviours and there is only one good enough prize for me. I am not asking for too much, but am not willing to bargain on the conditions either: fairness, honesty, (technical) objectivity all the way down or nothing.
I'm sincerely trying to help here
It does certainly seem that this is your intention. Unfortunately, you aren't fully understanding my goal and, for that reason, your attempt to help, although appreciated, isn't exactly relevant.
Sorry for my previous comment, I wrote it without properly reading yours. So, you are saying that the whole point here is the length of the input string? This bug was provoked because of not having properly sanitised the inputs even at their most basic level, by checking their lengths? That makes a bit more sense than checking all the possible combinations of characters, but it is still a quite relevant work without further information (i.e., doing it with every existing piece of software).
OK. But the number of potential combinations is still tremendously big and further information seems required. Just knowing that the given piece of software is probably buggy (= very valuable information) doesn't even seem enough. An automated approach trying every possible combination of characters up to 28 As would take really long.
As said to others, I took this whole situation as an excuse to further confirm that I was really dealing with the right people. I am a very cold person who never feel unhealthy urges as the ones that your comment, others above and most of generic prejudices/fears/insecurities seem to indicate. I do despise hypocrisy, unfairness, arbitrariness, dishonesty, etc. and do tend to react quite aggressively in situations involving those. But even those reactions are pretty practical outputs: active fight against what I think that deserves to be fought (for my own good and the good of the most). I even see that as a resource to save everyone's time and avoid individuals who I will never take seriously to think otherwise.
As said to other poster, I wouldn't want to work with you either. You seem to promote arbitrariness, to not want to properly understand others and to give lots of importance to what doesn't matter.
You come off as arrogant.
?! So, you are saying that you scheduling a chat at 9:00, expecting me to be at 8:00, and me politely pointing out the error is being arrogant? I should have been waiting at both times (this is actually what I was planning to do anyway, because she didn't correct/confirm her error) without saying a word, because I should be afraid of people not reacting reasonably to their own mistakes (feeling bad about them, correcting them, thanking to those pointing them out) and calling me things like arrogant? Wouldn't having that behaviour actually represent arrogance in its worst form? Assuming that people are too stupid to act reasonably and accept/correct their errors and just act paternalistically? In fact, isn't that what this mansplaining and other "feminist" ideas actually represent? Giving a special justification to the bad things that happen to them because of assuming that they need some additional help, that they cannot deal with whatever by themselves at the same level than others? No. I am not arrogant, pretty much the opposite: tremendously reasonable, always ready to learn/understand. You do seem quite arrogant though.
I would have never dared to do such a thing. She made a communication mistake and I asked for clarifications. Honestly, I took advantage from the situation to further confirm whether we both (meaning me and the company) were really on the same page. Even in case of having actually be something related to her job, I wouldn't have seen the problem. I will always welcome any sensible correction to whatever mistake I could do. My usual reaction to a mistake is feeling bad about it, apologising for the consequences, trying to improve in the future and, if someone pointed it out to me, being thankful for the help. I cannot understand (even respect) any other behaviour.
If you have some self-esteem issues or, because of whatever reason, your work conditions are intrinsically hard, you should never expect others to bear the consequences of all that. You can expect others to be respectful, polite, reasonable, even a bit over-understanding on account of the specific conditions. But you cannot expect others to bear the consequences of your own decisions, personal circumstances. You can also not expect anyone to be tolerant with whatever set of prejudices you use to make your life easier. If you have met lots of people doing certain things for certain reasons, it isn't my problem. You cannot arbitrarily see non-existent meanings in my actions on account of generic nonsense like my gender, race, ethnicity, etc. Or you could, but there is a name for that. Quite a few names, actually. And also the certainty that I don't want to have anything to do with you and with what you represent (+ expect to be responsible for whatever prejudice you have caused me).
'hey I'm not sure what you meant giving the time in that way since I'm from a place that does time a little differently. Do you mean x or y?'
As said to other posters before, why are you assuming that that wasn't my behaviour? Why are you assuming that I wasn't polite, nice and over understanding. Where can you find in my post the reason why you all are blindly defending someone, who you don't know and who did something which you don't seem to understand either, against another person, who you don't seem to know either?
That would have alerted her to the problem, given you your answer, and given a way for her to improve herself going forward while not coming off as condescending
Where have I even insinuated that I was condescending? That doesn't even define my behaviour in virtually any situation, other than in the (mis)interpretations of you-think-that-you-are-better-than-me-because-you-have-a-fancy-diploma kind of people. Have you read that email? My attitude was tremendously polite and over-understanding. I shared lots of information with her, even some tips to avoid these problems in the future. Her reaction? Not even a thanks and reinforcing her mistake via including it in the label of our chat. Why do you think that she was learning-prone and I wasn't teaching-prone? Why do you think that I did anything even slightly bad for my interests when dealing with a company which, so far, was showing an excellent-in-my-opinion behaviour? The answer to all these questions seems to be that you have a similar insecure, prejudice-prone behaviour that that person (and/or that company and/or whoever made the final decision): you see hidden meanings which only exist in your imagination, in other people you have met at some point and perhaps also in your own personality. But nothing of that existed in the reality (= my polite reply + my interest in finding an objectivity-, technical-correction- prone, fair, reasonable company).
Slashdot Mirror
I think that I have clearly explained my position about the kind of extrapolation, everything-is-done-based assumptions which underlie your whole comment. I have also provided a reference to a recent, relevant event which I think that somehow supports my position in this specific scenario. Also as said to the other poster and by trying to not be rude, I don't think that continuing a conversation when our positions are so far away makes much sense. I am not a big fan of infinite loops :)
You think that the around-to-on transition is easy or that most of the required work has already been done. I think that we will not be seeing Moon tourists (even just manned landings) in the next quite a few years. Our positions are clear and this discussion doesn't seem to go anywhere. Let's wait and see who is right.
powered vertical Earth landing
Complexity is relative and, in this specific case, is mostly conditioned by the amount of experience, the number of tests. There will always be much more control on an Earth-based whatever than under conditions which have been rarely tested, no matter how much simpler those conditions might look like. Extrapolations rarely work with engineering, much less when dealing with something as demanding as space traveling. Thoroughly testing everything is a very important step within the process of creating reliable technology. And here reliability is paramount. Another very important difference is the default safety and access constraints. If something goes wrong on Earth, going there and perhaps fixing it can be done more or less easily. What about the Moon? What would you do if something goes wrong? You have to account for that too.
How the training of the people affects the mission design is beyond me
What do you think that going in a space ship implies? That it is like using a plane? Where most of people don't experience any kind of problem? We are talking about a very relevant propulsion against gravity (provoking a high pressure which the bodies will bear) and tolerating the space conditions (provoking lots of negative effects). Healthy individuals with a bit of training should be ready to go more or less quickly. But what about problematic situations? Difficult landing or problems during the travel making the conditions even tougher. Let me put it even easier: how comfortable, problem-free, suitable-for-everyone do you think that the first plane flights were? What do you think that has been the main reason for having reached the current stage of safety and comfortableness in air travel? Fixing many problems during many years, lots of trial and error. Where do you get all that in a trip to the Moon? Is it impossible to somehow emulate the whole process, to make sure that almost anyone can get there more or less comfortably? Certainly not. I don't see this even as the biggest problem. But all that requires time, effort, investment, exactly the same than many other aspects. This is precisely the reason why I considered your assumption unrealistic.
fly-by and a landing differ only in terms of the number of refueling flights
Even by ignoring the aspect of dealing with untrained people, that statement doesn't seem realistic at all. Just the landing (and the very important taking-off!) part is perhaps the most delicate and complex one, even without having to account for the well-being of a person inside. To that you have to add all the problems associated with flying inside an (pseudo-)atmosphere and other aspects which make the conditions in the Moon or any planet different to the ones in outer space (where these ships have mostly been tested). Just look at what happened in the recent Lunar XPrize to understand how difficult all this can be.
Sending someone around the Moon is relatively difficult, mainly when that person has no special training. But the difficulty associated with making the next logical step (landing on its surface) is orders of magnitude higher. The 2023 deadline seems way too optimistic.
When I firstly saw this, I thought that it was just the typical billionaire's charitable action for the usual reasons (see some of the previous posts to get ideas). After reading "a stark opportunity to be a traitor to his class, to actually think about giving in ways that transform the system atop which he stands", I have changed my mind and started building a big Bezos statute in my own living room. LOL.
Even without knowing too much about Linus or the Kernel development community, I kind of think that I understand the guy and how difficult that working environment might be. If you mostly care about technical aspects and have built from scratch a so complex piece of software on which you take lots of pride, it has to be very difficult to deal with so many different people and interests. Nobody wants to hurt others and I am sure that this wasn't his intention, but you will always try to defend that about what you care. And I am sure that lots of people, attitudes and, more importantly, interests have systematically attempted to damage (perhaps, to improve from their perspective) this development and its original, technical-excellence-focused ideas. He might have made mistakes or chosen non-ideal means to accomplish his goals, but I am quite sure that, in general, I agree with him.
Most of people dream about doing something like Linux: your own work being so relevant for a so big number of people. I am also quite sure that Linus has been quite happy with his life/work. Despite all that, I cannot avoid seeing (from my very-far-away, comfortable place) here, in this apology but also in most of the past events who provoked it, what I think that is the worst nightmare for technically-focused-taking-pride-of-their-work people: being unable to do your work as you know, losing your independence, allowing external interests to arbitrarily condition about what you care the most. And it seems very hard. Well... I guess that having a whole life of success, a big impact in the world, lots of people supporting you, etc. do sound like a quite good compensation. But still I don't think that would want that for me.
Basically, I see all this as the usual evolution in today's society of doing something really good. Eventually and by assuming that you take all the steps to get to the highest point (building a big team, getting funding, being appealing to a big community), your work, your vision, your expectations will change beyond your control. That perspective is very unappealing to me. I am not saying that I wouldn't have loved to have built something like Linux, just that I would have never (at least, as per my current ideas) taken most of required initial steps to reach to such stage. It seems impossible to build something really big by sticking to certain principles/ideas, no matter how beneficial those might be for everyone involved. In the current money-, arbitrariness-, stupidity-driven society and when dealing with something big enough, the only ones who can do as they please for as long as they want, no matter how stupid their expectations might be, seem to be the ones in formal (= for the many, certainly not for everyone) power who rarely got there for their own merits.
Perhaps all the previous ideas aren't more that a self-denying resource helping me to be happy, but they certainly do their job. I certainly don't envy Linus and, even by assuming that he has been quite happy during most of his life, I wouldn't change places with him. I might be (kind of) poor, work a lot for a little recognition and even be still quite far away from accomplishing a big number of my main goals, but I am proud of what I do at each single step and do what I want in the way I want, in the sense of not tolerating external arbitrariness of any kind. For me, this has a very high value. In fact, I cannot think of anything more valuable than that, at least, at the professional level.
Clarification (slightly more serious than the previous one, but still anyone really needing clarifications of this sort should better avoid dealing with me at all): my aforementioned reference to bitch was meant in its casual sense of generic, genderless insult. Similar to son of a bitch or piece of shit or asshole or similar. Although this doesn't seem to be formally accepted by dictionaries (checked Merriam-Webster), I think that this is a normal use and that, at least, the intention of my original post should have been clearly understood by anyone with a minor interest in doing so.
Lastly, I want to highlight that nobody should see this new post as an indication of me giving half a fuc* (some times I put asterisks to somehow hide swear words, but I am not too good at it. LOL) about any kind of concerns from misinterpretation-prone "individuals" or ridiculous conclusions from out-of-context/against-intention isolated words. This is just an excuse to share the curious-to-me finding of "bitch" not being formally recognised as a genderless insult.
I am so moved by such a brave gesture that I have decided to stop referring to monopolies, capital, big companies, etc. as my slaves. From now on, I will always call them my disgusting little bitches. Any disgusting little bitch feeling offended by that comparison should immediately contact me such that I can come up with an even better alternative. LOL.
C is fast, but old and "unsafe" (better: difficult-to-master or non-intuitive or attention-demanding). Many other languages are slower, but newer and "safer". Practically speaking, these are the two extreme points of the performance vs. safeness trade-off. You can choose what aspect is more important for you and choose a language accordingly, but you cannot have everything.
Personally, I think that all these efforts to come up with the new safer version of C should focus on accepting the reality (do you want C-like fast? Use C) rather than aspiring to what doesn't seem possible. What about coming up with ways to ease the communication between C and the given programming language, such that anyone could eventually rely on pure C (or C++) when required? Or even coming up with a friendliness wrapper allowing to rely on whatever programming language to write C (e.g., you create the algorithm in language X and it generates the closer, "safer" version of C).
I have been sporadically using Python for some years already and never really liked it. Note that most of my experience is focused on C-based and strongly-typed programming languages. Recently, I have been spending some time on a Python project and have realised about its (newbie) friendliness.
I still don't quite understand the reason for all the tabs/spaces problems, consider it too slow, don't like the systematic need of relying on external resources and I will certainly continue using other languages before it. But I do understand now why newbies or those performing relatively small developments or those wanting to rely on some of the associated resources (although I don't like being systematically forced to include external dependencies, I do recognise that Python deals with these aspects quite gracefully and that there are many interesting libraries) might prefer Python. It is one of the most intuitive programming languages which I have ever used, at least from what seems a newcomer perspective (e.g., same command performing what are intuitively seen as similar actions).
Thanks a million times for allowing Slashdot readers to think for one moment that they can get close to the greatness, wisdom and humbleness of (a random) AC. Actually, I am so moved by your generous gesture that I have decided to start right away a foundation with the sole purpose of fully understanding and maximising all the wisdom contained in your message. Hopefully, we will have a good enough grasp of the first 5 words by the end of the next year such that we can start applying the underlying invaluable knowledge to all what we do as soon as possible. Thanks again. LOL.
Ridiculous statements delivered by an evidently programming-ignorant person aside, I have an anecdote which might help sensible people without a too deep understanding about all this to get the real implications of ideas on these lines (= absolute impossibility).
Although I have lots of experience in automated data understanding, numerical modelling, even in coming up with relatively complex algorithms taking care of a wide range of situations, my expertise on the image side of things is quite limited. More specifically, I haven't worked too much with the approaches which are more widely used to deal with these problems: neural networks. I mean that I haven't gone too depth into all these methodologies like properly understanding how (the complex versions of) their algorithms work or spending a relevant amount of time on tuning them up/coming up with good models. In fact, I have always tried to avoid this kind of trendy, theoretically-easy-to-use approaches which usually require you to spend a relevant amount of effort to understand everything properly (basically, new names and concepts to perform pretty much the same kind of calculations that many other methodologies can do) and rarely are comprehensive and adaptable enough, not more than older and more solid methodologies together with a good deal of personal experience.
Despite the previous paragraph, I am a very reasonable person always ready to update my assumptions when required. It is quite clear that all the work done in NN during the last years have allowed these systems to deliver a quite good performance under conditions like image analysis. So, I have been spending some time during the last weeks to gain a better insight into this sub-world, from both the algorithm development and parameter tuning sides. One of the first things I observed was that efficiency wasn't precisely a main concern for some of the most popular software packages; this is a relatively common situation nowadays, but here might become particularly problematic by bearing in mind the fact that some of these simulations might grow really complex/slow. Precisely improving efficiency is one of my strongest suits and that's why I decided to focus this first deep contact on that aspect.
It is still work in progress, so I will not talk too much about the specific details. The basic idea is that it is a popular, open-source package dealing with NN. It relies on well-documented theories and its algorithm, although pretty complex, is reasonably well commented too. All this together with my extensive experience on (efficiency) algorithm improvement (not too much on that specific programming language, although this issue isn't too relevant on account of my expertise and the myriad of available resources) seems to indicate that this should be a relatively easy endeavor. Logically, I had done a pre-analysis concluding that a relevant performance improvement was possible by even locating the parts to be modified. But the reality has been way different than expected...
Even after perfectly understanding the underlying theory, the main parts of the algorithms to be modified and having done a relevant amount of debugging/tests, the final solution isn't still quite there. The reason? Too complex, highly-abstracted code and (also complex) external dependencies. Similarly to what happens with many modern pieces of software, it was built to be used under certain conditions and together with certain resources; theoretically scalable and easily modifiable, but practically linked to a set of specific conditions. The whole approach didn't take efficiency into consideration since the start and, consequently, any relevant improvement on this front implies a big effort and essential modifications. Or, in other words, optimising that code by following its defining guidelines might be relatively easy, even automated in some ways; any other change can be very complex. Applying a set of more or less defined instructions is easy/automatisable, but creating those instructions or performing re
HR drone learned nothing, your resume was discarded and no further thought was given the discussion. Pick your battles.
That was precisely my battle. You keep assuming that my goal was getting that job (being hired as an external contractor actually) no matter what, but this wasn't the case. That job moved from very attractive to completely irrelevant after the first bit of arbitrariness appeared. If that company wants to ever work with me, they would have to deliver what I consider appealing (good working conditions + no arbitrariness). Perhaps they don't care at all about what I think, but that is irrelevant from my perspective and for the foreseeable future.
I have actually been seeing a noticeable evolution from pure arbitrariness to more sensible, technical-oriented hiring practices. Objectivity, reliability, fairness, what is good for the most, arbitrariness-unfriendliness, basically what I expect do tend to be the long-term winners in any context. Isolation or lack of alternatives might allow stupidity to go on for a bit longer, but we are talking about internet/the whole world and one of the most relevant and profitable activities now and in the future! Stupid expectations will certainly get extincted quite quickly. Even if this wasn't the case, I wouldn't comply with ridiculous impositions anyway as far as that wouldn't allow me to accomplish my goals.
Jokes aside
I am not 100% sure that you got my point or I got yours, so I will better clarify why I thought that you were joking (lots of past easily avoidable misinterpretations to learn from).
Custom Solvers (2.0 now) is just a commercial name where the word "solver" is expected to be understood as the generic name associated with the verb "solve": the person who solves. So, my intention when coming up with that name some years ago was to highlight the solving + custom-made essence of my software development business (the plural doesn't make too much sense now though, as far as there is just 1 person here). If you type "custom solvers" in a search engine, you might get some results where "solver" is used in a very specific sense (mathematical/calculation engine) which isn't exactly related to my business. In any case, I do enjoy pretty much calculation-, math-, data-intensive developments and working on somehow complex algorithms.
TL;DR: the "solvers" in my nickname is expected to be understood in its generic sense.
It was about a communication problem! There was a one hour difference between what she said and she meant. There are many different ways to transmit the right idea clearly, but she chose a tremendously confusing one (actually, completely wrong; if I had followed her original instructions, I would be waiting for her 1 hour after the planned time). I was very nice and informative, by even trying to help her to avoid these problems in the future. Her reaction to all that was very bad, even disrespectful. Additionally, I don't believe in blindly fearing absolute authorities. If you want to know more about me, about my personality, you shouldn't expect me to be afraid of saying something and to deliver the exact behaviour you want. You would be hiring liars, manipulators and cowards, whose real personalities you wouldn't even know. You would be doing a terrible job.
why would I need a custom solver? LP solvers that are
Jokes aside, I guess that you understand the utility of custom-made whatever, quality-driven if you wish. In any case, this is actually very descriptive of the aforementioned (our?) differences: if you want something generic, cheap, easy, manageable, interchangeable, docile, etc., you wouldn't be looking for me. But why do you think that you could force me to deliver what you (think that you) want? Live and let live! Don't behave like me, don't hire me, take me as a what-not-to-do sample if you wish, include me in your signature (funny one, by the way), but why do you expect me to be like you?
Since the start of this post, I didn't expect anyone to behave as I do, to even agree with me. I have been relying on generic ideas since the very first moment: objectivity, honesty, fairness, hypocrisy, acting against what you are supposed to do, seeing inexistent meanings. Always by assuming that everyone wants that. My reaction to "we really know you and we don't like you" would have been "OK. Bye.". The problem here is that they were implying that their views were similar to mine and, suddenly, they changed completely for presumably no good reason (= person interpreting what wasn't there). I never criticised a different approach, just highlighted what I think that was an error, an unintended consequence. Exactly the same that I did when the chat was scheduled at a wrong time (nothing to do with grammar, but with world time differences and with you telling me at 10:00 and really meaning at 9:00). Exactly the same that I will always do in any context, by being reasonably respectful and understanding with others. Nothing of this makes me a TV-show character or my behaviour wrong. Actually, those recommending you to be afraid of arbitrariness, to tolerate/support adult versions of what makes sense among teenagers do seem closer to what TV character would do. No offense.
That is generally perceived by other people as condescending.
I cannot argue with that, if you think in that way or know people that think in that way. All what I can say is that if I made a mistake and someone would politely (and rightfully) point it out, my reaction would always be being sorry, thankful and even feeling a bit bad about it. I would never do anything on the lines of attacking (assuming condencendence when nothing of this sort is even remotely applicable to that situation or to the personality of that person does seem like an attack to me) others out of the frustration provoked by my own mistake. Much less make decisions affecting other people in a meaningful way. And much, much less, doing so by breaking what should be overall valid principles like professionalism. I can also say that I know quite a few people thinking like me, that I don't like these other individuals (feeling more or less randomly attacked, offended and immediately getting back to you, usually in a quite unfair and coward fashion) and that I don't feel like allowing their (arbitrary) decisions to have a relevant effect on me. Anyone interacting with me at any point and in any way feeling even slightly offended for something I said/did is more than welcome to ask me for clarifications. If you prefer to unilaterally (mis)interpret whatever and affect me in any way, you should better be ready to take responsibility for your actions in case you were wrong.
So who exactly lost out by you not getting the job? Well, for one, you did! And now the question becomes: if you find yourself in a similar situation again will you respond in the same way?
I didn't lose anything, even won a marginal amount of knowledge. I cannot say that the company lose something either, but I would have certainly been very good at my work (by assuming that the advertised conditions were actually there). In the exact moment when the whole process moved from very clear, descriptive, reasonable into obscure and probably subjective/prejudicious, my interest in that company/job disappeared completely. I am currently doing a very relevant effort precisely to avoid certain kind of behaviours and there is only one good enough prize for me. I am not asking for too much, but am not willing to bargain on the conditions either: fairness, honesty, (technical) objectivity all the way down or nothing.
I'm sincerely trying to help here
It does certainly seem that this is your intention. Unfortunately, you aren't fully understanding my goal and, for that reason, your attempt to help, although appreciated, isn't exactly relevant.
Sorry for my previous comment, I wrote it without properly reading yours. So, you are saying that the whole point here is the length of the input string? This bug was provoked because of not having properly sanitised the inputs even at their most basic level, by checking their lengths? That makes a bit more sense than checking all the possible combinations of characters, but it is still a quite relevant work without further information (i.e., doing it with every existing piece of software).
OK. But the number of potential combinations is still tremendously big and further information seems required. Just knowing that the given piece of software is probably buggy (= very valuable information) doesn't even seem enough. An automated approach trying every possible combination of characters up to 28 As would take really long.
sounds to me like she was right
It seems to me that this isn't your first (AC) reply in the current sub-thread. Thanks for (re-)sharing your (irrelevant-to-me) views.
As said to others, I took this whole situation as an excuse to further confirm that I was really dealing with the right people. I am a very cold person who never feel unhealthy urges as the ones that your comment, others above and most of generic prejudices/fears/insecurities seem to indicate. I do despise hypocrisy, unfairness, arbitrariness, dishonesty, etc. and do tend to react quite aggressively in situations involving those. But even those reactions are pretty practical outputs: active fight against what I think that deserves to be fought (for my own good and the good of the most). I even see that as a resource to save everyone's time and avoid individuals who I will never take seriously to think otherwise.
I don't think I would want to hire you either
As said to other poster, I wouldn't want to work with you either. You seem to promote arbitrariness, to not want to properly understand others and to give lots of importance to what doesn't matter.
You come off as arrogant.
?! So, you are saying that you scheduling a chat at 9:00, expecting me to be at 8:00, and me politely pointing out the error is being arrogant? I should have been waiting at both times (this is actually what I was planning to do anyway, because she didn't correct/confirm her error) without saying a word, because I should be afraid of people not reacting reasonably to their own mistakes (feeling bad about them, correcting them, thanking to those pointing them out) and calling me things like arrogant? Wouldn't having that behaviour actually represent arrogance in its worst form? Assuming that people are too stupid to act reasonably and accept/correct their errors and just act paternalistically? In fact, isn't that what this mansplaining and other "feminist" ideas actually represent? Giving a special justification to the bad things that happen to them because of assuming that they need some additional help, that they cannot deal with whatever by themselves at the same level than others? No. I am not arrogant, pretty much the opposite: tremendously reasonable, always ready to learn/understand. You do seem quite arrogant though.
You tried to explain to her how to do her job.
I would have never dared to do such a thing. She made a communication mistake and I asked for clarifications. Honestly, I took advantage from the situation to further confirm whether we both (meaning me and the company) were really on the same page. Even in case of having actually be something related to her job, I wouldn't have seen the problem. I will always welcome any sensible correction to whatever mistake I could do. My usual reaction to a mistake is feeling bad about it, apologising for the consequences, trying to improve in the future and, if someone pointed it out to me, being thankful for the help. I cannot understand (even respect) any other behaviour.
If you have some self-esteem issues or, because of whatever reason, your work conditions are intrinsically hard, you should never expect others to bear the consequences of all that. You can expect others to be respectful, polite, reasonable, even a bit over-understanding on account of the specific conditions. But you cannot expect others to bear the consequences of your own decisions, personal circumstances. You can also not expect anyone to be tolerant with whatever set of prejudices you use to make your life easier. If you have met lots of people doing certain things for certain reasons, it isn't my problem. You cannot arbitrarily see non-existent meanings in my actions on account of generic nonsense like my gender, race, ethnicity, etc. Or you could, but there is a name for that. Quite a few names, actually. And also the certainty that I don't want to have anything to do with you and with what you represent (+ expect to be responsible for whatever prejudice you have caused me).
'hey I'm not sure what you meant giving the time in that way since I'm from a place that does time a little differently. Do you mean x or y?'
As said to other posters before, why are you assuming that that wasn't my behaviour? Why are you assuming that I wasn't polite, nice and over understanding. Where can you find in my post the reason why you all are blindly defending someone, who you don't know and who did something which you don't seem to understand either, against another person, who you don't seem to know either?
That would have alerted her to the problem, given you your answer, and given a way for her to improve herself going forward while not coming off as condescending
Where have I even insinuated that I was condescending? That doesn't even define my behaviour in virtually any situation, other than in the (mis)interpretations of you-think-that-you-are-better-than-me-because-you-have-a-fancy-diploma kind of people. Have you read that email? My attitude was tremendously polite and over-understanding. I shared lots of information with her, even some tips to avoid these problems in the future. Her reaction? Not even a thanks and reinforcing her mistake via including it in the label of our chat. Why do you think that she was learning-prone and I wasn't teaching-prone? Why do you think that I did anything even slightly bad for my interests when dealing with a company which, so far, was showing an excellent-in-my-opinion behaviour? The answer to all these questions seems to be that you have a similar insecure, prejudice-prone behaviour that that person (and/or that company and/or whoever made the final decision): you see hidden meanings which only exist in your imagination, in other people you have met at some point and perhaps also in your own personality. But nothing of that existed in the reality (= my polite reply + my interest in finding an objectivity-, technical-correction- prone, fair, reasonable company).