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peterb

@peterb@mathstodon.xyz

effort + coffee = software

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peterb, to random
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Superman, the software engineer. (From Wonder Woman #800)

peterb, to random
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I try not to talk politics on mastodon but every few months I am freaked out all over again that the American right-wing, which when I was a kid was 100% organized around patriotism and opposing soviet Russia, has in 2023 decided that their entire vibe is now "We hate America, the Russians are so manly, I wish I lived there instead."

I WANT to believe the motivation is that various people on the top are getting paid lots of money to promote this opinion. But...maybe they're just broken.

peterb, to random
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The existence of the diminutive emperor "Palpatine" implies the existence of a normal-sized emperor named "Palpa" and an extra-large emperor named "Palpatone".

peterb, to random
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These criminals made a huge mistake when they killed Ron Wick's sourdough starter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu8EOHjOgiY

peterb, to random
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@christianp Thanks for your hard work keeping this labor of love up and running. We appreciate you.

mcc, to random
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Super Mario Galaxy >
Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island > Super Mario World >
Super Mario 3D World >
Super Mario 3D Land >
Super Mario Odyssey (After "winning") >
Super Mario 3 >
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong >
Super Mario Sunshine >
New Super Mario Bros. >
Super Mario 2 >
Vs. Super Mario Bros >
Super Mario Land 2 >
Super Mario 2 (Japan) > Super Mario 64 >
Super Mario 1 >
New Super Mario Bros. U >
Super Mario Galaxy 2 >
Super Mario Bros. 35 >
Super Mario Odyssey (Before "winning") >
Super Mario Land >

[…]

peterb,
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@mcc Please place Donkey Kong 64 (the banjo-kazooie analogue) into this cosmology.

peterb, to random
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OK, I'll be the one in your timeline to say it:

THE FLASH (2023) was pretty darn great.

peterb,
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@mcc I'd call it near-top tier; not at the level of Into/Across the Spider-Verse, but then nothing is.

In more detail, with no spoilers: the movie knows it has to focus on the characters and their emotional journey, and does a great job of doing just that. I cared about the stakes, and Ezra Miller's performance was, simply, breathtaking. If everything else about the movie was garbage (and it's not), it would be worth seeing just to see his performance.

There's one longueur in the third act when we get to the obligatory Big Superhero Battle that all of these movies feel obligated to have, but once they dispose of it they get back to the stuff we care about.

I've seen a lot of dissing of the choices about CG but in context it's perfectly clear to me why they made the intentional Uncanny Valley choices they did, and I don't disagree with them.

peterb, to random
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Humans are REALLY BAD at thinking at large scale, and it's on full display in this "Ha ha ha the Mythical Man-Month doesn't apply to me" thread. It doesn't apply to you because you are working on tiny projects. Your 50-engineer project is so tiny that you don't even understand that it's tiny.

You see this a lot in warfare contexts when chickenhawks are all "Well, why don't we just invade Iran?" (or wherever. Set aside ethics for a minute.). We don't invade Iran because we're a naval power and literally don't have the force available to put enough boots on the ground to maintain control of it. But you, the chickenhawk, don't know this, because you don't understand what type of scale you need to run that type of operation.

In that thread, people are talking about how adding 25 or 50 engineers to a project can be absorbed by being clever. There are two problems with this line of argument.

The first problem is: most of your co-workers (including you and me) are not actually clever. You and I are just as bad at things as everyone else. Planning a project around the conceit of "Let's plan to be brilliant and not make mistakes" is planning a project that will fail.

The second problem is that you've never run a project at scale. When Fred Brooks was working on S/360 software, he experienced IBM trying to add ONE THOUSAND engineers to the project. Consider for just a moment that maybe the dude has a little more experience with engineering at scale than you do working on your Eggs And Milk Minder phone app.

peterb, to random
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I find it amazingly weird that the same person who directed Singin' In The Rain also directed Saturn 3.

peterb, to random
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I'm not going to get all political on Mastodon but the non-partisan thing about US politics that seems absolutely bananapants to me right now is the extent to which we've apparently become a gerontocracy.

peterb, to random
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Never underestimate the power of

From: CEO
Subject: Fwd: Customer complaint

?
Forwarded message attached below

peterb, to random
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OK, hear me out: what if, instead of leveraging all the things we learned about how to run a business effectively while remote, we just pissed that knowledge down the drain and made people come back into the office for no discernible benefit whatsoever?

peterb, to random
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Me, encountering literally any podcast recommendation:

"This sounds really interesting. I'd sure like to read a transcript of it instead of listening to it."

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