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Comment The article's premise is flawed (Score 1) 174

The article claims to measure the severity of a memory leak defect based on the amount of memory it leaked -- but most memory leaks (that are severe enough to be noticed) are small leaks that occur at regular intervals, meaning that the program's memory footprint will continually grow larger over repeated operations.

Therefore, do you want a 1MB memory leak? Run the program for a while. Do you want a 1GB memory leak? Run the program for that much longer. Keep going, and you can eventually get to any number you want, to post in your Substack article; this makes the reported numbers arbitrary and therefore meaningless.

TL;DR: Memory leaks are a problem, and they can be avoided with care and proper coding techniques, but claiming that software quality is worse now because the leaks "are larger" is silly.

Comment Re:Will California stop importing electricity? (Score 1) 124

When I used to live in Glendale, California, I noted from reports from the Glendale DWP that most of the power used by the city--and by the state--was imported from places like Utah. Power would be generated in Utah, then shipped by power transmission lines to Glendale.

I live in Utah... I wonder what effect this will have on my power prices.

Comment Re:Car manufacturers are correct (Score 1) 104

Oh piss off.

Several of the manufacturers involved here either are, have been or will shortly be, involved in motor sports - where they will collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year eeking out another 1% performance gain or efficiency gain out of an engine which is already vastly more performant or efficient than the engines we use as consumers.

These manufacturers can meet the regulations, they choose not to.

Comment Re:Know what's better than a 3-wheeled car? (Score 1) 54

The Aptera is an expensive, low function, unsafe unrepairable two seat car that is at best 20% more efficient than a Model 3.

You might be right about the rest, but the Aptera is far more efficient than a Model 3. The published numbers put it at about 110 Wh/mile, while the Model 3 is at 230 Wh/mile. And, frankly, the Aptera numbers seem a little high for a vehicle with a 0.13 drag coeffiecient and with one less wheel. I think the Aptera design should be able to do better than 100 Wh/mile. Obviously, it's hard to make an accurate comparison between a real-world car and one that is basically vaporware, but something would have to be seriously screwed up for a design as light and aerodynamic as the Aptera to be barely better than a Model 3.

Comment Re:Mute switch, please... (Score 1) 130

Is it just me, or what's so bad about having an engine that is quiet? I don't really want to add noise pollution and overall general stress to my neighborhood.

In general, nothing. But rich people buy sports cars for the same reason less-rich people buy video games that let them pretend to race sports cars, i.e. so they can have fun "going fast". Driving a sports car without cool engine sounds (however you want to define them) would be like playing an auto-racing game on mute -- less fun than it might otherwise have been.

Comment Re:Guy wants to be President so bad... (Score 1) 44

Not anything. I'm sure when Federal troops take over the State Capitol and Newsom is put in prison for unspecified but certainly horrible crimes, the military governor that takes his place will make sure none of this kind anti-corporate nonsense continues.

Comment Re:Fewer than two? (Score 2) 61

The employees from that 35% went to the other 65% that had two employees and turned it into three. Problem... Solved? :D

That is essentially what happened. They didn't fire 35%, those 35% just transferred their reports to others and became ICs (Individual Contributors).

Comment Re:Rookie numbers (Score 2) 61

35% is a good start

The 35% figure at Google is misleading. The vast majority of those people weren't pure managers they were software engineers who managed small teams as part of their duties while also doing productive technical work. A policy requiring a minimum of 5 direct reports for each manager was put in place, forcing all of those people to decide to either increase their management and cease doing significant technical work or cease being managers and focus entirely on technical work. Many chose the latter option, often quite happily (there is no additional pay or other concrete benefit to being a manager vs being an IC (individual contributor)). This partitioning of people who were in mixed roles into roles that were either managerial or technical provided most of the reduction in line and middle management.

Comment Re:Are people still using POP(3)? (Score 1) 47

I mean, do you expect them to come out and publicly say something like, "We're giving the government all your emails and data to calculate a social credit score"?

Do you expect this government won't ask for that?

Do you expect Alphabet to decline?

Yes, I expect Alphabet would decline. I worked there for 15 years and understand the culture and motivations pretty well. Culturally, doing something like that would cut against the grain, hard. Pragmatically, they wouldn't like to oppose the administration but they'd get a lot more PR mileage out of leaking the request and publicly declaring their opposition than it would cost them.

Comment Re:Why does it matter? (Score 1) 33

Hope you're up on your Sumarian antivirals because I'm gonna Snow Crash your ass.

You're still alive, I see. Yes, it's true, the lethal payload mentioned in the above video isn't actually included within it. I knew there was little danger in linking to this video, but don't you realize it could have been much worse?

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