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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I’m a mech E in the medical field. We’re consistently understaffed. If I validate an Excel worksheet in Excel '08 or a Python program in 3.5 with a specific version of NumPy, we’re probably sticking with those versions for a while. Every time I bring up re-validating with the latest version, keeping one old system running the old software requires fewer resources than me or a colleague re-validating.

    My whole department is stuck on one version of Python because that was the most recent version when I had an emergency project and developed a data analysis algorithm. We validated it, then as new members were added to my team, they needed a copy, so we had to keep using it. I’ll probably re-validate it to the next Python release. It’s not only unit tests, or we could automate validation. Unit tests are a tiny part of validating software for making medical decisions. And software that directly runs a medical device (like firmware on an insulin pump) is an order of magnitude more rigorous than what I do.

    Side note: there are people who somehow root their insulin pumps and run algorithms on them. There’s a group that can get a PID control loop on an insulin pump that has a more simple control scheme on it (because that’s how the FDA approved it). The company has been trying to get approval to use PID control in the US for years.


  • There are methodical ways of valuating a private (and public) company. Some are pessimistic and some are wildly optimistic. Your can legally use whichever one you want, only you must only use that valuation method for everything. It’s illegal to value the company low for taxes and high for loan collateral. And if you sell it, you can owe back taxes if your valuation was off (sale price is the new valuation).

    This is overly-simplified US accounting rules (from finance class 10 years ago)



  • Seriously? I was looking at a Surface product recently, and it appeared to have an access panel for the NVME drive. I read a ton of complaints about the dimensions of the drive being unusual, but access to it was easy. I don’t think I was looking at a Surface pro though.

    If a surface pro wants to be a full OS and not a tablet OS, it should be easy to replace the storage device.




  • Positive spin take: will encourage higher quality content and comments. Will incentivise spending more time posting and commenting and greater care put into both.

    Likely reality: Rush to lowest-common-denominator posts. Sensational titles to grab attention. Comments are less likely to write things the hive-mind doesn’t want to hear, so less variety in comments. White-knighting increases. More porn by professional posters.

    Almost-certain to happen: change in content. It’s a gamble that the new content will be as popular as the old content. Reddit had a platform up until June this year. No matter what happens, they abandoned that platform to re-shape it into something else. Which seems like it would be a hard sell to investors. “You know our core product and user base that you’re interested in? Well, what if we told you that we were creating something to gather an unknown amount of new users! And all we have to do is alienate our current user base!”



  • Kale@lemmy.ziptolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldWindows 12
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    1 year ago

    That’s despicable. Us real users will subscribe to Windows (I’ll subscribe to the basic package with the CMD/powershell add-on package). Windows will bundle the subscription with my Office 365 subscription so I only have one easy monthly payment! Plus my Fusion 360 and Photoshop subscription, Backblaze subscription, Google Drive subscription…


  • Kale@lemmy.ziptolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldWindows 12
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    1 year ago

    The Microsoft thing to do is start using Xbox naming, but offset from the Xbox brand. Windows 360. Then Windows Series S for home users and Series X for corporate. Then use Windows One for confusion’s sake. The first service pack can be called Windows One X.

    I used to like picking up old hardware and modding it for fun. When Xbox One launched, searching for mods for the OG Xbox became really annoying, because all of the old forum posts during the Xbox 360 decade(s) called the first Xbox “Xbox 1” frequently, not dreaming that the third platform would be named “one”.


  • Technically second distro I ever installed, but the first one I actually used. I purchased Mandrake when it was based on RedHat, but didn’t get very far with it. In college I inherited always on Internet in my dorm and ran a Slackware webserver, and later fileserver and BitTorrent machine. I tried running Slackware on my laptop but I couldn’t get the battery management to work, but I dual booted for a couple of years.