rmilk · HackerTrans

letztes Jahrdiscuss

I’m going to give a HARD disagree with this type of hand waving for a bug in pow(). First, how was a change allowed in such a fundamental function without significant justification and validation. It’s exponentiation. That’s like saying you want to fix multiplication. Sure, but it better get higher scrutiny that a higher-level function. Second, where is regression testing. It’s a trivial function to write tests for, which means MS never created real test plans for basic UCRT functions. This is where the outrage should placed.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Precisely. I have been told I have a knack for reading other people’s code. Turns out it was years of reverse engineering as a hobby in my youth that gave me the skills to sit down and understand someone else’s code very quickly. A hobby that gives useful real-world skills.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly true. Was a teenage software hacker, reverse engineered many games mostly because I was a bored teenager with free time and many games I legitimately bought. Mostly it was to cheat a little, like tweaking player stats or number of lives in a save file.

All that reverse engineering experience gave me a particularly useful talent as a developer: an uncanny ability to sit down and grok other people’s code almost like magic.

Solid experience with reverse engineering really is a good skill to have.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Have recently started seeing “Xitter” as a reference to the site. Possibly because it can be pronounced like a crude slang for a restroom, or just to make sure everyone realizes “Twitter” isn’t going away.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

This sounds interesting! The main reason I moved to perl instead of sed or AWK is for better control. Shell scripts don’t differentiate between variables and data (anyone else still having nightmares from trying to escape quotes and meta chars in a shell?).

Perl gives you all the simple features from sed or AWK and adds useful (maintainable) foreach iterators, arrays, hashes, etc.

Recommend using Strict mode if you are new to Perl. It gives good guardrails against silly mistakes like not declaring or misspelling a variables, or accessing strings or numbers that aren’t the correct datatype.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Apple tried. Recall the huge IP licensing battle from a year or two ago where Apple challenged Qualcomm on base price for royalties and what was considered FRAND given some of the patents were incorporated into the communication protocol standards.

Here is one of the HN articles, there are plenty more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15399689

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Or adding a middle name of “A” because some databases can’t handle that a person might not have a middle name or middle initial.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

I use strips from lightdims.com also available from Amazon and other places. Comes in a sheet of precut circles and squares in different sizes so you can stick it over just the LED. Seems to have better sticking power than painters tape. They also have sheets of white / translucent if you want to dim the brightness but still have some color pass through.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Seconded. My daily walk to Starbucks is my time to meditate on my coding issue of the day, free from distractions of emails, office visitors, and meetings. Many coders I’ve met say a change of scenery can help you solve a problem you were stuck on. Also a chance to say hi to the local crows who appear to recognize me nowadays and don’t fly away when I walk by :)

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Managing that risk is what the customer CFOs were supposed to do. Your average retiree or semi wealthy person knows the FDIC limits and manages their portfolio around them.

This is not a new risk for businesses in any industry and financial services exist to help manage that risk for companies with cash on hand.

I would instead ask why the SVB customers didn’t manage this risk. Others on HN said that banking with SVB was a requirement placed by many VC companies, which does tie the customer’s hands.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

At the same time, these startups all had a CFO whose job was to manage that financial risk. What if they had a late payment from customers or a supply chain delay, or were simply locked out of their accounts due to a cyber event or unavailability of a key employee? Did they have any contingencies like line of credit or instruments outside SVB? They took other risk reductions like insuring their office space, etc.

In addition every offering and statement from SVB shows >$250k is not insured but they treated it like nothing bad could ever happen there. Even your average retiree knows their life savings in a bank is only covered to FDIC limits.

This risk for businesses with cash is not new. Financial services like sweep accounts, negotiable instruments, etc. existed for decades. Is it just that SV entrepreneurs are too smart or not smart enough to manage these risks? Or was it the VC firms that forced their hand by requiring them to bank at SVB (noted as a VC funding requirement by others on HN).

The companies can sell their invoices or ownership of their deposits on the market, or use it as collateral for recovery. The CFOs job was to manage financial risk. They failed at this and their companies are at risk because of it. The FDIC takeover means they have unfettered access to at least $250K as of today, so it’s not quite as bad. And the FDIC will unwind SVB’s current assets through their insurance trust or by finding a buyer. The SVB stock and bond holders will lose, the depositors will lose much less.

But it makes you wonder how long the C-suite knew this liquidity issue given they had no risk manager for most of last year (also noted in other HN articles).

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

But isn’t your CFO planning for financial risk? Do you have hazard insurance on your leased offices, what happens if one of your key employees is unavailable, a large customer is late on payment, you get hit by supply chain issues, etc.

You can’t seriously tell me that the CFO who is responsible for corporate finance at these SVB customers didn’t realize a business checking or savings account is not fully guaranteed? It’s in every single bank brochure and statement. If that’s that case, they need to suffer the consequences of poor contingency planning.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly this point. Every single offering brochure on those business checking accounts notes the FDIC limit. If they’re interest checking accounts, they are money market backed and clearly state no guaranteed return rate or even guarantee of capital. Heck, even my not savvy mother knows to keep her money market retirement accounts in different banks just like you describe.

How can we possibly allow the CFO of these companies to get away with not managing finance risk, no matter how small. That was their only job, to manage finance risk. No business continuity insurance? Lines of credit with other banks? Convertible instruments that could be sold on Monday AM to raise cash? So many other ways a CFO can manage cash and risk but did not.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

I get what you’re saying, but how many well-intentioned startups have imploded and ran out of money the day before payday due to some unlikely risk? Lots (I was in 1-2 of them). Should we also try to salvage them?

“Well-reputed bank” is not the same as zero risk money management. Look at the fine print of every one of those business checking accounts and you see there is clearly some risk, including loss of capital if you’re over the $250k limit. Everyone who has a retirement account in money markets at a “well-reputed bank” knows about this risk, so how can we let the CFO slide on finance risk management that was clearly their most important responsibility? Business continuity insurance, lines of credit, investor infusion, etc. Debt sales, etc. There are ways to get around an unexpected cash crunch.

But there’s no excuse for not knowing the risk and expecting a $1M checking account to work like your personal checking account. This was the CFOs job at every one of the companies that is now in a crunch.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly. Even a business checking account with interest is backed partly/fully by money market funds. Those ALL come with offering sheets clearly spelling out returns aren’t guaranteed AND you could lose capital.

It’s simply poor money management by the employer to assume you can toss $1M-$5M in a business checking account and have zero risk. It’s not a personal account and it is clearly over the FDIC limits.

Anyone with $250K net worth knows there is risk here. Even my 80+ mother who is NOT finance savvy knows about this $250k limit and manages her life savings in different money market accounts to limit her exposure.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly. I got a letter from my last startup Thu at 11pm telling us they had no cash for payroll tomorrow and we were all laid off. Poor planning along with super-lean cash flow broke my employer.

This is no different. For example, how many business checking accounts are backed by money market funds to get a little interest on them? Clearly states in offerings that rates aren’t guaranteed and you could even lose capital. Same with the $250k FDIC limit - clear risk with zero forethought from these employers of hedging it with lines of credit, payroll/business continuity insurance, etc.

Those are things “slow” companies do, not move fast and break things companies do (sarcasm intended - I have worked in R&D in both types multiple times).

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

There is a risk question that companies are responsible for that I see is glossed over. No, you shouldn’t have to spread your business accounts to limit them to 250k. But you must know it’s not insured above this, just like a money market account is not a guaranteed rate of return or even guaranteed against capital loss. Have lines of credit with alternate banks, or insurance on that additional money.

Or, just like when the market tanks, you suck it up and get back 80% of your capital on deposit because you couldn’t foresee a money market checking account could lose capital even though it’s spelled out on EVERY SINGLE statement and offering letter from the bank.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Exactly. If you’re forced to use SVB because of your founders, you don’t have a recourse on the bank.

But there is also a risk question that companies are responsible for that I see is glossed over. No, you shouldn’t have to spread your business accounts to limit them to 250k. But you must know it’s not insured above this, just like a money market account is not a guaranteed rate of return or even guaranteed against capital loss.

I’m just spitballing, but for example what was the rate on a “money market” checking at SVB versus other larger national banks? If it was much higher, it immediately indicates higher risk in a business checking account at SVB to get those rates. You can see this way back with the old junk bond / Lincoln Savings fiasco of the 1980s, or with 2008 MBS, or CD accounts in early 2000s.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Also the major players can lobby legislation to add burdens to new players that they already have in place themselves. This locks out new players unless they can invest upfront, while allowing the existing players to use what they already have in place. This was the biggest issue with the EU copyright restrictions where it required a massive investment up front to match what YouTube already had implemented.

rmilk

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

So absolutely true. I work in an “operational facing” engineering group. We are engineering but process data (daily/monthly data processing for factory and customer requests). Having a composable process using the Unix philosophy makes it trivial to stop processing at any point in the work flow for that one customer request that comes up once a year. There is no ROI to make the work flow support these edge cases, it’s cheaper even after a decade or more just to one-off these special cases. But this would be completely impossible if we didn’t architect the system in smaller components. As you say, it’s not text processing, it is units of processing that can be composed, stopped, reordered or have a custom step in the middle.

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