Not really. Most stuff is sealed for life. So it's more replacing whole parts when they fail than changing the oil in something. But many bearings will last hundreds of thousands of miles and never need changing for the entire life of the car. Quite amazing really.
> Engineering is about creating something that serves a purpose, while operating within a set of constraints.
A builder fits that description. Even a cook fits that description.
Engineering is something else. It's hard to describe what it is, probably why it has its own word. Dictionaries probably offer a definition.
> A good engineer will acknowledge this tradeoff between robustness and cost and behave accordingly.
An engineer will never intentionally produce something shoddy for cost reasons. They will simply refuse to do it. What you are getting at it some tasks don't require an engineer at all. You want to build a bridge to span a kilometer of water? You need an engineer. You need to occasionally cross a ditch? Anyone could lay plank across. No engineer required. The author makes this point too, with software craftsmen.
But when nobody will die from your decision (and to be clear I think security is extremely important, but moreso for banking/healthcare than a private wow server), then “shoddy” becomes a matter of reputation/taste vs value/marketability.
The demand curve is different because it’s low stakes, like throwing a bad party or oversalting food. And part of the problem in software to begin with is too much LARPing about scale/engineering for things that don’t need it, as well as lack of accountability or care for things that do.
You can still be an “engineer” working on a game, it’s just more about making the game fun than making it safe. Or, you create a process for making and test hundreds of experimental bridges, and refine/invest additional time in understanding and verifying the safety of the best one.
I'm hoping to get a mini-split system installed soon and thought I might as well look for something with HA integration. It's not easy. Some manufacturers like Samsung actually want to charge you monthly for cloud integration! Completely out of the question obviously. I came across this, and Mitsubishi is supposed to be good anyway. I would prefer something that's actually supported but I can't seem to find any other options.
I could also very easily wire my units in so no need for WiFi. Maybe I can find a wired ethernet module.
I used this guys thing https://clima.protoart.net/ after someone mentioned it in an HN comment last summer, then used claude to extend it this summer. A year in, I’m very pleased. Matter or thread would be nice, but these are super straightforward out of the box and totally local.
The manufacturer documentation [0] for everything is great and it was perfect for my goal of getting them
to show up in Savant as native thermostats [1] (likely beyond typical scope for split units).
My ideal system would be something that does matter over thread with zero external internet access. Matter over thread devices are all standardized so no proprietary app required, and the newer iphones have a thread radio built in so you can control them without even a hub.
I have my AC connected using Matter (over WiFi, not Thread) using esphome-matter, a relatively new extension to ESPHome + a small open PR [1]
Since it's running ESPHome you can easily verify everything it's doing.
Thread would be even better but this is good enough for me. 100x better than the original cloud app it came with. Still no proprietary app required, works on every platform.
Even if their rules say that I don't get why they are allowed to call the police. In this case it might have been an unregistered gun but if someone was carrying legally they can refuse service but they shouldn't be calling the police.
This is quite funny timing as just a few days ago my partner, who eats kiwis almost every day, tried eating the whole kiwi. She used to scoop it out but now says she'll never go back. It's also way more convenient as there are no tools required.
I've noticed that delivery drivers are always racing around like their lives depend on it? Why do they do that? Because they are given workloads that are impossible to complete without racing. But what if it just didn't race? Their employers would be forced to hire more drivers, or increase the cost of delivery. By racing they are just building a rod for their own backs.
I feel like it's the same with programming now. So you built something in a week that used to take two. Ok, that's expected now. Expectations are raised before you can even blink, but it's very difficult to lower them. So that's it. We've built the rod for our backs and now must shit out code quicker than we can think.
I'm sad I won't get to take pride in anything I program any more. But oh well. There are other things in life that are more important. I expect I'll become more of a plumber just joining together slop to make things happen.
It's not about language, it's about culture. If you saw someone running through a crowd with a knife you'd expect them to be thrown in prison. But someone speeding through a neighborhood? Or dangerously overtaking a cyclist? No bother.
If the person running with the knife hurt someone they'd be a murderer. But the car? Oh, it was just an accident.
You think they were doing it on purpose every time someone is in an accident, or you think every time someone says "accident", they're referring to or you're purposely missing the nuance to make a point nobody agrees with, or you think that people in general are not annoyed when someone drives recklessly?
If it's the first, I dunno - you're wrong. People aren't. If it's the second, aside from insurance fraud, nobody is trying to fuck up their day and lose a functional car in the process, maybe getting seriously injured. If it's the third, you're just being annoying and nobody will take your point seriously if you can't make it more saliently. If it's the last, go check out reddit. There are at least half a dozen subs where people post bad drivers and everyone in the comments is collectively grumbling.
Accidents. The aviation industry is the worst example you could use. Every single time, the goal is to find the issue, NOT the blame. The industry is insanely safe in large part BECAUSE they refuse to frame it as a crash, and instead frame it like an accident.
Magnus Carlsen plays fellow humans at the game because people still care about human competitions. What motivation would a mathematician have for solving already solved problems by hand? Can you imagine someone spending years working on a proof for an already-proved theorem just in case it leads to new insight?
If insights and human understanding are more important than specific results, I don't see why people should stop producing insights and human understanding. "Working on a proof" in today's sense of trying to come up with a proof before others probably stops being useful, other ways of working will be needed
Of course not. I'm so tired of the chess analogy. It was always a game and it was always performative.
Research is fundamentally different. We are seeing the erosion of specific needs for thinking at depth. AI is the automobile for the mind. There will 100% be undesirable consequences and selective atrophy of cognitive abilities once prized. This is a loss. There's no getting the cat back in the bag at this point so long as the objective dimension of work, as in object opposed to subject, is held as the most important.
SWEs felt this same crisis late last year. Now it's the mathematicians. They won't be the last.
actually I think the whole point is we're finding that the chess analogy to math is in fact quite apt. Math is just an extremely complex game. Its rules can be written down and there are win conditions. It's really not far fetched to think that through information theory, a reasonable measure of depth and beauty to a definition or conjecture can be defined. Then the game is simply to maximize the number of such artifacts produced of high depth and beauty along with proofs of the relevant conjectures.
Philosophers I'm sure can debate this back and forth but it seems probable that some things we thought were ineffable are in fact quantifiable to a degree, and now we have the technology and the machines to bring that to the logical conclusion.
Probably because you were impressed by whatever it produced to fill in the gaps at the time. But if you expect the models to read your mind you're going to have a bad time.
Long, slow fermentation using cultured yeast and a special Viennese style steam oven are essential for baguettes. They traditionally use soft French flour, but I'm not sure it makes the difference. The downside of baguettes is they don't last more than a day, but that's ok in France because there's a boulangerie on every corner. Baguettes are not homemade bread. Brioche is homemade and just as wonderful and far better than the garbage Brits/Americans make and call brioche for their burger buns.
The first thing I noticed travelling to France as a Brit is everything you eat is delicious. This has changed a bit now; they have McDonald's in France now. But 30 years ago it was mostly true. You could buy a sandwich from a railway station and it would be the best sandwich of your life. It took me a while to realise why. The British and American way to prepare food is to take any old crap but use just one or two strong flavours like bacon, cheese, pickle etc and let it carry the whole thing. The French way (and even more so Italian for that matter) is to take a handful of already delicious ingredients and combine them into something greater than their parts. French sandwiches taste good because the bread tastes good, the butter tastes good, the ham tastes good, and the cheese tastes good. That's the secret.
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