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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • TSMC and Intel both use ASML lithography, but there are many many more steps than just lithography - Intel, TSMC, Samsung and other chipmakers use different processes to make the components on their chips (many of which are patented and so owned by specific parties).

    These things include the physical structure of the components and wiring on the chip, how the silicon is doped and with what ions, what coatings are put on to be etched in the lithography and what coatings are applied to the etched layers, how the chips are packaged and also how multiple chips can be combined into one package.

    Basically there are similarities but also hige differences between the different manufacturers, and a lot of trade secrets.

    If you’re interested in this kind of thing, I’d recommend the youtube channel Asianometry - the content creator is amazing.


  • All junior devs should read OCs comment and really think about this.

    The issue is whether is_number() is performing a semantic language matter or checking whether the text input can be converted by the program to a number type.

    The former case - the semantic language test - is useful for chat based interactions, analysis of text (and ancient text - I love the cuneiform btw) and similar. In this mode, some applications don’t even have to be able to convert the text into eg binary (a ‘gazillion’ of something is quantifying it, but vaguely)

    The latter case (validating input) is useful where the input is controlled and users are supposed to enter numbers using a limited part of a standard keyboard. Clay tablets and triangular sticks are strictly excluded from this interface.

    Another example might be is_address(). Which of these are addresses? ‘10 Downing Street, London’, ‘193.168.1.1’, ‘Gettysberg’, ‘Sir/Madam’.

    To me this highlights that code is a lot less reusable between different projects/apps than it at first appears.




  • You need at least two copies in two different places - places that will not burn down/explode/flood/collapse/be locked down by the police at the same time.

    An enterprise is going to be commissioning new computers or reformatting existing ones at least once per day. This means the bitlocker key list would need printouts at least every day in two places.

    Given the above, it’s easy to see that this process will fail from time to time, in ways like accicentally leaking a document with all these keys.








  • Elon sounds like he’s experienced, skilled and is approaching things from a theoretical or ethical or other grand point of view. He used to impress me with his approach on building an electric car company with full self-driving vehicles in the 2010’s. I wasn’t a full believer, but I thought he was competent and wanted Tesla to succeed.

    Then he went and bought Twitter. As a software engineer all my life, and in the startup scene, and having worked in a failed social media platform, I have some experience. Everything he’s said about Twitter is crap and everything he’s done is stupid. And the results speak for themselves.

    I’ve seen people say that Elon sounds great about things they don’t know too much about. But when the topic comes to things they do understand, Elon clearly is wrong.

    He started his career with hundreds of millions of dollars, and he bet it all on a couple of businesses be bought (he was never a founder, always a purchaser).

    Basically he’s been lucky twice (Paypal and Tesla), but each of these won 10-100x on his initial stake.



  • Their arguments included the size of the web page, and the time to display the first content, both of which were significantly better in Nue when compared to Tailwind.

    By all means argue on what is important (because what is important for your projects may be significantly different from mine), but there were many points that the author was highlighting, not just the separation of concerns. And for my projects, all these concerns are important.



  • This is exactly the answer.

    I’d just expand on one thing: many systems have multiple apps that need to run at the same time. Each app has its own dependencies, sometimes requiring a specific version of a library.

    In this situation, it’s very easy for one app to need v1 of MyCleverLibrary (and fails with v2) and another needs v2 (and fails with v1). And then at the next OS update, the distro updates to v2.5 and breaks everything.

    In this situation, before containers, you will be stuck, or have some difficult workrounds including different LD_LIBRARY_PATH settings that then break at the next update.

    Using containers, each app has its own libraries at the correct and tested versions. These subtle interdependencies are eliminated and packages ‘just work’.