rkcr's recent activity

  4. Comment on Touchscreens are out, and tactile controls are back. Rachel Plotnick's "re-buttonization" expertise is in demand. in ~design

    rkcr
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    I waited for many years before getting an EV, and a large part of it was the obsession with touchscreen controls. I hated the idea of having to navigate through a touchscreen just to defrost my...

    I waited for many years before getting an EV, and a large part of it was the obsession with touchscreen controls. I hated the idea of having to navigate through a touchscreen just to defrost my windows (I live in a cold area).

    I finally found the perfect car for me recently - the 2024 Hyundai Kona EV. All the important controls (lights, heating/cooling, volume etc.) are physical buttons. But it still has a nice big touchscreen for all the less vital stuff (directions, music). I'm hoping this is the template for cars going forward - touchscreens are great for some purposes (like maps), but shouldn't be relied upon for critical functionality.

    25 votes

  6. Comment on Carbon myopia is concealing a deeper problem: our insatiable appetite for materials in ~enviro

    rkcr
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    I worked at a circular economy startup for about two years... if you think it's hard to get people to reduce their carbon footprints, it's really hard to get people to reuse stuff. The startup...
    • Exemplary

    I worked at a circular economy startup for about two years... if you think it's hard to get people to reduce their carbon footprints, it's really hard to get people to reuse stuff.

    The startup focused on FF&E (basically, stuff companies have lying around). For many businesses, it's way cheaper to trash all their furniture & buy new than it is to go through the effort of documenting what they have & redistributing it. We liked to say our main competitor was a garbage dump.

    Part of the reason I left was because I didn't feel like we, as a society, are ready to embrace circular economies yet. Capitalism doesn't reward good deeds, and thus most people will only give a shit once it starts to become cheaper to reuse than buy new. (Incidentally, I believe this is why orgs like Goodwill or Buy Nothing flourish; they target people who have hit the inflection point of "need to get used because of costs.")

    22 votes

  7. Comment on 1 bug, $50,000+ in bounties, how Zendesk intentionally left a backdoor in hundreds of Fortune 500 companies in ~tech

    rkcr
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    It's unethical to contact third parties during remediation, but Zendesk actively refused to remediate.

    It's unethical to contact third parties during remediation, but Zendesk actively refused to remediate.

    20 votes

  8. Comment on 1 bug, $50,000+ in bounties, how Zendesk intentionally left a backdoor in hundreds of Fortune 500 companies in ~tech

    rkcr
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    I am somewhat sympathetic to Zendesk's initial response (because bug bounty programs these days have a TERRIBLE signal:noise ratio). But I absolutely don't understand why (when it's a proven...

    I am somewhat sympathetic to Zendesk's initial response (because bug bounty programs these days have a TERRIBLE signal:noise ratio). But I absolutely don't understand why (when it's a proven issue) they skimp out on paying the bounty. Tens of thousands for a legit bounty is nothing for a company of Zendesk's size and it saves them a ton of face with developers.

    16 votes

  12. Comment on User-defined Order in SQL in ~comp

    rkcr
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    /u/whbboyd has it right. Trello would detect when a degenerate case was approaching and redo the positions on all items in a collection if we were headed for disaster. (I don't know how often this...

    /u/whbboyd has it right. Trello would detect when a degenerate case was approaching and redo the positions on all items in a collection if we were headed for disaster. (I don't know how often this code actually ran - pretty rarely - but we planned for it.)

    Also - while Trello only renders a few lists/cards at a time, it is possible to have thousands of cards in lists.

    That also reminds me - one other nice aspect of float-based positioning is that a card could be archived (essentially removed from the list), then un-archived later, and it would still fit into the same spot as before (as long as there wasn't a position redo, but like I said, that's rare).

    3 votes

  13. Comment on User-defined Order in SQL in ~comp

    rkcr
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    Besides performance, if you're in a multiple user situation, using floats allows all users to simultaneously reorder items without concurrency issues. (I've had a lot of experience working with...

    Besides performance, if you're in a multiple user situation, using floats allows all users to simultaneously reorder items without concurrency issues.

    (I've had a lot of experience working with float positions from my time working at Trello; that's a use case where integer positions would not work.)

    9 votes