> I just wasted a day investigating something for nothing
Nah not for nothing, they paid you. If they want to pay you for dumb shit, that's on them.
You'll have to find a way to let go of the frustration though, that's the real problem here. I just try not to get caught up in what the business is doing, it's just a job, and their goals will never ever ever align with my own, so no point sweating it.
I work at a small company now. When my boss does something stupid, I tell so and why. Sometimes I need to change tact because that's what the business demands, but sometimes he's like huh you're right (generally for technical reasons, although the cognitive cost of task switching is real) and we stay the course. Either way it's nice to have somebody listen at least.
The problem with this mindset is that, in five or ten years, you'll be an seasoned expert in doing dumb shit. That's not an in demand skillset that will lead to career progression down the track.
> Nah not for nothing, they paid you. If they want to pay you for dumb shit, that's on them.
This attitude right here is why so many developers burn out. Having money thrown your way is not proof you're doing the right thing, and thinking like that can really hurt you on the long term. We crave meaning and community and selling those out can have severe psychological consequences.
I have plenty of meaning and community outside of work. Unfortunately no one wants to pay me to do dumb shit at work, probably because I’m too expensive.
Or maybe no-one wasted time? Sometimes a sensible idea one day, becomes not sensible next day as more info becomes available, then the day after that, further info, or request from the ultimate payer of bills, emerges, meaning the original approach was right. We can't always see what are managers are doing. Sometimes they're getting messed around a lot more than us, thus justifying their extra pay. ;) As others have said, us devs get paid no matter what. I wonder if the OP has kids? Have they ever heard "I want to go to the park. No I don't want to go to the park. Well only if so-and-so is going too. But not if you force me to wear that coat. Hey, can we play a board game? Oh, why didn't you let me go out. That's so unfair" . Work is easy by comparison ;)
I think it's because CPUs don't run faster just because they're colder, they run faster when you overclock them. Often to get them stable at higher clock speeds you need more voltage, which at some point demands more cooling to mitigate that.
AFAICT doing interesting but ultimately trivially complicated stuff as a youngster can still result in scholarships etc, Ahmed Mohamed comes to mind.
Perhaps that generation of cpus was very insufficiently cooled? This is before people even really put much of a heat sink on a cpu. The code did run faster with ice water, and faster again with liquid nitrogen. It was a high school, county-level science fair. I don’t know how things stand today, but at the time “will a computer run faster with better cooling?” was a perfectly acceptable level of scientific inquiry for a 14 year old.
I’m truly sorry if my childhood anecdote has inadvertently spread misinformation on this topic :)
> Perhaps that generation of cpus was very insufficiently cooled? This is before people even really put much of a heat sink on a cpu.
The 286 came out in 1982 but it wasn't until ~2000 (with the release of the Pentium 4) that thermal throttling was introduced.
From ~1995-2000 if the CPU got over temperature, your PC just turned off immediately. And prior to ~1995 if you ran a CPU without a heatsink it could overheat and destroy itself. We just had to be careful not to do that :)
the singular form of evidence is not anecdote. I think it's an interesting conundrum myself. as others have pointed out, the story as it was told is not consistent with the physics and current knowledge of what things were like in those days: CPUs did not yet do thermal throttling and simply cooling a CPU from that time doesn't make it go faster.
somebody else mentioned the possibility that the cooling did something to the crystal oscillator, but I think there are another two explanations that either alone or in combination might explain what happened: unreliable narrator (OP was very young when the memory was formed) and external influence - his dad or teacher might have done the overclocking which might have been beyond his understanding and therefore notice at the time.
either way there's no reason to take anecdotes uncritically.
That’s right. Did somebody investigate the same thing and had different results? Because in this thread there are only theoretical explanations why it cannot be, and not experiments. So in short, there is only one data point.
What conclusions do you believe it is reasonable to draw in light of this? Is your position significantly different from what I said:
> either way there's no reason to take anecdotes uncritically.
> Because in this thread there are only theoretical explanations why it cannot be
No, the explanations are referring to the mountain of evidence based on the physics of the chips and the known characteristics of the chips of the time. That's not theoretical, that past observations.
If you mean the ones that are just a painted strip on the ground, then OK, but for existing traffic lights controlled ones it doesn't seem unreasonable at all. Sensors to detect pedestrian and/or car presence are already extremely common. E.g. all modern [1] pedestrian crossings in the UK have similar sensors, which can extend the crossing time if it detects someone still in the road. And of course your local drive thru can detect your car pulling up, though usually by induction coil
Not every crosswalk. This is explictly only for signaled intersections/crosswalks. i.e. those that already have a pushbutton, a walk sign, and a stoplight.
That only covers a very small portion of crosswalks and is generally done for crosswalks in high throughput areas or areas where risks of a pedestrian/vehicle collision are high. i.e. the places where you'd want additional augmentation to notify drivers and prevent collisions
They don't actually have to. The 5th and 6th fleet coupled with the various large air bases in the vicinity would have little trouble it pancaking the entire site before the Turks managed to make off with anything if it really came down to it. It's tanks all the way down.
I feel sorry for the poor bastards that had to go to Tokyo. As I understand it, clapping the other super fit athletes is a great part of the experience of competing (father was an athletics coach).
Indeed, I too chuckled at that. Do you remember those hobbyist kits from the 80s for building your own electronic ignition unit? (i.e. points replacement)
At one of my first jobs, the workshop foreman would sidle up beside another mechanic who was working under the bonnet, casually put his arm on their shoulder or whatever, then touch a plug. It would make the other mechanic jump, but he himself seemed impervious (well steeled more like) to the effect.
Nah not for nothing, they paid you. If they want to pay you for dumb shit, that's on them.
You'll have to find a way to let go of the frustration though, that's the real problem here. I just try not to get caught up in what the business is doing, it's just a job, and their goals will never ever ever align with my own, so no point sweating it.
I work at a small company now. When my boss does something stupid, I tell so and why. Sometimes I need to change tact because that's what the business demands, but sometimes he's like huh you're right (generally for technical reasons, although the cognitive cost of task switching is real) and we stay the course. Either way it's nice to have somebody listen at least.