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AlexSW

174 karma · joined August 5, 2020

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AlexSW··on A list of advanced math tricks by Terence Tao
You may not be as far as you think.

If you've done 'proof by induction', that's listed there (beginning of post 6), and should hopefully give you some grounding.

Several of these are not as complicated as they may look. Though some of them I certainly have no ideas on at all.

AlexSW··on Getting Started with Tmux
For what it's worth, you can just do this using Alt (i.e. 'meta'). No special terminal required. Just use `bind -n M-<X>` to say 'no prefix' and use meta-<X>.

For example, `bind -n M-1 select-window -t 1` means Alt-1 goes to Window 1 for me.

I use Alt-h, Alt-j, Alt-k, Alt-l for vim-aware pane switching (with some vim config too), e.g. via `bind -n 'M-h' if-shell "$is_vim" 'send-keys M-h' 'select-pane -L'`. I have a load of Alt-<X> mappings.

I use iTerm and Windows Terminal primarily, but it works on everything, really. Though sometimes you need to adjust what 'alt' means; in iTerm, you need to make Alt be Esc+ (I think).

AlexSW··on "The Social Network" synth sounds
Just to add another data point, I really like it! I'm an enormous fan of the Social Network's soundtrack and I feel you really captured the feel and sound that some of its pieces give (obviously particularly the main theme).

Would love to add it to some of my Spotify playlists if you're on there (but I very much understand if you're only on Soundcloud).

AlexSW··on Integer Conversions and Safe Comparisons in C++20
Not sure Erlang is strong on the basic types front on the whole though; I've never been a fan of strings in Erlang. Greatly prefer C++ on this front.
AlexSW··on Ask HN: How do you celebrate your birthday?
I use it as an excuse to get the friends together for dinner and often games after.
AlexSW··on I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome
For me, it's simply the grouping of tabs. I use both, but if I ever want to keep my tabs organised (which is often) I cannot use Firefox.
AlexSW··on OrBit: New Undetected Linux Threat Uses Unique Hijack of Execution Flow
It seems to me hard sometimes to know what all of the 'state-of-the-art' and historic techniques are; in practice there'll likely be far too many to enumerate on a variety of platforms. But I do wonder if there are good lists or compilations anywhere that would include these.
AlexSW··on Ask HN: What martial art should I learn?
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu always seems like a good choice whenever I talk to people about it. However it's more physically demanding; more peaceful options may be preferable (e g Tai chi).
AlexSW··on The Linux kernel can spawn processes on its own
Genuine question: how do you know such things? I'd love to learn them, so I'm wondering how others learn them (other than remembering random comments from here).
AlexSW··on Security Vulnerability in Tor Browser
Judging by the post and the user's post history, almost certainly 'we' refers to Mozilla.
AlexSW··on Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)
Not sure whether you know something I don't but I'm not aware of any VM when I'm running Docker containers directly on my Mac?
AlexSW··on Spongebob-CLI – Watch classic spongebob from the terminal
Ah good spot, thanks! I'd agree with you there...
AlexSW··on Spongebob-CLI – Watch classic spongebob from the terminal
That's a local variable
AlexSW··on Spongebob-CLI – Watch classic spongebob from the terminal
I had a quick look at the code to see how it worked and I feel like I'm being daft; where is line 28 getting the variable `soup` from?

https://github.com/trakBan/spongebob-cli/blob/eac7eded094a48...

AlexSW··on Help me add dark mode in Hacker News natively
Materialistic is a good mobile app for Hacker News which has a dark mode. No affiliation, I just greatly like using it (Android).
AlexSW··on Transgender Individuals Twice as Likely to Die Early as General Population
That all makes a lot of sense. And I think you've helped something 'click' for me (and hopefully others) in understanding some things here, thank you for your time writing all of this up! It's really appreciated.

A quick final questions on pronouns, if you have time: I'm contemplating the idea of just using they/them pronouns for everyone. I quite like the idea currently for a few reasons, and I can't imagine people being offended by it(?). But one negative I could see is that, when someone asks for others to use particular pronouns for them (e.g. she/her), using those pronouns I can imagine would be a nice acknowledgement/validation/show of support etc., which using they/them instead probably wouldn't give. Did you have any opinion on people making such a choice, given any insight you might have from your own experiences or an understanding of the LPGTQ+/etc. community? I'd definitely like to be able to reasonably justify it as a rule (even if someone's specified certain pronouns).

AlexSW··on The λ-Cube
Nothing to add to the other comments, just wanted to add another data point that the website (on mobile) was perfectly clear and the information was all laid out and explained very well; I have no (constructive) criticism to give.
AlexSW··on Transgender Individuals Twice as Likely to Die Early as General Population
Am I reading you correctly in that, at the end of the day, you simply just want breasts and a vagina? Or do you want something more broad here?

I broadly thought transgenderism was about a desire to be perceived and feel/identify on all levels as a man when assigned female at birth and woman when assigned male at birth, as opposed to just wanting particular sex organs.

AlexSW··on Async Rust in Practice: Performance, Pitfalls, Profiling
Which limitations of C++, sorry?
AlexSW··on Hashing is not encryption
The output length/size of a hash function is fixed, whereas it takes an arbitrary-length/size input.
AlexSW··on The warning signs are there for genocide in Ethiopia
I think Xinjiang is different for a variety of reasons, one of which being it's happening under the Chinese government. Ethiopia threatening to slap on heavy quotas/etc. on exports or other retaliatory action is nowhere near as impactful for many nations, so hopefully countries will be much more prepared to heavily lean on the Ethiopian government diplomatically, which is just not as feasible with the Chinese government.
AlexSW··on We are recreating the entire planet in Minecraft
This first one entertains me greatly; how'd that go? Sounds like a pain!
AlexSW··on Your face is not a bar code: arguments against automatic face recognition (2001)
I really appreciate the sentiment you're conveying here, and you put it well. A quick browse of your profile suggests this isn't an anomaly in your posts, either.
AlexSW··on The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used
I compile React frequently in a docker container on my M1 MacBook Air and I, similarly to the other commenter, get no such problems.
AlexSW··on Nvui: A NeoVim GUI written in C++ and Qt
If you need another, saving a file using sudo after opening not as sudo is much more annoying and the normal strategy in vim (which often includes `tee` but I prefer to use `mv`) doesn't work at all.

I still use Neovim, but this is my main gripe. Broadly I like it a lot, for reasons others have covered.

AlexSW··on An open letter against Apple's new privacy-invasive client-side content scanning
I'm not sure of the point you're getting at. You can do this with effectively anything. Replace "gay marriage" with "child sexual exploitation" in "I support gay marriage". Does that mean we shouldn't support anything?
AlexSW··on U.S. and key allies accuse China of Microsoft Exchange cyberattacks
For what it's worth, I think this is the NCSC in the UK.
AlexSW··on Firefox 90
To add to the comments not mentioned any UX reasons, I wanted to use Firefox on my phone as I do on my desktop and laptop but when using it I disliked the tab organisation compared to Chrome, and that's pretty much all I need the Web browser to be good for on my phone, where I'll often have up to 100 tabs open. Maybe it's changed now but Firefox had an impractical 3D scroll through tabs showing only the top IIRC, whereas Chrome has a much more practical grid of page previews that allowed for easy navigation. It also now allows one to group tabs very nicely.

I hope Firefox has changed, or that there's a setting hidden away somewhere for these.

AlexSW··on When Orcs Were Real
This seems to me to be a very disingenuous comparison and you're not responding to my question. Are you seriously arguing that superior weaponry doesn't help in a war? I think it's reasonably clear that the situation of the Aztecs differs to the conquest of Afghanistan not only by many hundreds of years.

I am not making the statement that all winning a war takes is superior weaponry, as your strawman would suggest. It doesn't take any one factor. Many factors add up. I'm saying this is one of them.

AlexSW··on When Orcs Were Real
I agree with the majority of what you're saying, but like so many wars throughout history, surely superior weaponry played a huge role in the conquests? Particularly here where the difference is so large. Not the only role, certainly, and maybe not the biggest (compared to disease), but a very sizable one still. I struggle to imagine Spanish success had the weapons been reversed.
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