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Scarblac

8,606 karma · joined September 18, 2013

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Scarblac··on Danish Government silently drops plan to dump MS Office
It's French, sponsored by the French government. They may well end up translating it to all those languages except English.
Scarblac··on Danish Government silently drops plan to dump MS Office
The French government for instance sponsors LaSuite ( https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ , no English language web page of course ).

But I think the hardest thing to replace is Active Directory, Outlook, all the integration with Windows, all the admins certified on Microsoft technology. It's not about the actual application "MS Office", it's about all of IT (that line was not AI).

Scarblac··on Physicists trap a single antimatter particle for a month
But antimatter rights antimatter? Or do they become lefts.
Scarblac··on "Tame" boar and deer are instinctively adapting to the wolf in the Netherlands
Primarily because sheep owners refuse to install good fences.
Scarblac··on BB(10) > Graham's Number
But BB(10) is also just an integer. So it should be computable?
Scarblac··on BB(10) > Graham's Number
It's impressive that a Turing machine of only 10 states can run for Graham's number steps and still halt.

I'd call it absolutely mind boggling, actually.

Scarblac··on BB(10) > Graham's Number
Note that this casually solves the halting problem, usually a hint that something is wrong.
Scarblac··on BB(10) > Graham's Number
So what if we set C = BB(10)?
Scarblac··on Worlds more habitable than Earth?
Also, how much fuel do you need to bring along to accelerate a human and life support system and the whole craft including fuel, for a lifetime? Is it larger than a planet?
Scarblac··on Hackers activate automatic defrosting in supermarket fridges across Europe
Albert Heijn has 40% market share of Dutch supermarkets, and their distribution centers are shut down while they are working on this. Could become quite ugly quickly.
Scarblac··on Why don't more developers “use the platform”?
On the platform, my code is split between HTML, JS and CSS files.

I like modules. They exist in some form or another in most programming languages and they are one of the few definitively good ideas in software engineering. Give me the ability to split off parts of my work with some public API and hidden internals. Works on different levels too, like with a reusable library that consists of modules.

JS has a module story. But HTML and CSS just aren't connected to it, without using something like JSX.

That's why I end up abandoning "using the platform" every time.

I dont know any other environment except the browser where code is split into three in a similar way.

Scarblac··on Tokens too cheap to meter
And a datacenter for Emacs.
Scarblac··on Ancient cave art suggests first known humans in Ireland walked over from Wales
If it didn't melt in summer, its start would have been further to the south.
Scarblac··on The Highest Point in the Netherlands
It is correct though, since 2010 Saba is a "speciale gemeente" of the Netherlands, and its mountain is thus our highest point. Before that it was organised as a separate country "Nederlandse Antillen" with the other Caribbean islands.
Scarblac··on Some conservationists are helping to restore Africa’s wild dog populations
That genus is part of the Canidae family though. Dogs and wolves are in the Canis genus in the Canidae group.

Jackals and foxes are also each their own genus, and there are a number more genuses.

Scarblac··on Why some US restaurants are banning tips
Afaik, in Europe there is no person who "owns" the tip. It goes into a centralized pot that is shared by all the employees.

Especially because most payments are by card (where I live), the tip first ends up with the restaurant itself anyway, not individual waiters.

Scarblac··on Mathematics in the age of AI
Why would it not be able to find reductions now, but be able to find them just by being told that P=NP is definitely true?
Scarblac··on Mathematics in the age of AI
Well then, just tell the AI that the statement is true and it will find reductions!

In reality, it wouldn't depend on the truth value of the statement, but on the AI understanding the proof. If it understands it then it might be able to use it to find reductions.

So the point remains, knowing that P=NP isn't what's important, it's the proof that matters.

Scarblac··on Mathematics in the age of AI
Sure, but just that some random statement is true isn't interesting. It's interesting if it helps understand some abstract structure better.
Scarblac··on Mathematics in the age of AI
How would the mere knowledge that it holds, without any understanding why, be useful?
Scarblac··on The Dutch Community Where People Live on Strips of Land in a Lake
Note that for the second, that's not really a house, it's a boat (woonboot). It floats. The page lists the legal requirements for any replacement boat new owners may want to put there.
Scarblac··on You don't need React: creating a minimal UI library in Vanilla JavaScript
As usual this discussion is people talking past each other because some people work on web sites and others on web applications.

React is great for applications, perhaps not as much for sites. I wouldn't know though.

Scarblac··on You don't need React: creating a minimal UI library in Vanilla JavaScript
I feel the killer feature of doing everything in JS is components. I just want to import something from a library and use it.

Web pages have their code split between HTML, CSS and JS. There is no common story that works for all three except for using JS.

Scarblac··on Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust
Spreadsheet software, like Excel.
Scarblac··on Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust
OTOH, there's spreadsheets. The abstraction is just so great that users can and do use them for anything.

The problem seems to be that there's not many such great abstractions to be found.

Scarblac··on Steel Bank Common Lisp version 2.6.7
What is done in practice, for daily development use? Building the image in memory from source files at startup?
Scarblac··on Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample
At any rate, if the AI's side in this conversation were a human, that would be an extremely intelligent human indeed.

But there's no way the thinking times would have been that short, of course.

Scarblac··on Maybe you should learn something
It's hard to say because it depends on what you're looking at too, of course.

But doomscrolling seems to teach your brain to never pay attention to anything for more than a few seconds, while at the same time being more exhausting than watching TV.

So I'd say the TV is healthier.

Scarblac··on Maybe you should learn something
But even then, it's still the phone, in my experience. It takes up so many hours but you also don't really rest, and it also tends to keep you up too long at night.

If you can replace five hours of doom scrolling with an hour of doing nothing in particular, an hour more of sleep, some time staring at a book page or soduku, some more work on chorse, you'll most likely gain an hour or so to use on something that takes mental energy.

Scarblac··on Underarm bowling incident of 1981
There's a rope around the field, if the ball goes over it without hitting the ground (like a home run) it counts for 6. If if it did hit the ground it counts for 4.

They can run more than one (get to the other side, turn around, run back, etc) but the chance of the wicket you're running to being hit with the ball (so you're out) becomes larger so they usually manage 1, sometimes 2 or even 3. And both batters have to run the same amount.

If the number of runs is even, they end up on the same side as they started from.

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