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Sharlin

22,380 karma · joined June 19, 2009

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Sharlin··on Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack
Not many, probably, but their cold chain people definitely would have known. Instrumented and remote monitored cold chains are standard these days because keeping stuff refridgerated end to end is a pretty big deal.
Sharlin··on Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack
Probably most of them had exactly zero inhouse expertise in cybersec and just pretended there’s nothing to worry about because having to worry would be inconvenient. Maybe some of them made a call to their cold chain supplier and were told that there’s nothing to worry about.
Sharlin··on Patrick Stewart taught us what good men do with power
Like the GP said, they were bland, sort of jerks (and not really even Jerks With A Heart Of Gold), and had no chemistry together. As far as I can recall, they just had petty drama all the time that felt like it was written just because there’s supposed to be drama.
Sharlin··on Patrick Stewart taught us what good men do with power
Like 24 and several other shows, Battlestar Galactica is very 9/11 coded. Everything took a turn towards Darker And Edgier in the aftermath.
Sharlin··on Patrick Stewart taught us what good men do with power
Yeah. It boggles the mind how unlikable the Rocinante crew is. Why were they written like that?
Sharlin··on Postgres 19 is late because so many more bugs are being found now
...are you serious?!
Sharlin··on Parchment Paper History: How We Got Paper Perfect for Baking (2019)
Well, I meant globally. Child's book was of course translated to various languages but hard to say what its influence on popularizing parchment paper was other countries. I've no idea if those TV shows were broadcasted outside the US, though DVD releases appear to exist.
Sharlin··on Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes
Well, this thread is about a temper tantrum specifically.

Most of those things are internal US politics anyway and while certainly unpleasant to observe as an EU citizen, they just aren't salient on this side of the pond the same way that his international diplomatic efforts are.

I can believe that the head of state of a powerful industrial nation is a massive crook, criminal, terrible human being, what have you. But a toddler who shits his pants with liquid excrement and thinks it's an assertion of dominance? That's beyond my suspension of disbelief.

Sharlin··on Parchment Paper History: How We Got Paper Perfect for Baking (2019)
Parchment paper was definitely widely used in kitchens before the 00s.
Sharlin··on Parchment Paper History: How We Got Paper Perfect for Baking (2019)
How so? Parchment paper is cellulose impregnated with silicone.
Sharlin··on Restrooms along the Norwegian Scenic Routes
I still cannot believe I'm living in a timeline where the US president is emotionally a 3-year-old and throws a temper tantrum in the public when his parents don't get him a shiny thing he has done absolutely nothing to deserve.
Sharlin··on Sam Altman says DRAM capacity should go to data centers, not personal computers
B-but how are you going to be available and responding to emails and Slack DMs 24/7 without a phone?! I guess an employer could allocate each worker a dumbphone that has no other functions than letting your boss reach you. And check where you are physically, probably.
Sharlin··on Sam Altman says DRAM capacity should go to data centers, not personal computers
Yeah, "isn't your car sitting idle like 22 hours a day?"

Bathrooms are even more inefficient, btw. How many hours a day do you really use a bathroom? And some people even have more than one just for convenience.

Sharlin··on Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament
My point was that politics IS their domain, as evinced by the examples I gave.
Sharlin··on Shiny Object Syndrome
It’s possibly a good thing in disguise. Maybe it will make software dev finally more inclined to focus on tested and true technologies rather than chasing trendy novelty stuff.

(Oh, who am I kidding, it’s AI that do tech decisions now and they choose whatever stuff that’s overrepresented in their training data, or just NIH stuff, which has inexplicably become a virtue, like measuring progress by lines of code spent has become. )

Sharlin··on Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament
Many if not most career politicians have education in their domain: law, civics, economics, political science, or similar. On the other hand it’s a common failure mode of STEM people in particular to assume their expertise can be directly applied to more "human" fields and indeed to dismiss those fields as unscientific hand-waving.
Sharlin··on Proton's CEO Cancels AI 'Re-Interviews'
“That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.” Yen added, “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

I mean, I also appreciate the honesty of the CEO to say that security is not important anymore and if it is to you, this company is not a good fit anymore.

Letting people go for invented reasons isn't something that happens in civilized countries, by the way.

Sharlin··on Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated
Well, obviously massage is also very enjoyable. If labor is cheap enough, there's no reason it wouldn't be a common indulgement in public bathhouses (which were the only type of bath available to most city dwellers outside the very wealthiest ones, of course).
Sharlin··on I'm so bad at billiards that I ended up in the hyperbolic plane [video]
I loved this one about periodic double pendulums and their state space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtjb2OhEQcU
Sharlin··on Show HN: I Turned DOOM into a Transformer
There’s no use in writing docs at all if they contain near-zero density of information that can actually be deciphered. LLM word salad is not documentation, it’s only useful if all you care about is checking the box "[ ] write documentation".
Sharlin··on Gilgamesh by Simon Armitage review – an ancient epic is brilliantly translated
A very funny and informative book review of Gilgamesh (based on Andrew George’s 2003 edition/translation) by a guest author was recently published at Astral Codex Ten: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-epic-o...

Recommended reading for anyone interested in knowing more about the work.

Sharlin··on We ran AI agent swarms in Minecraft and Mindustry
A fate even worse than turning the universe into paperclips: turning it into a bureaucracy.
Sharlin··on Zombie stats: Where the numbers AI quotes come from
Probably researched and written entirely by an AI…
Sharlin··on If IPv4 were land
Honestly IPv4 addresses should always have been formatted in hex, like FF 00 00 69, with whatever delimiter. Would make it trivial to write directly as a 32-bit int, and parsing and formatting a string would also be cheaper. And you could have funny blocks like CAFE.0.0.
Sharlin··on If IPv4 were land
> until software and hardware has been updated

Yeah, about that part. This is a "now draw the rest of the fucking owl" type of idea.

Sharlin··on A new faster algorithm to compute 64-bit signed floor division
The mul-shift part is what any optimizing compiler does for known divisors and has done since the 90s, if anything it was more vital back then when the gap between div and mul was wider than today.
Sharlin··on SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef
That’s a rather interesting interpretation. Why would a ship name prefix stand for a verb phrase rather than something that describes the vessel? To be honest the exact meaning was TIL for me too, I always assumed the obvious "Steam Ship", similarly to other common prefixes like "MS" for "Motor [ICE] Ship" or "SY" for "Sailing Yacht".
Sharlin··on Discord will soon let anyone find public server messages through Google
Right. Many communities and project teams saw a real need for an IRC replacement, whether literally or not, and Discord was the least bad choice simply by existing. And IRC channels were of course just as un-googlable without setting up a logging bot and a crawlable archive.
Sharlin··on Police are using AI to pull over drivers for 'suspicious' behavior
I think tech people often have a very mechanistic interpretation of law (also leading to the common misconception that it would be possible and desirable to encode law as a computer program!) and like Orthodox Jews, a certain kind of people seem to treat law as some sort of puzzle to be solved.
Sharlin··on Why is AI generated language so hard to understand?
Yeah, there are certain exceptions.
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