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bencoder

788 karma · joined June 8, 2012

Contact: bencoder at gmail dt com
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bencoder··on SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
To come back and admit that I was wrong:

"In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed. " from [0] posted to HN [1]

I stand corrected - the warning article was pretty accurate

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/spacex-rocket-dust-tex...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35651757

bencoder··on SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas
the wide angle makes it look a lot further away from the rocket than they really were - The camera is about 440m away from the rocket.

The damage shown in the video appears to be entirely caused by debris while the article was suggesting possible property damage ("shattered glass and damaged foundations ... from a miscalculated sonic blast") to towns 8500m away - 20 times further

bencoder··on Pfizer board member suggests end to mask, vaccine mandates
It's amazing to me that every post that has anybody arguing against the restrictions or similar gets flagged, no matter the source or rationale.

It's really the most divisive issue I've ever seen in my life.

bencoder··on James Webb telescope reaches its final destination in space, million miles away
Having never actually seen the statue of liberty my sense when seeing these comparisons is that it's much smaller in real life than the version in my imagination - no matter how many times I see the comparisons, the statue remains much bigger in my head
bencoder··on Tell HN: AWS appears to be down again
Our API is just appsync (graphql) + lambdas + dynamoDB so, theoretically, we shouldn't have been affected. But about 1 in 3 requests was just hanging and timing out.

As others have said, they are not being forthright about the severity of the issue, as is standard.

bencoder··on Artificial Intelligence in the Cockpit
Seems like an example of the AI effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

although I think when autopilot was invented, the concept of "AI" didn't exist, so maybe not a perfect example

bencoder··on Tilt-5 Was Magical
Yes, all of the headsets do some form of reprojection if frames are not generated fast enough, or to account for the latency between generation and display.

If you turn your head fast you'll see black at the edges where it's not caught up

bencoder··on Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged
14cm, not 1.4m
bencoder··on Plans to shift aviation from magnetic navigation to true navigation
Sure but in small GA planes you're not likely to be travelling so far that the magnetic declination is significantly different so just keep it in mind each time you reset the DI. Or if you are travelling long distance you could make a note of it along your planned route, or your GPS app could let you know.

My point was that this shouldn't require any instrument upgrades to the GA fleet

bencoder··on Plans to shift aviation from magnetic navigation to true navigation
The direction indicator is gyro based rather than magnetic so for most GA it would probably be enough to just learn the offset for the area you are flying and add that when you set/check the DI.

For VFR flying it hardly matters anyway

bencoder··on Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
I really wanted this back then when it felt like I was missing out. Then twitter released their version and I got a taste and decided I wasn't into it after all.
bencoder··on 112 Gripes About the French
> Does this make it "freshly-re-copyrighted until 2004 + 70 years?", or is the year that counts for copyright the original publishing date?

Any changes (spelling, typos, the typesetting) in the new publication would be under a new copyright term. In practice, if you make your copy from the earlier out of copyright edition then you're fine. (Assuming you are correct that the earlier edition is truly out of copyright)

bencoder··on Intelligence and Practice in Chess Development
https://online-go.com/learn-to-play-go is perhaps similar but doesn't go very far or in depth
bencoder··on Intelligence and Practice in Chess Development
https://online-go.com/ is the main & best web based server (and open source like lichess as well)
bencoder··on Tink Is Joining Visa
The pop-up menus also have a very fast transition (compared to many websites) which aids in the feeling of snappiness. I don't know why so many sites insist on very slow transitions
bencoder··on Third member of U.S. FDA advisory panel resigns over Alzheimer’s drug approval
Your doctor should be able to help with that and provide you only drugs that have completed clinical trials to your desired standard.
bencoder··on A URL Lengthener
I remember weallgetthingscheaperwhenwebuyinagroup.com Which I think was advertised on TV in the UK when I was a teen
bencoder··on Show HN: Mmm.page – Drag and drop personal website creator
This is really great!
bencoder··on A SpaceX booster now trails only 4 space shuttles in flight experience
Space Shuttles actually went into orbit. The falcon 9 boosters are sub-orbital.

But I'm hoping that Starship will exceed the space shuttle massively!

bencoder··on Girl and Computer: Reflecting on the journey that got me to where I am today
Yes, everywhere I've worked (UK), the EM manages a group of teams, each with their own team lead.
bencoder··on Statement on New York Times Article
Pseudonymity is essentially the default state of the internet. The "right" to it just exists by the nature of it.

If you want to remove that right you need to argue why it shouldn't exist

bencoder··on Everything you need to know to design your own CNC router
Excellent resource, thank you!

I think the date at the top has the wrong year (2020 / 2021)

bencoder··on First person receives Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in UK
Probably the billions that governments have paid for their place in the queue
bencoder··on Universal Basic Income is Capitalism 2.0
If that's your conditions I'll quit because I'm not desperate for the job... because of UBI
bencoder··on Dark Web Price Index 2020
It's mostly impossible - try buying bitcoin with a card that isn't in your name and see if you can manage it
bencoder··on Unit Testing Is Overrated
Not the OP but I count integration testing as testing integrations /between/ systems - wherever your code depends on something outside your codebase. You can mock this for unit testing.

Don't mock things that are already in your codebase. Use the actual object.

Common argument against this I've heard is "But then when something goes wrong it is harder to figure out where the problem is" - I have never actually experienced this myself, but I have, very often, experienced being reluctant to do any refactoring because I'd have to rip up all the unit tests because they are testing only implementation details

bencoder··on Unit Testing Is Overrated
> There is no formal definition of what a unit is or how small it should be, but it’s mostly accepted that it corresponds to an individual function of a module (or method of an object).

And there-in lies the problem. Remove the idea that the unit is a single method/function.

I subscribe to the idea that a unit is a unit of functionality. Nothing to do with the code implementation.

Only mock where you're reaching out outside of your codebase (filesystem, network, operating system (time, for ex.))

You can still do unit tests for individual functions when you need to work on a complicated algorithm, but those functions should have no dependencies or side effects - pass in all the data you need

bencoder··on Code Completion Demo from OpenAI
This is a really impressive demo and points to a very interesting future of programming where requirements can be automatically converted to code and the developer is primarily determining and phrasing unambiguous requirements and checking the resulting code.

I don't know if that's a future of software development that I would wish to see, but it's definitely interesting!

bencoder··on EU safety agency suspends Pakistani airlines' European authorisation
Since January 1st 2020 the requirement is for ADS-B out. So they will be reporting their GPS position also, now.
bencoder··on Drive through cities in the browser while listening to local radio stations
If you click the "camera" option a few times you get to satellite view - and you are correct, it seems we are driving in a big loop
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