Hacker News Reader

bifftasticon A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

Aaah ... the Fable of Sable

bifftasticon Difftastic, the fantastic diff

I like the name

bifftasticon Email Is Not SMS (2008)

Seems like there are a few other things that are not SMS, including SMS itself:

  $ dig is-not-s.ms @sym.noone.org. axfr

  ; <<>> DiG 9.11.5-P4-5.1+deb10u7-Debian <<>> is-not-s.ms @sym.noone.org. axfr
  ;; global options: +cmd
  is-not-s.ms.            86400   IN      SOA     sym.noone.org. hostmaster.noone.org. 2018092900 28800 7200 604800 86400
  is-not-s.ms.            86400   IN      NS      ns4.beckert.ch.
  is-not-s.ms.            86400   IN      NS      sym.noone.org.
  bloggen.is-not-s.ms.    86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  blogging.is-not-s.ms.   86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  changelog.is-not-s.ms.  86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  e-mail.is-not-s.ms.     86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  email.is-not-s.ms.      86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  etherpad.is-not-s.ms.   86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  icq.is-not-s.ms.        86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  im.is-not-s.ms.         86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  irc.is-not-s.ms.        86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  jabber.is-not-s.ms.     86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  sm.is-not-s.ms.         86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  sms.is-not-s.ms.        86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  usenet.is-not-s.ms.     86400   IN      CNAME   sym.noone.org.
  is-not-s.ms.            86400   IN      SOA     sym.noone.org. hostmaster.noone.org. 2018092900 28800 7200 604800 86400
  ;; Query time: 672 msec
  ;; SERVER: 178.63.92.236#53(178.63.92.236)
  ;; WHEN: Sun Aug 28 15:27:12 BST 2022
  ;; XFR size: 17 records (messages 1, bytes 441)

bifftasticon Out of the Matrix: Early Days of the Web (2020)

Needs (2020)

bifftasticon AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe

How do they know their structures are correct?

bifftasticon We don't do that here (2017)

I think this is a very HN phrase and sentiment

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

bifftasticon Police Officer Exam Tutorial [pdf]

Desmond Tutu. A lower second class degree is a 2.2.

bifftasticon Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal

Underrated comment

bifftasticon Difftastic: A diff that understands syntax

I like the name.

bifftasticon Sad Little Men: Assessing the impact of an elite education

You should not be downvoted as you are correct. While all UK schools known as "public schools" are private, most private schools are not public schools.

You are right that what constitutes a public school is hard to define, but I think membership of the Headmasters and Headmistress' Conference is the usual definition.

bifftasticon Build your own SPARC workstation

Tempted to try this with SunOS 4.1.3 for the sake of nostalgia - the first Unix I ever used.

bifftasticon Electromagnetism is a property of spacetime itself, study finds

I'm not the person you're replying to, but yes A definitely is the electromagnetic vector potential (from classical electrodynamics). In gauge theory A tells you how to relate the phase of Ψ at nearby points in space/time.

Now that may purely a choice of convention for Ψ at different points in space/time (a choice of "gauge" in the jargon), but where it gets interesting is if your successive nearby points in space/time trace out a closed loop. If your A is such that the phase of Ψ ends up different as a result of going round the loop, you have an electromagnetic field!

bifftasticon Difftastic: Syntax-aware structured diff tool

I like the name

bifftasticon Why do recipe writers lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions? (2012)

I don't believe this refers to caramelized onions, which are sweet and slowly cooked. It refers to onions fried at a high temperature until brown or turning brown. This can certainly be done in under 10 minutes and is common in Indian cookery.

I cook a Madhur Jaffrey recipe or two most weeks.

bifftasticon Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head

bifftasticon CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

This isn't the first time I've seen negative articles about cryptocurrencies suddenly drop down the rankings on this site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27215572

bifftasticon Overkill objects for everyday life

This reminded me of this old post from the late Erik Naggum on comp.lang.lisp: https://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3147591653434816_-_@nag...

bifftasticon A century ago Ludwig Wittgenstein changed philosophy

Not meaning to be facetious, but it's in this week's hard copy.

bifftasticon A century ago Ludwig Wittgenstein changed philosophy

Can you say more of either of these? Especially the diagonalization argument which seems difficult to, er, argue with.

bifftasticon Curated List of Lists

Some formatting issue on the Emacs page: https://project-awesome.org/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs

bifftasticon Food Prices Are Soaring Faster Than Inflation and Incomes

Probably this:

https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239757/ishares-sp-gsci-c...

In other words a commodity ETF.

bifftasticon An Atonement of Nano

That is a good point in general about dictation software or other accessibility issues. Not likely to be the case for an article about a text editor however.

The filter to decide who to pay attention to works both ways...

bifftasticon An Atonement of Nano

This article is genuinely difficult to read due to the lack of capital letters. It shows a lack of consideration for the reader.

bifftasticon They're Made Out of Meat (1991)

I have also never understood this. Can someone explain?

bifftasticon Self-medication by orangutans using bioactive properties of a plant

This is shown in the Wild Kratts episode "A Huge Orange Problem", first broadcast in 2012.

bifftasticon I Hate My MacBook

Lightroom is the same on Windows. Those issues are a Lightroom problem not a Mac problem.