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blacksmytheon The art of the error message

I remember this from ~1995. The Mac would crash (often), then before rebooting say something equivalent to "we have lost all of your data. Click OK". I didn't want to click an OK button - I wanted an apology for losing my data.

On re-boot, it would say "you did not shut down your computer properly".

blacksmytheon CoderPad – Interviewing Platform for Programmers

"The Worlds Biggest Conference For the Worlds Smallest Self-Funded Software Companies" http://www.microconf.com/

blacksmytheon Blockchain Governance: Programming Our Future

>> Governance is the most vital problem in the space. Other fundamental problems like scalability are arguably best approached by using governance to set the right incentives for people to solve them.

>>Yet little research has gone into governance and it feels poorly understood.

blacksmytheon Working rich remain central to rising top incomes [pdf]

  >> Profit falls substantially after premature owner deaths.

blacksmytheon Entrepreneurs Aren’t a Special Breed – They’re Mostly Rich Kids

My high school had a personal finance class (I recall it was required) where you had to pick an occupation, research a typical salary, and then put together a monthly budget based on that salary.

blacksmytheon Sean Parker unloads on Facebook “exploiting” human psychology

Another saying is "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations", said to come from a Lancashire proverb, “three generations atween a clog and clog.”

https://www.corpmagazine.com/shirt-sleeves-to-shirt-sleeves-...

blacksmytheon Learn Networking by Reproducing Research [pdf]

"...students consistently found their own hardware ECMP performed significantly better than the original paper’s ECMP results. The students reran the ECMP results with spanning tree enabled and discovered that the resulting, worse performance was identical to the results in the paper."

blacksmytheon Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble for Its New Weedkiller

  >> Blue River kills with a spray.

An extremely clever idea that I saw previously was to zap weeds with concentrated fertilizer. Rather than being toxic to nearby plants, it is actual beneficial.

blacksmytheon Why physicists still use Fortran (2015)

  >> are ways to get this knowledge.

Edit: are ways 'better' to get this knowledge.

blacksmytheon Why physicists still use Fortran (2015)

A good point, but the text suggests there are ways to get this knowledge.

  >> except six hundred dollars in his bank account

blacksmytheon Wolf Puppies Are Adorable, Then Comes the Call of the Wild

Horses are very much domesticated. It was probably very difficult, requiring many generations of breeding.

By comparison, zebras are very hard to work with.

http://theconversation.com/why-zebra-refused-to-be-saddled-w... "In many ways, zebra appear very like horses (or ponies, given their size). Yet underlying differences in behaviour have meant that while horses and donkeys have been successfully domesticated, the zebra remains predominantly wild... Horses were initially kept as a food animal."

blacksmytheon What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

The Caltech graduation rate back then said to be on the order of 66%.

The saying at Frosh camp was 'Look to your left. Look to your right. One of you is not going to graduate'.

blacksmytheon 250 varieties of apple on one tree (2013)

Grafting apricots/apples/etc is relatively easy.

Citrus trees are much more finicky about taking grafts.

blacksmytheon The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millenial

  >> cabbie...

This was a good predictor of the ~2001 top of the tech boom.

blacksmytheon [dead]

blacksmytheon Simple Techniques for Lowering the Cost of Zero-Energy Homes

  >> didn't care too much to super seal air leaks, because of potential indoor air quality issues.

It is more energy efficient to open your windows each day (during the optimum daily temperature window), than to have low-level air flow all day.

The time of day that you want air flow varies with the season.

blacksmytheon Young People Need Another Gold Rush

I was astounded to see that there is a perceived shorted of gold rushes.

"Filecoin Suspends ICO After Raising $186M in One Hour" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988132

blacksmytheon Rules for new FPGA designers

  >> "Synchronize all external wire inputs with two clocks before using them."

This is why you need to sync external (async) inputs:

"Metastability in electronics is the ability of a digital electronics system to persist for an unbounded time in an unstable equilibrium or metastable state.

In metastable states, the circuit may be unable to settle into a stable '0' or '1' logic level within the time required for proper circuit operation.

As a result, the circuit can act in unpredictable ways, and may lead to a system failure..."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability_in_electronics

blacksmytheon The Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat

  >> sort passengers into their seats based on the passenger heights and weights.

Weighing passengers might not be universally popular. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-37550969

    Pair of businessmen say that asking passengers to step on the scales at the check-in desk is discriminatory.

blacksmytheon An Intro to Compilers

Perhaps the one he wrote?

    Walter Bright is the creator and first implementer of the D programming language... http://www.walterbright.com/

blacksmytheon Ask HN: Are you concerned about AI?

Even cardiologist's jobs are not safe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007208

blacksmytheon Roman Ruins Found in France Are Called ‘Exceptional’

Nails were so expensive, I had heard that people would sometimes burn buildings down to recover the nails.

However, it appears this might by a myth: https://historymyths.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/revisited-myth...

blacksmytheon Robot cracks open safe live on Def Con's stage

  >> half-digit tolerance

I assume you mean <0.5digit tolerance.

There is a big difference between 0.55digit tolerance (might be able to try two numbers at once with enough mechanical precision to the solver) and 0.45digit tolerance.

blacksmytheon The End of Arduino 101: Intel Leaves Maker Market

  >> Wish there was a save feature, I just saved this to a text file.

Click on the time tag (next to the user name), then click on 'favorite'.

blacksmytheon I hacked my body for a future that never came

  >> would have just ripped the other hand off.

I was amused that he could hit a tennis ball through the tennis net, rather than having the strings on his tennis racket shatter.

blacksmytheon “You’re Not the Customer, You’re the Product”

  >> lot more interesting than what's going on on the major labels anyway.

The Pandora recommendation system has gotten much better recently, and has become a good way to find good relatively unknown artists.

blacksmytheon Saying Sorry When Things Go Wrong [pdf]

For me the key work skill is a willingness to answer "I don't know".

People that can't say that when they don't know the answer are inevitably pompous time-wasters.

blacksmytheon Good at programming competitions does not equal good on the job [video]

Also, everyone is convinced that their proxy is the best achievable, although of course they test it only against false positives, not false negatives.