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cjuon Letters of Last Resort

It's strange to think that countries that never had this kind of weapon and maybe don't have a detailled nuclear doctrine might have to take such a decision in the middle of a crisis if they are "chosen".

cjuon State Machines - How Balanced controls funds flow

You have several realistic examples on this page about Stateflow, one of the most used FSMs design software in some industries such as automotive: http://www.mathworks.com/products/stateflow/examples.html

cjuon Hyperloop: Not so fast

Another article of the blog is about the modelisation of the Hyperloop vehicule (+environment): http://blogs.mathworks.com/seth/2013/11/07/hyperloop-model-a... It can be read as an introduction to Model Based Design. It shows for instance the interest of handling variants to test either different hardware concepts or different level of representativity.

cjuon The best things and stuff of 2013

A simpler description of the rules of Cannon http://www.pyromythgames.com/products/cannon/Cannonrules.htm (from the same site as the PDF linked by Fogus)

cjuon Ask HN: What programming language will you learn in 2014?

I've started to play with Nimrod and I will definitively continue in 2014. Macros are not always easy to use but they are clean and powerful (I'm mostly a C programmer ...)

cjuon Announcing Chess 2

My favorite variant is Twilight Chess [1]:" The general idea of twilight chess is fairly simple : you can move any of your piece, but the king, into a twilight zone (warp moves), and any piece on the twilight zone may be moved to any empty square of the board (drop moves), but pawns on the last rank. "

[1]: http://membres-lig.imag.fr/prost/Twilight_Chess/index.html

cjuon Umberto Eco: Exploring Imaginary Lands With One of Italy’s Masters of Fiction

Not a novel but the _Postscript to The Name of the Rose_ is really interesting. It has been written a few years after the novel and published at the same time as the english translation. It's a short book published independently. Eco writes there about the writing of the novel but also other topics.

http://umbertoecoreaders.blogspot.de/2007/11/postscript-to-n...

cjuon Ask HN: I'm chaperoning 7th graders for a Google trip. What would interest them?

At that age, we can hope they do not have yet the same attitude as in this strip: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2013/11/12/la-feature-que-lon-....

cjuon Real World OCaml

Here is a description of OCaml usage at Jane Street : https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2038036

ocaml.org have a list of users: http://ocaml.org/companies.html

Some "big" companies in the list: Facebook, Citrix, Dassault Système.

cjuon ASK HN: How to program a quadrotor?

A Galois project:

http://smaccmpilot.org/

http://corp.galois.com/blog/2013/10/2/smaccmpilot-open-sourc...

cjuon Ask HN: What email newsletters do you read?

The Embedded Muse by Jack Ganssle, a free biweekly newsletter on embedded system published since 1997.

http://www.ganssle.com/tem-back.htm

cjuon Ask HN: recommend a book that explains how computers work down to the silicon

«Structured Computer Organization » by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. I don't know the newer edition but the 3rd edition is the first computer book I have read and its layered approach is great (and I think, was new at that time)

cjuon How To Take Exceptional Notes and Be Productive with Paper

To be exact, he started with the Baroque Cycle (http://www.ericaustinlee.com/2008/10/neal-stephensons-writin...).

cjuon Gift for a 10 year old

A book idea : "A Little History of the World" by Ernst Gombrich, the author of "The Story of Art". The book is aimed at children ("für junge Leser" in original title) but not too much and may let him discover new topic of interest (History in general or a specific period/civilisation).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Little_History_of_the_World

cjuon Ask HN: How many HNers use encryption?

I use tarsnap[1] for my backups and I'm sure a lot of HNers also use it. It's not directly communication but the flow between my computer and the server is encrypted (and data on the server also are, of course).

[1] http://www.tarsnap.com/

cjuon JsPDF - HTML5 PDF generator

IIRC it's one of the few big applications written with Mercury functional logic language.

cjuon Nimrod: C + Macros + GC

As anyone tried it for embedded code on microcontrollers ?

It looks usable for soft realtime, almost keeping speed and control of C and adding ease (and fun) of coding.

GC is tunable and there are compilation options for embedded systems (http://nimrod-code.org/nimrodc.html#nimrod-for-embedded-syst...).

cjuon Elm 0.9 - New type checker, much better error messages

I like the idea of the unary negation. It feels natural to seasoned programmers but also to beginners according to the last paragraph.

cjuon 35h work week fading as the average full-time work week in France nears 40h

In France most white collar workers have the "cadre" status that was originally only used for managers. It somehow means you are free to organize your work time under the condition to work a certain number of days per year (often approximately 218) and have your task done (or at least give the impression you've done at much as possible).

The legal number of hours per week is still 35 (or more + RTT days) but the time you do over the legal number is counted as "overtime" only if your manager requests that you work more and that is very rare.

In many companies the real work time is much higher but I can't give you a realistic global value.

cjuon Clay – A language designed for generic programming

> There is this Haskell like language with effects based typesystem that might be worth looking at, the name continues to escape me.

Disciple ? (DDC) http://disciple.ouroborus.net/

cjuon Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

If I understand badclient correctly, the (alleged) attitude of M. Nissan towards Arabs and Israël comes from his problems with M. Ghosn. I'm just saying that if it's the case, it make no sens.

cjuon Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website

It's quite strange to see Carlos Ghosn described as an Arab. As far as I know, he has never spoke publicly about Israël.

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

cjuon Rejected names for the original Xbox

> TSO (Three, Six, Zero)

Already the "360" that have been used later.

cjuon Ask HN: What board game do you like?

A great classic: Scotland Yard

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/438/scotland-yard

A more recent board game, also based in London but much earlier : London 1888 Beautiful board. Rules are relatively complex if I recall correctly.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19991/london-1888

cjuon Ask HN: What board game do you like?

Also not really a board game but I really like Eleusis Express and by experience many software developers also do. The Express version is a much simpler set of rules of Eleusis: one of the player choose a rule the cards have to follow to fit in a sequence and other players have to guess it by prosing cards and havint the game master indicate wether the card fits or not. The role of game master is rolling.

It's important to insist that the game master shall not use a rule too much complex (beware "creative" SW dev!). It's almost always harder to discover than expected even with smart people.

http://www.logicmazes.com/games/eleusis/express.html

cjuon Ask HN: What board game do you like?

No really a board game but Werewolf (a.k.a. Mafia) is great. It's fun and simple to learn. However it depends a lot on the quality of the game organizer and the athmosphere he is able to provide.

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29

cjuon Ask HN: Book recommendations?

Over an infinite summer : http://infinitesummer.org/

cjuon Ask HN: What are some good books?

If you liked DFW and Borges, you may like Matt Ruff (especialy "Set this House in Order", "The Mirage" and "Fool on the Hill"). It's not as complex but the style is similar and really enjoyable.