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dandrewson Lecture from the Man Who Dropped Both Atomic Bombs

And perhaps, to demonstrate the will to use it.

dandrewson [dead]

Accidentally upvoted. Boy, I wish I could take that back.

dandrewson NASA estimates 1B ‘Earths’ in our galaxy alone

GP made no such point.

dandrewson Why CDs May Sound Better Than Vinyl

"Warmth" and "depth" seem imprecise to me. Do those words have quantifiable meaning to an audiophile?

dandrewson The self-hating web developer

In re: the vast number of available programming languages... not really a new problem. I've always been amused by the "Tower of Babel" illustration on the cover of Jean Sammet's 1969 book, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51jYiKlauWL._SX330_BO1...

dandrewson Tesla’s Model S Gets “Ludicrous” Mode, Will Do 0-60 in 2.8 Seconds

Not only s/w this time.

dandrewson A Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom

"...I don't see how you could effectively encode your knowledge of a programming language on to flash cards."

I've occasionally wondered if an Anki deck composed of Clojure idioms would be valuable. It would be dependent on paredit conventions, teaching "shapes" along with symbols.

dandrewson Scientists discover fundamental property of light 150years after Maxwells theory

Originally published: http://theconversation.com/scientists-discover-fundamental-p...

dandrewson Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome

"Botched shuttle design"? You don't know much about the orbiter, I take it. Shuttle was meticulously - even lovingly - maintained, a hairy complex scrupulously documented piece of kit, well built and designed if not well conceived.

I'll guess your crack is motivated by shuttle's mission, which was misguided (to say the least). Hampered by its LEO envelope, the Air Force should never have contemplated launching satellites on a man-rated platform at all.

But the orbiter itself... a thing of beauty. I've said here before that I'd like to have seen shuttle reattempted, this time with 21st century technologies. (So long as someone else is paying the expense!)

dandrewson A Programming Language (1962) [pdf]

Ken Iverson spoke at a local ACM chapter meeting, circa 1971 or '72, and advised one of my pals not to spend a lot of time on this book. The implemented language had deviated from "Iverson Notation", and he recommended that we look at e.g. Gilman and Rose instead.

dandrewson Ask HN: Ideal language for running the systems of an Orion class spaceship?

An oldie but a goodie: "Lisping at JPL".

http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

dandrewson Ask HN: I Have Cancer. What Should I Do?

Don't do anything rash. Be prudent sure, e.g. move assets around before a big surgery. But don't retire early, don't upset your daily existence any more than you have to.

Collect as much clinical data as you can. My oncologists encourage me to troll the internet, and give me URLs to check out. Be data-driven. Don't sweat the unpleasant possibilities so much, and deal with what is.

You may have more than one oncologist: I've got a surgeon, a radiation oncologist, and a GI oncologist. Keep them all informed of what the other is doing; you shouldn't count on them to touch base with each other regularly.

I went totally open-book with my friends and family and employer. Anything they want to know, I deliver in clinical detail. Some folks don't want to know and that's okay. I've gotten tremendous support from everybody.

Keep a positive attitude. That's key. Better for you and better for your loved ones. Tell jokes. Co-worker: "How are you doing?" Me: "I'm glad to be at work! You can't wipe this smile off my face. How weird is that?"

dandrewson The end for Mandriva

COL did have support for NetWare, which made it possible for me to swing to Linux when IBM lost interest in OS/2.

dandrewson Ask HN: What do you use to protect your home network?

OBSD and a tailored pf, running on a Soekris 5501. I'd probably do OpenWRT today on a commodity router, but I was having too much fun back then rolling my own.

dandrewson Floating Point Routines for the 6502 (1976)

Takes me back a bit. In 1980 I was writing an APL interpreter for the Apple ][ (alas, not half completed) and purchased a copy of "Software Manual for the Elementary Functions" by Cody and Waite. It still sits on my bookshelf 35 years later, awaiting full translation of its algorithms into 6502 code. SQRT, ALOG/ALOG10, EXP, POWER, SIN/COS, TAN/COT, ASIN/ACOS, ATAN/ATAN2, SINH, COSH, TANH, and random number generation. Also useful and comprehensive testing notes for your nascent implementation, with tests written in Fortran.

dandrewson Implementing a Virtual Machine in C

That's a little ungenerous of you. The toy VM has presented an aha! moment to all of us at one time - or more than once, when you learn about Turing equivalence and the rabbit hole that leads from that.

Skip the articles beneath your skill level and move along.

dandrewson Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died

Yeah, pancreatic cancer patient here. Mine presented as acid reflux, which my GP treated with Prilosec. Only after I went anemic and the ER staff scanned for a bleeder did they find the 8-9 cm tumor. Push your GP if necessary for some soft-tissue radiology if you feel "not right". Wish I'd caught mine a couple months earlier.

(Six months after surgery - I'm well so far, still doing chemo for the next three months. We'll see, we'll see.)

dandrewson List of April Fools' Day Announcements

That's "Ralf"!

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/

dandrewson Ask HN: How much to put in a resignation letter?

Doesn't get much simpler than Richard Nixon's:

http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/hi...

dandrewson LINUX is obsolete (1992)

Hurd not welcoming outsiders? My experience was opposite; for a short while I was a tourist on the dev list, and was never made to feel out of place.

dandrewson The Software Developer's Sketchbook

I was thinking along the lines of SLIME, where your evaluated code is preserved by the editor. Sorry for being unclear. Been a long time since I used a raw REPL.

dandrewson The Software Developer's Sketchbook

His "sketchbook" sounds an awful lot like a REPL to me.

dandrewson Ask HN: What new/emerging technologies are you looking forward to in 2015?

More applications taking advantage of deep learning opportunities: perhaps in 2015, deployment of (Dr.) Watson and its derivates when its diagnoses are become credible.

dandrewson Coca-Cola Disconnects Voice Mail at Headquarters

Telco (FSVO "telco") may well not be able to fix CLID, broken as it may be - they can replace it for all the good it does. But it's always aggravated me that they can provide ANI to 8xx customers. Way different service I'll grant.

dandrewson [dead]

Flagged for misleading (re)title.

dandrewson Coca-Cola Disconnects Voice Mail at Headquarters

CLID is trivially spoofed; indeed there are CRM vendors that will do that for your sales force.

Telco should fix CLID.

dandrewson Ask HN: What is the one thing you are afraid of doing in 2015?

Quitting the secure and high-paying Day Job and freelance doing dog knows what at uncertain rates. I'm older than most of you here on HN, and retirement is ever on my mind. It's hard to go all-in on a dream at this stage of my life.

dandrewson Ask HN: What is the one thing you are afraid of doing in 2015?

Yes, do please be (generally) serious. Feel free to criticize and to assert an opinion, but you should also present your reasoning.

I come to HN specifically because it tries hard not to be one of those peanut gallery sites we love to deride.

Kudos to dang and company. They're doing it right.

dandrewson Why tech valuations are bullshit

Flagged for editorializing (and inarticulate) title change.

dandrewson Orion Spaceship Launch Delayed: The Road to Mars Just Got Longer

Flagged for an unneccarily editorialized title. What was wrong with "Glitches Force a Day's Delay in Orion Spaceship's First Flight Test"?