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dbmueller

67 karma · joined May 4, 2019

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dbmueller··on ForgeFed: A federation protocol for interop between version control services
what's your vcs?
dbmueller··on Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz Is Out
What is meant by "exploding" here?
dbmueller··on X
Superficially similar, yes, but my point was just that it may seem from your bunching up the links together that all refer to the same thing, while they don't.
dbmueller··on X
I'm pretty sure the first two links refer to something very different than the third:

The first two are about a way to encode maths using unicode, as in conventions and special characters allowing e.g. to write fractions, aligned equations, etc. So, this would essentially furnish an alternative to the "math" subset of latex (think mathjax or katex) or mathml.

The third is a package for latex, and allows to use unicode symbols (greek letters, math symbols, etc.) in your math environments + something related to the use of unicode in the output (requiring compatible fonts); it seems the second part is the main one but I'm not sure what that means exactly.

dbmueller··on Improve your walking technique
> walking alone is by no means exercise.

why is that?

dbmueller··on Mastering systemd: Securing and sandboxing applications and services
(sorry for the piggyback)

Something I'd like to see is a simple way to define “containers” on my desktop that would allow me to run sandboxed versions of my standard apps in bundles.

The plan would be something like the following.

You have a simple gui that would allow you to create new containers, for which you could define what it has access to (specific folders, internet, sound, etc). You could then add apps to your container, and they would only be able to play with each other in the container with the restrictions given. I think that would work with a simple app essentially based on bubblewrap. For example:

* A "torrents" container, where the only apps would be firefox, deluge and vlc, and access to no folder in my home directory, but the container would have its own home directory.

* An "admin" container, with only firefox and thunderbird and libreoffice, say, and access to my ~/Downloads and ~/Documents folders.

You should be able to run the admin.firefox and torrents.firefox side by side, since they'd have different profiles. By default, each container would have its own "virtual filesystem" with no accesss to anything outside (modulo what's really needed), and only by toggling "links" would it be able to access your actual fs tree. The GUI would be easy enough for computer "illiterate" people to work with it. And the GUI would be smart enough to create desktop files with each new application I add to a container, with customized icons.

I don't expect it would be too complicated (essentially bookkeeping on top of bubblewrap). If anyone is interested, I'd happily discuss it more!

dbmueller··on Engineering code quality in Firefox
> people still can be harmful even being in good faith

That's a general truth. You make it sound like people choose academia to somehow cheat the system and profit from free student's work or whatever. Make a real case for you thesis then.

dbmueller··on Engineering code quality in Firefox
> I am generally suspicious of anyone who voluntary pursues academia

That's very unfair imo. The majority of people I know in academia don't fit this profile at all. There is obviously disappointing stuff happening, but people generally still are working/teaching in good faith.

dbmueller··on John Conway
It's not necessarily about becoming famous. If you're good enough, you can just work on what you enjoy doing, and it will probably yield something research worthy anyway, and your bosses will be happy, etc. Otherwise, you might end up simply having fun on dead-end stuff, which are harder to sell, academically.

But that's just my impression… mind sharing your story?

dbmueller··on John Conway
To me, the question that springs to mind then is: does that kind of attitude work as well for “lesser” mathematicians/people?

(I'm not sure it does)

dbmueller··on Introduction to Permaculture (1994)
So, I guess in the meantime some developments on the idea have been made. What would a modern intro/reference be?
dbmueller··on “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”
Interesting, thanks!
dbmueller··on “I'm not sure there is an acceptable solution to the problem we are facing”
Do you have any source/reference on the Ebola stuff you're talking about?
dbmueller··on Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system
>>regex library using finite automata >Ehh

By which you mean?

dbmueller··on More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
4 hours isn't that long, is it? plane cannot beat that by much
dbmueller··on More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights
I often find using interrail.eu to be a good option. Much more elastic, and can quickly get financially interesting, even more so for multi-hop travels.
dbmueller··on The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets
> Anybody who's overweight or obese can't be credible if they act concerned about climate change and won't do something as simple (and without cost) as eating less food.

For one, I don't think it's "as simple", and for two, the pattern "if you don't do X, you're not serious/credible/honest/worthy" is unhelpful.

dbmueller··on New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market
how long can a virus live on a face mask?
dbmueller··on The Power of One-State Turing Machines (2018)
I was bothered (for lack of a milder word!) by your use of "proved". As far as I understand, the major problem is that "algorithm" is sort of undefined. To actually prove that TMs are universal, you need to set the formal stage, which implies having a formal definition of an algorithm. But this is not really done, and Church-Turing essentially states that any reasonable formalization of algorithm ends up being equivalent. But this is not tautological at all, to me.

> recursive functions alone are not sufficient to describe all computation.

Any function computable with TM is recursive, and vice versa, so they should be, if you understand "computable" as "computable with a TM". I don't see how this "functions as first class" comes into play here, but I'd be interested anyway?

dbmueller··on The Power of One-State Turing Machines (2018)
> proven to be at least as powerful as any possible algorithm

I'd be careful with that, you need to formalize "any possible algorithm" first, and that's the content of Church-Turing I believe.

Edit: Also, don't forget recursive functions (dating from I don't know when, actually)

dbmueller··on Start Your Own ISP
I think there are quite a few in France:

https://ffdn.org/fr/membres

dbmueller··on Mailpile: Email that protects your privacy
Just as a heads-up, you should maybe have a look at mailcow and mail-in-a-box:

* https://mailcow.email/ * https://mailinabox.email/

which essentially provide the whole email stack in a relatively nice bundle it seems (I have not yet forced myself to migrate). I think mailpile and roundcube are just the "webmail" part of the stack.

dbmueller··on Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills
Is coffee production polluting? What is the number breakdown?
dbmueller··on Multi-Layer Dictionary (2016)
Except unions of open sets are required to be open, so the case for topology here is not what you're describing (assuming standard definitions).

Generally, the topology on a graph will look like what you get if you draw your graph in the euclidean plane (or space, whatever) without intersections of edges.

The notion of closeness of vertices in this case isn't really well described by "point set topology", but you'd rather use the notion of distance between vertices (length of a shortest path). But even then, the distance stuff generally assumes non-directed edges, because you generally want the distance from A to B to be the same as from B to A.

In short, I don't think "point set topology" has much to say here, at least as usually done.

dbmueller··on Multi-Layer Dictionary (2016)
Monoid with 60 generators. But is it free?
dbmueller··on The Mathematical Nomad, Paul Erdős
Is that János Pach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Pach ?
dbmueller··on Argdown
Interesting, thank you! I didn't actually think such a thing existed. Can you expand on the lack of scientific merits?

I gather it's a mix of sociology,philosophy,communication and logic?

dbmueller··on Argdown
If it's not too much trouble, can you link to the research centres you're talking about?
dbmueller··on Elsevier cuts off UC’s access to its academic journals
I'm not sure arXiv is an example of doing without journals. arXiv doesn't involve peer review, so that any result published there are to be taken with a big grain of salt.

On the other hand, there are open access journals that essentially act as a layer above arXiv, so that the main added value is review.

dbmueller··on What I Learned Co-Founding Dribbble
Fair points. I like the 'short timeframe/small goal' idea... might try that.

Thanks for the tips!

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