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2,741 karma · joined November 25, 2012

https://dennis.felsing.org https://hookrace.net https://ddnet.org
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def-··on GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece of modern techno-insanity
> * Dimmers. In apartments and other living arrangements where you can't do electrical work, and that don't already have dimmers, this is the only way to have lights with variable brightness.

For me that's the only "smart" feature I wanted and I discovered that there are some light bulbs with an integrated dimmer like Philips SceneSwitch or Osram Duo Click Dim.

def-··on Nim 0.20.0 (1.0 RC1) released
Python has a huge ecosystem of great libraries and is stable right now, no "once" required. In Python you can also write performance critical code in C as the standard library often does.
def-··on DDrace Network
I also blogged a bit about DDNet: https://hookrace.net/blog/ddnet/
def-··on Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal
You can use -d <interval> to run fetchmail in daemon mode and then use --idle so that the server can push messages to you immediately.

(I also use unison to keep the mail directory synchronized between all my machines.)

def-··on Intel Announces 8 Core I9-9900KS: Every Core at 5Ghz, All the Time
> Half the reason I still pay attention is to find if there's a new Linux boot switch I need to turn on to disable some new performance regression.

No need, if you really want to disable all mitigations, including future ones, use mitigations=off.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-...

def-··on Chinese Traffic to Time.gif · HookRace Blog
I'm not sold on the idea of monetising traffic. It's not like the traffic is costing me anything or causing harm.
def-··on China’s tech sector is in the doldrums
Sounds familiar:

> Vladimir Bukovsky maintained that the middle ground between the Big Lie of Soviet propaganda and the truth was itself a lie, and one should not be looking for a middle ground between disinformation and information.[5] According to him, people from the Western pluralistic civilization are more prone to this fallacy because they are used to resolving problems by making compromises and accepting alternative interpretations—unlike Russians, who are looking for the absolute truth.

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

def-··on Interpreter for a simple Lisp, Written in Prolog
Prolog uses .pl and because of the Perl conflict occasionally .pro: http://www.swi-prolog.org/pldoc/man?section=fileext

I still found a

    autocmd Filetype pl set syntax=prolog
in my vim config from my Prolog days.
def-··on Linux Desktop Setup
Indeed, I'm not even mad when I have to interrupt my commute to let a plane land or take off. Fun to watch every time.
def-··on Linux Desktop Setup
Thanks, fixed!
def-··on Linux Desktop Setup
https://hookrace.net/blog/broken-hardware-fixes-hacks-8-year...

https://hookrace.net/blog/new-hardware-hacks/

def-··on Linux Desktop Setup
I use YouCompleteMe at work for large projects (and it still sometimes struggles with looking up some symbols), but for my rather simple personal projects ctags has always been good enough.
def-··on Show HN: Synesthesia – Optimizing brainfuck compiler implemented as Nim macros
Related: http://howistart.org/posts/nim/1/index.html https://github.com/def-/nim-brainfuck
def-··on Nim 0.19
https://github.com/def-/nim-benchmarksgame
def-··on The risks and benefits of sun exposure (2016)
> The principal identified non-genetic risk factor is ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure, and the relationship between melanoma and UVR is 2-sided: non-burning sun exposure is associated with a reduced risk of melanoma, while sunburns are associated with a doubling of the risk of melanoma. It has long been observed that outdoor workers have a lower incidence of melanoma than indoor workers.

> The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency (defined as 25(OH)D less than 30 ng/mL) was found to be 69.5% for the United States and 86.4% for Europe. The authors further estimate that 9.4% of all deaths in Europe and 12.8% in the United States could be attributable to vitamin D insufficiency.

> Lindqvist et al. 2016 found that women with active sun exposure habits were mainly at lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and other non-cancer mortality, and noted that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking. “Our finding that avoidance of sun exposure was a risk factor for all-cause death of the same magnitude as smoking is novel.”

def-··on Evolution of the English Alphabet
Same question came up on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/8am0si/e...

> Linguist here! In those ancient languages, there was no standard writing direction or standardized spelling conventions. In fact the Greeks often wrote in either direction alternating in a method called "boustrophedon" which means "ox-turning." You get to the end of the line and then write backwards to the other side of the page; it's actually much better for reading.

Answer by sandscript

def-··on An Analysis of the Impact of Arbitrary Blockchain Content on Bitcoin [pdf]
If you are interested in this kind of paper, it was in today's morning paper: https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/19/a-quantitive-analysis-of...
def-··on Developer Survey Results
India is not in the Middle East.
def-··on Ryzen Boards Reign at Embedded World 2018
> Slow is fine, as long as it's reliable.

That's not as easy as it sounds. A few years ago I bought a Q1900 board and there are stability problems which might come from the hardware: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051

def-··on One year of cycling to work
I take a towel with me to dry my exposed body parts. I use Vaude softshell jacket (Posta) and pants (Tirano), but they are more for colder weather. In summer I'd prefer to switch clothes after arrival. There are also overpants and overshoes for the rain, but personally I don't like them because they make you sweat more.
def-··on One year of cycling to work
In our team we don't do full remote work, I don't know about other teams. You can occasionally do home office. I prefer being in the office for work for these reasons:

  - different space for work and private life makes it easier to separate them
  - being able to simply chat with colleagues a bit
  - looking over problems together more easily
  - get out of the house for a while, have a more regular daily routine
  - free lunch ;)
def-··on One year of cycling to work
Yeah, I might have been unclear. I've been cycling for a few years before that and that was the first time I touched a car. The driver DID look straight at me though, seemingly noticing me, so I was really confused when she started speeding up anyway.
def-··on Women who clean at home or work face increased lung function decline
"Chinese food cooking and lung cancer in women nonsmokers." https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-pdf/151/2/140/272296/15...

> This study presents evidence that cooking habits are associated with lung cancer in Taiwanese women nonsmokers. As shown in this and our earlier study (1), women who do not use fume extractors during cooking are at high risk of developing lung cancer. Furthermore, women who wait until the oil has reached a high temperature before cooking the food (stir frying, frying, and deep frying) and do not use a fume extractor have a consistently higher risk of lung cancer when compared with both hospital and community controls.

and further:

> In Taiwan, the market for vegetable oil increased from less than 50 percent to 85 percent between 1950 and 1990. However, vegetable oil containing unsaturated fatty acids was found to be more unstable than lard oil at higher temperatures and could emit benzoapyrene, which was not found in lard oil fumes (26).

def-··on A viable pathway for hydrogen as fuel
96% of hydrogen already comes from fossil fuels:

> There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis; which account for 48%, 30% 18% and 4% of the world’s hydrogen production respectively.

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

def-··on Farewell from Rusty Russell
Interesting to read his qualms about the cryptocurrency field: https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/the-corrosion-of-ethics-...
def-··on Spry Language
Yes, and then I lost interest in in functional languages after discovering the beauty of imperative programming for predictability and performance. All major programming paradigms can be useful, some are better suited for some problem than others.
def-··on Multifamily Passive House in Vancouver
Last summer I lived in the largest passive house settlement in the world, in Heidelberg, Germany, and the main complaint is the heat in the summer. Even with cooling down the apartment to 20°C with open windows all night, and closed windows and window blinds all day, the apartment would be back at 28°C when returning after work. Basically it is too hot in the apartment from May to September. In a survey nearly 60% of the people living there complained that it is too hot in summers, so it doesn't seem to be an isolated problem to the specific building I lived in.
def-··on The cpu_features library
Comment from the post:

> Just in case anyone is tempted, please do not write code that assumes the host on which it is compiled will always be the host on which it will be executed.

def-··on The Opium Wars Still Shape China’s View of the West
> Even national chains, until very recently, didnt accept credit cards.

Some still don't and don't plan to.

def-··on AMD Returns to Full-Year Profitability, Forecasts Strong 2018
Intel's plan seems to be doing this temporarily until their own high performance GPUs are ready.
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