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drewm1980

499 karma · joined March 4, 2015

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drewm1980··on California cancels salmon fishing season
Someone thought building a giant taser and electrocuting everything on the seabed was a good idea.

https://www.pulsefishing.eu/what-is-pulse-fishing/techniques

If it doesn't destroy the plants too, it probably ~is better for the ecosystem than what it's replacing, but if aliens come and start dragging electrocution nets over human cities to electrocute us all, we won't be able to say we didn't have it coming.

drewm1980··on Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
As a homeowner in the EU just starting an ecological home renovation, the biggest obstacle to heat pump adoption BY FAR is that you have to rip up your floors and install in-floor heating to deal with the lower warm-side operating temperature of heat pumps. At least that's what homeowners are being told here by tradesmen. Your two choices are to stay on natural gas or embark on a renovation that may end up costing as much as your entire house.
drewm1980··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
Yes, in the limited sense that this is a massive known problem with the USA's electoral system, and better democracies than the United States have been formed since then that are less vulnerable to the spoiler effects that resulted in the USA's pathological two party system. Here in Belgium, you can vote for greens, socialists, (thinly veiled) nazis... and they might gain a seat or two in the legislative bodies.
drewm1980··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
It was news to me until recently, but the shifting of blame for destructive business practices onto the consumer is extremely well documented to be greenwashing. i.e.:

https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobi...

It's not inconsistent to boycott destructive products as an individual, but political pressure should focus on flat out banning destructive business practices. The electoral system failed to prevent another oil-drilling president from entering office, but it's still possible his administration will be successfully sued in court under USA's (admittedly weak looking) version of Duty of Care laws. The TLDR is that ~some democracies have it baked into the constitution that the government must act in the interests of the citizens, and are getting successfully sued in court to do so, despite regulatory capture and corrupt politicians.

drewm1980··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
They are scooping up entire ecosystems from the sea floor and grinding them up to feed farmed fish. With rare exception, fish farming should be viewed as a way to allow humans to (inefficiently) eat the entire marine ecosystem.
drewm1980··on Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
The way certifications and accreditations work in the fishing industry is covered in the documentary Seaspiracy.
drewm1980··on “Clean” code, horrible performance
New developers are still watching Uncle Bob videos online and taking those strategies as the default for how you craft code, largely because there are not very many people since then making similarly grandiose claims about how software should be crafted and forming entire companies pushing adoption of those techniques commercially. We even had a young dev leave our company and form a startup around the idea of doing what we do, but a full "clean code" rewrite. Our software already has major performance issues, I'm not hopeful about the speed of his code after he layers on even more abstractions.
drewm1980··on C-rusted: The advantages of Rust, in C, without the disadvantages
correct. They say so in the paper.
drewm1980··on C-rusted: The advantages of Rust, in C, without the disadvantages
Indeed. Embarrassing! I consciously avoid using "intra" or "inter" in English for this reason, and when I do because of someone else's jargon I also say what I mean to disambiguate. Unfortunately we can't deprecate english to avoid these mistakes... but maybe we can design a system of macros we can insert into our posts to statically check if our usage is correct.
drewm1980··on C-rusted: The advantages of Rust, in C, without the disadvantages
Safety critical software has laws it needs to follow. Testing and validation can be so expensive it doesn't make sense to touch old code.

I'm an advocate of Rust for most software, mind you. The safety you get from enforcing ownership at function and crate boundaries is allowing the package ecosystem to grow rapidly at a high quality. The safety win partially mitigates the safety loss you get from adopting hundreds of small transitive dependencies maintained by random people on the internet. But if you've spend tens of thousands of dollars having engineers test and validate some piece of safety critical code, you're going to need a really good business case for touching it at all.

drewm1980··on C-rusted: The advantages of Rust, in C, without the disadvantages
Yep, the company behind this advertises online demos in gitlab
drewm1980··on C-rusted: The advantages of Rust, in C, without the disadvantages
RE the point about catching mistakes involving far apart pieces of code, they are clear that it's "interprocedural", so the analysis is only within a single function at a time. Like with rust, there is a focus on annotating function inputs and outputs, with a lot of inference within functions. I am curious if there's a way to quantify how quickly the safety propagates as you do gradual typing. If you annotate 20% of the functions in a typical codebase, does 90% of the runtime data pass through an annotated function boundary at some point, catching 95% of the ownership bugs?
drewm1980··on Why I’m making my family German (2017)
The author feels dual citizenship gave her options. Another option is to be a permanent expat without seeking local citizenship. An upside to that is that you may still be able to leave the country if it goes to war and locks in its own citizens (like what happened to Ukrainian men when Ukraine was invaded). And if your country of citizenship tries to lock down its citizens, you're already not there and you would probably have to commit a serious crime to be extradited.
drewm1980··on Insulation: First the body, then the home (2011)
There is not a single sustainable winter clothing manufacturer as far as I can tell. Rayon, hemp, and linen are sustainable but I have not found any warm clothing made of them. (Cotton requires a lot of water and organic cotton even more so because the yield is lower)
drewm1980··on Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?
Consuming animal products.
drewm1980··on The Python Paradox (2004)
I agree. It is not perfect, but if pycharm can't figure out the type of an object, humans can't be expected to either.
drewm1980··on The Python Paradox (2004)
Use a powerful IDE and lower your expectations. Python is halfway through a decades long transition to being a statically typed language, but there is no consensus that that's where we're going, so a minority of libraries will be a pain in the typechecker for the foreseeable future.
drewm1980··on The Disappearance of the Ashtray
Smoke used to be the smell of jazz. Going to hear live music was the only thing that could get me to second hand smoke.
drewm1980··on Bjarne Stroustrup: Think seriously about “safety”... [pdf]
Yeah, that gripe about the C++ standards committee not being consulted is a bit petty. It's likely the NSA didn't consult ~any language maintainers; there is plenty of error rate data coming out of large corporations to go on.
drewm1980··on Bjarne Stroustrup: Think seriously about “safety”... [pdf]
That part was a quote from the NSA. He didn't omit it. But I agree his argument would have been stronger if added to the list the most realistic C++ competitors and differentiated against those instead of the more dynamic languages.
drewm1980··on C'Dent is a new Acmeist programming language for writing portable modules (2010)
I am curious how it round-trips. For the output languages that are also supported input languages, can you transpile back and get something close to or identical to your input?
drewm1980··on Why Not Mars
The thought experiment wasn't to end sentient life in a glorious generation of virtual hedonism, just humanity. Let the octopi build their ~own VR escapism pods.
drewm1980··on O Holy Crap
Agree. Even if you make a hobby out of researching purchases and pay top dollar, you still need a great deal of luck.

Our 5000 euro door, made by local craftsmen with high quality materials, had an installation mistake that ruins ergonomics and compromises the airtightness. I even went for a non-sliding door in the expectation that it would be more reliable. Maybe the sliding door would have been entirely non-functional by now.

My ~400 euro yamaha reface mini-synth has internal speakers that buzz. It's a known problem affecting every one ever made AFAIK.

I'd guess only maybe 1/3 of the top dollar expensive stuff I have bought has been free of glaring defects, despite researching before buying.

drewm1980··on Engineered photosynthesis demonstrated in animals in vivo via synthetic biology
So basically, she would have to be a tree.
drewm1980··on A Reader Asks How to Avoid Working for Evil
I fear I am indirectly responsible for a substantial body count just by helping to build a company that eventually placed itself solidly on the wrong side of the energy transition, but I do not yet have a meaningful number for the C02e -> human life conversion.
drewm1980··on PFC bans are going to change waterproof garments
Their waterproofing wax is a mix of paraffin and bee wax. So if the whole point is to avoid petrochemicals or avoid animal products, this isn't a solution.

Perhaps soy wax could be used for this...

drewm1980··on PFC bans are going to change waterproof garments
Is there any non-petrochemical tech on the horizon for this? There many natural surfaces that seem to magically shed water; it seems a shame to me that gore fabrics is replacing petro-plastic with another petro-plastic instead of going straight to a sustainable option.
drewm1980··on France prepares for possibility of electricity blackouts during winter months
I want to believe that, but France has already recommissioned a coal fired plant. Falling back on coal will delay and exacerbate the pain of the energy transformation. I am an American at a young hip company in the EU and people here only pay lip service to the energy transition. People will keep declaring climate change someone else's problem until they are starving or freezing. If you are in the USA do NOT pin your hopes on the EU leading the way.
drewm1980··on Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries
Impossible burgers take an order of magnitude less land to produce than beef. They're not made of vegetables. Beef fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease. Putting soy in a veggie burger results in way more nutrition than putting soy in a cow.
drewm1980··on Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries
I live in the EU. The thing that makes cheese cheese is arguably the mix of fungi and bacteria growing in it. We have some excellent cheeses here that are traditional except for the substitution of nut milk for mammal milk. They are currently specialty items, but that may change. We may have to give up meat and dairy to get through the energy transition, but fortunately the same mold and bacteria responsible for blue cheese grow on plant milk too!

The etymology doesn't really matter, but the french word for cheese refer to how milk is ~processed... "Fromage" -> "Formage" -> "putting stuff in forms". If you think "peanut butter" is confusing... it is called "pinda kaas" in dutch... directly translates to "peanut cheese"!

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