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fferen

829 karma · joined December 24, 2010

Relativity textbook: http://ramp-book.com/

Blog: https://diffxweyl.wordpress.com/

Github: https://github.com/fferen

E-mail: kyh@berkeley.edu

submissionscomments
fferen··on Have you restarted your computer this week?
Corporate windows laptop; need to restart every 2-3 days at best.
fferen··on What If Heavy Files Felt Heavy?
Well, they already do in that large files take more time to copy which subconsciously discourages moving them.
fferen··on Sora 2
Very first frame of the video: green digital text is messed up. Stopped watching after that :)
fferen··on "AI" on a Calculator: Part 1
I first started coding in high school on the TI-84 calculators. My 1st language was TI-BASIC, 2nd was Z80 assembly - quite a big step - and I quit when I faced some tricky bugs that my teenage self could not figure out :-) Back then, I don't believe they had a C/C++ toolchain. Some time later, I tried using Small Device C compiler (SDCC), but encountered several compiler bugs which I couldn't fix but duly reported. Great to see there is such excellent tooling nowadays.
fferen··on Cognitive load is what matters
Disagree with first example. If that condition is only used once, adding a variable introduces more state to keep track of, that could just be a comment next to the conditional.
fferen··on Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator
Edge on Mac, but IIRC it happens on Windows as well. Just checked in firefox/mac and seems OK.
fferen··on Is my vision that bad? No, it's just a bug in Apple's Calculator
On the topic of calculator font bugs, Google's calculator randomly switches between two fonts:

https://pasteboard.co/lmbr4iE6BJej.png

https://pasteboard.co/sU3GA5psIaT0.png

fferen··on Why is everything an orchid?
Fails to mention the actual reason people are fascinated: their diversity of appearance. Typical AI summary with many words not saying very much.
fferen··on Bram Moolenaar's programming language, Zimbu
Reminds me of TI-BASIC for the TI-83 graphing calculators... The closing ')' is optional at the end of a line, and omitting it could make your program slightly faster...
fferen··on The Fill and Flush deplaning method
Idea: deplane by row. Each row leaves when a light in that row turns on. An algorithm decides when to turn them on based on several factors: keeping large groups together, expected speed of deplaning (eg. elderly may be slower), current occupancy of the aisle. Advantage: should be very fast, easy to follow, groups stay together.
fferen··on I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
My tentative advice would be to find the one with the best reviews. Only pay attention to the lowest reviews, even a few 1-stars are informative.

My story: I brush and floss every single day. At my regular checkup, the dentist measured 2-5mm gum depths, and insisted on doing a deep cleaning, which involves anesthesia and multiple visits. I argued that the 5mm depths were borderline, and could very well be 4mm with measurement error. (They did seem to be pushing rather hard.) They also pointed out some tiny supposed "pockets" on the X-ray that looked like just imaging blur or something. Feeling very suspicious, I left, and found another dentist with, surprisingly, zero bad reviews on Yelp. They measured 2-4mm gum depths, and did a much less aggressive cleaning.

fferen··on Silicon, Silica, Silicates and Silicone (1998) [pdf]
When I started grad school in semiconductor electronics, I noticed everyone pronounced it "si-li-cun", while normal people usually say "si-li-con". Maybe it's just a west coast thing.
fferen··on A third of North America’s birds have vanished
At least from the graph, it's leveling out?
fferen··on Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?
https://diffxweyl.wordpress.com/

Theoretical physics blog. Something for everyone.

fferen··on On the State of the Web
I've been using Cloudhiker lately to replace the good old stumbleupon days and it does capture some of the magic of the old web. (not affiliated)
fferen··on Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)
Everyone warns you about alcohol, but I have only had positive experiences, and in fact, wish I started drinking sooner in life. When I was going through a period of general anxiety and loneliness, I used to drink alone every weekend. It was a lot of fun and led to some of my best decisions, such as applying for a new job. Nowadays, I'm in a more stable place and only drink socially.

I feel like my mind is by default "extra sober", and drinking helps bring it to a normal level of sobriety.

fferen··on Why ChatGPT and Bing Chat are so good at making things up
I've found they serve almost exactly the opposite purpose as search engines. When I want reliable info and don't need hand-holding: search. When I have no idea what to search, or want a quick intro to something: ChatGPT. Together, they are very powerful complementary tools.
fferen··on A suspiciously criminal portfolio website
Would be better if you could pan around the board. Having only linear scrolling kinda defeats the concept.
fferen··on What is Chess? What to think and for how long
Something I wonder: are computers better at chess because they can think faster? What if we give a team of top grandmasters 1 day per move, versus like 1 hour for Stockfish. Will they at least consistently draw? To my knowledge, top human vs computer matches these days only use piece odds, not time odds.
fferen··on The art of the shadow: How painters have gotten it wrong for centuries
Sometimes you can get too carried away with drawing exactly what you see. Once I drew a person based on a photo I had on my desk, only to realize that since I was looking down at an angle to it, the drawing was all distorted. :)
fferen··on Meta to ask many managers to become individual contributors or leave
Transfer length method :)
fferen··on SICP: the end of an era (2021) [video]
SICP blew my mind the first time, but I think it's most useful when you already have some hands-on coding experience (as I did). It's why we don't start teaching math with set theory.
fferen··on Keyboard Latency (2017)
If the major source of latency is key travel distance, does this really impact the user experience? My feeling is that a keyboard with longer travel distance feels more "solid" than one where the key hardly goes down at all, even if this adds some extra latency. Otherwise we could just type on virtual keyboards with zero travel distance, but then there is no tactile feedback when the key is pressed.
fferen··on Ask HN: What piece of code/codebase blew your mind when you saw it?
Data from functions:

(define (cons x y) (lambda (m) (m x y)))

(define (car z) (z (lambda (p q) p)))

(define (cdr z) (z (lambda (p q) q)))

fferen··on Information overload is part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (2016)
> Before I lug my sluggish body from under the security of my warm sheets, I reach for my phone, pull it up inches away from my face, and start scrolling through whatever I missed overnight.

In my late 20s, I physically cannot do this anymore since my eyes start to hurt. I am forced to get out of bed and open the blinds until my eyes adjust to the light, then scroll through my phone. But by then I don't feel like scrolling as much. So that problem fixed itself :)

fferen··on Show HN: I may have created a new type of puzzle
1. The animal icons didn't show up for me until I refreshed the page a few times. (Edge, Windows 10)

2. Would help to say "Somebody at bone AND Somebody at flower". I first interpreted it as OR and thought it was broken when it wouldn't let me move.

fferen··on $ rm Important.txt (uh oh)
As a last resort, if you remember part of the lost file, you can grep the hard drive: http://blog.nullspace.io/recovering-deleted-files-using-only...

Saved some of my code once.

fferen··on Quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness
> For example, if I have a `Point` object with `x` and `y` fields, and I make a function called `lowest_point`, it knows I want to the point with the minimum `y` value. Because it knows the name `y` is most typically used for vertical direction, and the word `lowest` also implies vertical direction.

Unless, as in many systems, y=0 is the top and y increases downward.

fferen··on List of Creepypastas
No doubt my favorite creepypasta is the Interface series:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9

fferen··on The world that Twitter never made
+1, Full screen video works about 10% of the time on my phone.
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