grimoald

Funny, I heard remedies for incoming sneezes from several people and it's a different method every time, I'm not exaggerating. Pressing up the tip of your nose, press against the forehead, press your tongue against the palate etc. The latter works best for me, BTW. I better not try to find a theory what's the real cause.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use Java". Now they have a ProblemFactory.

> (1) there is no inherent reason why it's wasteful or gross to own a lot of things

Really? Maybe I'm a bit naive, but nearly everything you own was produced and transported by using natural resources and energy, and it will eventually lay on a garbage heap occupying space. So every existing thing at least makes a smaller or bigger contribution to environmental pollution and climate change.

> (even native speakers make mistakes)

> colloquial diverges from the proper grammar.

Since we are here on HN I'll allow myself to jump on your, to the topic of this thread totally unrelated, remarks. A native speaker can't really make mistakes, because what a native speaker speaks, defines the language. The grammars have to follow the speakers, not vice versa. The widespread world view that there is a proper language and beside it a inferior colloquial language needs to die.

Don't want to deprecate your personal feeling, but maybe there are rather profane factors that can add to a struck of awe. I imagine that when you come into a big bright hall with that thing right in the middle, which is far bigger than expected and which you have seen a hundred times before on photos, it's hard not to get an awestruck feeling, no matter what kind of thing there actually is.

Oh well, it's a bit hard to discuss art if you have not the slightest sense of it like me.

See here, for example: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1155/what-is-the-...

BTW, I learned English in school, too, but have never heard of such a rule. Still, I dare say I intuitively would follow this rule. At least all the "wrong" examples do look wrong to me.

For me, it's using Linux instead of Windows for coding (at least back then when I was learning to coding). It was so much easier to start a quick C++ project using an editor and g++ than fiddling with VisualStudio. Not to mention Python.

To simplify the argument in the article a bit: you can, of course, use reason to solve some specific problem, but not as a universal system to solve every problem. That's not circular.

It's only easy to see if you think 'ö' is pronounced like 'o'.

Yes! I have the theory that everybody likes the kind of games they grew up with. I started playing video games around ~2000 and I can't really enjoy these 2D platformers or simple 3D games like Doom. They just look too … ridiculous and unrealistic to me. Current games on the other hand are just needlessly shiny and … realistic to me.

I have always been fascinated how little space of giant ships is actually below the water [0].

[0] https://blog.windfluechter.net/files/uploads/fotos/AIDA/Hamb...

BTW: I like how the author uses curly braces to depict water :)

> Before I start though, I have to say, if a company is going to hire a developer based solely and entirely on a piece of code the developer wrote in an interview, you probably don’t want to work there.

This is something I read many times when talking about interviews, and it makes no sense. Either there is a nonzero chance to be more successful in the interview if you perform good in coding exercises, or not. If the former, then there was at least one person in the history of mankind who was hired depending solely on the coding.

As a German, I'm pretty sure most Germans have no idea who invented the computer or think it was someone in America. My parents, and I think the same goes for many others, heard the name of this guy for the first time today, when newspapers and radio programs brought short articles about him. One reason may be that, at least when I was in school, in computer science classes, no history about that field was taught at all.

A look at the blog mentioned in the article proves you right: http://awfullibrarybooks.net/knapsack-problems/ I don't know the book, but it doesn't seem outdated to me.

My system's language is not English, so I would have to either guess what “Dokumentbetrachter” is called in English or get only results in German, which are probably not that many.

BTW, there is a great music scene among the Tuareg people. I like the slow, groovy and intense sound of bands like Tamikrest or Tinariwen. Desert blues, if you want.

Please not. When I have a problem with a program I want to know what to type into Google. I'm using LXDE and in some apps you won't even see its name in the about window.

Totally unreleated: why is the editor war always Emacs vs. Vi, not Vim? Is anybody using the original Vi these days?

Out of curiosity: is anybody here using a binary clock (or another rather exotic clock design) on a daily basis and is able to read the time as fluent as with a normal clock?

Exactly. I'm guessing the reason is that a funny style implies a more personal and subjective sight on the things it describes, and that means it often distinguishes the important and complicated parts from the trivial ones. Serious texts often tend to threat everything the same and you have to think of the practical impact yourself.

I'm not a wine drinker, but when I listen to people drinking, I noticed some frequently occurring patterns, for example:

> normally, I drink only […] wine but I somehow like this one, too.

> The label says this one is very […], but I actually find it rather […]

> I like [bottle A]. > I like [bottle B]. > I like [bottle C].

Personally, when I hear things like this and read articles like [1] I can't help but take wine tasting for complete BS. Then again, I don't get anything out of that, except that I won't have a nice time with friends sipping alcohol and babbling random stuff.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X01... (Abstract of the abstract: wine tasters can't even distinguish red wine from white wine by taste or odeur.)