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kitd

5,658 karma · joined September 3, 2013

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kitd··on JVM Options Explorer
Your stack trace tells you where in the code the error occurred, but doesn't tell you what it was doing with what data. For that you need to pass context for the error up the chain of calls, adding to it as you go up. Exceptions are not a great way of doing it as you only have the local context, which isn't a great help when you're catching N levels up.

And if you're not catching N levels up but catching at each level, then you are emulating error values but with try/catch blocks.

kitd··on JVM Options Explorer
This is the kind of scenario that is served better by Go/C-style error values than exceptions. Error values facilitate and encourage you to log what you were doing at the precise point when an error occurs. Doing the same with exceptions idiomatically often requires an exception hierarchy or copious amounts of separate try/catches.

The difference really becomes apparent when trying to debug a customer's problem at 3am (IME).

kitd··on F-35 Got Hit
The article implies that this new one uses an IR image rather than just IR point sources, so can detect the shape of the aircraft among a cloud of decoy flares.

Pretty simple and probably quite effective if true.

kitd··on Go on Embedded Systems and WebAssembly
Full list is here:

https://tinygo.org/docs/reference/microcontrollers/

A few ESP32s on there.

kitd··on IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm
They also designed the Cell CPU used in Nintendo Wiis, among others.
kitd··on Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz
Written by protagonists:

"The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston" by Siegfried Sassoon. (Ignore the title, it's actually his autobiography, and you could probably skip the first book in the trilogy).

"Goodbye to all that" by Robert Graves.

Two of the best writers in the English language recounting their times in the trenches.

kitd··on Artemis II is not safe to fly
Yeah, that (and Carl Sagan) was what made me think of the idea.
kitd··on Artemis II is not safe to fly
I've often thought world leaders, upon election/selection, should get a free few orbits of the earth, to give them some perspective on the job they're about to undertake. Maybe offer the first one on Artemis II, a deferred one for the current US administration?
kitd··on Ötzi the Iceman's DNA Reveals a Living Relative 5k Years Later
There's a similar story about a modern relative of Cheddar Man, this one going back 10000 years. Even more incredibly, the modern relative lives just down the road from where the ancient ancestor was found.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-family-link-that-reac...

kitd··on We rewrote JSONata with AI in a day, saved $500k/year
But that k8s engineer's cost is spread over all the functions the cluster is doing, not just the rpc setup.
kitd··on Niche Museums
Not sure Stonehenge qualifies as "niche". Anyway ...

If you're ever visiting the Lake District, NW England, I recommend the unexpectedly interesting Pencil Museum in Keswick. Graphite was first mined nearby and when it was realised it could be used for pencils, it became extremely valuable, requiring armed guards for its transportation. Thus Keswick claims to be the birthplace of the modern pencil.

kitd··on End of "Chat Control": EU parliament stops mass surveillance
Call it `chatctl` and give it a CLI.
kitd··on The Last Testaments of Richard II and Henry IV
I love that HN contributions include articles like this, and those about pure science & nature too. They're such a breath of fresh air among the endless AI discussions. People sometimes say they shouldn't be on here. I say they contribute to overall human understanding and are therefore just as relevant as the tech news.
kitd··on Qite.js – Frontend framework for people who hate React and love HTML
HTMZ? ;)

https://leanrada.com/htmz/

kitd··on Microservices and the First Law of Distributed Objects (2014)
There's a stat I think quoted in "Code Complete" by McConnell that says the number of bugs in a system strongly correlates with the number of coders. The conclusion is that as the # of coders goes up, the # of lines of communication between them grows exponentially, and it's the lines of (mis)communication that lead to bugs.

This:

1. explains Brooks' assertion that adding coders to a late project makes it later

2. emphasises the importance in clearly defining interfaces between components, interfaces being the "paths of communication" between the coders of those components.

So your assertion is well founded.

kitd··on POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
> now

The idea is about 10 years old. At least that's when I first heard about it, with relation to RSS. It may go back earlier.

Edit: confirmed by the "See Also" section at the end of TFA.

kitd··on The 49MB web page
At least the BBC has RSS feeds for its stories, which avoids having to go through the dire news front page.
kitd··on Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition
You wouldn't know they had no history of leaving their local area unless you interviewed them.
kitd··on Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years
You need to change your social media algorithm.
kitd··on Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years
A populist far-right racist would fix all the potholes and bring HS2 in under budget? Got it.
kitd··on Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament after 700 years
On the other hand, the process of having Commons legislation rejected by the Lords, then amended and sent back can take almost a year. A government looking to push its legislative programme in a single parliament may choose to remove the most controversial elements in return for an easier passage through the Lords. In this way, just the threat of Lords scrutiny can be enough to moderate the output of the Commons.
kitd··on Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
See also "boiling frogs".

But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.

kitd··on James Bruton's new one-ball balance bike [video]
You may remember James Bruton who built a "bike" using 2 balls. Now he has revealed his one-ball version. Check it out!
kitd··on How important was the Battle of Hastings?
Thanks for the link. I had often heard of the importance of the battle of Marathon, but couldn't remember its provenance.

Here's an interesting excerpt from the Siege of Orleans though:

the struggle by which the unconscious heroine of France, in the beginning of the fifteenth century, rescued her country from becoming a second Ireland under the yoke of the triumphant English.

That's quite a statement from a 19thC English man.

kitd··on Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
Tools like Claude Code are the ultimate cheat code for me and have breathed new life into my desire to create

I'm in my 60s and retiring this summer. I feel the opposite. Agents have removed most of the satisfaction and fulfilment from designing, building, testing and completing a feature or component. And if frameworks are a problem, learning to create simply and efficiently without them has its own sense of satisfaction.

Maybe it's a question of expectations. I suspect weavers felt the same with the arrival of mechanised looms in the industrial revolution. And it may be that future coders learn to get their fulfilment otherwise using agents.

I can absolutely see the attraction to business of agents and they may well make projects viable that weren't previously. But for this Luddite, they have removed the joy.

kitd··on Show HN: Swarm – Program a colony of 200 ants using a custom assembly language
Someone else who has read Godel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadter?
kitd··on Smalltalk's Browser: Unbeatable, yet Not Enough
Ah, yes ... "volcanic" organisation.

shuffles papers

"Hang on ... it's here somewhere ..."

kitd··on Computer Says No
> feeling resistance

In a software context, I wonder what the impact of the language used is on the sense of "resistance"?

kitd··on Porn depicting sex between step-relatives set to be banned in the UK
You can only marry a step-sibling in the UK if the 2 parties first met as adults. If one or both was under 18 when they first met, then no.

Edit: I believe the same applies for step-parent/child.

kitd··on Physicists developing a quantum computer that’s entirely open source
> But unlike commercial ventures, the plan is to give away all the intellectual property

I would prefer the term "share". "Give away" implies a single, proprietary enterprise could acquire and control it, which isn't "open source".

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