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mbeex

616 karma · joined December 19, 2017

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mbeex··on How Graphviz thinks the USA is laid out
> freshwater body

This implies volume. Baikal doubles LS in this respect.

mbeex··on NumPy Illustrated: The Visual Guide to NumPy
Never could I. What helps me often is to consider the C language heritage of Python. There, the beginner also has the slightly confusing some_var[y][x]=some_value, caused by the computers memory model behind. Consequently, I'm always looking for the hierarchy of fastest changing indexes. This explains/justifies a lot of the design decisions made also for numpy.
mbeex··on How much math you need for programming (2014)
The controversy between assuming a point of view of "creating" vs "discovering" things is as old as mathematics.

> rather than a simple constructive process.

This requires some more distinction. 'constructive' can mean very different things. Some non-intuitionists would consider their counterparts definition of 'constructive' as possibly OK, but simple - and held other cases still for construction. Anecdotally, Ramanujan received his results as an inspiration from his household deity. Thinking about it probably brings up 5 different opinions among two people.

mbeex··on FFmpeg is 20 years old today
Closer to the underlying originals CLI: https://www.videohelp.com/software/FFmpeg-Batch
mbeex··on What You Can Learn from Living in Antarctica
Opposite Favourite:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32481442

A remark from the article comes to mind:

"If you’ve got a bunch of pessimists together, then nothing is going to happen other than misery."

mbeex··on Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer
I do calisthenics, aka body-weight training. Not the crazy crossfit incarnation, instead classic ladders, intervals of pushups, pullups and some variations. Additionally a plank before bedtime and some hiking (~2000km/year) + deep squats to counteract sitting.

Most important is to find something you can make into a lasting habit (for years). Otherwise you will end like most people with dieting do.

mbeex··on A divorce in Italy destroyed my researcher career
I actually voted for the comments of both of you. I think, you are not far from each other. Written language is sometimes limited :)
mbeex··on Scientist David Sinclair on why we age and why he thinks we don’t have to (2019)
My point was - what will these growing numbers of living things do to a non-increasing volume of 4/3 pi r^3?
mbeex··on Scientist David Sinclair on why we age and why he thinks we don’t have to (2019)
And people stop dying on this sphere, for which we still have no escape or distribution plan (into space).
mbeex··on A divorce in Italy destroyed my researcher career
And it is also nothing new. Personally, I had it 25 years ago in Germany. Same patterns than and now in virtually all western societies. Problem is and was, the topic owns some extraordinary tabu traits and prejudices from people not affected. Ironically, it is not uncommon for them to come three years later and ask when their own lives fall apart.
mbeex··on Google users locked out after 15 years' use
> So many people don't take the 10 minutes to configure DMARC, DKIM and SPF.

Another commentator here mentioned this and the hint was worth gold. In the meantime, I changed/adjusted this in the interface of my website provider (I am also using his SMTP server) and solved an actual problem of this kind immediately (maybe also explaining the shortcomings in the past).

In general, I would admit that it is not a compelling excuse not to know something. The problem is, that I was not even aware of these keywords and after looking them up, I seemingly solved things quickly and - hopefully - permanently. People just don't constantly check all things. Especially with long term reliable services with rare, subtle and not obvious (in this case without any hint) errors.

mbeex··on Google users locked out after 15 years' use
Many commentators mention e-mail here: I'm a conservative oldtimer with my own domain (since the Ninetees) and associated e-mail, of course.

The problem is that it happens to me more and more often that especially with my business contacts in larger companies my e-mail is filtered out / ends up in their junk folders / disappears for other, unspecified reasons. Simple public black lists do not show anything. I am more the developer and not the infrastructure type, but the company policies seem to contain more and more features of downgrading private domains. And in my opinion this is supported by some kind of dirty game of global IT players at technical and other levels.

mbeex··on I am seriously considering going back to desktop computers
P51 owner here. I'm using Thinkpads/Lenovos for 15 years as my main development computers:

1. Not thaaat big, but I prefer sub-4k anyway: WQXGA support, with docking station more than one - check

2. External keyboard - check

3. Check

4. Two M2 1TB Samsung + one 500GB SATA + optional external drives of similar sizes. More than enough

5. Admitted, docking station for some cases and connections.

6. Not anymore, USB bootable devices for the rare occasion. Other former reasons are more or less obsolete for my causes.

7. Docking station again

8. Lenovos are not so bad in this respect too

9. This one was > 2000EU - but will last several years as its ancestors did too ...

12. A piece of duct tape solves all camera problems

I am a consultant, the necessity for traveling around was partly responsible for the original choice, but even today I'm not missing much. I have still NAS-es with even bigger drives and DIY desktops and rack-based servers for image processing (requiring multiple GPU's). But thats me and my area of work. For most things, the laptop ist quite sufficient.

mbeex··on Does C++ still deserve a bad rap?
My entry in professional C++ programming was accompanied by Scotts earlier books. The moment gradually to refrain from the language as my main tool again coincides (coincidence?) with his retreat.
mbeex··on AI Is an Ideology, Not a Technology
Reason for the nitpicking is, that for me - as a trained mathematician - and seemingly some other commenters, the gap between linearity and non-linearity is yet inside mathematics quite substantial. This is true also in general. Non-linearity might be not sufficient, but it is certainly necessary for any definition and/or serious discussion of AGI.
mbeex··on AI Is an Ideology, Not a Technology
Without non-linearity you are mathematically provable not able to get solutions for most contemporary problems.

Refusing the general AI hype bullshit and over-simplifying the hard foundations are quite different things, IMO.

mbeex··on AI Is an Ideology, Not a Technology
> I actually don't get what your point is.

I do, there is a difference between an universal approximator and intelligence.

But I share the objection. And there are more parts, like graph theory, calculus, statistics or more advanced stochastic approaches.

mbeex··on KaTeX – The fastest math typesetting library for the web
KaTeX has an 'output' option and one of his settings is 'mathml'. You can produce clean MathML this way and even mixed HTML/MathML output (default and what you see in the OP's example) with MathML for accessibility. Problem with the pure approach isn't KaTeX but the browser support.
mbeex··on KaTeX – The fastest math typesetting library for the web
He wrote "can be generated". You can use KaTeX for setting up complete static web pages with no JS/server-side prozessing at all. Example from my blog:

https://depot.traits.de/pages/2020/02/21-markdown-example.ht...

mbeex··on Mathematics for Programmers [pdf]
> In effect your brain added 11+2 to get 13, then took away 12 to make it fit

Not my German brain. But mod 24, I'm with you again :) And don't let me start with the Russians, they did it in hardware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_analog_dial#/media/Fil...

mbeex··on We need young programmers; We need old programmers
Somebody else finding the Monkey experiment a good one but wrong for the Authors cause? I mean, the cold water was an artificial external influence and just the opposite of something fundamentally impossible. To be precise, exactly the exact kind of obstacles against which youth has rebelled at all times. Its not the same as the changed circumstances he relates later in his article to.

Galois: Was shot in a fabricated duel (like Lermontov and Pushkin BTW). The setup exploited certain concepts of honor and - kind of ironically - hot-tempered youthness, susceptive to this.

mbeex··on Against Testing
> "Refactoring" normally refers to changing code's implementation without affecting its external behavior.

To verify this invariance, you have to test it. Specifically, and that means new tests.

mbeex··on AsciiDoc Language Submitted to Eclipse Foundation
> the Python3 variants are unfinished and are missing support.

I stand corrected:

https://asciidoc.org/CHANGELOG.html (Version 9.0.0 (2020-06-02))

mbeex··on AsciiDoc Language Submitted to Eclipse Foundation
Not so much. And the original Python variant is a) slowly growing old in features, b) the Python3 variants are unfinished and are missing support. I don't remember exactly in what respect, but I evaluated things some months ago and reluctantly installed the ruby gem of AsciiDoctor. I would have prefered a Python solution very much in my Python-driven environment. Also, a 'pip install asciidoc' would be very welcome.
mbeex··on AsciiDoc Language Submitted to Eclipse Foundation
No, problem is the covered complexity. For Markdown I have never resort to any documentation - within its original scope. This is his big advantage and I appreciate this. If you need more, you have almost certainly to look up things. This is true for AsciiDoc as well as for example ReST, the syntax of the former being a bit more appealing to me (just compare simple links for example) .

For this reason, I'm using a blogging system (Pelican) that supports all of them (including Pythons Markdown extensions). I'm completely free to apply the best suiting variant to the topics requirements.

mbeex··on “You want to know something about how bullshit insane our brains are?” (2018)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_pursuit

" Smooth pursuit eye movements allow the eyes to closely follow a moving object. It is one of two ways that visual animals can voluntarily shift gaze, the other being saccadic eye movements. "

mbeex··on What adolescents think of mindfulness in schools
For example, meditation can lead to addiction (to do meditation). This is a certain contradiction, very often to find in the teachings/techers themselves. Meditation lets things pass. This is also true for meditation sessions itself, this is what is sometimes forgotten - it has to end.
mbeex··on What adolescents think of mindfulness in schools
It is not because it does not even claim to be science. The often associated religious or/and esoteric part is something, putting me off for years (it still does). But the thing itself has a quite rational essence. Helpful for me:

https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Plain-English-Revised-Exp...

At the end it comes also to dukkha and other Buddhist concepts I don't care much about. But before, it served me very well in his quite accessible approach to what I would call 'mind cleansing'.

On-topic: In my opinion the whole thing is nothing for very young people, in particular not for children.

mbeex··on GitHub isn't fun anymore
So, something like https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/group/ ? But this is gitlab.
mbeex··on GitHub isn't fun anymore
> At first I thought it was just me getting older

You are still far from it, concluding from your problem.

Up to now, I never heard about this 'trending page'. I'm quite aware, that GitHub is also a social platform business including of course the whole associated industry of for example self-marketing as the compulsory 'side' effect (the term 'side' is debatable).

For me, it is a tool and as such in the meantime not the best anymore. The missing group feature (even true for bitbucket) alone was reason enough for me to transfer the better part of my projects to GitLab and structuring them there in a sufficiently satisfying way. Some of them are still mirrored on GitHub and thats it. Not to talk about CI integration and other features.

As for some other comments here - even for me my repositories are mostly my work. Other contributions are rather short-lived PR's etc. So, this is all fine for me.

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