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merolish

95 karma · joined September 26, 2017

https://web.mit.edu/merolish/www/
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merolish··on UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating
I'm in an online degree program in mathematics in my forties and this temptation is very real. The LLMs have memorized every textbook and every exercise so it's easy to have the kinds of conversations that before I could only have with TAs during office hours, and skip the mental struggle.

At least in my most recent class, it's also wrecked the class discussion forums that I previously found very helpful. By the end half the students were just slop-posting entire conceptual explanations and exercises, complete with different terminology, notation, and methods than the class text. So you just skip those and look for the few students you know are actually trying.

merolish··on UK accounting body to halt remote exams amid AI cheating
We called them "bibles" in undergrad and they were collections of homework and tests from previous terms.
merolish··on PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin
Yes, the newsroom is linked to at the bottom of paypal.com.
merolish··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
I remember SML fondly, best of luck.
merolish··on Plastic – A Modern NES Emulator That Works with EGUI and TUI
ratatui in particular seems like a fine piece of work (I'm currently at a Rust shop and expect to use it a bit going forward).
merolish··on You (probably) don't need to learn C
> Pipelining, cache misses, branch prediction, multiple cores, even virtual memory are all completely invisible to C programs.

Are there languages where these are visible? Any time I've seen them discussed it's been in terms of writing C/C++/Java that understand how they work, e.g., the disruptor pattern padding variables to a 64-byte cache line.

> C teaches you an abstraction of computers based on the PDP-11.

Hmm, I'd wonder how a C designed today would look based on modern architectures.

merolish··on Is Fortran “A Dead Language”? (2022)
Live trading systems are in C++ or Java, but like others have said Python is used for day-to-day research, sometimes R if the particular quant likes it.

I never saw any Fortran in my time at Bloomberg in the 2010s but allegedly there was still a lot of it running in the nether regions.

merolish··on Should you standardise tools in your company? Case of Miro vs. MS Whiteboard
Thanks for your insights! Haven't had to think about these issues as an individual dev.
merolish··on Should you standardise tools in your company? Case of Miro vs. MS Whiteboard
Are there other popular tools you'd recommend/not recommend given cost/compliance concerns?
merolish··on The record-breaking -108.00 diopter myopia lenses (2016)
It looks better in desktop mode. There's a slideshow showing the lenses and the patient wearing them.
merolish··on Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
This list was posted a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32305997
merolish··on Most buildings at MIT campus are remaining closed to the public
Senior House was an undergrad dorm that the admins put on probation and then shut down and converted to grad housing.

https://thetech.com/tags/senior-house

merolish··on Most buildings at MIT campus are remaining closed to the public
As an alum who lives in Kendall, I think I'm most annoyed that I can no longer walk the basement level from 77 Mass Ave to the med center.
merolish··on The enduring mystery of ‘Jawn,’ Philadelphia’s all-purpose noun (2016)
Huh, I grew up in Cherry Hill and graduated HS in 2000, guess we missed it because I didn't learn about the term until years later.
merolish··on Show HN: Feather – 90 percent of Bloomberg terminal, for 5 percent of the price
On top of the support staff, they stressed the importance of customer service for all employees. I remember being told that even as a random engineer, if terminal users were to ask me for help I should at least point them in the right direction (e.g. HELP HELP like you said).
merolish··on Show HN: Feather – 90 percent of Bloomberg terminal, for 5 percent of the price
I was a SWE at Bloomberg for a few years. I don't think people appreciate the breadth of the platform; they employ something like six thousand engineers.
merolish··on More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years
I do applicant interviews for my alma mater (MIT). The number of students applying has skyrocketed, and it sounds like it's the same for peer schools.

https://thetech.com/2021/03/18/regular-admissions-2025

Tuition has doubled since I went there, but at least they can afford good financial aid for those who can get in.

merolish··on A Generative Grammar for Jazz Chord Sequences (1984)
It looks like it's the major bebop scale, yes.
merolish··on A Generative Grammar for Jazz Chord Sequences (1984)
Jazz guitarist here, and yes. One of the nice things about the instrument is that a relatively small number of forms for chords and scales are transposable up and down the fretboard, so once you burn the usual patterns into your head (iim7-V7-IM7, etc.) reading a new sheet usually doesn't take too much work.

Most pop music is even simpler, as illustrated by Axis of Awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

merolish··on Public health interventions and epidemic intensity during the 1918 flu pandemic
Beat me to it. If this gets bad there's going to be a global recession and associated political unrest on top of the actual toll of the pandemic.
merolish··on On June 11th, the Strand was designated a landmark
It's a factor in the insane cost of real estate in tech hub cities where many of us are attempting to live and work.
merolish··on Challenging projects every programmer should try
Seconded, a minimal full-stack system like a messaging service could go in many directions depending on your interests.
merolish··on WeWork Files for IPO
I've come to avoid having dates or catching up with friends at certain coffee shop-style places after a couple experiences where we were literally surrounded by people silently on their laptops. I prefer to have conversations without an audience of strangers.

And this is probably me getting old but I don't know how people can spend hours hunched over a laptop in café seating, as opposed to an ergonomic office chair and monitor at eye level.

merolish··on BASIC Computer Games
Back in the 90s I learned a lot from the Prodigy QBasic community. There were some really cool games that people contributed, they have to be out there on the web somewhere.
merolish··on Austin Is Building a Mini Silicon Valley
I was there in May 2016 (and looking forward to heading down again later this year).
merolish··on Austin Is Building a Mini Silicon Valley
NYC area traffic is bad but you have walkability, the subway, commuter rail systems, express bus lanes, etc. In my one visit to Austin it seemed like rush hour consisted of everyone cramming on to a couple highways and sitting. Are there good ways to avoid that?
merolish··on How Harley-Davidson's All-In Bet on Its Past Crippled Its Future
Was going to say GS (RIP my G 650 GS) but you beat me to it. If I get another bike it'll be a bigger GS, V-Strom, etc. They're fantastic machines.
merolish··on Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters
Newark would be a painful commute for anyone wanting to live in the boroughs, LI, or Westchester/CT, i.e. a ton of people.

I do hope NYC deals with its growing pains -- I finally left last year, in part because of rising costs and aggravation.

merolish··on People living in storage units in order to avoid paying Boston rents
I moved back to Cambridge this spring after over a decade mostly in NYC. It was surprising to see that while cheaper it wasn't too much cheaper.

On the other hand, the job market here seems robust and I hear fewer tales of appalling living conditions and insane 2+ hour commutes like in NYC and California.

merolish··on Paul Graham on SICP (2000)
Even at MIT a lot of people struggled with it because they threw so much at you so quickly, and it's since been replaced with a Python-based intro course.
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