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pk2200

879 karma · joined January 26, 2009

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pk2200··on Emacs 29.1
The two URLs I provided don't convince you that this isn't a fad? Of all the SWEs I know, every single one who previously used Eclipse, Atom, or Sublime is now using VSCode. Some of my Emacs & Vim friends have switched, too. I can't imagine what would change this trend in the next 5-10 years. Perhaps a new editor with an integrated LLM coding assistant that's FAR ahead of all competitors? Except VSCode is currently leading there, too.
pk2200··on Emacs 29.1
I'm a long-time Emacs user, but VSCode is definitely not a fad. Microsoft is all-in on it, and it appears to be by far the most popular text editor.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16907280...

pk2200··on Show HN: Devil Mode: A twisted Emacs key translator for modifier-free editing
Nice! Years ago I added home row chording to a simple text editor I was writing. It worked so well that I wondered why it's not common practice. You should write more about your project! :)
pk2200··on Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes
The tournament Carlsen withdrew from today isn't an online event. All the games are played in person at the St. Louis Chess Club.
pk2200··on Top Chess Engine Championship
For time management, the rough approach is to allocate a fixed % of the remaining time and increase or reduce it, mostly depending on the stability of the evaluation with increasing search depth.

Games are played on the same computer, with only one engine analyzing at a time.

The graph shows each engine's evaluation of the position for each move in the game. The red line is from a 3rd engine "observing" the game.

pk2200··on Who is the most accurate world chess champion?
Capablanca preferred playing quiet, positional chess, often patiently nursing tiny endgame advantages into a win. It's generally much easier to play accurately in simple endgames than complex middlegames, and that's a big factor in his low ACPL score. (I don't mean to take anything away from him - he was probably the best ever at that style of play.)
pk2200··on The neural network of the Stockfish chess engine
Just wanted to say thanks for many years of fantastic work on both Stockfish and Leela. The computer chess community owes you a huge debt of gratitude!
pk2200··on Done, and Gets Things Smart (2008)
Possibly Craig Silverstein, but my guess is Urs Hölzle. He was Google's first VP of engineering and a huge advocate for everything mentioned in the article: "design docs, audited code reviews, early design reviews, readability reviews, resisting introduction of new languages, unit testing and code coverage, profiling and performance testing".

Early Google had more than its fair share of genius engineers with giant egos. Urs was brilliant and tough - a perfect combination for keeping everybody in check and shaping the engineering culture.

pk2200··on Building My Own Chess Engine
There was a recent thread about challenging projects every programmer should try, and I think writing a chess engine would be a nice addition to that list. Chess programming is a refreshing change from modern software development, because you don't need any complicated frameworks or libraries, just a basic grasp of the minimax algorithm for searching a game tree. I have fond memories of writing an engine as a fresh college grad - it was my first "big" project and I made every mistake imaginable, but it was great fun and sharpened my coding skills immensely. It's exhilarating to play against your own program and then try to improve it. Highly recommended!
pk2200··on Running Docker on Apple Silicon M1 (Follow-Up)
Digital Ocean, probably.
pk2200··on Experience report on a large Python-to-Go translation
He wrote about this more detail in an earlier blog post (about halfway down the page).

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8161

pk2200··on Experience report on a large Python-to-Go translation
He evaluated Rust and Go a few years ago and strongly preferred Go.

https://blog.ntpsec.org/2017/01/18/rust-vs-go.html

pk2200··on No limit: AI poker bot is first to beat professionals at multiplayer game
The chess channels you're visiting are grossly overstating Alpha Zero's impact. AFAICT, it hasn't made any impact on opening theory at all. AZ's strength is in the middlegame, where it appears to be slightly better than traditional engines (like Stockfish) at finding material sacrifices for long term piece activity and/or mating attacks.
pk2200··on New iPad Air and iPad Mini
One use case I haven't seen mentioned is note-taking. Apple Pencil is a truly amazing device. I use it at work all the time, especially in meetings. It's quieter than typing and because I don't have my laptop open, I'm much less likely to get distracted by slack, email, HN, etc. It's also slower typing, but that may be a good thing because it forces me to mentally organize/consolidate whatever I'm writing.
pk2200··on The Friendship That Made Google Huge
I can't remember what Senior VP equates to on the tech ladder, but in terms of his overall impact on the company, Urs is definitely an 11.
pk2200··on Armageddon Looms over World Chess Champs after Carlsen’s Shocking Decision
You definitely can't force a draw against a higher rated player, but you can make one more likely by choosing quiet openings and simplifying in the middlegame. But it's often tricky to pull this off. If you make too many second-best moves in pursuit of simplification, you'll drift into a position that's both simple and bad. :)
pk2200··on Chess World Championship: Stockfish live-analyzing game 7
Svidler and Grischuk at chess24.com are fantastic, but they're both world class players and beginners will find their commentary and analysis difficult to follow. I'd recommend chess.com - Danny Rensch and Robert Hess are a bit more accessible.
pk2200··on How did Google get so big?
Urs Hölzle (engineering VP) and Eric Veach (AdWords) also don't get nearly as much recognition as they deserve.
pk2200··on Ken Thompson quotes
I have a similar Google lunch story. A guy sat down, introduced himself as Rob, and told me it was his first day at Google. We had a nice chat, and later I told my office mate that the new guy seemed really smart. He laughed and told me I'd just had lunch with Rob Pike. :)
pk2200··on Technical Interview Performance by Editor, OS, and Language
Gogland is great, and especially easy to learn if you've used other JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, etc).

https://www.jetbrains.com/go/

pk2200··on Thinkpad X62
No, and that's a shame, because the right half of the spacebar would make a perfect enter key. FWIW, when I had right-pinky pain years ago, I remapped semicolon to enter with good results.

If you don't mind non-standard layouts, here are some excellent keyboards that give your thumbs more to do. :)

https://shop.keyboard.io/

https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic-mechani...

https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/

pk2200··on Thinkpad X62
You might want to try the Matias Ergo Pro. I switched to it after 15 years on the MSFT Natural 4000. I still slightly prefer the 4000's layout and wrist rest, but the overall typing experience on the Matias is much better.

http://matias.ca/ergopro/

pk2200··on Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America
Austin seems like a strong candidate, since it's a major high tech hub and Whole Foods is already headquartered there.
pk2200··on Amazon to spend $5B on second US headquarters
Austin seems like a strong candidate, since it's a major high tech hub and Whole Foods is headquartered there.
pk2200··on ECMAScript 2017 Language Specification
Array comprehensions. Anytime I switch from Python to JS, it's the first thing I miss.
pk2200··on Garry Kasparov: Why the world should embrace AI [video]
Yes, but it took 20 years for Kasparov to find that grace. After losing game 2 of the 1997 match to Deep Blue, he accused the IBM team of cheating, by allowing a human grandmaster to override DB at a critical moment in the game. He repeated this bogus claim for many years, before finally coming to his senses.
pk2200··on WebAssembly 101: A developer’s first steps
You might be interested in this thread from a few weeks ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14341623

For me, the most helpful comment in that discussion was a link to this paper, written by the WebAssembly designers.

https://github.com/WebAssembly/spec/blob/master/papers/pldi2...

pk2200··on Identifying the dimensions used by the primate brain to decode faces
Here's the paper: http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(17)30538-X.pdf
pk2200··on LiChess: Learn from your mistakes
The Lichess author gave a tech talk last year where he discussed the design of the client and server.

https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-sourc...

pk2200··on LiChess: Learn from your mistakes
My Lichess & ICC ratings are typically within 50 points of each other. It's the same for a friend of mine who plays on both servers, too.
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