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redcap

700 karma · joined March 11, 2009

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redcap··on A guide to technical report writing [pdf]
The guide has a section on accuracy but doesn’t talk about having punctuation outside of quotation marks. There’s a world of difference between

1. Please enter the text “foo bar.”

and

2. Please enter the text “foo bar”.

The first is normal American practice, but suggests incorrectly that the period (.) should be input.

Technical writing should be accurate - meaning all quotes should be a true representation that is not subject to style whimsy.

redcap··on Canon Nanoimprint lithography semiconductor manufacturing system (5nm)
It’s possibly competition for ASML if it works well.

If it makes sense for them, TSMC could buy it and use it to keep doing what they’re doing.

The key point is that it’s equipment used to manufacture semiconductor devices, and Canon would be competing with ASML rather than TSMC.

redcap··on My ranking of every Shakespeare play
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth#Superstition_and_%22Th...
redcap··on Instant Brands, maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex cookware, files for bankruptcy
I don't know how much rice you eat, but my experience has been that 1 rice cup cooks enough rice for a modest serving for 2 adults - in our household at least.
redcap··on How Not to Negotiate a $6.1B Deal
In that case I would suggest that Olive Garden Canada didn't "go out of business" (i.e. naturally through business dying off), but was killed intentionally.

It didn't die as a result of failure on its own part.

There is also a difference between a restaurant and a chain of restaurants - in any case the US component survived, so I would say that the (overall) business didn't "die off".

redcap··on Japan found hundreds of years’ worth of the minerals used in batteries and EVs
"The mining of rare-earth minerals was at one time dominated by the United States. The People's Republic of China has since come to dominate the market."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_mineral

Presumably because China doesn't mind the cost to its miners or the environment (for now).

If that should change then it might start to be viable to mine this deposit.

redcap··on YouTube Will ‘Frustrate’ Some Users with Ads So They Pay for Music
I listen to Youtube fairly extensively while working, but don't get any ads because I have an ad blocker.

I don't even get "you have an ad-blocker installed" warnings...

redcap··on Paypal Patent Application: Expedited Virtual Currency Transaction System
Rather than the abstract, the legality of a patent is based primarily on the claims. That's what you should be looking at to see if there's prior art. Here's claim 1:

1. A virtual currency transaction system, comprising: a non-transitory memory; and one or more hardware processors coupled to the non-transitory memory and configured to read instructions from the non-transitory memory to cause the system to perform operations comprising: identifying a first user primary wallet that is associated with a virtual currency and that includes a first user primary wallet private key; creating a plurality of first user secondary wallets that each include a respective first user secondary wallet private key; performing a respective virtual currency transaction using the first user primary wallet private key to transfer an association of predefined amounts of the virtual currency from the first user primary wallet to each of the plurality of first user secondary wallets such that at least two of the plurality of first user secondary wallets are associated with different predefined amounts of the virtual currency; receiving, subsequent to associating the predefined amounts of the virtual currency with each of the plurality of first user secondary wallets, an instruction to transfer a payment amount to a second user; and allocating a subset of the first user secondary wallet private keys to the second user, wherein the subset of the first user secondary wallet private keys are included in respective first user secondary wallets that are associated with predefined amounts of the virtual currency that equal the payment amount.

redcap··on Anti-NIMBY movement is winning with a simple message
You realize the NIMBYs have had the law changed for their benefit? Why did that need government intervention?
redcap··on How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed
The Liberal party is the conservative party. No Conservative party in Australia AFAIK.

The Liberal party is broadly social-conservative, pro-business.

The Labor party is broadly speaking socially liberal and pro-labour.

redcap··on A hacker stole $31M of Ether – how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum
the algorithm may be nigh-on unbreakable, but the implementation can always have flaws. Getting crypto right is hard.
redcap··on The Benefits of Talking to Yourself
One of my Japanese teachers really stressed reading out loud as good practice - you practice reading the piece, you practice saying the words, and you get some listening practice too.

One nice big feedback loop!

redcap··on The Benefits of Talking to Yourself
Japanese train drivers have a system that's called Pointing and Calling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pointing-and-calling-ja...

Visual and audio feedback is great for your brain.

For me, I often need to make a 200mL bottle for my child, and each scoop of powder makes only 20mL - meaning that I need to put 10 scoops in. Especially when I have a crying baby it's easy to lose track when you count in your head. But no worries if I vocalize my count.

redcap··on Avoid These 35 Habits That Lead to Unmaintainable Code
#1 There's nothing wrong with TODO comments. Often you don't want implement feature B in full so that you can focus on feature A. Of course you've told your customers that you'll do both features, so you push feature B back to a future release. No problem in using TODO there - at least you have comments as to what's actually going on and what may need to be fleshed out in the future.
redcap··on Australian regulator alleges Apple misled iPad/iPhone users over consumer rights
Try accounting for population size before touting universities as a good measure of anything.

Try looking up cost of tertiary education and maybe cost of medical care and see who ends up better.

You haven't proved your point.

redcap··on Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]
I'm currently working in a patent law firm in Japan, and we make heavy use of Notes to manage work we bill and to manage all the information relating to filing cases and managing the client correspondence for each case. There's a myriad of forms but it all (still) works.

Naturally at this point we use a different email client, but I don't think there's any incentive to shift away from Notes as it just works.

redcap··on Japan issues tsunami warning after magnitude 7.3 earthquake
The warning in Japan is for as high as 3m tsunamis:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20161122_12/

redcap··on Maine Ranked Choice Voting Initiative Approved
While the Liberals (conversatives in Australia) have the lower house, they don't have the majority in the upper house, making it more of a house of review than a rubber stamp.

The PM is elected by the parliament, and often disposed of when they're seen as not doing the job. More turmoil, but avoids a lame duck at the top.

redcap··on Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’
There's a lot to be said for going for a 3-day hike in the wilderness, even if you're accompanied by a parent.

Going with a scout group usually means that you wont be relying on the parent as you want to stay as a member of the group of people your own age.

You'll start to feel tired and sore at some stage, and it may start to rain. But if you've prepared properly (and the scout motto is "be prepared"), then you should be ok.

It's just a matter of getting away from it all, and perhaps embracing the suck as mentioned above.

redcap··on No One Saw Tesla’s Solar Roof Coming
I presume there's a difference in manufacturing between these tiles and normal tiles.

I also presume there's CO2 costs involved in manufacturing solar cells that aren't present in normal shingles.

redcap··on No One Saw Tesla’s Solar Roof Coming
2) Does that include the carbon cost of manufacturing, distributing and installing the tiles?
redcap··on Stripe in Japan
I've always thought of it as playing second fiddle to JAL. That's changed after JAL had to go through a lot of restructuring, but it's mostly been these two companies. There could be some numbers out there stating that ANA is the largest, but I'd guess there wouldn't be much of a margin.
redcap··on Fire balloon
> On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity of the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site. This balloon caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but backup safety devices restored power almost immediately.
redcap··on The Intel ME subsystem can take over your machine, can't be audited
CSS is only 40 bits, which is ridiculously easy to crack. 56-bit DES keys are pretty unsafe these days, so you want at least 128 bits if you're talking private keys.

If it's using 2048-bit RSA, that's perhaps equivalent to a 256-bit private key.

So entirely different ballpark to CSS.

redcap··on Roald Dahl – the storyteller as benevolent sadist (2010)
(World War 2 flying ace)
redcap··on RMS on the Ogg Vorbis license (2001)
It's from the priority date, which was Aug 29, 1986 making this expired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_S...

redcap··on Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage
For me it was mainly twitter for news. Facebook was useful immediately after the quake to let family back home know that I was OK while the phone lines were still jammed. I also used it as a way to relay news in English to Facebook friends in Japan who can't read Japanese.
redcap··on Snapchat Passes Twitter in Daily Usage
Twitter was amazing useful after the big earthquake/nuclear issues in 2011 (I live in Japan).
redcap··on How to win the coding interview
What I've seen suggested elsewhere is having publicly viewable code on github or the like - that would effectively be your coding resume and evidence of your ability.
redcap··on An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges
There's the story about a developer who outsourced his work to China so that he could browse reddit:

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2013/01/16/verizon-finds-de...

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