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sh4na

152 karma · joined February 2, 2010

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sh4na··on Using git and dropbox together
Switch to a new branch before commiting, commit only what you want then switch back. Doing a git checkout -b new-branch-for-this-bit-of-code is quick and painless if you want to stage things while you're working, doesn't change anything since you're creating a new branch from your current point, and gives you much easier logging, diffing and merging capabilities later on. This is one of the recommended workflows for git, in fact.

You can also commit parts then stash the rest, test, pop the stash, commit more, stash, test, etc, etc. You can add things to commits with --amend, so you can tweak them if you notice something is missing after you added things with git add -p and then commited. I do this a lot when I want to split a commit and use git add -p.

If you really want to test things from somewhere else, use git new-workdir to create a new working dir based off your local clone. Whatever you stash or commit to one, the other will see, since they're really pointing to the same local git clone (if you look at the .git/ dir of a workdir, you'll notice it's all symlinks to the original clone). Just make sure every local workdir you create like this is on a different branch, otherwise it will get confused when you change things on one side (because, of course, they're all pointing to the same local clone, but suddenly the local files won't match). I use this to have a "test workdir", which is based on a clean and permanently updated branch, where I cherry-pick/merge from the work branch into it, build and test, without having to stash on my work branch, reconfigure things and otherwise stop the coding workflow.

sh4na··on Using git and dropbox together
Push to your own fork of your project on github (if the project is not yours and you don't want to push incomplete things to the main repo), you can have multiple remote repos configured on your local clone and seamlessly switch and merge between them. Or if you don't want to fork, push to a work branch. That's why git has branching, forking and multiple remote repos features, it's not only a "version control system", it's a "distributed development system". Distributed means not only multiple people all working on one thing, but you also distributing your work.
sh4na··on Using git and dropbox together
It makes no sense to push to the server before they're done, why do you do this? Are you afraid your hard drive is going to go kaput while you're on the plane, or you're not taking your computer with you? That's the only reason I can think of to do this... git is not like svn, where commit and push are the same thing; on git, a push is the same as publishing for others to see, the commit is what's important and it doesn't require a net connection.
sh4na··on Rhapsody passes on Apple's "economically untenable" sub plans
Technically, they state you must have the same or better offer. Better isn't the same as cheaper, it can mean more expensive with more features, so an "premium iOS offer with added features" for 30% more could be justified :P
sh4na··on Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)
Oldie but goody. Also, sounds like an arduino project waiting to happen.
sh4na··on ACM considered harmful
three lines of not-equal signs != meaningful comment

downvote parent == thanks!

sh4na··on ACM considered harmful
Ooh, Dark Pattern, that sounds awesome. Also, Dark = relative absence of light, or almost absence of light, but not quite. Also, in western philosophy and languages, Dark is equated to evil, as opposed to Light and non-evilness, that can be traced as far as the allegory of the cave, where shadows are illusions and reality is "above", "the light" that creates "the shadows".

If the word "Dark" invokes a racist meaning for you, you might want to consider retraining yourself in language and philosophy, you're on the fast track to becoming racist - racist being someone who connects meanings of human discrimination based on physical traits to any word (that could relate to color, light, whatever) regardless of the context and original meaning of said words. You're discriminating those poor harmless words!

sh4na··on ACM considered harmful
There is no way you can know if the content of the article will actually be useful - there goes $15 down the drain. if my local library has ACM access, yay... but it doesn't. So they get content for free from academics, sell it at a profit, while the academics get nothing for their work and have their content limited to an audience that might not be the one they actually want to reach - it could be, but they've just signed away their content for nothing and have no control on who can can see it, not even they can see it... Some academics publish just because they have to, so ACM is fine for them, but a lot are not like that, and ACM is taking advantage of the situation.

The only reason I would pay for content is to give back to the author for taking the time to commit to paper the information that was useful to me. Paying to some organization that's taking advantage of people for profit... no, thank you.

sh4na··on eBooks compiled from top StackOverflow topics/answers
Just convert them with Calibre to whatever format you want. Mobi is much better than PDF as a starting point to convert to other formats, ebook formats in general are much more flexible and convertible. Converting from PDF to ebook is such a pain...
sh4na··on FFmpeg turmoil
Some threads from the list that might help contextualize this:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/118594

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/119382

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/123727

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.devel/118554

sh4na··on Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds
I'd love to know what their explanation is then when the healthy child catches polio and is crippled for life, or catches measles and dies from the complications, which are both things that have a much higher likelihood of happening to an unvaccinated child then autism, especially when everyone is going on the anti-vaccine craze. Maybe their child will thank them when he becomes sterile in adulthood by having measles, or she will miscarriage and become sterile by having rubella. Well, love is definitely the wrong word here, of course. Not quite sure what the right word is.

I might sound a bit harsh, but I was vaccinated against polio and that was the only thing that saved me from becoming a cripple for life when the stupid bug insisted on infecting me when I was 5 years old - the vaccine didn't quite take, but it took enough to dampen the bug's spirit, but I still had to spend 8 years on physiotherapy and I still suffer the effects from it to this day - all because someone shared a spoon between me and another child one afternoon. These people are the new Darwin Award winners, only they're doing it to their children. It's a shame.

sh4na··on Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search
Please see my reply above to nostrademons about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of that button.
sh4na··on Google’s decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search
Why do people insist on blaming users when users use things in the "wrong" way? If you give a general feedback button to a user, they will give you back general feedback of all kinds - it's not that hard to understand, really. If you want to get feedback specific to the quality of the search results, then provide another button that says "Tell us if the results you got are not useful / just spam". Be clear about what exactly the button does, and you'll get meaningful reports from the users. Note that I said another button - you always need a general feedback button for people wanting to report something else, that's how you get general and specific feedback.

Also, google is one of the worst companies, if not the worst company, at dealing with user feedback. You can't just expect people to give you feedback but never return the favor in any way. People have the feeling that giving feedback to google is like throwing things into a black hole - like talking to a machine - if you know no one will answer you and you will never know if anyone even read your feedback, not even a little thank you note or a clue that the feedback was useful, there isn't much incentive to give feedback, now is there?

sh4na··on CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'
The software is used to determine target locations,which are then fed to the drones for execution. I'd say it's pretty damm relevant when someone decides to hack something up real quick and says they don't mind using it knowing that it's giving erroneous data with several meter deviations. I bet you wouldn't find it hyperbolic if you were, let's say, 10 meters away from someone being located with that software.
sh4na··on 'They say Chinese is difficult - European languages are more difficult'
A language where a spoken word has completely different meanings depending on how hoarse you are that day can be a lot of things, but "simple" is not one of them, imho.

The author doesn't understand that most european words aren't just made up on the spot for new things, they are built with the same process as he describes for chinese: pick an existing term and adapt it for a new use, or pick several terms and join them up. Of course, you probably have to go back a few hundreds or thousands of years to get at the root of the thing.

otoh, I could say that the advantage of having a small non-meaningful alphabet is that you're not stuck with the symbolism of existing characters, so you're free to actually make words up if you want to.

The advantage of having a (for the most part) neutral tonal system in european languages combined with a small neutral system of characters, combined with the rich heritage of the small number of base languages that created all these languages (latin, greek, etc) and the freedom to synthesize words whenever appropriate is what is making english the lingua franca that it is, and what keeps all other (let's not say euro, but western) languages up there on the importance chart.

I wonder if it would be easy for chinese speakers to understand how western languages work if we say that each character in the latin alphabet is the equivalent of a single stroke in chinese...

sh4na··on _why: A Tale Of A Post-Modern Genius
Funny how a guy who decides to pull out of the open source community and pull the plug on essential projects used by the community without so much as a line of warning is depicted as a hero. Self-centered jerk is more appropriate in this case, but it seems that the more excentric the behaviour, the more genius you are, regardless of the fact that there are vast numbers of developers who contribute daily, monthly, yearly, countless hours of their lives selflessly to others, without whom we couldn't be typing all these comments right now. But no, those aren't artists, it's this guy that pulls the rug out from under everyone that gets the adoration. Human nature is soooo lame.
sh4na··on Brian Williams on Wall Street's Free Fall
I believe his point was that the effect of looking at videos from Greece while imagining the consequences for the economies in the rest of Europe and those consequences spreading to the US while suddenly watching the Dow fall 1000 points was harrowing, to say the least. Not that one was caused by the other, but that it a lot to take in in one go.

I'm sure watching the Dow fall like that while watching videos from Greece was scary, especially to people that are already too aware of the fragile state of the world economy.

sh4na··on Apple: .net apps are kicked off iPhone OS 4 too.
A post on a mailing list from someone who emailed "Steve" and got some one-liner reply does not strike me as an official announcement from Apple, no matter how much people enjoy saying "ooh, I mailed Steve and he replied, I'm sure this matter is over and done with now"

There are way too many companies and users affected, for this to be resolved via some one liner reply to some guy on a weekend. A bit obvious, eh?

sh4na··on Tumblr Stole My [Subdomain] At The Behest of A Corporation
You're right, it is refreshing to see someone flat out lie about company business in public on a personal blog. You don't get to see that every day :)
sh4na··on Tumblr Stole My [Subdomain] At The Behest of A Corporation
You are confused, that guy is not the blog owner, he is the Founder of Pitchfork, and obviously he has no reason to lie. The fact that the Tumblr version blatantly contradicts him only makes it that much obvious that that Meaghan person is the one lying about the whole thing.
sh4na··on Kung Fu Typing
Not surprised, dvorak is optimized for speed in pure text, and programming is not pure text, nor does it need a lot of speed most of the times, and the ()[]{};.$ symbols are the most important, which clashes with what the dvorak layout considers important.
sh4na··on Kung Fu Typing
Awesome graphics. I do touch typing with the home return, does that make me cybernetic? :P

@jessejmc I tried to switch to dvorak once. It's a very efficient layout, and I might have stuck to it if it weren't for the fact that I need to switch regularly between english and portuguese, and dvorak is not at all targetted to languages other than english.

It doesn't help that, between laptops and keyboards, I have pt, es, us and uk physical layouts... nowadays I find myself just customizing the keyboard layout to my needs - US international as base, then switch and add all the accents and symbols around to optimal places - that way I don't care much what's printed on the keyboard.

I wonder what that does to the pretty diagrams? :)

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