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swsieber

5,413 karma · joined February 4, 2014

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/ssieber; my proof: https://keybase.io/ssieber/sigs/sRmqw8z_cUpNdiltIxyUQM70_Z0inBaIsYxZhMcYQjc ]
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swsieber··on PDF to Text, a challenging problem
It can also have embedded binary streams. It was not made for text. It was made for layout and graphics. You give nice examples, but each of those lines could have been broken up into one call per character, or per word, even out of order.
swsieber··on Pentagon to terminate $5.1B in IT contracts with Accenture, Deloitte
So, realistically speaking, we've seen lots of corruption protections stripped away in parts of the federal government - SEC to stop prosecuting things, Inspector Generals fired, loyalty pledges, etc.

Who would need to be on board with changes in the Pentagon to strip away protections there? I'd assume it's quite a bit more insular than other parts of the federal government.

swsieber··on 20 years of Git
While I get how that's like git, it sounds even closer to unison:

https://softwaremill.com/trying-out-unison-part-1-code-as-ha...

swsieber··on Has the decline of knowledge work begun?
Reminds me of something I read in a sermon published oh (checks date) 24 years ago:

"More than thirty years ago I stood beside the desk of Professor Richard Rosenbloom, who taught courses in manufacturing management. In those days they called the field 'production.' I was a research assistant, and Professor Rosenbloom had just stood up to welcome one of his students into his office. The student, of medium height, was dressed in a dark suit and tie. He stood before the desk, bowed deeply, and handed to his professor a beautifully wrapped gift. He had completed his studies and was returning to his home in Japan.

"The professor murmured thanks and then, to demonstrate his appreciation, he unwrapped the gift. It was a black fountain pen with gold trim. He sat down at his desk, took out a piece of paper, filled the pen from an ink bottle, took the pen in his hand, and began to write. The student beamed. But then he looked stunned, as we all did—the pen was not writing. Professor Rosenbloom pressed harder. The student frowned more deeply. Nothing. Professor Rosenbloom tried swirling the pen. Still, no ink flowed. Finally, in exasperation, the student reached across the desk, grabbed the pen, shook it forcefully, and said with great feeling, 'Cheap Japanese pen!'"

swsieber··on Solar Generation Surge Sends European Power Prices Below Zero
Isn't there a third options of building long term energy storage, or is that not feasible at current tech levels?
swsieber··on Crew-9 Returns to Earth
It's a wonderful concept, but the implementation plan, the execution and the results are all terrible.

I'm all for audits, reducing waste, transparency, etc., not wanton firing and publicity stunts.

swsieber··on iText PDF Library turns 25
I have used their RUPS tool for a while, and it's been great for inspecting the underlying PDF structure.
swsieber··on iText PDF Library turns 25
Hmmm... they link to the AGPL and state it's under that. In a conflict between the two, the website extras, and the AGPL requirements, which would win?

I personally think the AGPL would win, but it's not something I'd be willing to enter a legal battle over.

swsieber··on Show HN: HTML visualization of a PDF file's internal structure
I've used the iText RUPS (free) for a while for debugging PDFs (as I have the "privilege" to work on code that extracts data from PDFs...). It looks like your introspection stuff might be a bit stronger, which would be great. I'll take it for a whirl.
swsieber··on Higher potassium intake at dinner linked to fewer sleep disturbances – study
Whenever I see discussions of GERD I like to bring up this paper (and the reedit discussion around it) where they basically tried a supplement with every likely helper and it worked 100% of the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/GERD/comments/adt6vh/regression_of_...

| The aim of this study was to investigate if a dietary supplementation containing: melatonin, l-tryptophan, vitamin B6, folic acid, vitamin B12, methionine and betaine would help patients with GERD,

| All patients of the group A (100%) reported a complete regression of symptoms after 40 days of treatment. On the other hand, 115 subjects (65.7%) of the omeprazole reported regression of symptoms in the same period

swsieber··on Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?
Do ligatures in fonts count? I once modified a monospace font with a ligature that squished 4 spaces down into 3. It was purely for a technical argument of spaces vs tabs to demonstrate that you could indeed have adjustable indent even when using spaces. The fun part was seeing IntelliJ place 4 dots representing spaces even spread over the three space gap :)
swsieber··on WASM Is the New CGI
It seems relevant since we are in a thread asking to compare WASM to java applets.
swsieber··on GLP-1 pills are coming, and they could revolutionize weight-loss treatment
The way I've heard it put is that it "quiets the food noise"
swsieber··on I wish I didn't miss the '90s-00s internet
I mostly agree; but we are experiencing the Eternal September of AI and bots.
swsieber··on Why I started livestreaming as a Rust developer?
Technically by the rules of grammar it is not. But pointing that out add nothing of practical value to discussion. It is a question in colloquial speech.

For instance:

Person A: "Why did you start livestreaming as a rust developer?

Person B: "Why I started livestreaming as a Rust?"

There, person B is confirming what it is they are supposed to answer.

swsieber··on [dead]
I've had pretty good experiences with the Vue version of this framework. Not sure what more there is to say. IIRC, it's pretty tailwind centric.
swsieber··on Americans are doing less DIY. It's another worrying sign for the economy
Which is why you hire an electrician to come look it over. That's been the recommended route for electrical DIY since I've been searching stuff out on it.
swsieber··on We need visual programming. No, not like that
Yes - Rust has pretty slow compile times. It is perhaps my biggest gripe with it.

You might define java as having a robust type system, but I would rate Rust's as significantly better. Several things in Rust I miss when working in Java:

* Monomorphized types

* Sum type and product types. Think sealed classes in java, but with better ergonomics

* A really clever type system that prevents things like ConcurrentModificationException and data races (not dead-locks or race conditions generally though).

Though, IIUC, Rust made early decisions about module structure that have really hindered compile speed, not necessarily tied to the type system.

Another big factor that makes rust slow would be optimizations & slow system linkers; it doesn't have a JVM that can warm up to optimize stuff.

Source: work with both Rust and Java on a daily basis.

Edit: The way the type system works out in general makes me far less worried about making sweeping changes in a Rust codebase than in a Java codebase, but there are still logic bugs that I miss occasionally. Still, it moves quite a big bug finding from "run the program and see" to "make it pass typechecking", which is quite a bit faster than compiling; you can typecheck Rust without compiling it.

swsieber··on 50 Years of Rubik's Cube
I have two primary experiences with the Rubik's cube.

When I was in high school, 10-20 years ago, I had a 30 minute bus ride back, and it eventually became something I just did. I didn't learn a ton of patterns, but I did start solving the top two layers faster over time, and I was consistently under a minute for my solve time. I don't recall meeting others who could solve it.

At one point in HS, our local church had a multi-congregation multi-day event, and I participated in a the talent showing, solving the rubik's cube. There was a 2 minute limit, and friends coming up to "tackle" me and prevent me from finishing, and one of the local newscasters was a leader for the youth, and he narrated. I was surprised by how many of the girls liked the skit, and I didn't quite know what to do with myself then, ha ha.

My second experience is now, being a youth leader in the same congregation. I'm surprised by just how many of the youth know how to solve a rubik's cube. Probably upwards of half. I think I counted 14 people in our youth group, but that included me and a few parents.

Oh how the times change.

swsieber··on Inside a $1 radar motion sensor
If your fine with zigbee, I could see having one of these aqara door sensors in the cushion of the seat, triggering to closed when you sit on it: https://cloudfree.shop/product/aqara-door-and-window-sensors...

Seems like it'd be finicky though.

swsieber··on Ask HN: Why is HN often talking about PDF files?
The are widely used and in a terrible format that's hard to work with (programmatically). So yes, there are problems.

My particular pet peeve is that many rendering platforms suffer from floating point rounding shenanigans, such that rendering/rasterizing a 8.5x11 doc at 300 dpi results in a the height being off by a pixel :/

swsieber··on Microsoft breached antitrust rules by bundling Teams and Office, EU says
Very similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787842 on the front page today.
swsieber··on How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
While true, if you go to page 1 of the article you find this:

> During a 45-minute test drive in a Tesla Model X, I had to intervene twice to correct mistakes by the FSD software. In contrast, I rode in driverless Waymo vehicles for more than two hours and didn’t notice a single mistake.

That seems pretty significant.

swsieber··on A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe
Does HO stand for home office in this case?
swsieber··on Tire toxicity faces fresh scrutiny after salmon die-offs
And rightfully so, IMO. Increased pollution from increased weight is a real issue.
swsieber··on The Seattle Public Library is reducing maximum digital holds
While I get that it's specific to Seattle, it did contain some stuff interesting to someone halfway across the country (me).
swsieber··on Amazon Echo Hacking Wiki
You can root a echo dot v2 I think: https://github.com/Dragon863/EchoCLI

I have done it myself, but I don't know enough to really dig in and take over the sound stuff like I'd want to. It runs tinyalsa iirc.

swsieber··on Kobo announces color e-readers
> I can only FALL asleep on my stomach, but I can only CONTINUE sleeping on my back. Which means almost every night, I somehow flip myself over without waking up.

This is me, to a T. It's nice to hear I'm not the only odd sleeper.

swsieber··on Kobo announces color e-readers
Mmm... I patched a fax4 decoder for rust the other day. It's an interesting format. But amazing really. It's still widely used the mortgage industry, specifically the land record systems.
swsieber··on Why CockroachDB doesn't use EvalPlanQual
I don't wonder. It would be more widely considered, at the very least, judging by interactions I've had with a few people.
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