Hacker News Reader

thyrsuson Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)

Tolstoy argues that it is the conscience in particular that is stupefied; he may also have been influenced by behavior he observed. I have anecdotal experience of Russians drinking themselves beyond garrulity into stupor, although I'm certain it can happen in any culture where alcohol is available.

thyrsuson Take action, Protect end-to-end encryption

In this polarized environment, my Republican Senators would look at my highly Democratic leaning address, and do the opposite of what I ask.

thyrsuson A large crash spike affecting Firefox users on Linux

Nope: I tried that. No response to any common keyboard combo. As suggested in a sibling comment, X11 shares the blame.

thyrsuson A large crash spike affecting Firefox users on Linux

The NYTimes animation of the Canadian fires air quality effect froze Firefox, mouse, and keyboard on CentOS 7 for me. I could ssh in from another system, kill -9 Firefox and it recovered.

thyrsuson Always the same warning signs

Thus the apothegm: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

thyrsuson The Disappointment of 5G

Meanwhile, in this suburb of a modest city, I'm wondering if I'll ever see more than one bar of LTE. Thank goodness for Wi-Fi calling.

thyrsuson Janet for Mortals

I think I read that the image you distribute expects to use a C compiler in it's execution, and not every computer has a C compiler - or did I misunderstand? The run-in-browser blob cannot make that assumption, but perhaps that's a special case?

thyrsuson Scientists finally figure out why the water bear is nearly indestructible (2017)

Glass as I encounter it is a form of silicon dioxide, and not particularly soluble. What new meaning of the word "glass" is being used here?

thyrsuson US Navy swaps $38,000 periscope joysticks for $30 Xbox controllers (2017)

I speculate national security concerns contributed a great deal to that $38,000 cost. How many servers with SSP and POAM documents were needed for its design to classified requirements, sysadmins with security clearances, and for classified manufacturing and delivery? I don't know, maybe submarine components are available at the navy surplus store. Let me know if you find any :-)

thyrsuson Ask HN: That happens to T-Bills when the Goverment locks up over debt ceiling?

I predict the Federal Reserve will buy them at close to 100% non-default value while dry heaving over their involuntary involvement in politics. I further predict that those shorting the securities will lose their court case against the Fed, since the action would be protected by the 14th amendment:

Section 4

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

thyrsuson Legacy Software Systems: How to Live with Aging Software Architecture?

What do you do with a 20 year old embedded Linux system which still "works" and where management has been saying they'll replace it for more than ten years but meanwhile don't touch it, and, oh yeah, "make it secure"? I can actually imagine somewhat exotic network firewalls that would be sufficiently secure (might even be a fun project) but there's zero provision for the required effort.

thyrsuson Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Spread Through Employee Mobility (2022)

For exasperate, I think you meant exacerbate.

thyrsuson Y2038, glibc and utmp/utmpx on 64bit architectures

What are file systems using? What are tar/cpio/dump/rsync files using? What is kerberos using?

thyrsuson You have the right to livestream police traffic stops

It's never occurred to me that it would be advantageous to do this. Would anyone like to guess why?

Relevant clip: watch to the end. https://youtu.be/jRTU2iUNt94

thyrsuson 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits Turkiye

That's a criticism of the government, not the people. They are hoping policy will change and they'll be able to help.

thyrsuson Cyber is a new language for fast, efficient, and concurrent scripting

We're using ansible-pull. Aside from occasional access to NFS mounts, there's a minimum of network traffic. E.g., the git retrieval is usually: I've got version x. That's current? Thanks, we're done. The time is spent executing Ansible modules on the local system. 200+ tasks ok, 200+ tasks skipped, maybe 10 changed. That takes between 5 and 20 minutes. I have an unsubstantiated suspicion that the large dictionary representing the package inventory is a contributor - systems with fewer packages seem to work faster.

thyrsuson Cyber is a new language for fast, efficient, and concurrent scripting

This looks great. The first use case that occurs to me is to accelerate pieces of our horribly slow Ansible scripts - but I'm probably the only one on our team who's interested in making the investment in learning a new language, and dealing with the bespoke code. How do I generate the required enthusiasm?

thyrsuson The Shameful Open Secret Behind Southwest’s Failure

It's good to see "technical debt" discussed sensibly in non-specialist media.

thyrsuson The End of Programming

This paper coomparing code developed without copilot to code developed with it feels relevant: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.03622

thyrsuson Promotion of alternative social platforms policy

Is that the Morris worm sendmail with its Turing Complete address rewriting language that I'm seeing in the same sentence with the word "barebones"? ;-)

thyrsuson Gravedigging 101

TIL: Coffin: six sided. Casket: four sided.

thyrsuson The stick shift might survive the electric revolution

In the low end models that I'd be willing to pay for, there is no price difference between stick and automatic in the U.S.

thyrsuson The stick shift might survive the electric revolution

I feel just the same, with the proviso that I want a mechanical backup for catastrophic software bugs - a fully mechanical drive disengagement, aka shift to neutral. And the emergency, aka parking, brake should have no software mediation either, beyond sensors that signal software to "do the right thing" (park or neutral) with the drive. I haven't started looking at EVs, but one will probably be my next car when my current (stick) irreparably fails.

thyrsuson Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rea...

...and my experience as a varyingly persistent introvert :-)

thyrsuson Fred Brooks has died

Message from the Chair of the UNC Computer Science Department (personal phone number elided):

Dear Friends,

It is with great sadness that I must share the following update on the health of the Department Founder Dr. Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. I know how much Dr. Brooks has meant to the department, to computer graphics, to the world of computing, and to each of you. So I wanted to reach out and pass on the following message from his son, Roger Brooks.

Dr. Samarjit Chakraborty Chair, UNC Department of Computer Science

– Begin Forwarded Message – Subject: Frederick's condition and his Hope

Dear ones:

As you may have heard, on Saturday my father came home from the hospital into hospice care. He spends most of the time sleeping. When (slightly) awake, he is only slightly responsive, and not able to respond verbally to questions. He seems to be in no pain and no particular discomfort. He is eating and drinking small amounts, but far from enough.

Frederick P. Brooks Jr. has fought the good fight, run the good race, been an outstanding husband and father and mentor and friend of many . . . and is now fading away. His hope and his coming joy, in death and in life, is in his Lord Jesus Christ, who I know will welcome him with “Well done . . .”.

The hospice nurse tells us that my father may live several days to 10 days or so.

You may share this information with all who would want to know. I know that I am missing email addresses for beloved friends which exist somewhere in my parents’ contact lists, and I apologize that I do not have time to dig for those.

With family and aides around, we have ample help. If you would like to come and visit my mother, or bring your last respects and prayers to my father, please just call the house first. Close friends are welcome, but it is hard to predict in advance when things will be busy or peaceful.

Kori Robbins, associate pastor at Orange Methodist Church, visited yesterday and prayed what I thought was exactly the appropriate, loving, and merciful prayer, which she tells me she adapted from Douglas McKelvey's A Liturgy for the Final Hours. We ask you to join in this prayer:

O God our Father, O Christ our Brother, O Spirit our comforter,

Fred is ready.

Now meet him at this mortal threshold and deliver him to that eternal city; to your radiant splendor; to your table and the feast and the festival of friends; to the wonder and the welcome of his heart's true home.

He but waits for your word. Bid him rise and follow, and he will follow you gladly into that deeper glory,

O Spirit his True Shepherd, O Christ his True King, O God his True and Loving Father, receive him now, and forgive his sins, through the blood of his Savior Jesus Christ.

Roger Brooks Sr.

thyrsuson Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

As (43) states, introversion is on a scale (a matter of degree) rather than a type (i.e. not like char vs. float). That it is persistent in a probabilistic sense is well established.

thyrsuson Psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid

Equally, if not more, important to the scientific method is gathering data that might disprove it.

thyrsuson Berkshire Hathaway bought a $4.1B stake in Apple chipmaker TSMC

I'm confused: do you think China would be more likely to take Taiwan if it saw that nexus of economic leverage starting to diffuse?

thyrsuson Symbolic Regression is NP-hard

I think the form "beggars the question", i.e., left the question in poverty, unanswered, is somewhat less misinterpretable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

thyrsuson Nascar driver stuns to qualify for championship with GameCube move

I wish I could tell what parts of such games were realistic, and then be able to practice emergency maneuvers - e.g. at 70 mph, cargo falls off the back of a pickup I'm following - just how sharply can I swerve my Toyota Corolla without going into a roll?