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timb07

187 karma · joined December 21, 2016

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timb07··on Top books discussed on Stack Overflow and other Stack Exchange sites
The book is so good it deserves to be listed twice. :)
timb07··on The Hand Licking Incident
One of the best pieces of advice I've received as a sysadmin was "Don't just do something, stand there!" :)
timb07··on Amazon May Be Hiding Its Plans to Test New Wireless Tech
Do you mean the 3.6 GHz band? The auction commenced a week ago: https://acma.gov.au/Industry/Spectrum/Spectrum-projects/3-6-...
timb07··on The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities
In a properly-operating democracy, politicians require votes to be elected; money helps, but isn't sufficient.

The 1% may have 50% (or more) of the money, but they only have 1% of the votes. The 99% (or rather, those members of the 99% who vote as if they're in the 1%) need to exert their power at the polling booth.

timb07··on Catullus 16
And just to prove I did study Latin, I actually remember the end of that poem:

"atque in perpetuam, frater, ave atque vale"

timb07··on How to disrupt the brogrammer vibe with 1 simple change
Well, that's the result.

The change is not to interview for "cultural fit" but for "values alignment".

timb07··on Catullus 16
I studied Latin in school, and we studied Catullus 85 and 5 (which is mentioned in 16).

We discovered there was a book of English translations of Catullus in the library, which we used to "help" with our homework. I'm pretty sure it didn't contain 16, because we would definitely have noticed. :p

timb07··on The Intl.RelativeTimeFormat API
"Trimester" is a word commonly used in English in relation to the stages of pregnancy.
timb07··on The Art of Prolog, Second Edition
The Mercury compiler is written in Mercury, which is syntactically derived from Prolog. The original compiler was bootsrapped by stripping the non-Prolog parts from the code and executing it on NU-Prolog. The compiler first successfully compiled itself in 1995, after which NU-Prolog was no longer needed.

And just to tie this back to the original topic, Leon Sterling (first author of The Art of Prolog) was the head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne when the development of Mercury began there.

timb07··on Ask HN: Was hired to improve company's devops, founder won't listen to my ideas
Alternatively, get ready to leave.

But before you do, push back against the founder. The next time he pushes directly to master, immediately revert the commit, but cherry-pick it over to a development or staging branch instead. Then notify him what you've done and why (including that you're trying to prevent breaking changes being made on master, like happened previously).

How the founder responds to this will determine whether you leave, or whether you stay a bit longer and perhaps gain the founder's trust. But still expect you'll have to leave. :/

timb07··on Titans of Mathematics Clash Over Epic Proof of ABC Conjecture
Even further OT: I was good friends with Frank Calegari's older brother (also a mathematician) at school, and used to play bridge with Frank at university. I'm not a mathematician but I do sometimes read articles when they're posted on HN, so it was a surprise to see someone I know mentioned. :p
timb07··on Forest, a multi-syntax functional language that compiles to WebAssembly
> How do I edit the code in my preferred syntax? Do I need an editor plugin?

> When working on the project, each developer runs forest dev, which mounts a virtual filesystem in the local directory using FUSE, called dev/.

> dev/ contains all of the source files, projected into the developer's syntax of choice.

timb07··on Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience
"My hope is that python will serve as a "gateway drug" to other languages like ruby, ML, C/C++, SQL"

Your inclusion of SQL in that list really shows you have no idea what you're talking about.

timb07··on Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience
Nice reference to Karel Čapek's "R.U.R." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.).
timb07··on To Make Sense of the Present, Brains May Predict the Future
> We can't predict the future.

What tosh. Of course we can predict the future... and sometimes our prediction is correct.

Data compression works by modelling the data stream and predicting the next symbol based on that model, and then recording in an efficient way the degree to which the prediction was correct. The comparison between the prediction and the actual outcome is the key point -- just as it is in the article.

timb07··on Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
Is the Boeing team that worked on the schedule for the 787 Dreamliner involved in this schedule?
timb07··on Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew
President Bush also proclaimed "Mission Accomplished".
timb07··on Research-backed strategies for better learning
Embarking on a complete rewrite just to make deployment easier seems odd -- deploying Python code might be trickier than code in some other language, but it's not that hard.
timb07··on Research-backed strategies for better learning
From a quick look at the Sagefy code, it seems you've written your own web framework, including your own database layer. Was there a particular reason you didn't use a framework like Django?
timb07··on First physiological test for autism proves high accuracy in second trial
The generally accepted definition of autism spectrum disorder is that in DSM-V. This physiological test is compared against ASD diagnoses based on DSM-V, and based on that comparison, the accuracy of the test (for the given sample tested) is calculated.

As more is known about the condition, the diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM could be updated, which would mean that this test would then need to be evaluated again. But that doesn't prevent its current accuracy being measured.

timb07··on Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Wins Chicago Airport High-Speed Train Bid
> I think it’s more likely to never get off the ground

It's a tunnel, duh.

timb07··on Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Wins Chicago Airport High-Speed Train Bid
The point of The Boring Company is to reduce the cost of tunnelling by digging narrower tunnels (designed for custom vehicles, not regular trains or cars) and using an electric tunnel boring machine.
timb07··on Who controls glibc?
"While RMS has undoubtedly contributed much to the FOSS community"

RMS would vehemently disagree with you: he founded the Free Software community, and has nothing to do with Open Source Software.

timb07··on Researchers have developed a water-based battery to store solar and wind energy
"Excess electrons bubbled off as hydrogen gas, thus storing that energy for future use."

Just wow.

timb07··on Earth’s carbon dioxide levels reach highest point in 800,000 years
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an-incompl...
timb07··on Earth’s carbon dioxide levels reach highest point in 800,000 years
How do you debate designs that haven't been built yet?

Historically, nuclear power plants take years or decades to build, and at great cost. The risk to investors is so high that they only proceed with some kind of state-funded insurance.

If there really was a modern nuclear reactor design that would compete in the energy market with wind and solar, everyone would be building them already.

timb07··on Macbook Pro frying USB peripherals
And there's a black button with black lettering which lights up black if you press it which tells you not to press it again.
timb07··on Illnesses from Mosquito, Tick, and Flea Bites Increasing in the US
"Mosquitoes and ticks and the germs they spread are increasing in number and moving into new areas."

Why? I suspect that climate change is a factor, but how do we know whether that's true and the CDC isn't allowed to report it, or whether it's false?

timb07··on Why the F-35 Isn’t Good Enough for Japan
If China is a threat to Australia, maybe we shouldn't have sold them the port of Darwin...
timb07··on United States v. Microsoft Corp. Dismissed [pdf]
Eight. Sure Clarence Thomas is there, but he rarely speaks.

It was news when he asked questions in 2016 for the first time in 10 years: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/29/468576931...

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