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yangyang

1,556 karma · joined April 4, 2009

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yangyang··on Amsterdam to use “noise cameras” against too loud cars
Part of it is the prevalence of "pop and bang" maps, modified ECU configuration which changes timing and allows unburnt fuel to enter the hot exhaust and explode.

There is a purpose to this in turbocharged cars in motor racing - anti-lag - as the extra gases keep the turbo spinning during gear changes. No reason for it on public roads though.

There's also a lot of "cat deletes" (removal of catalytic converters to improve exhaust gas flow and increase engine power). Illegal, but very common to see on YouTube and just like pretty much anything else illegal on the roads in the UK these days, the police don't seem to care at all.

yangyang··on How PostgreSQL stores rows
I wrote a PostgreSQL extension years ago that visualises pages (as text): https://github.com/hollobon/pagevis
yangyang··on Something funny is about to happen to some prices
There have been negative electricity (spot) prices already - https://www.montelnews.com/en/story/sweden-finland-see-negat....
yangyang··on Norsk Data
Sounds very familiar - they probably knew each other.
yangyang··on Norsk Data
Ha. My father worked for Norsk Data in the UK during the late 1980s and early 1990s after they bought Wordplex. They had incredible offices at a stately home near Newbury.
yangyang··on UK police release airport drone suspects, admit there may not have been drones
Under £500m. Still a huge amount but considerably less than £9b.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26954482

yangyang··on Migra – A schema diff tool for PostgreSQL
I've used it for about that long, with no real problems at all. We have probably a hundred or so migrations, and have added support for various things not supported out of the box (triggers, functions, exclusion constraints and a few more), and it's been very solid.

What kind of situation are you using it in where it falls short?

yangyang··on Migra – A schema diff tool for PostgreSQL
This looks interesting.

If you're using SQLAlchemy, Alembic is a good migration management / generation / application tool: http://alembic.zzzcomputing.com/en/latest/, and works with most (all?) the databases supported by SQLAlchemy. It doesn't handle every kind of database object / attribute thereof, but it's reasonably easily extensible.

yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
Only seen it done with ones removed from old keyboards. On at least some (including the IBM SpaceSaver IIs that I have), it's on a separate little board. I believe the outputs are pretty simple to decode.
yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
I guess with practise it may well have improved. I just didn't find it comfortable enough to persevere.
yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
I've got one of the thumb keys on the left of the Kinesis mapped to shift; never quite got used to it though and I'm always mistyping when holding it.
yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
I've been meaning to hack a trackpoint into my Kinesis. It's been done before, mounted where you can control with the thumb so you don't need to move your hand at all.
yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
The trouble is tuning it so that you don't need to actively hold your foot to prevent it actuating, and also having enough feedback on actuation.

I felt that some kind of wireless, in-shoe, toe-activated device might be the best option. But that's not really very practical!

yangyang··on Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012)
I converted a set of pedals for a dictation machine to work with my Kinesis keyboard.

It wasn't as useful as I expected. Having to keep my foot in the same place all the time became quite uncomfortable, and I found that synchronising my foot with my fingers (these pedals were configured as modifiers rather than escape - I mostly use Emacs) was quite difficult.

yangyang··on Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time
IIRC the other shot is somewhere south of the river. I worked it out at the time. I was near Tower Bridge on the north side.
yangyang··on Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time
Oh yeah, I don't deny it isn't insanely improbable. Still, finding same strike in a newspaper, shot from a very similar angle, was quite surprising.
yangyang··on Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time
I had the same thing happen with one of my photos of lightning in London. I actually thought my shot had been ripped off at first glance, then realised it was from a different angle.

Mine: https://www.flickr.com/photos/beechlights/2739042419/in/phot...

Alternative, from the Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/earth/2515...

yangyang··on Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?
I found this post about latency of input devices very interesting: https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/
yangyang··on Tetris for TS100 soldering iron
Love this sort of thing.

I did a Tetris game for a led-matrix clock I got from Banggood: https://github.com/hollobon/jy-mcu-3208-tetris

yangyang··on Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?
Porting an ancient 6502 Forth to Z80. Nobody will ever use it and there are already loads of Z80 Forths around, but it's fun and forces me to learn exactly how a language that's always interested me works. Not on Github yet.
yangyang··on The 1980 Citroën Karin
Agreed, and it's become common on many more cars than supercars to add valves to make exhausts noisier. I suspect these valves are not triggered in regulatory exhaust noise tests.

From Jaguar's website:

  Every F‑TYPE is fitted with an Active Sports Exhaust 
  that creates a race‑car inspired crescendo. 
  The exhaust system reacts to throttle position, speed 
  and engine revs by opening active valves. When open, 
  these valves allow exhaust gases to take a more direct,
  less restrictive route through the rear silencer
  producing a much richer, more exhilarating sound. Where
  fitted, the Switchable Active Exhaust, allows you to
  manually open the exhaust valves so you can enjoy
  F‑TYPE’s stirring soundtrack at all engine speeds. This 
  feature is optional on F‑TYPE and standard on all other 
  models.
yangyang··on Fork a distributed Postgres database with Citus
We use ZFS (on Linux) clones to instantly fork a read-only replica of our production database, to create r/w copies. We also currently have these upgraded in-place to 9.6 (we're still on 9.5) for testing.

Docker-compose and a makefile make it all very straightforward.

yangyang··on Customizing My Postgres Shell
This is cool. Always worth spending some time setting up psql.

In my psqlrc I also have a bunch of "macros" (unfortunately no parameters in psql) for common stuff like transaction handling and SET ROLE / RESET ROLE, lock monitoring etc.: https://github.com/hollobon/psqlrc/blob/master/psqlrc.conf Some of it only works on <=9.4.

yangyang··on Show HN: Miso – A Haskell implementation of Elm
I did too, but I thought it was going to be a mail client (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_(email_client))
yangyang··on Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning
The biggest selling cask ale in the UK (Greene King IPA), is 3.6% abv
yangyang··on Moderate drinking associated with atrophy in brain related to memory, learning
> The average beer is stronger than it was 20 years ago

I very much doubt this. High strength lagers are much less popular than they were 20 years ago, not least because of beer tax that scales with strength. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11455150/Britain...

yangyang··on MonetDB – Column-store database
We used this in production at my previous role and it was fantastic. There are a few rough edges but it became markedly more reliable over the 2 years or so we used it. It handled huge (well over 100KB) queries generated by SQLAlchemy with ease and was lightening fast.

We were using it as part of a custom BI tool for portfolio risk analysis. The data was mastered in postgresql and loaded into MonetDB for OLAP stuff.

The developers are pretty responsive to questions and bug reports.

yangyang··on New GNU Emacs website
An old HP Touchpad Bluetooth keyboard. It works fine though not having a meta key on the left is a bit of a pain.
yangyang··on New GNU Emacs website
I run Emacs under termux on my Nexus 6P. Works great with exactly the same config I use on the desktop.
yangyang··on Building a Tetris Clone in x86 Assembly, pt. Ⅱ: I/O
I've uploaded a little video of it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIG7UfFYCdY
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