Syzygies

38 ms·

421.
by Syzygies 5y ago
There were cholera epidemics in the 19th century, until we realized we shouldn't drink contaminated water. In cities such as London, this required major infrastructure investments. We're just realizing we shouldn't breathe co
422.
by Syzygies 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba
423.
by Syzygies 5y ago
I first encountered this in the basement A/V department at my high school.
424.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Wow, a language calling itself AFL++ really puts its cards (and influences) on the table.
425.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Calculus teaches us the nature of optima. Sometimes they're at one extreme. Sometimes the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. This is one extreme. The sweet spot is in the middle, using tap/hold keys on a more conventional keyb
426.
by Syzygies 5y ago
See dunham's answer. Anyone who has seen a PDF file in text form would swear they're looking at Postscript. There's a common intersection that's identical. Very roughly speaking (this is a semantic debate where everyone
427.
by Syzygies 5y ago
I do insert the score radio buttons using the "pdfmark" mechanism via Postscript.
428.
by Syzygies 5y ago
After a few experiments, I'd compare this to panning for gold in a river others ignore because the yield isn't good. You will find nuggets you would have otherwise missed, but you'll work for it. This engine is likely best us
429.
by Syzygies 5y ago
I am a math professor with a scanned exam grading workflow that I hacked together as Bash scripts using various open source command line tools. I feed all the exams through a sheet-fed scanner, decode bar codes to identify problems and stud
430.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Other than the canonical "Do I bring an umbrella?" we have one actionable need for precise weather forecasting: In hot weather I have outfit our California house with an assortment of commercial (quiet whole-house exhaust) and hom
431.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Yes. I could work for AppleCare phone support. All my friends call me instead. When I need to call, I'd do well betting a year's salary that the first person won't know the answer. I always get escalated, sometimes to someone
432.
by Syzygies 5y ago
This is beautiful technical writing. I was crushed to discover that this was his first article (at this location).
433.
by Syzygies 5y ago
There's large, and there's scope. I use VSCode to dabble in dozens of projects across a dozen languages at a time, often coming back to fix things after years. VSCode is great at telling me what I did in the current project, but I
434.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Thank you. I kept asking myself why I was reading a debate in 2021 about a language that defaults to (GET OFF MY LAWN) all caps. Learning about Ruby pry made it all worth it.
435.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Could we genetically engineer mosquitos to deliver Covid vaccinations?
436.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Racket's fork of Chez Scheme now runs native on Apple M1 silicon. That's a remarkable feat; GHC Haskell for instance doesn't yet, and their blogs explain the difficulties. I keep a zoo of exotic languages, many of which must
437.
by Syzygies 5y ago
I'd like to believe this isn't primarily profit motive. What gives me pause is how I write regularly asking for separate vaults for trivial passwords and passwords that could lead to financial ruin. The profit motive wants to keep
438.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Wow. Thank you for that thoughtful response. C aside, Haskell is my primary recent experience, so everything you say resonates. Like Idris, you're doing a lot to clean up Haskell.
439.
by Syzygies 5y ago
"Idris 2" is clearly an influence. They both offer ChezScheme as a backend, for example.
440.
by Syzygies 5y ago
"An accessible syntax that makes it less scary." Can anyone explain how syntax elements such as { } are a net win? This looks like they've tuned the syntax to not scare anyone off in the first week, at the expense of an econo
441.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Studying algebraic geometry back in 1980, I nearly dropped out of grad school: Attempting to solve century-old problems with century-old methods stopped making sense to me. Then a friend and I had this vision that algebraic geometry should
442.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Those are close but don't fit. They're for pipe clamps.
443.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Home Depot doesn't sell "Replacement Clamp Pads" for their Bessey "Clutch Style Bar Clamp". They regularly go missing. You're _supposed_ to shop lift them, then the store sends the defective clamps back to be r
444.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Some card counters use two counts, to separate odds from strategy. I could never imagine myself memorizing all those cutoff numbers. These two counts aren't independent; once you establish a 2-dimensional parameter space, the regions o
445.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Great strategy for publicizing a language: Use it to support articles people want to read.
446.
by Syzygies 5y ago
In the 1980's I attended an amazing talk by Lynn Conway. She described how with Carver Mead she had popularlized VLSI design methodology, using her studies in anthropology for insights into deliberately fomenting a revolution. She open
447.
by Syzygies 5y ago
New functional languages emphasize current research, such as dependent types or algebraic effects, as if the best of the past has naturally been saved. Sometimes the best of the past gets forgotten. I loved SML; a language designer would do
448.
by Syzygies 5y ago
There's a massive intellectual black hole at the center of the Haskell galaxy, yet many worlds have evolved happy, advanced civilizations without spiraling into that black hole. A small subset of Haskell makes for a spectacularly effec
449.
by Syzygies 5y ago
If one understands linear algebra (and has Haskell output of matrices with nice eigenvalues), then reviewing this spelling is the only preparation needed to teach a semester course.
450.
by Syzygies 5y ago
Whatever the law, when does learning from what we read devolve into plagiarism? The poster child for this category would be those programs that generate nonsense English text that recognizably resembles a known author. They choose the next

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