ajb

5 ms·

31.
by ajb 2mo ago
This is a moving tribute. Stephen Wolfram's writing often has certain faults, which I mention only to be able to say that he has here transcended them; this is a genuine and heartfelt piece of writing which makes me feel sad for his
32.
by ajb 2mo ago
That's a likely motivation, but it's worth pointing out that it's against one of the HN community's other values: thinking things through properly, not just picking an option. The hacker mindset values understanding how
33.
by ajb 2mo ago
FWIW I have seen wind damage to a brick building, but with a shade sail, which while having a similar purpose is typically larger than a typical awning (although an awning on every window might approach the same load).
34.
by ajb 2mo ago
Small ones like this may be fine, but buildings (especially old ones) may have surprisingly small margin for extra wind load laterally. What seems like a cheap option could require an expensive structural analysis, or an even more expensive
35.
by ajb 2mo ago
Indeed, I would be interested to know if this was more than just albedo.
36.
by ajb 2mo ago
There can be a difference between whose the fault is, and who is accountable. Usually, the entity you paid is the one legally accountable to you. This is not just a trivial detail: you will have no luck with the law attempting to hold the o
37.
by ajb 2mo ago
I don't know why you expect me to be a partisan for it, given the best thing I said about it was "driving on it is a non-event". Experimentation with junction design has been a good thing in the UK. Many of the designs are, h
38.
by ajb 2mo ago
I'm sure you know this, but for the benefit of those who haven't seen it before: it does not go anticlockwise. The"roundabout" in the middle is an illusion generated by the 5 normal roundabouts in a circle. There are no
39.
by ajb 2mo ago
Interesting. I think part of the reason people assume it's not possible is that (at least in the UK) there is so much faux-consultation which has approximately no effect; both in the public and private sector. But it looks superficiall
40.
by ajb 2mo ago
Igalia is very serious about worker ownership. They aren't legally structured as a cooperative, as they don't technically meet the definition - as I understand it, they were nervous about the idea of committing wholly to new emplo
41.
by ajb 2mo ago
Substack is trying to turn itself into a social network, so comments on substack posts by other substack bloggers let people find other blogs. This is why half the comments on popular substacks are from other bloggers casually mentioning th
42.
by ajb 2mo ago
While the alcohol consumption can be a bit nuts, the UK has a relatively strong cultural tradition that what happens in the pub stays in the pub. That makes it a useful low-risk way to air work issues that would not be raised in a work meet
43.
by ajb 2mo ago
The problem is not necessarily job losses as such. When artisans were replaced by factory work, it took a long time for automation to actually reduce the number of workers. What happened quickly was that the asset of the artisans -their ski
44.
by ajb 2mo ago
The one I really don't accept is the Ryanair Russian Roulette pricing model, where they advertise cheap prices, but have many hidden tripwires that add a multiple of the sticker cost.
45.
by ajb 2mo ago
The problem is that they also need to be big enough not to be rolled by aggressive behaviour such as lawsuits, pressure from politicians, etc. I mean, some of my domains are at a tiny company run by geeks, but I wouldn't really blame t
46.
by ajb 2mo ago
In the UK, the old common law rule does not apply to land that has been registered centrally, that is then the legal definition of who owns the property. However there are still properties that are not registered and for those, the rule yo
47.
by ajb 2mo ago
The UK used to have a distributed system - everyone had to have a solicitor store "deeds" of their property, which were a sort of paper blockchain of all the transactions the land had been in since - I don't know, since recor
48.
by ajb 2mo ago
I understand the frustration, but it's justifiable for the public to be concerned about AI in general because the novelty of the technology means that boundaries between beneficial and problematic usage is not yet stable and well defin
49.
by ajb 2mo ago
A positive one, or a negative one?
50.
by ajb 2mo ago
The problem with this line of thinking is that the more humanity succeeds at becoming efficient at providing for its essential goods and services, the more the economy rests on unnecessary ones. Should we really accept that the more succes
51.
by ajb 2mo ago
Yeah that happens all the time. Anyone/thing with popular public releases has fans/journeys scraping the website looking for unreleased material or scoops. In the early days one of the high profile soaps in the UK published their
52.
by ajb 2mo ago
In the semiconductor industry this role is called Field Application Engineer. They do serious work, not just slideware, as your chip probably ships with drivers that were designed months or years before you could get significant time from t
53.
by ajb 2mo ago
Interesting, I hadn't heard of Petersen's algorithm before. There's a similar algorithm by Lamport (of course): https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/fast-mutex.pdf .
54.
by ajb 3mo ago
This was a while back, they have both now passed; but thanks for the good wishes.
55.
by ajb 3mo ago
An anecdote, but some reason to think that overworking part of your brain is a bad idea: I had an Aunt who had dementia. This is obviously a terrible outlook. But her and my Uncle seemed to be doing okay. My Uncle was an ultra-competent guy
56.
by ajb 3mo ago
Historically, vehicles actually did have completely interchangable motive components. They were called horses. It would have been difficult given the state of other technology at the time for the inventors of the internal combustion engine
57.
by ajb 3mo ago
It eventually worked for you - great. That doesn't prove that it will eventually work for everyone. At some point, when something is not working, you have to write off the sunk cost. In many cases, there's no obvious threshold as
58.
by ajb 3mo ago
This isn't the worst article, and it's triggered a decent amount of discussion (despite being very short). However, I really dislike "What you're doing wrong/failing to do" titles. They are intended to trigger
59.
by ajb 3mo ago
This does violate the principle of least surprise. But,if you look through their other github issues, it becomes fairly clear that Anthropic are not interested in building an effective sandbox. It's a feelgood sandbox. To be fair, they
60.
by ajb 3mo ago
Indeed. I wonder if it falls foul of labour law. Blacklisting is illegal and whitelisting (certification) is normally done with multiple competing third party certifiers.

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