apricot

40 ms·

451.
by apricot 11y ago
Making an exact replica of a work of art would be tantamount to destroying the original, or so an artist friend told me when I asked him that very question. On a related note, you can buy lab-created rubies for a few dollars each that are p
452.
by apricot 11y ago
A ponzu scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator pays returns to its investors from citrus-flavoured soy sauce sent to the operators by new investors.
453.
by apricot 11y ago
Just the right mix of theory and practice to make the data structures class I had as an undergraduate pale in comparison. Thank you Mr. Norvig, and please keep them coming.
454.
by apricot 12y ago
Sorry to get your hopes up, I meant the Stephen Slade book.
455.
by apricot 12y ago
One idiosyncratic list coming up. Kernighan and Plauger, Software Tools , had a very big influence on my coding style and appreciation for the Unix Way. If you want to learn more about Lisp macros, the exuberant book Let Over Lambda by D
456.
by apricot 12y ago
I had a Casio calculator watch that also included a video game for the ultimate in nerd entertainment. From what I remember, it consisted of scrolling numbers that you had to enter before they reached the edge of the screen, like in a typ
457.
by apricot 12y ago
McGill University in Montreal had an undergraduate computing lab full of NeXT machines in the early 1990s. Visiting the lab was the high point of the tour they gave to prospective students.
458.
by apricot 12y ago
But that Pepsi logo document is obviously satire, in the spirit of "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Right?
459.
by apricot 12y ago
Is "Yesterday I eat noodles" considered grammatically correct English in Singapore?
460.
by apricot 12y ago
Interesting, but the jump from "if we knew how to fold proteins, we could cure cancer" will have any biologist twitching violently.
461.
by apricot 12y ago
Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymo
462.
by apricot 12y ago
In first place, and it's not even close: Martin Gardner's Scientific American columns. I can't believe they haven't been mentioned yet. They're (slowly) being reprinted by Cambridge, or you can buy a CD with all of
463.
by apricot 12y ago
Yes, Panasonic "business rugged" laptops are generally very well made, amazingly light and robust, and come with niceties that you seldom find elsewhere: a good, spill-resistant keyboard, optical drive, physical wireless kill swit
464.
by apricot 12y ago
"Your airplane is so expensive!" "But your bicycle is so slow!"
465.
by apricot 12y ago
Thought-provoking article, and it contains this gem: "I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them." This is such a wonderful turn of phrase, and has c
466.
by apricot 12y ago
Always upvote Andrew Plotkin.
467.
by apricot 12y ago
A friend gave me an older Macbook Air (3,1) recently. I installed Linux Mint LTS on it, completely replacing MacOS (no dual-boot). Everything just works, you name it: wifi, webcam, sound, suspend. The only hard part was understanding that t
468.
by apricot 12y ago
I managed to install Debian on mine without trouble. I've written a mostly-functional Apple II emulator (minus the graphics modes) and enjoy having an Apple II in my pocket. I also use it to learn Chinese by listening to audiobooks. Wh
469.
by apricot 12y ago
Nice. I've been using a Ben Nanonote ( ) for the past few years. It's a nice open hacking platform, not very powerful but very open and tweakable. ( ) http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ben_NanoNote
470.
by apricot 12y ago
That interview should be read by everyone who cares about the attack on Charlie Hebdo and subsequent "Je suis Charlie" worldwide movement. Many people, for all kinds of reasons (many good) are trying to make Charlie Hebdo into wha
471.
by apricot 12y ago
Oh my god. Those manual scans gave me a serious case of the flashbacks. I must have spent hours reading it when I was in grade school.
472.
by apricot 12y ago
So are instantaneous cycles good or bad ? Three pounds of flax.
473.
by apricot 12y ago
This was the first academic paper I ever read, way back when. For a brief, wonderful time, I thought all academic papers were of a similar caliber, and I was in awe (and not a little bit intimidated).
474.
by apricot 12y ago
I lived in China for a while and had the occasion to experience the constant frustration that accompanies Chinese zippers. Zipping down your fly and not knowing whether you will be able to zip up. Taking 5 minutes every morning to zip up yo
475.
by apricot 12y ago
Upton Sinclair said it best: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
476.
by apricot 12y ago
I remember reading "Computing Across America" on Compuserve back in the eighties, as it was happening. At first I wasn't sure whether it was a true story or an elaborate fiction. Reading the stories written in raw ASCII code
477.
by apricot 12y ago
Regarding your comment about floats in LaTeX, of course you don't tell LaTeX where they go. They float. That's why they are called floats. If you don't want them to float, don't use the float environment. ( Or use the fl
478.
by apricot 12y ago
In the 1990s, when I was in college, I wrote a 6502 emulator in a text editor macro language (the text editor was QEdit, a DOS editor that was popular at the time). It was completely useless but a lot of fun. There was a very low hard limit
479.
by apricot 12y ago
It's like someone showing up to give a talk with a Hitler hairstyle and toothbrush moustache. There's nothing wrong with the hair or the moustache per se , and perhaps they are your favourite for some reason, but the pre-associat
480.
by apricot 12y ago
Like you, I see many, many parallels between microcomputers in the 1970s and 3d printers now. I'm old enough to remember the magazines of the day (Kilobaud, Dr. Dobb's, Micro) being full of snake oil as well as genuine treasures.

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