jtolmar

45 ms·

451.
by jtolmar 9y ago
I'm generally happy with all the Ubuntu default apps. Basic text editor: gedit. Search has been a lot less usable since it moved to the top right bar. Keyboard sequences like control-f + part of a word + escape do strange things like s
452.
by jtolmar 9y ago
I'd take the CLT as everything complicated being normally distributed by default, but with fairly common exceptions: 1 - If the problem isn't actually that complicated, the CLT doesn't do much. 2 - If the problem is dominated
453.
by jtolmar 9y ago
I'd prefer a "crash if receiver doesn't support sender's MIME type" model for debugability. Which could still be ergonomic if all the common piping programs supported some specific collection of formats and there wa
454.
by jtolmar 9y ago
Those things, while terrible, are separable from their economic progress. Unless you believe that using political dissidents as organ donors helps the economy.
455.
by jtolmar 9y ago
The object-oriented world has been moving towards more immutable and mostly-immutable classes. This is sometimes awkward with large classes, so people use the builder pattern to get around it. (It's a case of languages having not caugh
456.
by jtolmar 9y ago
> Seems almost identical to defining a record and module of functions that operate on said record. OO is mostly that plus the ability to forbid people from using the record without using the functions. > by attaching the functions you
457.
by jtolmar 9y ago
C++ pointer/reference syntax. I understand the concepts, and pointers make perfect sense to me when I'm programming in assembly, but whenever I look at them in C++ it's like & and * mean the opposite things when used in v
458.
by jtolmar 9y ago
Values that get passed around together go together into a structure, making code that deals with them more succinct. The functions that care about that sort of structure go into a class, not because this is inherently better, but because fo
459.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Assuming a game with square tiles and vector movement: All shortest paths are either a straight line, or consist of the straight line from the original location to an outside corner, a series of straight lines between outside corners, and a
460.
by jtolmar 10y ago
My preferred solution for a variety of these is that you buy a transmitter from Amazon, and the drone tries to home in on it once it gets to your address. The ideal transmitter would be wide and flat, so the drone can just drop packages on
461.
by jtolmar 10y ago
In Seattle, at least, it's very common for apartments to have tiny private balconies. If a drone can deliver to one of those, it will be more convenient than trying to deal with the average apartment complex's mailroom.
462.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Amazon's culture is strictly hierarchical and all the mechanisms designed to protect lower-level employees are busted. You're supposed to be able to transfer to a new department, but many directors and VPs work to block transfers.
463.
by jtolmar 10y ago
I don't know a spline off the top of my head that inherently has the property you want, but you can split Bezier curves to form what you want: https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#splitting . You can also drop earl
464.
by jtolmar 10y ago
My pick for the most interesting chemical that he's described does not explode, but rather convinces things to light on fire. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...
465.
by jtolmar 10y ago
An easy to use parsing library with some sort of way to import sub-trees (ie: everything between these parentheses uses this other parser) and good default parsers for obvious things like C-style math and JSON objects.
466.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Same thing, but very light weight and with a discount for buying in bulk. (Best friend is an ornithologist.)
467.
by jtolmar 10y ago
This is one of the classic procedural algorithms. I wrote my first version fifteen years ago; it's quite nostalgic :) The other classic algorithm that I've gotten the most mileage out of is: http://www.roguebasin.com&#x
468.
by jtolmar 10y ago
There's also an upper bound on how bad an axis-aligned solution can be. And, on a less mathematical note, weird diagonal packings are counter-intuitive to everyone and you're not likely to get customers complaining that you packed
469.
by jtolmar 10y ago
There are still cases it won't work; in fact, sometimes the optimal packing is pretty strange. For example, check the fifth optimal square packing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_packing_in_a_square
470.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Dell XPS 13. Got it preloaded with Linux, which isn't important but felt nice. It's super light, powerful enough for everything I do (giant pile of chrome tabs + one of gimp, gaming, or webdev), has incredible battery life, and is
471.
by jtolmar 10y ago
The reason these works feel so insightful is that they link all their material together into a massive, cohesive worldview. Each additional detail makes it sound more true, even though rationally each detail is one more thing that could be
472.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Here's something fun and counter-intuitive: From default settings, set speed variance to 50%, launch frequency to 120 cars/minute, and reaction time to 500ms. Unsurprisingly, this is chaos. Then, keeping those settings, clear the
473.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Briefly going faster than the regular flow of traffic is sometimes the best way to avoid an accident. But I think the real reason is that people would be very, very grumpy about that law and regulators need to pick their battles.
474.
by jtolmar 10y ago
Here's the intuitive explanation I usually use. Sequential Bayesian Filtering is how you apply repeated evidence to a moving target. There are three steps: 1. Predict: Using some Markov process, move your prior distribution forward in
475.
by jtolmar 10y ago
People make that joke about Seattle quite a lot during certain seasons. Seattle has a few months of near-uninterrupted sunshine and a few months of near-uninterrupted drizzle, but the intervening months interpolate by changing the weight of
476.
by jtolmar 10y ago
I found it kind of funny that the author's big conclusion was less state-directed action, leaning on the thought that somehow the economy will work out for everyone as long as we get out of its way well enough. A type of magical think
477.
by jtolmar 10y ago
If Cap'n Proto is a joke, JSON beat it to the punchline. What's an efficient binary representation? C Structs. What's an efficient text representation? Javascript objects. But casting arbitrary data to a struct is a horrible
478.
by jtolmar 10y ago
If you throw a balloon animal into a ceiling fan, it's pretty funny. (When I was very young we had a family friend who was a clown, and we visited his house once. This is everything I learned.)
479.
by jtolmar 10y ago
It's interesting seeing everyone immediately sort themselves by their assumptions and then argue in those clusters. Are martial arts supposed to be a way to defend yourself? A competitive sport? A way to stay in shape? Some sort of art
480.
by jtolmar 10y ago
This looks surprisingly close to the hypothetical dream framework in my head. I'll definitely take a look into it. I love the for/yield construct for handling boring concurrency.

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