mcbits

78 ms·

781.
by mcbits 10y ago
That bothers me about lots of extensions, and not just extensions. For example, the Newtonsoft.Json NuGet package opens up a web page after updating, and it bothers me every time. The higher the quality of the software, the more it bothers
782.
by mcbits 10y ago
Amateur radio has a role as kind of a communications militia that can be called up in times of emergency, and the ARRL happens to be the most influential voice in that community. Aside from the chit-chat and banter, hams regularly take part
783.
by mcbits 10y ago
I think I've managed to play the stream without infecting my computer with Flash. Open this network stream in VLC: http://icv-live8.icvdm.cshls.lldns.net/icvdm/icv-live8/icv-l... Changing that "live8&quo
784.
by mcbits 10y ago
I will add: Want to click to select a tab using a pen tablet? No problem, as long as you have the hand of a surgeon. (It's far too easy to accidentally pop a tab out to a new window.) Though now that it supports extensions, I'm st
785.
by mcbits 10y ago
I used to sit out back and feed the squirrels, and a couple of blue jays learned what I was doing by observation. Although they never got as close as the squirrels (which were almost hand-tame within a few weeks), they did warm up quite a b
786.
by mcbits 10y ago
It's the bottom border that looks off when wrapping. Since the headings are already distinguished by whitespace, size, weight, and color, the border doesn't really add anything. Overall, the page is not conveying a hierarchy to me
787.
by mcbits 10y ago
That's hard on the eyes, and the headings look like links. The top-level headings look just plain broken when they wrap.
788.
by mcbits 10y ago
It's easy to imagine that eating 1 out of 3 slices of pie is "the same" in a very specific sense as eating 333333... out of 1000000... slices of the same pie (although that would be infinity out of infinity slices, which is m
789.
Exoplanet Direct Imaging Science [video](youtube.com)
3 points by mcbits 10y ago|0 comments
790.
by mcbits 10y ago
I can't speak for everyone, but I read conversational prose a lot faster than dense technical writing. If I were to read enough of each style to absorb the same amount of information, I don't think it's safe to assume I would
791.
by mcbits 10y ago
The laws of physics are the mathematical description, and the wormhole concept arises as a curious edge case of those laws. If wormholes are actually impossible, the laws of physics already need to be rewritten, not the other way around.
792.
Putting a computer in your brain is no longer science fiction(washingtonpost.com)
2 points by mcbits 10y ago|0 comments
793.
by mcbits 10y ago
For reference, "median net compensation" appears to be just shy of $30,000 (if it's safe to extrapolate from 2014). https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
794.
by mcbits 10y ago
At the very least, sneak one relevant equation into each article (not just as decoration) and spend a paragraph explaining something about it. Over time, readers will gain a lot more from that than from a data center full of 3D cartoons and
795.
by mcbits 10y ago
> Perhaps few adults (especially a medically qualified one) would be foolish enough to try eating an unknown fruit found on a foreign beach That's what was going through my mind for the whole story. And then to sit around sipping pi
796.
by mcbits 10y ago
I wonder what kind of interesting stats one could dig up from aerial images of the farms near La Crosse, WI. Instead of a grid of circles, the farms carve out a bunch of fascinating patterns in the fractal topography around the river. (I&#x
797.
by mcbits 10y ago
I'd say "see what happens next!" is clickbait even if the page has no ads and actually does show what happens next. When "nightmare scenario" turns out to mean "not much has happened", that's at least
798.
by mcbits 10y ago
A lot of people refer to VSCode as an IDE, but their PR doesn't call it anything more than an extensible editor (perhaps a distinction without a difference). I would hope, for JetBrains' sake, that their commercial IDE stays far a
799.
by mcbits 10y ago
Here is some evidence of mining source code for common structure and idioms. I didn't even have to dust off my bull whip: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/csutton/publications/idioms.pd... I don't have evid
800.
by mcbits 10y ago
Yep, I'm just saying that if someone can and wants to release their code, they shouldn't let "is this even useful to anyone?" stop them. It could turn out to be useful in ways that nobody has foreseen.
801.
by mcbits 10y ago
No examples come to mind of someone just releasing a bunch of proprietary code without some effort involved. But people sometimes poke fun at the Apache Foundation as a place for companies to wash their hands of old code that they don'
802.
by mcbits 10y ago
I'm a proponent of publishing code that's useless, obsolete, buggy, poorly documented, etc, if the rights holders are so inclined. The reason is that I think it can still be useful as training data for, say, designing new programm
803.
by mcbits 10y ago
As an employee, your time and skills are your personal capital (your means of production). The way you invest that capital has risk like any other investment. Again, this is partially mitigated by salary. But as an employee, you probably
804.
by mcbits 10y ago
Working as an employee is not without risk. There is the risk that you'll invest 10% or 50% of your productive lifespan in an employer who squanders it all and leaves you jobless without notice instead of an employer who puts your abil
805.
by mcbits 10y ago
5. The von Neumann probes are microscopic and densely packed with a chemical structure encoding the information needed to reproduce in a variety of environments. Occasionally some of them mutate and get stuck in a planet's gravitationa
806.
by mcbits 10y ago
"If you wish to converse with me, define your terms." -Voltaire Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "precise", but philosophical arguments do tend to start by defining one's terms or disputing the opponent's
807.
by mcbits 10y ago
Regarding morale, there's always a "bad country" making headlines each week. A disgruntled employee and an employee coerced by Bad Country's operatives can do pretty much the same damage, so you might as well frame the r
808.
by mcbits 10y ago
"May or may not succeed" applies to the research itself, regardless of how it is funded. I imagine the subtext of your comment is that ALS (or gene sequencing?) should receive more public funding, but they both already receive a l
809.
by mcbits 10y ago
I suppose they would be happy enough if he just planted a bunch of silly turfgrass and spritzed it with poison once a week like any respectable citizen would.
810.
by mcbits 10y ago
That's zenzizenziawful (doubleplusungood in modern notation).

More ›