mrob

39 ms·

751.
by mrob 2y ago
That's not the mental model I had, and I doubt I'm the only one. I believed knowledge to be something you either had or didn't have. I understood that it was possible to learn things incorrectly, and to forget things (hence t
752.
by mrob 2y ago
Teachers should explain this point to students. When I was in secondary school, the teachers called the practice tasks "problems". But they obviously already knew the answers, so the problematic nature of the tasks was entirely ar
753.
by mrob 2y ago
If your country is unfortunate enough to lack a strong volunteer military or nuclear weapons, here's how to implement military slavery ("conscription") while minimizing harm: 1. Abolish all arms control laws. 2. Formally esta
754.
by mrob 2y ago
It wouldn't even end all life in the involved countries. Submitting to military aggression is also morally wrong. Nuclear retaliation is a heroic sacrifice that does good to the rest of the world by discouraging future wars. Furthermor
755.
by mrob 2y ago
The best option is plywood for the dimensional stability, varnish for waterproofing, and solid wood edge trim to give some resilience against mechanical damage that would otherwise risk delamination. This also hides the ugly part of the ply
756.
by mrob 2y ago
This is why it's so important to have a nuclear deterrent. If Russia were to invade the UK, and there was no hope of a volunteer military defending us, I strongly hope our politicians would have the courage to use our entire nuclear ar
757.
by mrob 2y ago
Conscription is slavery and slavery is evil. If a country has to resort to slavery then it doesn't deserve to exist.
758.
by mrob 2y ago
I remember floppy disks failing, but mostly things like free AOL trial disks I repurposed by covering the write protect hole. I assume those were the cheapest they could find. The major brand name ones generally worked reliably.
759.
by mrob 2y ago
I miss the predictability of floppy disks. Assuming it was manufactured correctly, a floppy disk would always act like every other floppy disk. You could look at it and see everything there was to see. It didn't have firmware with myst
760.
by mrob 2y ago
Or better yet, sell the stacked SOC + RAM modules. Any good repair shop can replace BGA devices.
761.
by mrob 2y ago
Natural dyes are common. The main three in medieval Europe were madder, weld, and woad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia_tinctorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reseda_luteola https:/&#x2
762.
by mrob 2y ago
>robotic animals that's not in the movie at all Although I haven't played the game or read the book, the movie features a robotic snake, and there's dialogue about real snakes being very expensive. It seems reasonable that
763.
by mrob 2y ago
Open Source refers to software that meets the Open Source Definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition This software is "Source Available": https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
764.
by mrob 2y ago
Audibility of error (and sound in general) depends on what other audio is playing at the same time, with both frequency domain and time domain effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking Here's a two-p
765.
by mrob 2y ago
Another advantage of individual speakers for each instrument is that it allows positioning them without the phase cancellation artifacts you get with a stereo setup. It's obvious with some sounds, e.g. try playing some mono pink noise
766.
by mrob 2y ago
The main benefit of 4K displays is sharper vector fonts. It's very important to imitate the exact shapes of print fonts, so despite sharp fonts already being available for decades in bitmap form, we've got to push those pixels. Li
767.
by mrob 2y ago
The Phoebus cartel isn't comparable, because incandescent lamps have an inherent tradeoff between lifespan and efficiency. Most of the output of an incandescent lamp is infrared. Running it hotter shifts it more into the visible spectr
768.
by mrob 2y ago
Why specifically do you consider it to be bad? Espeak-ng is primarily an accessibility tool, used as the voice synthesizer for screen readers. Clarity at high speed is more important than realism.
769.
by mrob 3y ago
IMO, the biggest mistake in C syntax was using the same character for both the dereferencing operator and the pointer type declarator. I'm convinced it's responsible for the majority of the confusion about pointers.
770.
by mrob 3y ago
The stack pointer is as much mutable state as the loop index.
771.
by mrob 3y ago
I think recursion is easiest to understand as syntactic sugar for stack manipulation. It always terminates because stacks have finite size. I don't see the point of having an "elegant" mathematical definition of something whe
772.
by mrob 3y ago
Smoke point is a measure of when obvious quantities of particles are emitted, not their chemical composition. Extra virgin olive oil has lower smoke point than refined olive oil, but it's more chemically stable under frying conditions:
773.
by mrob 3y ago
"Self-modifying" means modifying code at runtime.
774.
by mrob 3y ago
At the end of MI2, "Chuckie" looks at the screen and his eyes flash, implying he's still really LeChuck. Additionally, there's scene of Elaine speculating about a voodoo curse. Ron Gilbert never "sequel-proofed&quot
775.
by mrob 3y ago
The piano action physically disconnects the hammer from the key after you press it. Here's a diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(piano)#/media/File:For... All the complexity you mention only a
776.
by mrob 3y ago
>Above all, one cannot overstress the importance of the attack transient. Roland used this fact to produce surprisingly realistic sounds at low cost. When memory was too expensive to sample the whole note, you could get excellent results
777.
by mrob 3y ago
A real piano is also profoundly lacking in expressive control over timbre (excluding extended techniques like half-pedaling or directly touching the strings that hardly ever show up in the repertoire). The only control the piano gives you o
778.
by mrob 3y ago
>You can’t just go, ‘Oh, death, and grief, and sorrow, and murder.’ There's a whole sub-genre about this that's commonly played on banjo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_ballad
779.
by mrob 3y ago
>Different wood types will produce different tonal characteristics. True for acoustic guitars, but for electric guitars this is thoroughly debunked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n02tImce3AE Previous HN discussion: ht
780.
by mrob 3y ago
And the human ear is mostly insensitive to phase of those overtones, so you can have waves with visually very different waveform that sound identical.

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