niftich

24 ms·

121.
by niftich 7y ago
A few days ago, I was just thinking of the phrase 'This place is not a place of honor' and the foreboding aesthetic of the field of spikes warning nuclear waste buried below. I first saw this document many years ago, yet it stuck
122.
by niftich 7y ago
The notion that new construction being 'high-end' won't improve the market on the low-end is erroneous in markets where the spread of rent budgets of people forms smooth, continuous gradient. But the Bay Area is not such a ma
123.
by niftich 7y ago
The field does suffer a bit from version control, dependency management, language compilers, and build and packaging tools all being single-purpose tools that are layered, where one can't introspect others beyond the public API, and ma
124.
by niftich 7y ago
I don't know if I'd look at it with that lens. Clearly, knowledge and analyses of this topic are resident in academia and have been long present at various levels of industry, but other factors like performance and power consumpti
125.
by niftich 7y ago
Discussion also at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669380
126.
by niftich 7y ago
This post lifts out the key parts of the paper [1] and is a good summary. I think the paper is an accessible read as well. Not too much discussion two weeks ago when the paper was posted on HN [2], so I will raise a point I've made bef
127.
by niftich 8y ago
It's no accident that one can see a similar result in timing attacks and information leakage from computer systems (e.g. Spectre and prior art), because in both cases, statistical inferences are being made from observable state. Though
128.
by niftich 8y ago
The Verge also did an interview with the designers [1]; I prefer The Verge interview to the Creative Boom announcement [2] that's the article link at the time of writing, because the interview adds detail behind the design process and
129.
by niftich 8y ago
Sleeper trains are doing fine in Central and Eastern Europe, despite having to contend with some long running times. Sweden is trying to revive them through Denmark, which hasn't hosted night trains since 2014 [1]. There's two via
130.
by niftich 8y ago
Solar on the WEIM market [1][2], which (given more and more utilities joining) is more and more of the actual interconnected infrastructure within the WECC [3] -- including plants down south in CA, AZ, NV, NM. The scenario to envision is th
131.
by niftich 8y ago
Idaho Power is one of the three big power companies that covers a portion of Idaho -- they serve the southwest, Avista is in the northwest, and PacifiCorp is in spots in the southeast [1]. Idaho Power has been, for several years, planning t
132.
by niftich 8y ago
Peak electrification in the US was in the 1930s and began falling in the 40s, but the Class I railroad route miles were almost 2.5x that of today. Electrification generally came about to reduce the impacts of steam traction (e.g. in cities
133.
by niftich 8y ago
Very accessible paper. They took the seL4 kernel, implemented a series of mitigations against timing leaks, and showed that their performance impact is tolerable and less than one might think. While some of these mitigations have seen commo
134.
by niftich 8y ago
PostgreSQL 'TIMESTAMP', for nonextreme values, is the same idea as java.time.Instant -- an absolute point on the timeline stored internally as a number from some epoch -- but whose default textual interface accepts and emits java.
135.
by niftich 8y ago
Oracle has 'DATE', 'TIMESTAMP', 'TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE', and 'TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE'. Out of these, 'TIMESTAMP' and 'TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE' do exactly what you'
136.
by niftich 8y ago
I feel that storing unix epoch seconds in a >=4-byte fixed length numeric or arbitrary precision numeric column is a reasonable choice if: 1) the record naturally has the semantics of a timestamp that is chiefly used for comparisons betw
137.
by niftich 8y ago
I frequently wish that datetime libraries and APIs frozen in time and awkward design were given a second pass and redone in the style of Java 8 [1], which is a triumph of clarity after many years of lessons learned. Even putting out a new R
138.
by niftich 8y ago
To build a rail line (or extension) in the US, you must ask the Surface Transportation Board for authority [1]. They also conduct an analysis of environmental impacts. [1] https://www.stb.gov/stb/public/resources_c
139.
by niftich 8y ago
This time was indeed marked by the high popularity and increasing interop between classic IM networks, and the rise new networks. Some choice dates: - 2005-09: Meebo launches offering web access to AIM, WLM, Yahoo - 2006-02-07: Google Talk
140.
by niftich 8y ago
I get this recurring dream of a retrofuturistic world where intercontinental travel serviced by nuclear-powered ocean liners. For nonproliferation reasons, there's only a handful companies operating them, one for each theatre. It takes
141.
by niftich 8y ago
I think this piece takes too long to arrive at a underwhelming point, seemingly that prime transportation and activity corridors all want to co-locate because of interrelated and natural, rational reasons. This finding isn't obvious bu
142.
by niftich 8y ago
An Altamont Pass segment ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its
143.
by niftich 8y ago
The EU is working on extending the TEN-T road and rail network to Moldova and Ukraine as part of its Eastern Partnerships initiative [1], and they'll connect with existing and new corridors in EU member states. This will benefit Romani
144.
by niftich 8y ago
He's fed up and so are lots of people rallied behind him, because the problem is that bad. The Romanian road network is deficient and overburdened. Aside from commuters stuck in traffic, there's also lots of trucks. Most roads are
145.
by niftich 8y ago
[1] Canada blamed for India's 'peaceful' bomb [Radio broadcast]. (1974, May 20). In As It Happens. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved March 14, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/archives
146.
by niftich 8y ago
India has an intricate history with nuclear technology. Both the Soviet Union and the US courted India in the 1950s, but in the end it was Canada who donated a design for the first Indian reactor that came online in the 1960s. The US assist
147.
by niftich 8y ago
Sourcehut's design seems inspired by terminals and line-oriented interfaces more so than early 2000's boxy HTML, so some choices are head-scratchers. The lack of visible bounding boxes or ("old-style") underlining around
148.
by niftich 8y ago
Coal-based generation in Nevada (from coal mined elsewhere) does exist, but the remaining plants are in the I-80 corridor, linked to Southern California only through a circuitous routing that's not commonly used -- that energy goes to
149.
by niftich 8y ago
San Bernardino County is home to the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility [1], which is a mirror-focused solar thermal power plant. It generates a lot of glare and is controversial for its impact on animals. It also took several years to ramp up to
150.
by niftich 8y ago
I don't agree with that quote being used to define software rot, and I don't think the examples illustrate rot either. I'm just fundamentally opposed to the terminology of the rotting metaphor when it's applied to projec

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