samdk

9 ms·

31.
by samdk 12y ago
NCLB tried to fix those "ineffectual, corrupt money pits" by giving enormous, overriding importance to a small set of easily gamed statistics. Creating a single performance metric that people Must Meet Or Else is an exceedingly na
32.
by samdk 12y ago
Moving a file (within the same file system) is an atomic operation on most file systems, but writing data is not. If you don't do this and you're overwriting a file directly and the write fails for some reason, the data from the o
33.
Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.’s Bulk Data Collection(nytimes.com)
147 points by samdk 13y ago|85 comments
34.
by samdk 13y ago
If your app gets a nontrivial number of visitors this is probably way easier than trying to pull a specific user's request out of logs. And once you reach a certain size the person doing user-level support very likely doesn't have
35.
by samdk 13y ago
> There's also this: http://www.podval.org/~sds/ocaml-sucks.html I also mostly agree with it for base OCaml (and I write OCaml every day), but it's worth noting a lot of the complaints--even the ones outsi
36.
by samdk 13y ago
If you combine many lines of code into one, you lose readability in any language ;). Probably you would actually format this as follows: let menu = GMenu.menu () in let explain = GMenu.menu_item ~packing:menu#add ~label:"Expl
37.
by samdk 13y ago
If you haven't, also check out Jane Street's Core/Async, which is an almost-complete replacement (and extension) of the standard library. (Info here: http://janestreet.github.io/. ) I work for JS so I'm b
38.
by samdk 13y ago
Yep, this is a hard problem. I wasn't super enthusiastic about the verbosity of option types when I first started programming OCaml, but almost two years later I'm quite convinced that they're the right way to do things. I really don't thin
39.
by samdk 13y ago
Even the best functional programmers I've seen fall back to some kind of exit-or-exception semantic in the None case. I offer two responses to this. I'm going to use Jane Street's alternative Core standard library for OCam
40.
by samdk 13y ago
I basically agree with the final conclusion, but I don't think the example given--deleting five lines of text--actually supports it at all. The author is claiming that vim's way of doing it is cryptic (normal 5dd), and then says this about
41.
by samdk 13y ago
I don't know that this does, but the Aeron comes in three different sizes. You can adjust the tension of the fabric base (that's the twisty knob on the right-hand side), also.
42.
by samdk 14y ago
You're mistaken. With Tor you are (in theory) anonymous at every leg of the journey. The only connection Tor doesn't encrypt is the connection between the exit node and the server you're connecting to, which is unavoidable. Your ISP can pro
43.
by samdk 14y ago
I don't know if the person you're responding to is actually correct or not, but the map you're referring to is very misleading. The places you named--and, not coincidentally, many of the places on the map with the highest murder rate as a p
44.
by samdk 14y ago
You are asking someone to execute a shell script directly from the internet, which is questionable in the first place. And then you're making it much much worse by asking them to do it with a non-https link, meaning that someone can trivial
45.
by samdk 14y ago
...or anywhere you're using a 'let' statement. I write a lot of OCaml, and I write a lot of multi-line anonymous functions that aren't stateful. I think it's less common to do this in Haskell, but that's more because it's Haskell than becau
46.
by samdk 14y ago
Even for people who don't read as much as I do, I think those benefits exist and that you're understating them. (Especially because my Kindle is part of the reason I read so much, not just the means by which I do it.) A Kindle is still a
47.
by samdk 14y ago
You're understating the benefits and missing a few key ones. First, the instant purchase ability is extremely important. It means that books gain some measure of equality with other forms of media (the internet, movies/tv, music). With a Ki
48.
What Happens in Brooklyn Moves to Vegas(nytimes.com)
7 points by samdk 14y ago|0 comments
49.
by samdk 14y ago
If you're worried about this, you can get the bundle for free, and then increase your contribution later (for as long as the bundle is still going on) once you're sure all of the games work on your computer.
50.
by samdk 14y ago
I use my up/down keys to move between visible lines (rather than real lines, which is what they and j/k do by default). This can be helpful occasionally when you have lines wrapped for something that's text rather than code. " up/down
51.
by samdk 14y ago
That's a fucking stupid rule. (And I say that with the full knowledge that my phrasing will make you less receptive to my argument.) Environments where you can't discuss mistakes are poisonous. People make mistakes. People do stupid things.
52.
by samdk 14y ago
"X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid" To be clear, I agree that this is awful feedback. It contains no useful information and personally insults the creator, both of which are bad. There is a world of difference b
53.
by samdk 14y ago
If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was important, and nobody
54.
by samdk 14y ago
The parallels to Unix are strong enough that having an actual pipe operator can be very useful. I frequently write code that looks something like this: List.map data ~f:(fun elem -> ...) |! List.find ~f:( ... ) |! Option.m
55.
by samdk 14y ago
Please actually read what I've written before making assumptions. I have used Gnome 3 for many months and found it to be a step backward in almost every way from Gnome 2. I read through the release notes to confirm that I wasn't missing an
56.
by samdk 14y ago
I'm not evaluating it from the release notes--I was rereading them to make sure I wasn't just missing some major improvements I just hadn't noticed while using it. I don't think it's well designed at all, and it's certainly not polished at
57.
by samdk 14y ago
Of course there'd be less criticism if Gnome 3 were a new project. If it were a new project, everyone content with using Gnome 2 would've been able to safely ignore it. Gnome 2 was boring and mediocre, but it worked. Gnome 3 is still wors
58.
by samdk 14y ago
According to the article, they're getting 2 million uniques/month, which suggests that demand exists. And with such blindingly obvious product/advertising tie-ins, it seems like there's the potential for actually making money here. I'm cert
59.
by samdk 14y ago
It's actually not that. Spacing a header equally between preceding and following paragraphs can work fine. There's an obvious association with the following paragraph, because headers are expected to come before content, and so you don't ne
60.
by samdk 14y ago
This advice, as with much other good advice, should be taken and understood in context. It is an essay about how to write a good essay, and there are times when you want to break some of these rules. As one example, expressions like "I thin

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