smarks

16 ms·

121.
by smarks 7y ago
An article with more details is here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59nzjz/teen-security-rese... This article has more details about the reasons Demirkapi was suspended. Apparently he first tried to cont
122.
by smarks 7y ago
Note that Oracle has nothing to do with these releases or builds. Red Hat is now the maintainer of OpenJDK 8u and 11u release families. But this isn’t Red Hat’s fault either. By default, the OpenJDK builds put something obvious like “-inter
123.
by smarks 8y ago
Agree. The article has several criticisms of ISO/IEC 14977 specifically, which seem quite reasonable to me. The article isn't a criticism of EBNF in general.
124.
by smarks 8y ago
One quick and cost-effective way to detect IR light is by using the front-facing camera on your phone. Unlike the rear-facing camera, the front-facing camera does not have an IR filter and can easily pick up IR lights in the dark. To t
125.
by smarks 8y ago
How’d they get the water temperature to 220°F? Doubtful the kettle was pressurized. Were they below sea level?
126.
by smarks 8y ago
Thanks for this explanation. This is one of the things that popped out at me when I looked at the book page. The statement about not providing answers seemed quite dogmatic, and my initial reaction was, why? Turns out it's not so dogma
127.
by smarks 8y ago
Yes. To paraphrase Ray Noorda, it'd still be dead, but it would have been a much more interesting death.
128.
by smarks 8y ago
From my point of view this is primarily a historic artifact, with limited practical use. As I mentioned in another comment, my projects (at Sun in the 1980s and 1990s) used SCCS on shared filesystems. For day to day work everything has long
129.
by smarks 8y ago
In the "old days" people were used to the locked checkout scheme, and we were afraid of merges. In a large code base most people were working on different files, so lock conflicts ("I want to edit a file but somebody else has
130.
by smarks 8y ago
Sad news indeed. One of my favorite Weinberg quotes (phrased as a law): > Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. W
131.
by smarks 8y ago
I’m not sure what you mean by “reversed on appeal” as the stop() methods did make it into the platform. But there’s also Thread.destroy() whose API was defined but which I think was never actually implemented. (Fortunately.) Edit: FWIW, I l
132.
by smarks 8y ago
There are narrow and unsafe uses of the no-arg Thread.stop() overload so it remains in the platform, although deprecated. There is an overload Thread.stop(Throwable) that is deprecated “for removal”. It’s been a no-op for several releases a
133.
by smarks 8y ago
If a time crystal could somehow be manipulated to change the moment of inertia, that might be called an oscillation overthruster.
134.
by smarks 9y ago
Sure, I don't disagree. Personally, after moving away from BASIC to other languages, I felt freed from a bunch of problems I had had with BASIC. For example, scope eliminated problems with reuse of variable names. Perhaps lots of other
135.
by smarks 9y ago
That sounds like Dijkstra, from EWD498 (1975): http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EW... At least, the "mentally mutilated" phrase is about BASIC. The "criminal offen
136.
by smarks 9y ago
Time to re-up this classic from Andries Brouwer: https://lwn.net/Articles/104185/
137.
by smarks 9y ago
PCMCIA = "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms" Oddly, that's one I had memorized. It actually stands for PC Memory Card International Association. (That one I didn't memorize; I had to look it up.)
138.
by smarks 9y ago
Rule 34 cannot be stopped.
139.
by smarks 9y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. I don't know whether or not this is related to intelligence, but it does seem to be a fairly common pattern where someone will underestimate the value of writing something down. I did notice this a couple ti
140.
by smarks 9y ago
Note that the Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining Fund (VGPMX) invests in companies that pursue "mining of or exploration for precious and rare metals and minerals" and that it's not a fund that invests in gold itself. Some
141.
by smarks 9y ago
Thank goodness, the IPA backlash has started.
142.
by smarks 9y ago
Even if an attacker doesn't benefit, it's still possible for them to mount a denial-of-service attack. That could be very damaging. Or, they could use the threat of a DoS attack for extortion purposes.
143.
by smarks 9y ago
I thought so too, but eclipses in real life are always transient phenomena.
144.
by smarks 9y ago
Ha, that's funny. I had almost forgotten about the SunOS-vs-Solaris wars. Everybody wanted to hang onto SunOS as long as possible. Seems ironic that (many) people feel this way about Solaris now.
145.
by smarks 9y ago
Here's another article (really, radio transcript) on this phenomenon: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/31/540515367/familiar-looking-num... One thing that this doesn't mention, but which I heard some
146.
by smarks 9y ago
> Will somebody please explain how XRotateBuffers is "mechanism, not policy"? XRotateBuffers is implemented using the RotateProperties protocol request, which given a list of property names, will rotate their contents by a give
147.
by smarks 9y ago
TL;DR Don't pick up calls from unfamiliar numbers. It did help confirm a sneaking suspicion I've had, which is that robocalls spoof a caller ID number with your area code and prefix, to make it seem more familiar. Stories about pe
148.
by smarks 9y ago
Coincidentally I had bought this book from abebooks.com just a couple weeks before Ms. Sammet's passing. I looked again just now, and there are a few copies available for less than $100. However, the prices seem rather higher than they
149.
by smarks 9y ago
Although Ms. Sammet's passing has been previously discussed here on HN, this new NYT article provides a different and somewhat more colorful perspective on the life of this remarkable woman. Worth a read.
150.
by smarks 9y ago
Yes, I was wondering about this too. I also tracked this down to the IEEE article but it unfortunately has no other detail. I find it hard to conceive that a 20-line program would take three days to toggle into a computer, even if each line

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