smcameron

7 ms·

61.
by smcameron 1y ago
This video shows the innards of the thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMdmkONa7qs
62.
by smcameron 1y ago
Wait until you discover IGML (intergalactic modeling language)[1]. The entire user interface of a space game I'm working on -- including menus, buttons, sliders, even text rendering -- is literally implemented via a form of IGML. It&#
63.
by smcameron 1y ago
The shock when you opened up the Armatron expecting a series of electronically controlled motors and found out it contained instead only a single motor that ran continuously and an incredibly ingenious and entirely mechanical train of lin
64.
by smcameron 1y ago
Hm, I suppose that's why a flanger[1] (guitar effect pedal) can sound a little like a jet plane. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanging
65.
by smcameron 1y ago
There's an interesting book[1] by Douglas Hofstadter about translation in general and also about translating his most famous book[2] (which by its nature was particularly difficult to translate) into many different languages. [1] http
66.
by smcameron 1y ago
I am pretty sure IBM's "DisplayWriter" word processor used the "small house" char for some kind of an indicator in the status line, maybe something to do with tabs. Here's a screenshot I found of DisplayWriter
67.
by smcameron 2y ago
The premise of this movie reminds me of one time when I was working at McDonnell Douglas in the early 1990s on a project that was a test facility for space station related stuff. There was a database and you could enter issues for various p
68.
by smcameron 2y ago
The (in)offensiveness of the sound has little to do with it. For quite a few years after I left my job as an SRE at google, this gentle little tune called "morning flower"[1] which I used as my pager alarm sound would give me a l
69.
by smcameron 2y ago
> "The class itself is very well structured. I've heard about STPA in past years, but this was the first time I saw it explained with concrete examples. The Google example at the end was also really helpful." But the artic
70.
by smcameron 2y ago
Don't forget (my own) Space Nerds in Space: https://spacenerdsinspace.com (discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28343941 )
71.
by smcameron 2y ago
Been a few years since I worked at Google as an SRE, but I did not find "There’s no incentive in big tech to write software with no bugs" to be particularly true. Perhaps because I was an SRE for a few of the of the older, intrin
72.
by smcameron 2y ago
Heh. I feel that I might be somewhat responsible for the existence of this article. Perhaps merely a coincidence, but this happened a few days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/C_Programming/comments/1itrhd9&#x2
73.
by smcameron 2y ago
An algorithm I've heard of in multiplayer game programming, in which massive state must be transmitted to many clients ... xor the previous game state with the new game state on the server ... most of the result will be zeros because m
74.
by smcameron 2y ago
I also wasn't at all confused.
75.
by smcameron 2y ago
Back in the 1990s, while debugging some network configuration issue a wiser older colleague taught me the more general concept that lies behind git bisect, which is "compare the broken system to a working system and systematically elim
76.
by smcameron 2y ago
Just sitting here with my mechanical automatic watch like some kind of renaissance fair re-enactor. Probably off by a few seconds, but probably less than 30.
77.
by smcameron 2y ago
A couple years ago I wrote a battlezone clone in C using fixed point math on an rp2040 for a computer security conference badge[1]. Then I noticed I could compile C to webassembly and SDL2 was supported, so I extracted the battlezone code
78.
by smcameron 2y ago
Working on linux storage drivers for a decade or so taught me how to write code iteratively, slowly and methodically morphing it towards my goal, with each step along the way functioning, and an improvement over the previous step. You basi
79.
by smcameron 2y ago
Almost all LED taillights strobe, but too fast for most people to see the strobing due to persistence of vision. But if you move your eyes side to side while taillights are in your field of view you can catch a glimpse of the strobing.
80.
by smcameron 2y ago
From the description of Thrash Metal: > Besides aggressive, low-frequency riffs (which are sometimes fittingly described as “shredding”), That's definitely not what "shredding" means. An example of "shredding":
81.
by smcameron 2y ago
It's a 2 michelin star restaurant. Insanity is the point.
82.
by smcameron 2y ago
I expected this to be about qualia. It's not. What I percieve to be red might be what you perceive to be blue, but we have no way to know this, because we will both call it by the same name. We have almost no insight into the qualia
83.
by smcameron 2y ago
50% of heterosexual couples meeting online is not the same as 50% of customers of dating sites entering a relationship. It could be the case that say, only 10% of dating site customers end up in a relationship, and this 10% amounts to 50% o
84.
by smcameron 2y ago
Kind of looks like they had no canaries. https://securityboulevard.com/2024/07/crowdstrike-pir-canary...
85.
by smcameron 2y ago
> Ultima III had top-down tiled dungeons in '83. That's not what I remember, Ultima III had crude 3D dungeons similar to Wizardry's dungeons. The maps of the dungeon levels were 2D and tiled. Google image search for &qu
86.
by smcameron 2y ago
I'm glad it's niche. Prevents idiots from ruining it with their "improvements".
87.
by smcameron 2y ago
There's openlase https://github.com/marcan/openlase with which you can use the audio output through amplifiers to control galvos of a laser projector. About 10 years ago a buddy of mine built a home-made RGB laser
88.
by smcameron 2y ago
In my mind, "cannot overstate" always meant "impossible to overstate", but I think some people interpret/intend "cannot understate" to mean something like "must not understate". I don't kno
89.
by smcameron 2y ago
I forget how I did this, but: $ file hello.com hello.com: αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε
90.
by smcameron 2y ago
> how do you predict ahead of time whether your software will run on congested networks? One thing you can do is build in "bad network emulation" into your software, allowing the various pieces to drop packets, delay packets, r

More ›