thechao

70 ms·

961.
by thechao 5y ago
Liberal arts students at UT Austin would, on occasion, have to talk to Alan Kline (undergrad ombudsman for natural sciences). In the late 90s Alan shared a ‘pod’ with Dijkstra; Dijkstra had moved his desk right into the ‘foyer’ of his offic
962.
by thechao 5y ago
In programming language theory there is a unified notation for operational semantics, but most papers use nonstandard and/or incorrect interpretations of the notation. It’s a glorious minefield when you go to try to implement the paper
963.
by thechao 5y ago
The right algorithm beats out low-level every time. Think of bitwise operators as a vector unit, but the scalar is a bit. That’s it.
964.
by thechao 5y ago
Malicious compliance.
965.
by thechao 5y ago
Yeah; my home city (Austin, Texas), has 3x the murder rate of London. Although, you’re 100 times more likely to die in a car crash in London than be murdered in Austin. So… y’know, murder is bad, but it seems like you should stay off the
966.
by thechao 5y ago
If labor is a market, laborers are at a fundamental disadvantage compared to employers when it comes to clearance: the employer has an asymmetric advantage in its ability to wait to hire someone; laborers are a lot less capable. I don’t k
967.
by thechao 5y ago
I learned low level programming while at Intel, working with one of their performance teams; so, nothing written. In general, though, assembly is more expressive than higher level languages; it lets you “tighten up” the code the computer
968.
by thechao 5y ago
I love high level systems languages like C/++ and Rust… but everything you said about JavaScript being slow is the same thing assembly programmers experience when optimizing high level systems languages. In general, when I see C code a
969.
by thechao 5y ago
MengerSponge's article is raising an extremely subtle point about how we translate modern physical theories into English: we do it poorly . Conservation laws (Noether's theorem) are dependent on the way the physics is voiced, mat
970.
by thechao 5y ago
The "rotational" logic version was suggested to me as a way to implement a computer by a mechanical engineer in ~2004. He claimed that such a "boolean calculator" had been initially designed as an alternative to the firs
971.
by thechao 5y ago
A lot of us in the hills around Austin are putting in rooftop rainwater systems — we expect at-the-well metering in the next 10 years. Most of us are on grades, and a 1500’ footprint lets you put in 20k gallon system under the house — that
972.
by thechao 5y ago
Maybe XSL 1 or 2? XSL 3 combined with XQuery (or Xpath 3.1) is pretty tolerable. It's just slow .
973.
by thechao 5y ago
The "killer feature" for XML, for me, has been XSL — a language dedicated to transformation of XML. OTOH, there's only one high-quality open-source implementation of that language. Having spent a lot of time in XSL, I think
974.
by thechao 5y ago
Biking expenditures are nuts . I feel like I'm splurging if I don't let the soles wear off my sneakers before getting a new pair. I've only just begun regularly swapping them out — every year whether or not they need to be —
975.
by thechao 5y ago
I played with the great grandfather of this device — a black & white ~4” LCD, the size of a pizza box, attached to a 286 luggable. It was cool … but the killer feature is being able to rotate the data — our eyes are still 2D. Turns out,
976.
by thechao 5y ago
We’re already sequestering a quarter of the CO2 in the ocean; this will do so in a safer way that mimics the large scale natural process that’d happen over the next few millennia anyways.
977.
by thechao 5y ago
There seem to be four 'big' models for quitting-work-when-you're-old: kids; socialized safety nets; pensions; and, home-wealth. One of these things is not like the others.
978.
by thechao 5y ago
We'll run out of sun at some point, even though (most) of the time left for the energetic universe is still available.
979.
by thechao 5y ago
Engineers will use the HW when it’s their only choice for year-over-year performance gains — I like to think of it as the “great unwinding”.
980.
by thechao 5y ago
The GPU in your computer consists of mostly-dark highly specialized circuits; it certainly seems to improve my computing experience.
981.
by thechao 5y ago
The commenter above is correct: just stop toggling HW. We already do this to a great extent; we’re limited in the number of custom implementations because we can’t wire everything together. 3D chips will have a lot more “dark” logic than cu
982.
by thechao 5y ago
Try laying out a square with all the vertices connected in a plane : it’s not possible. You must move one of the wires “up” a layer. Which wire? Great layout minimizes layer transitions while also bunching together related HW blocks. The N
983.
by thechao 5y ago
He sort of implies that “just better hardware” will peter out in the 2030s. I think he’s calling it at least 50 years too soon. Here’s why: (1) I think logic designers are still faffing about in term of optimizing their designs; and (2), I
984.
by thechao 5y ago
Obviously this anecdote is decades out-of-date, but my first boss’ PhD thesis is for an automatic small-airplane guidance system. I mean: as long as your plane was on a high speed ballistic arc and needed a guidance system that only ran for
985.
by thechao 5y ago
There are two ways off the top of my head (assuredly there are more): (1) use two lasers; or, (2) the geometry of a laser is hour-glassed shaped, so only the “neck” may have sufficient energy density.
986.
by thechao 5y ago
I was a grad student at a major State university. We had a “defensive” grading rubric which caused cheating to be self-defeating. We’d do analyses like this to visualize the cheaters, and try to predict the GPA average of the class (section
987.
by thechao 5y ago
SQLite is a great way to find bugs in your fuzzer: if your fuzzer finds bug, it’s time to debug your fuzzer!
988.
by thechao 5y ago
They're legal because they're laws . I think you might be asking how they're constitutional? They're constitutional because there's nothing in the constitution that prevents such laws. Are they fair? I mean ... som
989.
by thechao 5y ago
My boss took my label maker away. Apparently, I am "not responsible". Also, with respect to cables, this is really why we need tri-colored braided cables from a reputable dealer (ANKER!?): white, black, gray, blue — that gives 6
990.
by thechao 5y ago
Now I really want a USB blade switch.

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