theoh

106 ms·

931.
by theoh 10y ago
The specific case of pre- and post- memory management could be handled by hooks (like in emacs lisp) or automatically through an abstraction along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_acquisition_is_initi
932.
by theoh 10y ago
Even the great Butler Lampson has a slide set online which includes the item Design (Apple's forté) This is arguably a slightly more defensible version of the GP.
933.
by theoh 10y ago
The GP is claiming that all possible floating point systems, taken together, would contain the same number of values as there are points on the real line. Consider a floating point system based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
934.
by theoh 10y ago
Disposable fashion is still culture, but I agree, that doesn't sound like a situation you could characterize as "memory" (apart from the fact that it's always going to be catering to acquired or innate taste preferences)
935.
by theoh 10y ago
Via a single SMS message. The size of SMS messages is still fixed at 160 characters, but now they can be transparently chained to send longer texts. This is quite unlike IP protocols which have much larger maximum packet sizes. Whether Tw
936.
by theoh 10y ago
Food is a form of cultural memory. Maybe the most important one?
937.
by theoh 10y ago
The titles of her books are so childish. That's her prerogative, but it feels like a real "Two Cultures" situation: I wish Cheng or someone else would span recreational/popular math and serious culture where the world is
938.
by theoh 10y ago
"All UI design is a subset of data visualization" Since UI design potentially encompasses almost all interactions with designed objects, you must be working with a very narrow definition of what a UI is. What about the question of
939.
by theoh 10y ago
I'm not a mathematician or physicist, but (after a bit of googling) I do find some material that advances coordinate-free approaches as a kind of ethical discipline. Relations, understood as ordered pairs, for example, don't have
940.
by theoh 10y ago
As thanatropism said, "coordinate-free" is not synonymous with (Einsteinian) relativity. It's a general mathematical approach, and it doesn't have any philosophical consequences that I'm aware of. Just because space
941.
by theoh 10y ago
I only skimmed the article but I didn't see the word "coordinate" mentioned. When you say "coordinate-free" do you mean "independent of any fixed frame of reference"? Because AIUI coordinate-free actually
942.
by theoh 10y ago
I don't know about the practical reasons but "learn to write like letterpress printing" is a pretty dehumanizing instruction. Which was apparently accepted.
943.
by theoh 10y ago
"Obviously [...] disgusting" is too strong. Norms change, and in this case legislation was needed to make it happen.
944.
by theoh 10y ago
The article repeats the standard erroneous concept of "single point perspective", which it says is what a pinhole camera produces. "instead of producing an image from a single point perspective, as would a pinhole, its straw
945.
by theoh 10y ago
You probably realize this, but here's chapter and verse on why analog was superseded... The thing that makes digital attractive was actually pointed out in the 50s by John von Neumann: every digit you add to the representation buys yo
946.
by theoh 10y ago
The article references a weird quote from Fortune: "Abovitz says that Magic Leap's "light-field" technology essentially mimics the brain's visual-perception mechanisms to create objects and even people who look and
947.
by theoh 10y ago
I can't share your rosy picture of the profession. The default librarian is still the natural enemy of intelligent, creative nonconformists, surely? Having no subject expertise but knowing roughly where to find a mediocre non-answer to
948.
by theoh 10y ago
Google reveals this mention: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancello... "Humboldt's world view of one vast interconnected system, through which he drew three-dimensional lines tracing, fo
949.
by theoh 10y ago
Strongly disagree that "Brexit UK" doesn't have an appetite for the exotic. It just has to be framed as such. I find the museum experience in London to generally have the flavour of the spoils of a post-imperial shopping trip
950.
by theoh 10y ago
I had to look this up when you said "specially welded"... As far as I can tell, TGV tracks are built to vey tight tolerances, but Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) is a worldwide standard on new railway lines, nothing special. I most r
951.
by theoh 10y ago
Believing in conspiracy theories is, ironically, a way of attributing more power to the state/elite than it actually has. You're celebrating pathological thinking, especially when you claim that stocking up on ammo contributes to
952.
by theoh 10y ago
The surface has negative curvature, which is all it takes to create a hyperbolic geometry. It doesn't have to extend to infinity and include the whole of hyperbolic space to exemplify the geometry. So it's hyperbolic, but not the
953.
by theoh 10y ago
Ok. I think most of this sounds reasonable. We do necessarily adopt the attitudes and dispositions of those we associate with. HN is a pretty ambiguous place from that perspective: an internet gold-rush town inhabited by those who feel the
954.
by theoh 10y ago
I'm aware of the theory of the "big lie", and the fact that neurons that fire together, wire together... But what about Feynman's injunction: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are th
955.
by theoh 10y ago
Ok, I didn't mean to beg the question by simply claiming that people can rationally evaluate statements. The things people learn are not noise. They have structure, they have hidden consistencies. Whatever you think of the rationality
956.
by theoh 10y ago
Um, what about the Elaboration Likelihood Model? It's about persuasion and it contends that there are two ways it happens: through a rational evaluation of the material, or based on the credibility of the source (and other social cues)
957.
by theoh 10y ago
I've never seen Stallman speak, but that sounds like a similar situation to this anecdote from Nottingham in the 80s: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XvwNKpDUkiE It's a somewhat tedious story but it's all about
958.
by theoh 10y ago
Has anyone explored the design space that Twitter is a member of? It seems like it's just a cut-down version of publish-subscribe with a couple of eponymous channels (write, read) per user (and then the complexities of message threadin
959.
by theoh 10y ago
To follow up to your last comment: as you may know, the idea of an infrastructure being invisible until it breaks down is one of the major themes in academic study of infrastructure. Gregory Bateson and Merleau-Ponty used the example of a
960.
by theoh 10y ago
Harris has, I think, a really good prose style and a refreshing "all's grist to my mill" attitude to the topic. Sorry for the damage to your IQ.

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