todd8

24 ms·

151.
by todd8 4y ago
It does seem "stupid" to require testing of steel at one hundred degrees below zero when the steel is going to be used in a submarine. How will the steel ever end up at a temperature of -100F? I'm not a metallurgist, but I
152.
by todd8 4y ago
PL360, Algol W, and EULER are additional languages created by Wirth. PL360 was a programming language that provided low level access to IBM's 360 mainframe hardware, Algol W made a number of improvements to Algol 60 to make it more pra
153.
by todd8 4y ago
Bikes work in some cities, and I'm a big fan of bikes in general. Especially in the US, it would benefit a lot of people to get a bit of daily exercise. However, I can't imagine riding a bike to work on where I live. First, it&#x2
154.
by todd8 4y ago
There is a fundamental problem with terraforming Mars; it has no magnetic field to keep the solar “winds” from blowing away the atmosphere. Humans will not be able to live outside on the surface of Mars, no matter how long we try to generat
155.
by todd8 4y ago
I learned C in the late 1970s (although most of my programming back then was in FORTRAN, Assembly, and Pascal). Around the same time I was using a ones-complement system, a CDC 6000 series machine. This was an important machine at the time
156.
by todd8 4y ago
It’s a bit more complicated. Normally with our friends we split the bill in half 50/50 no matter what we order. These friends though always pick wine much more expensive than we would. I like my friends, but they are wine snobs.
157.
by todd8 4y ago
It’s a bit more complicated. Normally with our friends we split the bill in half 50/50 no matter what we order. These friends though always pick wine much more expensive than we would.
158.
by todd8 4y ago
Back then the future was difficult to discern. I entered grad school in 1974 and at that time having a 300 baud modem (30 characters/second) at home was a luxury that only one of my friends could afford. I didn't have a personal c
159.
by todd8 4y ago
I live a only a few miles from from downtown Austin in a home that is about 10 years old. We frequently find brown recluse spiders indoors and in the garage; less frequently I find black widow spiders. They have left us alone so far even th
160.
by todd8 4y ago
Note that their website[1] depicts twice as many working women as men (more precisely 9 women and 5 men). Perhaps due to an unconscious bias? [1] https://fgsglobal.com/what-we-do
161.
by todd8 4y ago
I like the impressionists so Musée d'Orsay is another great choice.
162.
by todd8 4y ago
> ... more people complaining about wine snobbery than there are actual wine snobs That may be so, but nevertheless, I dread going to dinner at fine restaurants with some of my friends because I've had to pick up a $1200 tab due to
163.
by todd8 4y ago
Around 50 years ago, I was a math major and consequently required to take a course on differential equations. For perhaps the first time, I was taking a class on mathematics that just didn't click for me; nothing was intuitive. The cla
164.
by todd8 4y ago
A good book on parasites that I can recommend for the general reader is Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer [1]. [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0
165.
by todd8 4y ago
Two useful tools for curious flyers: flights.google.com and milecalc.com
166.
by todd8 4y ago
It looks really nice; the font is a great choice. However, I've got more keyboards than I really need that are very similar to the featured one, so I'm not interested. HN reader cantSpellSober makes a number of good suggestions, a
167.
by todd8 4y ago
He continued to be a very highly paid contractor. The last time I communicated with him was many years ago. He had married another friend of mine, and they relocated overseas. He was doing contract programming for high performance network h
168.
by todd8 4y ago
I've programmed for a long time. One of the best programmer's I've known actually had his own debugger. He was an OS kernel developer and carried the debugger with him from job to job; we were working on the new operating sys
169.
by todd8 4y ago
There are so many security cameras and smartphone users that we are flooded with videos of everyday and not so everyday experiences: funny pets and kids, surprising weather events, accidents, crimes, etc. Why are there no better videos of U
170.
by todd8 4y ago
I've had the Ashley Book of Knots for a long time. It's great. According to the book, Ashley was one of the last people to actually work on a traditional square rigged sailing ship. In the book I learned that the ship's carpe
171.
by todd8 4y ago
Yes, back in the 60's my buddy and I asked our parents to buy us some powdered aluminum and iron-oxide. We got in trouble because the chemical supply company warned them about our requested ingredients. That was the end of our homemade
172.
by todd8 4y ago
I've done research on verification of distributed programs and worked for IBM as an architect of distributed file-systems. It was all so long ago that I'm not up to date on the literature so I really enjoy the discussion here. Thi
173.
by todd8 4y ago
While there is lock in to using a service like Gitlab, I wouldn't expect the "free" tier to provide every feature I might need. Sophisticated software like, say, Adobe's products are expensive to develop and maintain. Ev
174.
by todd8 4y ago
This is typical, and it's a problem that large organizations must work against. I can remember large, complex software development projects having similar fanciful projections (mostly about schedules). Estimates would roll-up from low
175.
by todd8 4y ago
Back before the internet, in 1964, I read a brief Scientific American column on laboratory glass blowing (for making condensers and so forth). This set me on a quest; and I acquired supplies and primitive homemade equipment. I was years awa
176.
by todd8 4y ago
One hundred years ago, it would have been appealing to have a mathematical model of color perception that scientists could work from. The problem, of course, is that the systems of perception within humans and other mammals are very complex
177.
by todd8 4y ago
I’ve never heard of Marta before, but I’m going to try it out. The clean DSL for configuration looks good, and I have to agree that GUI configuration interfaces can be very irksome. (I feel like throwing out my networking gear after using
178.
by todd8 4y ago
I’ve been pitched ideas many times, some were good and some were not so good. What I liked to see was a clear presentation because that usually meant clear thinking behind the idea.
179.
by todd8 4y ago
I had been putting off quantum physics and time was running out. I was worried forth semester physics at MIT was going to be tough, but then through some miracle of providence the EE department decided that a solid state chemistry chemistry
180.
by todd8 4y ago
I’ve only once built a reasonable igloo in the manner depicted in the video. It requires dry snow having a consistency a bit like styrofoam. Snow caves in a big snowdrift or under the branches of a large snow covered fir tree are much more

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