tomalpha

23 ms·

1. 241.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   IMHO it’s less about Skylake being special and more about the previous generations having fairly small improvements over their predecessors. Broadwell was never a huge leap for general purpose server performance. At least it didn’t get perc
2. 242.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   Good ones get paid like devs in my experience which, depending on your mental model, is likely somewhere between a sysadmin and a quant. However successful trading firms tend to pay well, especially those who contribute to their bottom line
3. 243.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   In the UK we don’t have motels as such. We tend to have Bed And Breakfast guest houses. Much smaller affairs. They can end up having the same use though as we have a growing precariat too. There is some, perhaps better, provision for state
4. 244.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   FPGA clocks run at about 1/10th of the speed of a general purpose CPU (very very roughly). They can do more work per clock-cycle either using dedicated processing logic for a particular operation (some bit twiddling stuff like crypto c
5. 245.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   Somewhat ironically, the European Convention on Human Rights was very much a British supported thing and largely drafted by a British Member of Parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Maxwell_Fyfe,_1st_Earl_o...
6. 246.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   Thanks, I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. I hesitate to say “eureka!” but maybe, just maybe that might get me there :)
7. 247.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   Thanks and yes it does make more sense when posed like that. I still (as something I consider a personal failing) end up intuiting a probability of 50%. It remains fascinating to me how different people’s brains perceive the world differe
8. 248.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   I realise you might be being lighthearted, but just to be boring I’ll thrown in “The fastest and most bug free line of code in any language is the line you don’t write”.
9. 249.▲
   by tomalpha 9y ago

   This has always fascinated me. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but still don’t completely “get” it. It seems so counter intuitive. I ended up writing code to simulate it too. Glad it’s not just me that need that extra level of pro
10. 250.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Conversely, whilst it may become harder to attract talent from outside the UK, UK talent may become cheaper if the pound stays at its post-brexit-vote lows. UK tech graduates are increasingly looking outside finance for jobs these days. Com
11. 251.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Before every bubble bursts, there's always a widely-held view that "this time it's different" [0] Whether there is a bitcoin bubble[1] or not[2], and whether it's a about to burst or not, it's definitely being
12. 252.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Back in the day, I wrote a load of Perl 5 and certainly used to consider myself well-versed in it. Perl 6, at least seen through the lens of this post, doesn't appear to have fixed the write-only nature of Perl 5 and it's amazing
13. 253.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Likewise. The line immediately after your quote also looks interesting, though clearly not precedent-setting in and of itself: The firm also settled out of court with a small number of British consumers.
14. 254.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    A good start, though once someone has physical access to the OBD port, all bets might be off: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/132526-hack-the-diagnost...
15. 255.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    It must be possible to implement some kind of simple response time check. Given that the speed of light is ~1ns per foot then a total response time greater than (2d + p) where d = max distance in feet, and p = processing time within the key
16. 256.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    I think that’s a neat idea. In my defence, I might put that under the some-kind-of-switch-to-turn-it-off category but only in hindsight ;) Like latency-measurement though I wonder how robust it would be to the vagaries of modern life both i
17. 257.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Not requiring an explicit (or at least conscious) action on the part of the user seems to be the flaw in the process. The countermeasures would appear to be: * blocking the signal using some kind of Faraday cage to store your keys this r
18. 258.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Reader mode in Safari (at least on iOS) renders this nicely for me automagically, and turns the grey to a nice black. For the desktop I was going to recommend Distill Mode in Chrome (add --enable-dom-distiller to the command line/launc
19. 259.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    This has (some) echoes of the rise and fall of the use of Linux at Central Scotland Police: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/11/ms_lochs_down_polic... I worked with one of the architects of that (many mo
20. 260.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Not to disagree with the thrust of your argument, but Knight Capital's meltdown was nearer $450 million.
21. 261.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Ah interesting, thanks. Googling a bit more for ionization techniques suggests you might be right, and it might be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix-assisted_laser_desorpti... (based on a reference in http:/&
22. 262.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Mass spectrometry has been around for decades now. I remember seeing old (before even my time) manual plots on graph paper from the '60s. Without wishing to detract from the researchers accomplishments, why hasn't this been done b
23. 263.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    I too thought that - especially given that it's (I think) a well known phenomemon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect
24. 264.▲
    by tomalpha 9y ago

    Could this phenomena have caused the recent hearing loss among US and Canadian diplomats in Cuba?