wtbob

71 ms·

811.
by wtbob 10y ago
> On the small scale, many indigenous tribal systems rely on a council during times of peace, and elect an executive (sometimes called a "war chief") during times of war. That's how the Roman Republic operated, too: the Se
812.
by wtbob 10y ago
So, in order for me to feel happy about the artist's keeping-it-real credentials I have to give up the freedom to resell my ticket? No thanks. Seats at performances are scarce resources. We have an efficient and fair mechanism for al
813.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Ok, I admit, I still want "sweet expressions" There's a Common Lisp library on Sourceforge: http://readable.sourceforge.net/ I've been thinking of using it to make a Lisp interface palatable to non-
814.
by wtbob 10y ago
Agreed. I think that the line numbers and machine-inserted hard breaks make it difficult to read. For the first issue, maybe the line numbers could be smaller and/or greyer, and offset more? For the second, I think human editing of
815.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Meanwhile, I have zero experience with CL but I keep hearing that it's highly mature, rock solid, the choice of most professional Lispers, and the platform of choice for Peter Norvig's book on AI programming. It is definitely
816.
by wtbob 10y ago
> However, when a designer makes a real gesture-based interface it's because there's something their users can't do with the interface they're used to. You're right when the designer is good. A bad designer migh
817.
by wtbob 10y ago
I just use a gpg-encrypted org-mode file (I can transparently decrypt it with emacs). It's remarkably convenient, and I don't have to worry about software going out of support.
818.
by wtbob 10y ago
So … it's okay for a union to shake down 1,000 members for £50 each and donate money to a politician in hopes that he will support an agenda favourable to unions, but it's not okay for anyone else to do the equivalent?
819.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Just recently there was a HN story about a great add-on for Emacs that would find the definition of a symbol. That's been in VS for a decade or two but open source editors apparently don't have it. ctags has existed since 197
820.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Change the configuration language from XML to JSON and you'll suddenly have space for 10 spellcheckers. Change it from JSON to YAML or canonical s-expressions and you'll have room for even more …
821.
by wtbob 10y ago
> I also don't care what's under the hood of my car. Well, if you're a Mac user then presumably the hood of your car is welded shut.
822.
by wtbob 10y ago
> I don't get people's need to constantly bring up Thiel's support for Trump, as though it singularly defines him and everything else he does. It's an ad hominem fallacy: Thiel supports Trump, ergo his assistance to
823.
by wtbob 10y ago
> It would be fantastic if there was a standard format like you suggested I thought that's what HTML was supposed to be … Somehow it turned into a portable runtime instead.
824.
by wtbob 10y ago
> I don't want an "experience"; I just want to read what you've typed. Exactly. That's why I prefer command-line browsers (and like reader mode): I just want to see words, not distraction.
825.
by wtbob 10y ago
This is possibly the absolute best comment I've read in months. It puts into words why I dislike JavaScript 'web apps' so much: the Web was this really neat tool for sharing the written word, and it's turned into a virt
826.
by wtbob 10y ago
Communists slew far more anti-Communists than anti-Communists slew Communists, by orders of magnitude. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ho: all killed far more after they took power than were killed by those they overthrew.
827.
by wtbob 10y ago
> If you buy some shares in M&S or BP on the stock market, the money you pay goes to the previous owner, not the company. You are what Keynes called a ‘functionless investor.’ When such so-called ‘investments’ pay off they extract we
828.
by wtbob 10y ago
> For a GUI login, I'd expect systemd to do exactly this. Processes have always done this when they receive a hangup (HUP) signal (unless they do something else, of course, but that's up to them). > But even in the cited thr
829.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Or not, because windows will kill all processes that are part of the users session when they log out. Ah-HA! Now we know what inspired this change. Is Poettering financed by Microsoft, or is he just a fan of their ease-of-use, high se
830.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Being able to assure by default that all of a user's spawned processes are terminated when the user logs out is a much more secure default behavior than the opposite. When the user has explicitly requested that processes not ter
831.
by wtbob 10y ago
> I'm surprised there's still so much rage about systemd. Didn't you hear? It hangs up processes which have been run with nohup!
832.
by wtbob 10y ago
That's the real lesson here: if there were less regulation then companies would compete with one another — which would cost them profits, which is why they lobby for more regulations.
833.
by wtbob 10y ago
> I'd wager that the short term (~10 years) consequences would be vastly superior service for every day citizens. In the long term, not certain I think that you'd see the same phenomenon as in any country which socialised an in
834.
by wtbob 10y ago
> high-speed internet and cell service are seen as luxuries and not basic infrastructure I would never want to live without high-speed mobile Internet (which can provide the equivalent of cell service), but is it really a necessity to li
835.
by wtbob 10y ago
The only thing Slack has over IRC is a better web client and history. It really makes me sad that it's 2016 and we haven't just updated IRC. Text is cheap: storing every byte every written on an IRC server would cost, essentially
836.
by wtbob 10y ago
It'd be pretty cool if numbers were unguessable: then they'd become cryptographic capabilities in which anyone who knows your number could contact you and pass your number on to others, but no-one who doesn't know it could fi
837.
McCLIM: new screenshots available(common-lisp.net)
2 points by wtbob 10y ago|0 comments
838.
by wtbob 10y ago
Growing up I knew a lot of families whose children worked in their restaurants. While — kids being kids — I'm sure that they would have told you that they were miserable, I don't think that they actually were. Honestly, is a kid
839.
by wtbob 10y ago
> Those who work in public administration would pay the least: $34.75. That tells you everything you need to know about which jobs are relatively unrelated to merit. > But many people can’t or don’t save enough to add up to the $12,87
840.
by wtbob 10y ago
I'm really excited to see folks still doing good fundamental work like this. The world absolutely needs outside-the-box thinking about HCI and software architecture.

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