xamuel

6 ms·

31.
by xamuel 2y ago
Yep! If I knew someone IRL who was into this kind of stuff, I'd really love to experiment with this sort of thing and mirrors. Arrange so that you can stereogram your conversation partner's face with a mirror image of your own fac
32.
by xamuel 2y ago
Ear rumbling: https://www.reddit.com/r/earrumblersassemble/ Eye shaking: https://old.reddit.com/r/Eyeshakers/ Some of us are born with small frenula of the tongue (or we undergo tongue-t
33.
by xamuel 2y ago
No need for the Mac Plus program, you can make these in any text editor. Use a fixed-width font and fill a line with a repeating word eg WORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORDWORD Then copy that and paste it a bunch of times to ma
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by xamuel 2y ago
I wrote a paper about doing this using human eyes as the "repeating pattern" (either someone else's, or your own in a mirror): https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEDSK.pdf ...You can use this trick to make
35.
by xamuel 2y ago
My Library of Ordinal Notation Systems shows a way you can systematically write more and more complex code, with no end---even if you had access to strong AGIs, they could never "finish" the exercise. https://github.com
36.
by xamuel 2y ago
Compile error messages in a classical typed language: "Error: Object of type 'StructA' cannot be assigned to variable of type 'StructB'" Compile error messages in TypeScript when you use a library like React: &
37.
by xamuel 2y ago
I wonder how much dependencies could be reduced by systematically searching low-hanging fruit and addressing it ad hoc. For example, if commonly-used library A uses one minor thing from (and thus imports all of) library B, which in turn imp
38.
by xamuel 2y ago
Funny story re "nobody should be rolling": When I was switching from academia to industry, I decided, based on HN comments like this, that I should un-publish my CSV parser. I was worried potential employers would tsk-tsk me for s
39.
by xamuel 2y ago
Linebreaks can be escaped in CSV, so splitting a file into rows is actually ~1/3 the complexity of parsing a whole row. See: https://github.com/semitrivial/csv_parser/blob/master/split.... Though I
40.
by xamuel 2y ago
Very nice. The submission's main file (SmallestCSVParser.cs) is 3851 characters (of which 657 are commentary). Mine, in C, is only 2807 characters (of which 198 are commentary): https://github.com/semitrivial/csv_p
41.
by xamuel 3y ago
>The hour before the Kitty Hawk flight, the two most informed people in the world on the topic of heavier than air flight were a pair of bicycle retailers and manufacturers named Wilbur and Orville. Actually, this is quite false. There w
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by xamuel 3y ago
For those who enjoy Knuth's religious humor, his "Surreal Numbers" is a must-read. It's a novel/dialogue in which two characters discover an ancient stone tablet containing the Law which defines surreal numbers. &qu
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by xamuel 3y ago
>Suppose these models are found to be reliable enough for certain mission critical work (healthcare, defense, etc.) and they lead a user down a path that results in harm or death? Who's at fault? Suppose it becomes a liability of th
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by xamuel 3y ago
Some observations I've made about the film and haven't seen anyone else make: * "Strangelove" = "Strangle" + "Glove" * In many war room scenes, if you squint, the table looks like a mushroom cloud. Th
45.
by xamuel 3y ago
One can make a very good argument that in elementary calculus, we actually use what logicians would call "terms", but refer to them as "functions". For example, if f is a unary function symbol and x is a variable then f(
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by xamuel 3y ago
I wouldn't recommend the Parmenides as one's first step into Plato, it's one of his hardest dialogues. I'd suggest the Alcibiades as the best Plato intro. It's lighthearted to the point of pleasure reading, yet at t
47.
by xamuel 3y ago
Incorrectly titled. The "smart" devices from the first part of the article ARE the midwit solution. The better devices in the rest of the article are the actual right-end-of-the-bell-curve solutions.
48.
by xamuel 3y ago
>The correct thing is that "I didn't initialize it" won't compile Flawless detection of uninitialized reads would require solving the halting problem, which is impossible. So requiring initialization does prevent opti
49.
by xamuel 3y ago
I feel like this has been part of the latent background memetic knowledgebase for many years now: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit/photos/
50.
by xamuel 3y ago
>I know the names to the 1600s and further That is, assuming the officially recorded parents are the actual biological parents. It's not nice to talk about in polite society, but sometimes people are mistaken about biological parent
51.
by xamuel 3y ago
You do not necessarily have 4 grandparents. Try to think of ways in which you can have fewer than 4 (hint: it's a little bit impolite to talk about). Neither do you necessarily have 8 great-grandparents, for the same reason.
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by xamuel 3y ago
It's not enough that they "had any children". For example, if they had exactly one child, and that child was childless, then they are not your ancestor. Biologists define the "identical ancestor point" to be the mos
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by xamuel 3y ago
Apple Maps is great, one thing they could improve though (on iPhone) would be to nail down the location of the input boxes. Currently they jump around when content finishes loading, which often leads to the user pressing the wrong button. G
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by xamuel 3y ago
Part of the subtle brilliance of Threads is how it deliberately withholds information from you. You do NOT learn the fate of many of the characters. Including---spoiler alert---the character you initially THINK is the main protagonist, unti
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by xamuel 3y ago
You might be short-changing yourself more than you realize. I was similar for most my life, but this year I decided to learn about fashion and actually dress nice. Not only do I look a million times better, but---surprisingly---it actually
56.
by xamuel 4y ago
Yeah, that film is Stalker (and boy is it boring)
57.
by xamuel 4y ago
>Trouble is I know I'm going to be bored crapless You're certainly right. All Tarkovsky's films are astonishingly boring. It takes a lot to be able to appreciate that sort of film. Learning to enjoy boredom is one of the g
58.
by xamuel 4y ago
Solaris is my favorite Tarkovsky film. Some observations: * When they assist the exhausted Kelvin to his room near the end, his body blocks the light but occasionally his body moves so the light can come through and blind the camera. This p
59.
by xamuel 4y ago
No reason to stop at print("print()"), you can nest further, print('print("print()")'). And then you can short-circuit the process, write a single program which first does print(), then print("print()&quot
60.
by xamuel 4y ago
In addition to her writings, von Bingen was also an interesting musical composer. There's a learning curve when you listen to her music because it's so incredibly stripped down. But once you get past that, it can be mind-altering.

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