I always take time to look at those photos when I see them making the rounds. Such a brilliant person, such an incredible body of work. And yet she indulges in a fun and silly photo shoot. It's a wonderful moment of…
The quoted passage makes one of the great mistakes in analyzing an industry like this: assuming that people are stupid and that is why they make bad decisions. If you want actual insight assume that people in positions…
I don't see why this calls for a new system. If anything these environments are a stronger case for a quality ecosystem where a whole community cares about keeping it coherent and up-to-date. A minimal Debian…
I've been a Debian user since the late 90s, and their packaging system is the main reason. Not the tools and package format, but the culture and strict rules that govern inclusion in the system. Every time I see a new…
I started contributing to OSM recently after a bike trail was built near me. The arial imagery typically takes years to refresh around here so I walked it a few times to capture GPX tracks and then drew the new path. It…
I am in the minority who thinks Raft is overrated. I tried teaching Raft one year instead of Paxos but ended up switching back. While it was much easier to understand how to implement Raft, I think my students gained…
Let me make sure I understood this correctly: having a CS degree will turn you into a cartoon stereotype of a technical nerd, but getting any other kind of degree in the world will enable you to be a well rounded person…
There is an RFC for this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550
I've never really liked the look of the Tikz-generated automata. Something about them always looks a little off to me. I also dislike the use of 0 and 1 as the canonical alphabet. a and b look nicer, they stand out…
It seems like modern languages adopt more and more ideas from functional programming as time goes by (garbage collection, closures and higher-order functions, parametric polymorphism, immutable values, algebraic types).…
I can't wait for the rest of the series: Climate change is 99% solved. The last 1% is the hardest. We are 99% of the way to ending all wars. The last 1% will be the hardest. Scientists are 99% of the way to curing…
In English, meaning is defined by common usage. I know the formal logic hipsters have mounted a persistent campaign to make an exception here, but the fact remains that "begging the question" means exactly what ordinary…
I think that overstates the difference. I think a better analogy is architects vs. construction workers. Any decent architect will have a pretty strong understanding of the realities of construction, and an experienced…
I remember this was a protection scheme, but I don't remember who used it. They would use a laser to burn a small hole in the disk. At load time, the program would attempt to write to the sector with the hole and then…
I always take time to look at those photos when I see them making the rounds. Such a brilliant person, such an incredible body of work. And yet she indulges in a fun and silly photo shoot. It's a wonderful moment of…
The quoted passage makes one of the great mistakes in analyzing an industry like this: assuming that people are stupid and that is why they make bad decisions. If you want actual insight assume that people in positions…
I don't see why this calls for a new system. If anything these environments are a stronger case for a quality ecosystem where a whole community cares about keeping it coherent and up-to-date. A minimal Debian…
I've been a Debian user since the late 90s, and their packaging system is the main reason. Not the tools and package format, but the culture and strict rules that govern inclusion in the system. Every time I see a new…
I started contributing to OSM recently after a bike trail was built near me. The arial imagery typically takes years to refresh around here so I walked it a few times to capture GPX tracks and then drew the new path. It…
I am in the minority who thinks Raft is overrated. I tried teaching Raft one year instead of Paxos but ended up switching back. While it was much easier to understand how to implement Raft, I think my students gained…
Let me make sure I understood this correctly: having a CS degree will turn you into a cartoon stereotype of a technical nerd, but getting any other kind of degree in the world will enable you to be a well rounded person…
There is an RFC for this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2550
I've never really liked the look of the Tikz-generated automata. Something about them always looks a little off to me. I also dislike the use of 0 and 1 as the canonical alphabet. a and b look nicer, they stand out…
It seems like modern languages adopt more and more ideas from functional programming as time goes by (garbage collection, closures and higher-order functions, parametric polymorphism, immutable values, algebraic types).…
I can't wait for the rest of the series: Climate change is 99% solved. The last 1% is the hardest. We are 99% of the way to ending all wars. The last 1% will be the hardest. Scientists are 99% of the way to curing…
In English, meaning is defined by common usage. I know the formal logic hipsters have mounted a persistent campaign to make an exception here, but the fact remains that "begging the question" means exactly what ordinary…
I think that overstates the difference. I think a better analogy is architects vs. construction workers. Any decent architect will have a pretty strong understanding of the realities of construction, and an experienced…
I remember this was a protection scheme, but I don't remember who used it. They would use a laser to burn a small hole in the disk. At load time, the program would attempt to write to the sector with the hole and then…