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Bost

91 karma · joined January 2, 2016

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Bost··on How to programmatically find out if computer is on
I propose to optimize it so that it's off all the time. And switches on and does something only when measured.

(And please stop calling me lazy.)

Bost··on Racket v8.3
What do you mean by "real" threads? The Thread documentation says nothing about being real or unreal. https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/eval-model.html#%28pa...
Bost··on Category Theory Illustrated – Logic
I started to read the first chapter of your book, it looks nice. If I may ask you, could you also provide answers to the questions you ask? Somewhat hidden, e.g. behind a button "Show me the answer". I often I think I know the answer, but A) my answer may be wrong or B) I'm right but my reasoning is wrong. (So I'd like to compare my answer with yours.) Thanks.
Bost··on Emacs Modernization: Simple Changes Emacs Should Adopt (2006)
> It does offer you an interactive tutorial.

:facepalm: Yeah, my 8 years old niece will be taught "Informatics" in the school. Starting in a few days, actually. I'm sure she will enjoy Emacs over Notepad, since Notepad doesn't have any interactive tutorial.

> It does come with comprehensive offline documentation.

To avoid using precisely that, some years ago, I created myself a little extension of the engine-mode which opens up a browser and searches on the internet using a proper search engine. Here's the code: https://github.com/Bost/dotfiles/blob/c262e4dd7c5a498ce5d75c...

Enjoy

> It does come with the best interactive querying and documentation capabilities of any software system in wide-use today.

I managed to learn how to write my own plugins, macros, spacemacs core extensions, etc. I hope one day I'll learn how to use the emacs interactive documentation, too. Eventually.

Bost··on Emacs Modernization: Simple Changes Emacs Should Adopt (2006)
> Emacs is great out-of-the-box.

Sure. And because the out-of-the-box is so great: 1. people actually create emacs distributions(!) like spacemacs, doom-emacs, etc. 2. the emacs wiki has https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DotEmacsBankruptcy

Bost··on Unix shell programming: the next 50 years
Also, you may have want a look at GNU Guix and GNU Guile.
Bost··on New Mercedes C-Class 2022 production plant in Germany
6 hours ago, 17 points, 3 comments. In short: Cars - (almost) nobody's interested.
Bost··on Tricks of Trench Warfare (2020)
> The hypocrysis of the german government/army of that time, is staggering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_...

All sides started to develop these weapons before the war, and apparently it's the Germans who were capable of deploying these weapons sooner and with greater success.

What you present here nothing less than a one-sided propaganda. It reminds of French villages hundreds of kilometers far from any WWI front line, deep in the rear with memorials dedicated to "Innocent children fallen in the great war" followed by a list of some 10 to 15 male names.

Innocent children, the throat cutter sort, same as those from the other side.

Bost··on France's 18-year-olds given €300 culture pass
> Everybody needs culture

And therefore, all the cinemas, concerts, theatres, museums etc. are closed. For more than a year. Uhm.

Bost··on France's 18-year-olds given €300 culture pass
Yeah, everyone claims culture is very important!

Except when the hard times come by - enter Corona - and you simply throw culture overboard. Just like that, as we've seen it. So much about the importance of culture.

And now imagine we'd have a proper hard times. Like war, famine and plague combined.

Bost··on Dan Kaminsky has died
> It’s morbid curiosity

I guess it's the caveman in all of us who really needs to know what happened to his buddy so that he can avoid it. And I guess those without this curiosity in their DNA died out rather soon... So it might not be insincerity but genetics.

Bost··on Godot 3.3
Waiting for Godot full play https://youtu.be/H5zoztwfs40
Bost··on Every Noise at Once
Eurovision (next to the speedrun) doesn't work. Ooooh... sooo disappointed
Bost··on All my servers have an 8 GB empty file on disk
There's a difference between "The server is not responding right now. We're loosing customers.", and "Low resources during product development". Actually the latter may be a case of enforcing premature optimization. So no, it's not the same idea.
Bost··on Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF
Once upon a time there was a dude with such an attitude and he became a president. Edit: And his story is not over yet. Apparently.
Bost··on How to Design Programs (2014)
Regarding the font thing - saying "everything will be clear" and providing no other information clarifies nothing.

Except that, thank you for that YT link. A critical opinion, when well stated is worth its weight in gold.

Bost··on Israel, Cyprus and Greece agree to link power grids via subsea cable
Same situation in Germany
Bost··on `three = 1` in the Linux sourcecode (2014)
It's in the repository of a certain "torvalds". Better check twice next time what this guy's doing :)
Bost··on How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you
> It doesn’t help when every company you have an account with sells your information

That may or may not be the case. It's enough to have a friend of yours who (unknowingly) posts a picture on FB with "Me with X. He/She changed his/her name and move to ...". The chances are you'll never discover where the "leak" comes from.

Bost··on Racket Compiler and Runtime Status
See also https://youtu.be/s3Q3M2wZ7rI
Bost··on The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
On one hand, Germans try hard to avoid ghettoization. On the other hand they LOVE order. That means meticulously inspecting every bolt and nut, finding differences and putting them, with great pleasure, to different boxes. Like: These two bolts are of the same size. Yes but they have different color.

Imagine a policewoman, from 2nd or 3rd generation of a guest worker family, considering herself to be "rather turkish". And actually that's a sign her of flawless integration - completely in line with the way how the "German" Germans think of her. Because she has dark eyes and slightly, really just a tiny bit darker skin, even if she behaves like a typical German police(wo)man.

Bost··on The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
> I was pretty surprised, having believed Europe was more enlightened than the US.

As rule of thumb the bigger the distance from the Blue Banana the less enlightenment you encounter. Especially in the eastern and southern direction.

Bost··on The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
> I'm originally from an Eastern European country and only realised the racism in Eastern Europe once I lived abroad for multiple years and drew parallels with the highly mediatised US racial tensions.

I've been having exactly(!) the same "only after I lived abroad" experience.

Bost··on The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)
I have the impression those being better off, with (somewhat) higher social status, education being better connected to the majority population find "Gypsy" to be derogatory.

But once I met a poor family referring to themselves this way, so a bit perplexed and curious I rather asked them directly if they consider themselves being Roma or Gypsy... only to get an ambiguous answer.

Edit: I met that family in the eastern Slovakia.

Bost··on Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses (2013)
Error translating "Context" to Korean... timeout.
Bost··on Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses (2013)
In "Bohemia" there's a village called "Bohemia" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8Cechy
Bost··on Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses (2013)
I've been told, in the U.S. you don't really say or use the word "village". Even if the place has just some 300 souls living there. So "The village or town..?" may not pass the type-checking :)
Bost··on Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses (2013)
Fun fact: several Central European countries are being quite often (wrongly) described as East European. So while at it, in that part of Eastern-ish Europe where I'm from the ZIP codes do matter :)
Bost··on Emacs Survey
I use the WinKey extensively. My top two contenders are:

  s-c  sp-copy-sexp
  s-b  sp-backward-copy-sexp
followed closely by:

  s-p  helm-projectile-find-file
  s-f  helm-find-files
  s-r  helm-recentf
  s-R  spacemacs/rename-current-buffer-file
  s-0  delete-window
  s-2  split-window-below
  s-3  split-window-right-and-focus
  s-D  dired-jump
:) The rest can be enjoyed here https://github.com/Bost/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/.spacemac...
Bost··on Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members resign
There are two kinds of protests. One where you go on the main square with a banner inviting people to join your fight for a noble cause. And the other is... well, not that many will join you in your fight for full pockets and you know it. So you go for the next round-about, straight on.
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