HCIdivision17

This is lampshaded pretty hard in Consider Phlebas, I think, where Horza basically hates the Culture for that reason (among others). I also consider Star Trek's Federation boring as well, but worse: at least The Culture meddles in the affairs of other groups (for better or worse!).

I think the key is in the last quoted sentence: there isn't one model. There are many, and they are generated in different ways with differing emphasis on different data sets. They gain confidence when these seem to agree with each other and the acceptable physical knowledge already understood. They also check the sanity of the model to make sure that it is consistent with what has already been observed. In that way anyone may gain confidence that multiple approaches are converging on similar results.

That, and there are metric crap-tonnes of data to work with of all sorts. Just ungodly amounts of it.

This is really slick. I've used it a few times just to get my capture groups tested right, where pattern matching is needed over parsing. The fact it color codes the Python named capture groups is just awesome: make a regex to match the stuff you need, then slam it into another string via % and you've just converted one string into another. There's tons of ways to do that, but when your patterns are fast and loose, it makes the intent a bit easier to show. (I also tend to use regex with comments, so they tend to be a bit more literate and long... well, at least not all line noise.)

The fine is punative. Noncompliance is often not acceptable when it comes to safety and environmental regulations. When I worked in plants, you can bet there were only two groups that would put the fear of God in operations: OSHA and the local environmental regulations agency. Fines could be thousands per hour (or per infraction, which could be collected hourly). Even if it's unreasonable (and for damn sure it can be - Argon metering was my personal worst hated), you better comply until you successfully sue or negotiate it down.

And it is likely necessary. Meeting regulations is far harder and more expensive than just the feel good that you met the reqs. If there wasn't a stick held up as a credible threat, plants would just trash everything. Not because they're evil, but because plants simply can't care - they aren't people. Thusly these agencies are impersonal and brutal in kind.

Then look at the article about how acko.net was built. You'll want JS active, since like all of his work, it's usefully interactive.

https://acko.net/blog/zero-to-sixty-in-one-second/

And almost immediately found: sometimes wires are annoying. It's not hard to think of scenarios where it's nice to have a wireless connection to your mobile device.

For me, it's simply easier to wear them while on a motorcycle, since otherwise I have to thread the wire under my clothes, which can be a real mess in the winter layers. It's positively infuriating to have a wire get caught and tug an earbud while fully suited up with a helmet on while on a highway in the winter.

I'll include the obligatory donation link below for what is effectively an internet utility. [0]

Also, take a look at downloading a copy of Wikipedia! You can get a full download with images for around 100GB (last I checked, which was about two years ago). It's great for if you ever think you'll need some technical info while away from live internet. I keep a copy on a hard drive that boots into linux, just in case (maybe I'll be on site with a customer and need some engineering notes - BAM taken care of!)

[0] https://archive.org/donate/

EDIT: I used XOWA, and I do not keep the wiki up to date, really. Note that the entire wiki history is huge, but a reasonably current snapshot is manageable (~100GB or so).

[~] http://xowa.org/home/wiki/Help/Download_XOWA.html

I wouldn't read much into the downvote. People tend to get tired of what has been coloquially termed the "middlebrow dismissal" which plagues HN a bit. No doubt your comment was misinterpreted as such.

If we're lucky, we'll see some open source on this, but probably only in as far as it directly makes the game more fun. Or harder. You can likely mod the game quite a bit though, as the Content folder is full of plain text code. (I'm assuming .cso files are compiled glsl code?)

And thanks for the reminder for Quadrilateral Cowboy; I have no idea why I don't have this in my library yet. I don't think I've heard anything negative about it from anyone, and it looks like an absolute blast!

I am really excited for future games though. If the pattern holds up, we may just get dozens of badly written manuals and specs to decode!

... It's a bit silly that I'm excited at the prospect for properly terrible docs, but it really would add some fun to it. Just imagine if the components have undocumented features, and once in a while you get one that simply doesn't work as advertised. Beat the game? Get certified!

I won't dissuade you from trying all of them - I like 'em all :)

SpaceChem will introduce the idea of step-test-debug along with the modular piping (a bit); it has been a favorite for years. TIS-100 will introduce the assembler block programming, and is notable in that it manages to be fun!

Personally, I would start with SpaceChem, as it's fun right away and stays that way for a long time. It always feels like a game, while TIS-100 can feel a bit like work sometimes :P

You get to build and program circuits!

Think of it as a steppable debugger for a computer that has modular components. Your goal is to build circuits out of chips that are little blocks of code. Also there is a real pritable manual (which was one of the most celebrated bits from TIS-100).

To get an idea of where the game is going, it helps to have played some of the earlier works, like SpaceChem and TIS-100.

http://www.zachtronics.com/spacechem/

http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/

EDIT: You know, looking at some of the other earlier work, he may have been building up to this for a long time. I have n't played it, but Ruckingenur 2 sure looks like a spiritual precursor to this.

http://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/

Huh, you know, I've never really noticed it as Xeno's Paradox applied that way before. I'll have to keep an eye out for it, since it can lead to such a different conclusion with the same information.

Gosh, there is a lot of depth to language. I like lisper's note because there are a lot of people whose first language is not English and may not know the difference; I like your rejoinder that it was sarcasm against another audience, but was ironic humor to Google. (We can write to multiple audiences at once, no?)

And now here's a font complete enough that perhaps I can find the right glyph to punctuate the idea. We need something with a bit more nuance than the interrobang, I think.

I've been really surprised how well my iPhone 4S held up. It's a losing battle against software that expects ever more resources, but it still does the things.

I'll second "Y Not" by Jim Weirich. It's just such a charming talk. My programming teacher in high school was like that, and I think it's such an excellent way to teach. From the careful way he meanders to the solution to the fact it was a live coding session really grounds the explanation of how the Y combinator works.

Oh you're right, of course. But part of the ridiculousness of industrial automation is that at some point all those variables will be catalogued and dealt with. A bit poorly I'd bet, but we'll certainly see it happen. It'll just take another few decades...

I strongly contend that there very likely has not been a decline in the give-a-damn factor. My experience is that it really hasn't ever been too high. Just look at cartoons 50 years ago, and packages getting wrecked en route is a staple joke; the jokes were rarely obscure, but often topical. There is always a few great operators, but mostly you just fix you processes so people default to failure less. Hence hacks like the TV stamp.

But the answer is (as always) more automation. Mind, this can lead to really neat edge cases where you accidentally build a package smashing factory. But in general repeatability (machine) beats out diligence (people) every time.

You just have to, you know, pay for it. The cost benefit analysis probably strongly favors the marked box in this case.

To be sure, but that's the 'no silver bullet' clause. You can compromise and gently escalate, though. Be nice, yet firm. Or be ostensibly nice but with a subtext of consequences ("speak softly and carry a big stick").

Or perhaps the ideals fail and you just need to bare your teeth at them. But return to civility; no reason to senselessly burn bridges. (What if they're just horrible? Then leave. What if you just can't walk away quietly? Well, just try not to burn bridges as a first resort, at least not while you're standing on it ;)

Thanks - distribution vs consumption always mix me up with the copyright rules.

I've wondered about this: when it says non-commercial purposes, does that mean me downloading a copy to read for my work, or me printing and selling?

I haven't any problem buying it, since it's useful for my job, but that distinction has been a bit fuzzy to me (and I'll normally just err on the side of buy, just to be safe).

It's gotten more interesting in Windows 10. With a hi-res surface, scaling often plonks screens in confusing and arbitrary places when docking/undocking. My method is now something like "Alt+Space, M, Hold Left for a few seconds, Hold Up for a few seconds, Hold right for twice as long as Left, Hold Down for twice as long as Up, etc". And it won't work at all on Java sub-windows, who just scale and move any which way. And hitting Win-Left or Win-Right may not even snap the window to a viewport, meaning the secret button nor the red X are at a window extreme.

It's certainly added a fun little extra layer of puzzle to my life. I bet this is how Catherine felt about Atrus' door puzzle locks as she wandered Myst Island.

You know, I actually never noticed that. Is that another cool whizbang feature on the site? Somewhere along the line I got it into my head that upvotes were just how you favorited things.

Well. Time to start indexing my upvotes... (later...)

At least for me, I have two different voting style:

- Yeah, this is pretty cool. Upvote!

- I've got to save this for later when I can really read it

PostgreSQL stuff tends to be pretty reliably good, and usually with an educational bent. So I'll tend to use the upvote as a bookmark to go back to later.

I gotta say, I don't really like slides, but I've yet to be disappointed by a PostgreSQL post. And usually, a high vote/comment ratio is a nice indicator of quality.

EDIT: formatting

I was in some kind-of experimental programs as a kid. In middle school, we had a "team" that we all followed with. Basically same teachers and it covered multiple grades. I really liked it. I had good friends in a grade lower, and I could be a part of some classes a grade over. But I never had the awkward in-wrong-grade feeling.

I have no clue what difficulties that put on the teachers, but as a student it was pretty nice.

I feel like unit debates often result from a misunderstanding between sides of "is perfect the enemy of good?" I thought it suspicious that they would have miscounted the days, but you're right: it's so dang useful that it's worth a little error (with occasional corrections) for such convenience.

Of course, at some point it becomes a huge pain and you buckle down and choose something just as arbitrary but easier to handle. And that's why we don't count angles in the milliseconds since 1970. Or days in a year; though we do sometimes measure 3D angles in solid minutes, which seems like a metaphor taken too far :)

You don't really recalculate that stuff over and over, do you? Every electrician I've worked with has a couple of the main ratings memorized and just applies it to standard. Anything more complex requires a calculator or tables either way, and once you're not doing the math in your head, it really doesn't matter what units you use. They're all arbitrary, so you may as well snap 'em to an integer value of convenience.

You'd certainly also want a universal one for conversion, but not for every day tedium. Fahrenheit is nice because it spans the human experience in a nice range (say damn cold 0 to rather hot 100). But that's bunk if you're in context of chemistry where water's properties are far more comparative (0 freezes to 100 boiling). Though absolute scales are always a bit sporky, since they latch to a scale and wonk it sideways (-273 is a silly number no matter what anyone says).

And so on. Scales and units are merely benchmarks. Literally. Pick the right bench for the job and follow the marks.

(Though with enough effort you can make any scale work. Kinda like hammers and threaded carpenter nails.)

Edited; typing on phones ruins grammar.

That's the trick. In a sense, the units follow the application, and hence English units always feel a bit natural. They have a tendency to have integer multiples and simple fractions.

And when I say natural, I don't mean elegant. They often tend to be thoroughly arbitrary. But they match the needs, which is usually reasonably pragmatic. For example, 360 degrees is ideal for simple in-head directional geometry, but radians are by far simpler in algebra or very precise measurements (because Pi can often be neatly factored out).

Once you start using enough decimal points, all units are lousy. I remember using angstroms in astronomy because it fit better into the optics theory and the distances are already absurd it didn't matter. So you may as well use the units that are convenient, and just get good swapping.

(PS: glass sheets are sold by the square foot, but in thicknesses measured in millimeters. Turns out to be pretty convenient that way.)

That was one of my favorite parts of the game, and the Achievement really was the cherry on top. It pops up just before you fade in, and it seems like a cheeky spoiler, and then the huge white Title Text to the dialog to the absurd "you really should grok where you stand on this" setting comes in. And then - if you wait for a little bit - the point really gets driven home...

Almost certainly this. In one of the links by another commenter here, you can see a voltmeter where the guy changes the decimal. The dots are bizarrely high to be a decimal point, but right where you'd expect it if it's the bottom dot on the colon.

That was my understanding as well. The idea being that there is a lot of volume in the first few meters of ocean surface area churn. It's not hard to imagine that does better in surface area than (even a lot) of plants.