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Ixio

129 karma · joined June 27, 2015

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Ixio··on Code colocation is king
This is kind of what Django does instead and I much prefer the Rails way. Though it might just be because I started MVC-dev with Rails.

I think I find it easier to find common abstractions on the {models/views/controllers} level than the resource level and that frustrates me with Django app-based dev.

Ixio··on Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets
We keep finding new ways to make fission safer and reducing risk of runaway scenario but I'm pretty sure we'll never reach zero risk. Sure we might reach it on paper but human error can always happen. Chernobyl operators thought their reactor design had zero risk of exploding, current reactors are much safer but I'm pretty sure the risk isn't zero.
Ixio··on Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)
I'm of the mind that randomness is only an approximation of complexity, if you're omniscient then randomness doesn't exist and everything is deterministic.

However it seems to me the deterministic vs randomness debate is of the same order as the existence of god(s) : we will never be able to prove or disprove it and we aren't able to make useful predictions out of the information one way or the other so we might as well just agree to disagree and move on.

Ixio··on Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions
Do you grow your own food ? Where does your zero trust end ?

Science is very difficult to cheat on such high visibility issues. There is a huge scientific consensus on climate change, from experts of all countries and diverse backgrounds. For it all to be a huge conspiracy seems like a pretty big leap of faith, that they are genuine is a simpler explanation.

Ixio··on Humanly Traversable Wormholes
Your blogpost might benefit from explaining further the following line: "Special relativity says that the rocket has a different coordinate frame than the space stations. In particular the x axis, which corresponds to all the points in space at the same rocket-time, is not the same as the x-axis for the space stations."

I'm on the lookout for an explanation of why FTL=time-travel that I'll finally understand. However in your blogpost my limited knowledge of Special relativity fails to make sense of the whole argument.

Ixio··on Humanly Traversable Wormholes
Exactly ! Why don't we suppose traveling/observing through the wormhole has the same time dilation ?

I've heard of FTL=time-travel a couple of years ago for the first time and I would love to be able to argue with someone knowledgeable about it to understand. I hoped this HN thread would have answers. However all the answers here seem to have holes in same.

I'm starting to wonder if FTL=time-travel isn't like Schrödinger's cat: a hypothetical thought experiment terribly misunderstood by the masses.

Ixio··on How much power can we expect from rainfall?
Looks like the first tidal power plant was built in 1966 in Brittany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station.

It was also the largest for 45 years until a bigger one opened in South Korea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sihwa_Lake_Tidal_Power_Station.

Not sure if someone has an analysis about why those aren't more widespread ? It seems like the existing ones are pretty massive and in very specific spots, maybe smaller installations aren't cost-effective enough.

Ixio··on ICANN delays .org selloff after California’s attorney general intervenes
Perhaps like democracy it is the least bad option.
Ixio··on Please stop recommending Gitflow
Thanks for the link, at the very least Jeff Kreeftmeijer in 2010 already used the name git-flow for that specific model. I somehow missed all of that.

Plus nvie.com updated its 10-year old post with a notice yesterday and also uses the name git-flow there.

I guess I'd better use the term git workflow in the future.

Ixio··on Please stop recommending Gitflow
Are people really calling this specific model of git branching THE Gitflow model ? For me this was a gitflow amongst others, a gitflow being a git workflow.

In the original article "A successful Git branching model" I don't see a single mention telling people they should call this specific model Gitflow.

For me the word gitflow has the useful meaning of a git branching model, am I in the minority ? Using it as a noun for a specific model seems like a waste of the word.

In regards to the article, sure this gitflow is one of the most shared images on the subject. However I recommend that every team use whatever gitflow makes the most sense for them and their project. I was not aware that our industry had a problem with teams cargo culting that specific git workflow.

Ixio··on Getting Pagination Wrong (2016)
> There’s absolutely no use case out there, where I search for something, and then I say, hey, I believe my search result will be item #3175 in the current sort order.

I actually have a use case. When the search filtering functionality is lacking or overly complicated to use. For example with Gmail if I can't be bothered to look up how date filtering works, since I receive emails at a fairly constant rate I can sort of guess that item #3175 might be around the date I'm looking for.

I strongly disagree with anyone that thinks Facebook "got it right" with their timeline. As far as my experience goes it's very easy to see something interesting on the Facebook timeline only for it to refresh and lose it forever. It can be very frustrating not to be able to get a consistent timeline.

Ixio··on Traffic lights worldwide set to change after a Swedish engineer saw red
ainiriand said 'stop in safety conditions' which is also the law in France. The problem is proving you couldn't stop in safety conditions when you receive the fine.

> Article R412-31 du Code de la route. Vous devez obligatoirement vous arrêter au feu orange, sauf si cela doit vous conduire à un danger.

Ixio··on Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.
> if the employee responsible for firing the moderator did such acts repeatedly despite management warnings than perhaps it's a good idea to fire that person

> There are some people who refuse to behave in the best interests of the group, no matter how much direction you give them

I think we agree on this.

If an employee refuses to change behaviour despite multiple warnings he/her is fair game for dismissal. However I think firing someone without prior warnings is abusive unless it's for something criminal or malicious. You can probably guess that I don't care much for at-will employment...

Ixio··on Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.
One of my latest questions got as first comment : "Please use English punctuation when writing in English."

Certainly polite but a bit jarring as a non-native speaker that feels fluent. Also a bit nonsensically-bureaucratic : I made the mistake because I didn't know any better, after the comment I still couldn't correct the mistake because I still didn't know any better, I wasn't even sure what rule of punctuation I had wronged.

I would've preferred a direct edit instead of a comment prompting though I guess that can be seen as worse by some people.

Ixio··on Dear Stack Exchange, Inc.
I see firing in such a case as a cop-out, a cowardly way to appease mob-mentality.

In this case if the employee responsible for firing the moderator did such acts repeatedly despite management warnings than perhaps it's a good idea to fire that person. However this doesn't seem to be the case, the CTO correctly assumed responsibility in his apology of green-lighting the moderator's firing.

He does the right thing, in my opinion, by promising a better process that wouldn't lead to such a hurtful (and seemingly unfair) dismissal.

You don't fire an employee for mistakenly deleting your production database, you update your process so this cannot happen (at least not by accident).

Ixio··on Use DuckDuckGo to improve your privacy online (2018)
The way I see it everyone should have some sort of personal data broker (maybe as a browser extension ?). Your data broker has all of your personal information and keeps it safe for you.

If you make a query on a search engine I'm sure we can find a way to have better results without the search engine retaining your private information. Either there is some kind of third party you can temporarily give your info to and trust it to forget it immediatly after giving you the results. Or the search engine could give standard results and your data broker then filters it using your info (which doesn't leave your pc).

I used to think of this data broker as some sort of AI but now that I think about it maybe a simple browser extension that filters Google search results or augments your DDG queries might do the trick.

Ixio··on I'm going to work full-time on free software
Your 61.85% seems pretty weird. If you look at the same site they point to 37% in the US instead of your 22% (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income-t...) and that's for an individual with an income above $400K.

I strongly doubt that someone winning $60K pays 61.85% in Sweden. Your source seems strongly geared towards rich people.

Ixio··on The Onion Futures Act
Thanks for this. I was curious about the details and the podcast (I read the transcript) explains all of it.

I was wondering how they made so much money and why it doesn't happen anymore. Turns out the initial cornering of the market was done in secret at a standard price. Nowadays buying at such scale secretly is impossible, so the price goes up and makes cornering the market prohibitively expensive.

Ixio··on A cheaper, smaller Raspberry Pi 3 is now available
The linked blog post https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-raspberry-pi-3-... has more info and is interesting.

In it they say "Back in March, we explained that the 3+ platform is the final iteration of the “classic” Raspberry Pi", I've tried finding the corresponding blog post but didn't have any luck. Does anyone know where I can read more about this ? I'm interested in hearing more about their need for "new core silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology".

Ixio··on Show HN: Coffee Chat – Trade your expertise
Right, so free means you are bootstrapped or VC-funded and later on... your users are the product ?

I can understand not wanting to communicate on a business model that isn't ready but could you maybe point out some leads other than the usual ads or data-selling business ?

Or if you don't want to be specific maybe you can point out that you are definitely against selling user data later on even if it means saving the company ?

I was happy to find a "How does Coffee Chat make money?" section but it's content isn't very helpfull if you're a user fearing data collection and adds.

Ixio··on Extended Validation Certificates Are Dead
That's actually how I found out my Lenovo was doing MITM a few days before the whole Superfish debacle exploded on the net. I went on Bitbucket (I think) and noticed something seemed different, I realised it wasn't showing an EV certificate: I dug deeper and saw that the issuer was suspect.

I feel that EV certificates do have their use for high-worth targets (banks and so one). Getting one is not trivial and definitely not scalable. Maybe they are a bit overpriced, maybe the certificate industry is kind of sketchy, but that's other debates.

Ixio··on The Future of Notebooks: Lessons from JupyterCon
> The Jupyter notebooks are version controlled like my .py modules.

That's interesting, could you give us some more details ? Last time I tried to put a Jupyter notebook under git it was as mess. Do you use another tool than git or have they made tools to help with version control ? Or is it just your workflow that helps, like emptying all cell results before saving ?

Ixio··on "Pwned Passwords" V2 With Half a Billion Passwords
If you prefer a one-liner like me, the following line works for me:

VARPWD=P@ssw0rd; HASH=`echo -n $VARPWD | sha1sum`; curl --silent https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/`cut -b 1-5 <(echo $HASH)` --stderr - | grep -i `cut -b 6- <(echo $HASH) | cut -d ' ' -f 1`

If it doesn't return anything than your password isn't in the list. You should probably start your line with a space so that it isn't recorded in your bash_history.

If someone else can make it better or shorter, be my guest.

Ixio··on How to build an antigravity device
Yes to me it doesn't any more realistic than Bob Lazar's story that he quotes, just more convoluted.

My understanding of a warp drive (Alcubierre drive) is that it contracts space in front of the ship while expanding space behind it. I don't understand how increasing a gravitational field locally is meant to achieve any of that.

Ixio··on How a Medical Catastrophe Can Bankrupt a Life
> No matter how much some starving kid needs food, he doesn’t have a right to steal someone’s wallet or hold up the local convenience store to obtain it

There is at least one Italian court that disagrees with you: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36190557

The article states that Italy's highest court of appeal has ruled that stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger is not a crime.

Ixio··on LinkedIn is ignoring user settings
The service I was writing about is French: http://www.service-virtualis.com/virtualis/index.htm

So unfortunately if you get points I'm guessing you're from North America and probably won't be able to apply.

I haven't searched but there might be such services available to you in a nearer bank.

Ixio··on LinkedIn is ignoring user settings
Mine also let's you chose a maximum amount that can be charged to the temporary card number. I usually add 10% or 20% extra to the expected amount so that unexpected taxes or shipping costs don't block the whole transaction.

I really love the feeling of safety that I get from chosing the max amount, being sure that I won't be overcharged.

Ixio··on Bitcoin Can Drop 50% and China Miners Will Still Make Money
> That’s because Europe realized it could not sustain another war of that destructiveness.

That's what people in Europe thought after WW1, yet WW2 happened. I hope this time you're right.

Ixio··on Git hash function transition plan
Can someone explain the name? It does not look like a good name. Or is NewHash just a placeholder name for the git project because the haven't made a final decision on a new hash function? (It's hard to google and find out)
Ixio··on A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes English-Speakers to Learn Foreign Languages
The map was interesting but it just got me wanting the whole list which is on the openculture post but not on the reddit link. So I think it adds more than just "blogspam" to the original source (but probably not much except for the list).
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