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__tmk__

54 karma · joined February 24, 2021

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__tmk__··on LICENSE: _may be_ licensed to use source code; incorrect license grant
Interesting, I've also heard the exact opposite opinion [0] where Zulip’s non-standard approach is seen as its main strength.

[0]: https://chaos.social/@yorgos/115931944888149528

__tmk__··on Base 3 Computing Beats Binary
I would think there wouldn't be much of a difference because the smallest unit you can really work with on modern computers is the byte. And whether you use 8 bits to encode a byte (with 256 possible values) or 5 trits (with 243 possible values), shouldn't really matter?
__tmk__··on Swift sucks at web serving or does it?
There's a project for using Swift to write GNOME applications, which is fascinating to me: https://github.com/AparokshaUI/adwaita-swift

I wish them success but realistically they won't have success.

__tmk__··on Is Cosine-Similarity of Embeddings Really About Similarity?
1-cos_sim(x,y) is a valid distance metric for L2 normalized vectors, though.
__tmk__··on How to be successful as a research mathematician? Follow your gut
That's not very actionable advice. I've found this article [0] from Terence Tao very insightful:

  [A]ctual solutions to a major problem tend to be arrived at by a process more like the following (often involving several mathematicians over a period of years or decades, with many of the intermediate steps described here being significant publishable papers in their own right):

  1. Isolate a toy model case x of major problem X.
  2. Solve model case x using method A.
  3. Try using method A to solve the full problem X.
  4. This does not succeed, but method A can be extended to handle a few more model cases of X, such as x’ and x”.
  5. Eventually, it is realised that method A relies crucially on a property P being true; this property is known for x, x’, and x”, thus explaining the current progress so far.
  6. Conjecture that P is true for all instances of problem X.
  7. Discover a family of counterexamples y, y’, y”, … to this conjecture. This shows that either method A has to be adapted to avoid reliance on P, or that a new method is needed.
  8. Take the simplest counterexample y in this family, and try to prove X for this special case. Meanwhile, try to see whether method A can work in the absence of P.
  
  (... 15 more steps)
[0]: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/be-sceptical-of...
__tmk__··on The Future of the Vim Project
I've also seen neovim plugins written in fennel [0], so if you want something lispy, that's possible now.

[0]: a Lisp that compiles to Lua, https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel

__tmk__··on Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023
Coal is 30% currently: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2023/06... and I don't see this going away soon.

The argument is that we could have kept nuclear running and shut down all coal. In 1990, nuclear power plants were producing 153TWh in Germany. Today, coal+nuclear together is producing about as much.

__tmk__··on US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance
I doubt the USG is competent enough to have a masterplan like that. This just seems to me like the actions of a person (Gary Gensler) who personally dislikes cryptocurrencies and who is trying to establish himself as a political player through his "bold actions".
__tmk__··on iOS 17 app sideloading might only be available in Europe
I think my banking app disallows taking screenshots of it. (Presumably this also means it would be hidden from screen recordings? Not quite sure.)
__tmk__··on Replacing Pandas with Polars
Why is the article using PNG images for the code samples? I guess because the author thinks it looks prettier this way, but I don't really see it.
__tmk__··on Djot: A light markup language by the creator of Pandoc and CommonMark
Wow, this is all I ever wanted. The only thing that's maybe missing is a natural way to do captions for images and tables, and a syntax for spoilers. But these can probably be built on top of the div and span syntax.
__tmk__··on Twitter Blue for $8/Month
Most of that will be crypto spam though...
__tmk__··on Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all users
UK has daylight savings time. Better move to Iceland instead. They're always on UTC.
__tmk__··on Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack
Yes, miners can turn off the bomb, but that requires that they coordinate and determine a schedule for the hardfork that turns off the bomb (you need a hardfork to turn it off).

This scenario is definitely possible, but it requires a little more work than "one guy keeps running an old eth1 node".