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andrewcookeon Solving the chaotic three-body problem using deep neural networks (2019)

i need to go out, so this is just off the top of my head, but isn't this really just some kind of efficient approximation? in which case (1) can it be extended to other problems trivially (so that we have an optimization library that we can 'plug in' to arbitrary numerical problems) and (2) how good is it at extrapolating?

andrewcookeon How to survive a ransomware attack without paying the ransom

the garmin data actually is in an open format. i've written software to decode it using publicly available documentation. the software is free to use. you can copy the (.FIT) file off the watch over USB.

andrewcookeon On Liberating My Smartwatch from Cloud Services

if anyone is interested, i have a project that allows you to process and visualize data from garmin devices (FIT files in general). it includes a command (ch2 fit records <filename>) that dumps the contents of a file. it's not got many users and is a little unpolished still, but recently i added docker support which makes it easier to try out.

https://github.com/andrewcooke/choochoo

andrewcookeon Evidence-based Software Engineering – book beta

this is excellent, except that it doesn't read so well.

andrewcookeon A few lessons from the Mezzo project [pdf]

http://gallium.inria.fr/~fpottier/publis/mezzo-icfp2013-long...

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4960

thanks; these are all very interesting.

andrewcookeon Microsoft takes down No-IP.com domains

it's more than that. i cannot get to my (presumably clean, running linux, carefully maintained) home machine situated in chile, connecting from the uk.

andrewcookeon With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

ah, thank-you. that makes more sense.

andrewcookeon With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

what an awful diagram. it implies there's some kind of symmetry that relates all four, but when you look at the details there are asymmetries. if you think it was helpful look at it again and explain why di appears in two quarants but dq and dv appear once each.

andrewcookeon Making Everyone Go Away

you want mode, not median. there's no reason to think that the background is close to the median colour. that's kinda the whole point of the article...

(median works well if you have symmetrically distributed noise, which is true when denoising astronomy photos, for example, but not here).

andrewcookeon TrueCrypt suggesting migration to BitLocker?

i just wanted to say thanks to the truecrypt devs for a decade of largely unthanked and criticised work that, as far as i can tell, has been impressively reliable.

[kinda disappointed that, despite arriving so late to this thread, no-one seems to have said this.]

andrewcookeon Ask HN: Is UML still relevant today?

just want to second uml distilled. if you need to use uml you should read it - it's very slim and very practical. http://martinfowler.com/books/uml.html

also, uml with a tool like enterprise architect (which is basically a set of gui interfaces onto a database, where you construct a design in the database using the views, and are forced to be consistent) is very different from sketching a few diagrams.

it's not for me, but with a good tool you can see the attraction in certain scenarios.

andrewcookeon The Heartbleed Bug

when openssh uses certificates it still uses its own protocol (even with the x509 patch - without that, the certificates used by openssh are not even the same kind of certificate as those used by openssl).

the problem with the openssl library is in the implementation of the TLS protocol. this is not used by openssh. so openssh is not affected by this problem. even when certificates are used. and even when x509 certificates are used (which requires a separate patch).

andrewcookeon Ask HN: Idea Sunday

they seem to use accelerometers - either in your phone/table (which you have to then place on the mattress under a sheet) or in a wristband or watch.

andrewcookeon Ask HN: Idea Sunday

yeah, one of those (thanks). edit - knowing it was a watch i've found this - http://www.sleeptracker.com/ but if you have something simpler / less expensive / more attractive to my partner (less nerdy looking) i'd be interested. edi2 - ah, also http://www.axbo.com/pages/shop

so i guess to correct my original post - something more like a simple, traditional alarm clock. with less obvious tech. but that somehow works this same way. basically just a clock display and some buttons to set the alarm time, and i guess some kind of wearable sensor.

andrewcookeon Speed memory access by arranging data to take advantage of CPU caching

can you give a hint? i think i understand the article (well, i haven't read it, but i sometimes need to tailor code to work better with the cache on a cpu), but i don't know what you're referring to.

andrewcookeon Ask HN: Idea Sunday

a simple, motion-sensitive sleep alarm. i just tried to find one, but they all require a phone or tablet. they're nothing simple and stand-alone with a very basic interface.

andrewcookeon What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

maybe he needs someone else to show him how to be happy.

shrug. in my experience, people telling me how to live my life tend to be a pain in the arse. but maybe i am projecting.

andrewcookeon Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO

i've stood my ground for my beliefs when people were ridiculing me for doing so. it's a lonely position to be in.

i didn't share eich's views here, but he's free to have them, and the reason for the problem is, ironically, the intolerance of other people (people forcing their "tolerance" down his throat).

he has my respect. not for his view on gays. but for staying true to what he did. i think this is a shame.

andrewcookeon What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

so what? my impression is that colin is happy with things as they are. why should he change his business, which makes him happy, because someone else thinks it should be different?

the aim of life is to be happy, not to meet someone else's expectations.

andrewcookeon Ted Ts'o: For those who believe systemd developers are reasonable

its the same thread that's already been linked to and discussed in earlier posts here.

andrewcookeon The tourist map of flash drives

it would help just to have the y axis labelled correctly. afaict the y axis label is the same for both graphs (the default and the alternate link provided as sibling answer)!

andrewcookeon On Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla

it's not a "non-apology". it's simply not an apology. are you so used to people kowtowing to indignant internet hordes that an authentic voice explaining his position just confuses you?

and why should he issue an apology? he seems to think similarly to around 50% of the population. why on earth should he apologise for that?

andrewcookeon nsagate.apple.com

    > nmap -Pn -A -T4 nsagate.apple.com

    Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-03-23 21:27 CLST
    Nmap scan report for nsagate.apple.com (17.254.0.48)
    Host is up.
    All 1000 scanned ports on nsagate.apple.com (17.254.0.48) are filtered

andrewcookeon Julia vs. Python: Monte Carlo Simulations of Bitcoin Options

Wut? Python is going to get better because it has a head start? What's the logic in that? Surely the incumbent is less likely to improve than the challenger because it's already been polished. IOW it's usually the new guy that has room to improve.

andrewcookeon The Corruption of Agile

i don't know if this helps anyone, but it's vaguely related to the article. if you're read taleb's "antifragile" then you can think of agile development as "antifragile development". and if you do that, and understand the difference between antifragile and merely robust, you can see what "parts" of agile make most sense.

from the article (my emphasis):

> Agile was a personal practice. Implicit is a personal way of orienting oneself towards a development process that accepts, even welcomes, change.

andrewcookeon Tech Job Scotland

If you're English, be prepared for some weird attitudes (you're sometimes treated as "an enemy" just because you're English). It's nothing terrible (certainly not as bad as racism towards racial minorities (I'm searching for the correct way of saying this, not having lived in the UK for many years, but I guess that's better than "people of colour")), but it gets tedious after a while.

[English; lived in Scotland for 3 or 4 years]

[Edit: Interesting reading the comments. Maybe things have changed (though I would have thought the debate over devolution - which seems like a good idea to me - would have exacerbated feelings). This was ~15 years ago and many Scots explained it to me as resentment over Thatcher, poll tax etc (in fact, one reason we went to Scotland was in search of a more left-wing environment). It wasn't good natured ribbing and it was pretty widely acknowledged as being "a thing" (had many conversations with Scottish friends about it - one memorably said that it was considered normal in middle class conversation over dinner to trash the English in a way no one would dream of doing to any "racial" goup). And I could certainly understand the motivation (the "historical context"), even if it was occasionally unpleasant.

It also got considerably worse when I moved from academia to "real" work.

It wasn't trivial (any once incident, sure, but the steady drip over time...), it certainly wasn't isolated pockets, and it's something I would take into consideration in future. In short: I was glad to leave.]

andrewcookeon Ask HN: What have you learned in 2014 so far?

meh. op is just a generic, post-hoc, bitter whine because someone pissed them off. you could replace the whole thing with "stinky brad with a stupid beard" and it would be as useful.

also, read anti-fragile and fail more often.

andrewcookeon Ask HN: What have you learned in 2014 so far?

a lot about julia, jenkins (and ci in general) and docker (partly i think, and inspired by anti-fragile (below), because i've decided it's ok to be wrong more often).

on the non-technical front, i've learnt i have a problem communicating in the culture i live in (chile) and that this has become critical (because it's affecting my health care). i'm not sure what the fix is yet. though.

also, reading anti-fragile has helped solidify some ideas i've had for a while, but which seemed unconnected.

and today i just learnt that you can't convert raid 1 to 5 and expect the volume group you had layered on top to survive. but i also learnt that my backups worked, so there's that ;o)

andrewcookeon Ask HN: What is your preferred method to backup Ubuntu 13.10?

not ubuntu particularly, but i use rdiff-backup with a cron job (and rotate a couple of external drives, one kept elsewhere).

[i am just pulling things back after failing to convert raid 1 to 5 and losing my raid in the process!]

andrewcookeon How a Light Saber Works

can evanescent waves couple with the environment to generate the plasma?