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astockwell

1,094 karma · joined July 28, 2013

Email: astockwell@gmail.com

GitHub: https://github.com/astockwell

Twitter: https://twitter.com/astockwell

Site: http://astockwell.com

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astockwell··on A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game
Now if someone could publish a patch that overcomes the 10,000 fleet identifier limit!
astockwell··on What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph
> I'd have to consider all the ways a bully eager to use their powers might misunderstand me

Damn. Doesn’t that just sum up so many interactions (and sadly, relationships) in life.

astockwell··on Artificial intelligence is not conscious
This is the fundamental trust challenge with private/profitability-driven 'science'.
astockwell··on Hard Rust requirements from May onward
Would this logically extend to also include C-reliant languages like Python and Ruby (the latter being mostly a grammar underpinned by C) as technical debt also?
astockwell··on Why do some gamers invert their controls?
Disclosure: Didn’t read. But I did always get heckled at gatherings for inverting my controls, and then forgetting to switch them back. I think it came from whatever console you started with first (Sega Saturn), if you played early PC joystick games (Tie Fighter!), and Goldeneye’s Solitare configuration, which allowed deadly accuracy without needing to invoke the crosshairs.
astockwell··on Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?
The inimitable https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html, which is a great read for any programmer, not just game devs.
astockwell··on What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
Chesterton's Fence
astockwell··on I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
This is probably the right answer. Similar to "dont fight the police on the street, fight them in court". Can even quiet-quit during the project if you need to.. software can take an awfully long time to build..

Also, track your time during the work. And keep all correspondance. Paper trail, paper trail, paper trail.

astockwell··on Setelinleikkaus: When Finns snipped their cash in half to curb inflation
I imagine Finland's would be similarly branded a disaster if the present-day internet/social media megaphones had existed..

History books on 1945 aggressive monetary policy change: "The public didn't like it"

History books on 2025 aggressive monetary policy change: "The public went frigging bananas, doxxed their leaders, coordinated widespread disobediance on the scale of GME, etc"

(Granted I live in the US, and that's putting it mildly how the US would react)

astockwell··on Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
Link?
astockwell··on Postgres.new: In-browser Postgres with an AI interface
I think you are 100% spot-on. Good enough has always been fine for the vast majority of people and the vast majority of use-cases.

Couple this with decreasing costs of storage (and ideally compute), and it doesn't matter if the data model is garbage, people can still get something workable that's better than the awful Excel files they curate now. It will still make errors, but eventually fewer than their spreadsheets.

astockwell··on Three ways to think about Go channels
Go does have the `- race` flag for test + build commands [1], which can help (not 100% iirc, but some) with datarace detection.

[1] https://go.dev/doc/articles/race_detector

astockwell··on The Making of Django Reinhardt
In college, in a music class (History of Jazz maybe?), I had to miss an exam, and the professor assigned me an essay to make up for it: Life and impact of Django Reinhardt, minimum of 10 pages (back in the "12 point font, Times New Roman" days).

This was in the early '00s, and hand-over-heart, there was less than 10 pages _on the internet_ about Reinhardt. The collegiate library was not much more help.

astockwell··on M 4.8 – 2024 Whitehouse Station, New Jersey Earthquake
Felt it in Hartford, CT!
astockwell··on 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
Haha having recently rewatched MIB with my daughter after ~15 years, I don't think Will Smith correctly selected the target... :'D
astockwell··on Chainguard Images now available on Docker Hub
Many organizations pay people (or entire teams) to maintain a suite of hardened images, either for device/firmware applications, or because they use many languages in-house, etc. This is definitely one of those business models I thought "oh, of course" as soon as I saw it.
astockwell··on Home Lab Beginners guide
Some defense against the class(es) of availability problems that occur from OS + upwards. No defense against the class(es) that occur below that (metal).
astockwell··on Neurosurgeon pioneers Alzheimer's, addiction treatments using ultrasound [video]
Careful, that was literally the exact same selling point of Electroconvulsive therapy 80 years ago.
astockwell··on Ten Simple IT Security Rules for Early-Stage Startups
I have often wondered the same thing. I think it boils down to the actual factors being “something you have” and “something you know”, where the former is the possession of the password manager file/access, and the latter is the master password of the pw manager?
astockwell··on LinkedIn shelved plan to migrate to Microsoft Azure cloud
$$$
astockwell··on Moderna Melanoma Vaccine Cuts Death Rate in Half
> The most common sites of melanoma are chest and back in men and legs in women

> The most common chemical sunscreen ingredients cause cancer themselves

Both of these statements are out-of-date.

Recent studies show two different histological subtypes of melanoma for young adults vs older adults, each following a different common mode of presentation [1]. Melanoma in younger adults tends to present on the long limbs and is thought to have different contributing factors.

Also "common chemical sunscreen ingredients cause cancer" is a common FUD trope. Sunscreen reduces cancer mortality, full stop. Each person's circumstances vary based on their daily habits, geography, and personal/familial history.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8482997/

astockwell··on Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says
This almost exactly described my life as well (also 37, lived in a major metro). Not to mention the (surreptitiously unpaid) evening calls we'd have with other TZs after spending that 11-hour day, because take-home laptops.
astockwell··on Ask HN: How are so many fake ads allowed on YouTube?
If anyone has NOT noticed these ads running constantly on YouTube, I’d encourage you to spend 10 minutes on the site in an incognito window.

I would have thought this thread was overblown had I not inadvertently done that a few weeks ago. But it was truly surprising just how awful the “untailored” ads were.

astockwell··on Want employees to return to the office? Then give each one an office
A recent HN comment on another post highlighted the irony of corporate messaging:

“Come back to the office”

“We’ll be resuming periodic Active Shooter drills”

astockwell··on Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock
I feel like there is very likely some precedents for this (or at least some close examples) that other countries have implemented similar to this, I wonder if any of these folks have looked into it. Wish US elected officials would look at how ideas fared in other places more often. "Pull their heads out of their asses" would be the less cordial phrasing there.
astockwell··on What makes developers productive?
I’m curious what others have experience here, as a code base grows.

I’ve been on several teams that consistently endeavor to keep the knowledge of a code base shared, but every time the code base reaches a certain size, the Bus Factor creeps right back in, but this time for “modules” or areas of the broader code base.

Combine a large code base, 4-8 engineers making constant changes all over, and it becomes a real struggle to keep everyone “up” on the whole thing.

Has anyone seen a workable strategy for this?

astockwell··on An open-source mouse and trackpad utility for Mac
It is me!
astockwell··on The Cuboid: A DIY air purifier that's better than a box-fan (2021)
This is almost exactly the design used by BlueAir purifiers https://www.blueair.com/us/blue-family.html

Can recommend.

astockwell··on Study: ChatGPT outperforms physicians in quality, empathetic answers to patients
No problem and no defense needed, just wanted to ensure I understood you.
astockwell··on Study: ChatGPT outperforms physicians in quality, empathetic answers to patients
When you say “He told me which tool I could use”, did you mean the doctor told you, or was that a typo and you meant that ChatGPT told you which tool and walked you through it? Seemed like the latter, but was too ambiguous to assume.
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