gmantastic

This article discusses Intel Management Engine and a company offering laptops with it disabled: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/21/purism_cleanses_lap...

Simple lisps have very little, very regular syntax making them popular choices for "write your first interpreter" tutorials.

Is the motivation for commit-on-write to get a kind of persistent history for undo/redo? That is an interesting idea.

> What do you think would be a good set of criteria for what should count as a meaningful unit of work?

I'd consider a meaningful unit of work to be a bug fixed, or feature implemented, at least to the extent that you have a runnable version of the code again (even if you intend to do further work to implement it better e.g. replacing hard-coding). I'd consider changes short of this as not worth commiting, as this would not be a good starting point for further work (I know it's cheap to branch with Git etc., but it just feels untidy to leave something so part-done).

I save after every logical edit too - I think it's a good habit. You never get caught out by network/file-system failures, and can confidently reload from disk to a recent good state if you mess up or change your mind mid-edit.

I think commiting should be done for a more meaningful unit of work than a single edit, something logically 'complete' akin to a transaction.

Formerly functioning heavy-drinker. 4.5 years dry. Much happier.

Being 16-18 and studying for your A-levels can be a horrible time - it was for me. Relationships with your friends start to change as you grow up at different rates (I don't know whether this applies to you), interests change, and you have so little energy it feels like an effort to get out of bed before noon. Some things that worked for me were hanging out with some different, more studious people, and learning the course material from books in the order I chose rather than following the course (I missed a lot of classes, but I would't recommend that). Make a game out of getting the grades that will be your ticket out of there! On a serious note, if you think you might be depressed, talk to someone (a doctor or counsellor) about it.

Nice, I get it. Here's mine tweaked - not so clever: https://gist.github.com/garethjwilliams/7210264

Yeah, you're stuck with counting up from 1, although you could tweak it to suppress the output prior to a starting point.

Addition and comparison will suffice: https://gist.github.com/garethjwilliams/7202128

I agree that one should not use language likely to offend others on the grounds of sex, sexuality, gender identification, race, religion, physical appearance etc.

I don't really like the tone of this article though - why must I know and repudiate a short and odd list of derogatory terms? And who decides what the "proper term" for a particular group is? Is each group uniform in their preference? Or is the author stereotyping people?

Whilst this article might help raise awareness, there is no substitute for being a decent person, and thinking for yourself before opening your mouth.

There's some info on semantic differences here: http://docs.cython.org/src/userguide/limitations.html - it doesn't bring up much, and the design goal is full language compatibility. I've only played with it so far, but it's case of optionally adding type info, and also writing some distutils scaffolding to say how to build the module as a cython extension. This is then callable from Python via the regular import mechanism.

It's selectively adding C-like type declarations to Python code speed up the slow bits. C code is then generated and compiled into a Python extension module. This is similar to adding type information to Common Lisp code to allow the compiler to optimise it.

http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html

Cython might also be worth considering. It lets you add static type declarations to Python and produces compiled code. You could avoid a big-bang rewrite, migrating the slower operations first. I don't know whether it would meet all your cross-platform requirements though.

http://cython.org/

I liked Google Reader, but all those great posts queued up with no time to read them properly felt like neglected homework. It's a shame to lose it, but maybe for the best. I won't be rushing to recreate it.

Links posted on Hacker News and Twitter allow me to find something interesting to read when I need it, without making any kind of commitment. For the very rare thing that I don't want to miss, I subscribe by email.

Thank you.

Making a language that good programmers would freely choose to use is a great design goal.

In my first paid job I wrote loads of Cobol, even though I was already proficient in more expressive languages. I can't think of any scenario where I would freely choose to use it.

Today I sometimes write SAS code. This can be so painful I solve the problem in Python first, at home, in my own time, then port the solution to SAS. Python (and its ecosystem) is so nice to use, and productive, I'd rather use it and not get paid, than get paid to use something else.

Any language that passes that test is doing pretty well.

I got the same, so I finally tried TOR anonymisation (https://www.torproject.org/) - it worked a treat.

Great post. I stopped drinking for good 2 years ago, after 20 odd years of being drunk pretty much every night. For me, the enjoyment was gone, and only the habit remained, along with a pile of worries about if/when my health would fail. After a rough few days, I've not looked back, and have no plans to drink again (I could never moderate). I too have lost weight, feel great, and still enjoy parties. My wife is somewhat dismayed that the stupid behaviour she put down to the drink is actually the real me and my warped mind! If you like drinking and can drink in moderation, then keep going, but if you need to stop, then go for it. Just stop fully, and stay stopped. NB: I found Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Control Alcohol" book useful - he uses some great imagery I found helpful in the early days after stopping.

The best advice I could give is, whenever someone you manage brings you a problem, resist taking it away and solving it for them. Instead, give them some pointers on how they might solve it, but leave ownership of the solution with them. This is hard to do consistently, particularly when it would take you less time to do the work yourself, but the long-term effect is that you grow a team of self-sufficient people, who only bring you problems when they have tried hard to solve them themselves and genuinely need your help. This in turn means your time is freed up to work on the most important things.

I agree - this descended too quickly into a discussion of what the OP "deserved" or what his shares were worth when he left. His claim is based on ownership, which should be established (or disproved) according to the law.

I'm not deaf, but I strongly dislike companies calling me. Why do they think I am using the web or email to contact them? SMS spam is a growing problem too, and hard to filter (at least with the old phone I use). It all feels like an invasion of privacy, and companies should be aware I'm unlikely to buy anything from them if they force me to provide contact numbers.

I use it most days, but spend little time there. It's just a nice way to share a few pictures with fairly computer illiterate friends/family, and engage in a bit of schoolboy banter with my mates.

It's useless for any meaningful debate, and the constant copy-paste status updates from some people, which basically amount to scare-mongering/grief-porn chain-letters, annoy the hell out of me.

That's very helpful, thanks.

<blink> 2.0?

A week wasn't even long enough to grow the beard - he had no chance of getting the language design finished.

I worked through the Yudkowsky article yesterday, and had to picture/sketch venn diagrams to get my head round it. I find this far more intuitive - the way it translates back to the notation is really clearly presented.

This link's been plagiarised?

I think the article misses a point - in order to speak well, particularly off-the-cuff, one must first be able to think quickly and clearly. Looked at this way, judging people on how well they speak is a useful short-cut to assess their thinking skills (although not definitive).

Yes, Python Essential Reference by David M. Beazley is great. If you already know how to program, this is the one to buy and keep on your desk.