herodotus

This article was written in 2014

I had a raccoon pooping under my deck. I installed a motion detecting sprinkler to keep it away. In just a few days, the raccoon figured out that it could safely go behind the sprinkler to do its business. Now my deck is completely enclosed to stop them getting underneath.

Thanks!

Looks interesting. I have tried it out. Cannot see how to do this step:

> Import your statements from your broker or bank.

The novel referred to in this article is "The Maniac" by Benjamin Labatut.

(Article is paywalled)

If you have an online way for people to cancel membership or subscription, and if you ask the reasons for cancelling, at least have an "Other" option.

When my wife died over four years ago, I had to deal with her various online accounts. The most egregious was an organization where we had a family membership. I called them and told them she died. They expressed condolences, and said they would switch me over to my own membership.

When renewal time came, I received two emails: one to me, and one redirected from my wife's email address. Mine said (names changed for reasons of privacy):

"Dear Herodotus, We hope this email finds you and your family well. It is time to renew your membership...."

The second one said this:

"Dear Jane (Deceased), We hope this email finds you and your family well....."

Not all experiences were this bad, but I did get the feeling that most people building client databases do not give much thought to the one use case that is guaranteed for every entry in the client database: Death.

Be warned: the title is completely misleading. There is nothing new in this article.

This is a very badly written and highly inaccurate article. I think it is AI generated, and, if so, I sincerely hope that AI improves before the internet gets flooded by more nonsense like this.

If you really are interested in Pythagorus, please read the Wikipedia entry instead.

This is so strange: a few days ago I commented on an HN post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40582712) about when "programmer" became an acknowledged job title, and, in my comment, mentioned how I used a Chebyshev approximation followed by two iterations of Newton's method to compute sqrt, and then today this article shows up with exactly that use case!

I wrote that code (to compute sqrt 2) in 1974 or 1975 in IBM 360 Assembler. I used a conditional macro constant that increased the number of iterations of Newton's from 2 to 3 just in case the client wanted double precision.

Maybe. At CDC I my job title was Systems Analyst.

> programming wasn’t even a “real job” (early 1980s)

This made me laugh. You young-uns! I earned my first money for programming in 1970. I wrote, in IBM 360 assembly language, a "subroutine" to compute square-root, using a Chebechev polynomial to get a close approximation, and two iterations of Newton's algorithm to get the required precision. I got a job with Control Data Corp (as a COBOL programmer) a year or so later. But the real point of my laugh is that real jobs in programming probably started in the early 1950s.

When I use regular Safari on my MacBook Pro with an M2 chip, I get many "problem loading the page" messages. Completely repeatable on ebay. But on the "Technology Preview" I never see the message. I don't usually use early release software, but in this case the Safari Technology Preview has become my main browser.

Ok, I read the article. But I still don't know what the big lie is.

Waterloo press release: https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/cosmic-glitch-gravity

A book? A website? If a book, how does one buy it? If a website, what is the link?

A search just turns up essentially the article above which seems to be a copy and paste of the news release.

My landline provider offers a "call-control" feature. When someone calls, if the caller number has not been accepted before, a voice asks the caller to enter a randomly selected digit. Only after this has been correctly done is the call permitted to go through. Probably deflatable, but it has eliminated my robocalls. The only downside is that legitimate robocalls (eg: doctor's reminder) might be blocked if I have not whitelisted the number.

Simple solution, and I am surprised at how well it works.

Of course I know that security by obscurity is a bad idea. Hence I applaud the lock picking lawyer for his wonderful YouTube channel. But this latest video really makes me wonder: is this is a step too far?

Fun to look at the topic list. Not a hint of Neural Nets!

If they were familiar with Ptoloemy's almagest, they would be able to predict eclipses using geometric methods. Not perfect but surprisingly accurate according to Jayant Shah in the paper "Accuracy of Ptolemy’s Almagest in predicting solar eclipses"

More accurate methods using Newton's theories were yet to come.

Amusing, but nostalgic for me: my first job after graduating was working as a COBOL programmer for Control Data. This was while I was waiting to be accepted into graduate school at the University of Waterloo. I enjoyed working there. But was very happy to get accepted at Waterloo (and stop programming in COBOL).

Getting a new manager who lies to their reports and their manager.

Certainly, here's a comment:

It seems like you inadvertently left in a placeholder or instruction for ChatGPT within your article's introduction. While it's an understandable oversight, it's essential to thoroughly review your text before publishing to ensure such remnants are removed. This helps maintain the professionalism and polish of your work. If you need further assistance or editing help, feel free to ask!

The article itself never uses the term "AI" or "Artificial Intelligence". They do mention the use of a Neural Network as one part of their attempt to help find commonalities in their data set. It is too bad that the Oxford University press person chose to use that word in the title and in the article - badly (in my opinion) characterizing the work.

I have to applaud the library for releasing this report. In Canada, the most likely response to cyberattacks is mealy mouthed platitudes like "Please be assured that we take your privacy very seriously and are doing everything possible to recover the data and ensure that something like this does not happen again." and on and on.

So refreshing.

Many years ago (2011?) when I was working on PDF at Apple, and when Jailbreaking iPhones was a thing, someone posted a PDF on a Website. Just by reading the PDF on your device, it was Jailbroken.

Apparently the attack was done this way: someone modified an open source font library by removing bounds checking from one of its functions. They then waited 12 months to see if anyone had noticed or fixed the change. They then created a PDF with the font in question, including the embedded jailbreak code. The PDF was then released.

The article I cited above is well argued, includes citations and evidence, and is written by one of the top scholars in the field (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich).

When solid science is ignored by people in influential roles, it is of interest to this forum.

This article is wrong on many levels. A very good article to read about this is '"Crisis" versus Aesthetic in the Copernican Revolution' by Owen Gingerich

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4258973/Crisis%2...

Fun to see. When I worked on the implementation of Rod Burstall’s HOPE language (https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800087.802799) in 1979 I “invented” pattern compilation and implemented it (in POP-2) for the HOPE interpreter. HOPE patterns were of course way simpler than Haskell patterns, so my algorithm was pretty straightforward. From the math point of view, any function or arity n that has a parameter whose possible actual values belong to a finite discrete set can be replaced by a family of functions of arity n-1.