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inetsee

3,167 karma · joined May 31, 2008

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inetsee··on Why going to sleep during the 'golden hour' could save your life
For those of you who don't like paywalls (like me) an unlocked version of the research is here https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

And if you want a deep dive, the original article (including a LOT of details about the research) is here https://academic.oup.com/ehjdh/article/2/4/658/6423198

inetsee··on It's not your age that's slowing your metabolism, new research says (2021)
If it is true that frequent, brief, moderately intense exercise is that beneficial, I can see several ways that office workers can fit that into their workday.

If you work in a multi-floor office building: when going to the restroom, walk up stairs to a restroom on a floor above the one you work on; if you go out for lunch, walk to lunch, then walk up the stairs when you get back; if you are going to a meeting, leave you desk a couple of minutes early and walk up and down the stairs before going to the meeting room.

All of these ideas have something in common: walking up stairs is as close to HIIT that most people get during their day.

inetsee··on Ask HN: Where did you first learn to code?
When I was about 13 years old (60 years ago) I discovered a programmed instruction text that taught machine language programming. Not assembly language, machine language. It would have a page of explanation, followed by a multiple choice question. Your choice of answer would direct you to another page in the book. If your answer was correct, you'd see the next page of instruction. If you were wrong the page you landed on would give an explanation that would hopefully clear up your misunderstanding. I gave a book report on the book which cemented my nerd cred for the rest of my time in high school.

It was another 4 years before I was in college and was able to run a program on an actual computer. An Algol program on a Burroughs B5500 mainframe, complete with punched card reader and line printer. After I graduated I got a job with a defense contractor, and spent the rest of my career working for defense contractors. At one of my jobs I worked on the flight computer software for the Air Force C-130 cargo plane and I would never fly in one of those planes, but that's a story for another day.

inetsee··on CA judges rule Gilead can be sued for taking too long to develop an HIV drug
One of the things I spotted in my casual looking around is this statement: "Therefore, as part of the FDA approval process, Gilead was required to develop an alternative form of the chemical — known as a “prodrug”— that could be taken by mouth." [1]

If Gilead agreed to develop an alternative drug that had fewer adverse side effects in exchange for FDA approval of their preferred (more expensive) drug, then I think the lawsuit has a great deal of merit.

[1] https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/federal-court-rejects-drugma...

inetsee··on PiDP-11
My first job after graduation was programming and running a PDP-8 in a Psych lab (my degree was in Psychology with a minor in Computer Science). Data transfer was interesting from today's perspective. I would have to print out data to a teletype machine with the paper tape writer turned on, then take the paper tape to the computer center (where the Burroughs B5500 lived) load the paper tape into a teletype machine connected to the mainframe, and after that the mainframe would output the data on punched cards. After all the typos were corrected on the punched cards, the Psych Grad students could run their data analysis using programs also on punched cards.

One interesting episode I remember to this day was when we got some error messages from the PDP-8. I ran a diagnostic that said the one of the boards in the computer was experiencing intermittent errors. I ran a diagnostic which said yes one of the boards was failing. We had a maintenance contract, so I called DEC and they sent out a repair person. He ran the diagnostic again and confirmed that a board was failing. I expected him to just replace the board. But No! He pulled the board out of the computer, unsoldered a transistor, and soldered in a new transistor. After running the diagnostic to confirm that the problem was fixed he went on his way and we were back in business. Nowadays if you get a hardware failure you have to replace an entire Motherboard, or a memory board.

inetsee··on Folding anime production company set to destroy film masters in November
I'm wondering whether they could ship the film masters to the Internet Archive. They might even pursuede the Internet Archive to pay the shipping costs.
inetsee··on FTC sues Amazon over ‘deceptive’ Prime sign-up and cancellation process
I recently signed up for Prime after resisting for years. The only reason I signed up was for the rapid shipping. I was doing a lot of traveling and I needed to be able to get some stuff quickly. After my current trip I will almost certainly do whatever is required to cancel.
inetsee··on UK hobbyist stuns math world with 'amazing' new shapes
It's a sequence of coordinates for the vertices of the shape. Is that different from a sequence of words in a story or a book.
inetsee··on Show HN: Build your own ChatGPT with Mersei
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see any information about costs.
inetsee··on Why Japan's Moon Lander Crashed Due to a Computer Bug - Scott Manley [video]
This reminds of what happened to a Mars lander when one software team was doing calculations with the metric system and another team was using English measurements.
inetsee··on Show HN: The Leica MPi: A Leica M2 with a Raspberry Pi-Powered Digital Sensor
I really liked this article until I went out and looked at how much Leica M2s cost. The project may only cost $100 in Raspberry Pi parts, but it looks like acquiring a Leica M2 can cost thousands of dollars.
inetsee··on How to Sink a $3B Dollar Submarine: Leave a Hatch Open
Yes, people do make mistakes; often. Airline pilots have long checklists of things they have to do before taking off, and more checklists for dealing with problems that inevitably crop up.

A doctor named Atul Gawande wrote a book named The Checklist Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/...

Early in his career he did some research that showed that a simple pre-surgery checklist could reduce serious complications by more than a third. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/dr-atul-gawande-surgical...

inetsee··on Tom Lesley has published 40 books in 2023, all with 100% positive reviews
The Copyright Office has decreed that AI generated content cannot be Copyrighted. If these books have a copyright listing then they are a violation of the rules. I doubt if the "author" is at risk for legal repurcussions, beyond not being able to sue for copyright violation.
inetsee··on A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken
I remember reading this quite a while ago. My elaboration of this technique is to write the last sentence in my head, but only put the first part down on (paper) the end of the file. If I'm lucky, when I come back to it, I can read the first part of the last sentence, and memory will tell me how the sentence ends, I can just keep going.
inetsee··on Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine
You drive somewhere to pick up prints?
inetsee··on Core64: Interactive Core Memory Kit
The computer I worked with in my first job was a PDP-8 with core memory. We upgraded it from 4K words to 8K words for ONLY $5000.
inetsee··on Apple Makes Major Progress on No-Prick Blood Glucose Tracking for Its Watch
I have the Freestyle Libre system. The probe that "pokes through your skin" only happens once every two weeks, and my experience is that inserting a new Freestyle sensor hurts less than the average finger stick blood test. Before I got the Freestyle Libre I was doing finger sticks 4 or more times a day. With the Freestyle Libre I am checking my blood glucose an average of 20 times a day, and if I download the data from the Reader I can see glucose readings every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day.
inetsee··on Ask HN: How do you exercise?
I'm 72 years old and diabetic. There are significant limits on what I can do. My wife and I will do 30 minute walks 5 to 7 days a week. We go fast enough to get my heart rate up to the lower end of the aerobic zone. I also do strength training at the YMCA 3 or 4 days a week. I use the machines rather than the free weights. I worry about getting injured using free weights. I can't do many of the exercises other people have described here, but I do what I can. My weight is in the middle of the Normal BMI range, my diabetes is reasonably well controlled, and I think my strength is good for a 72 year old.

My recommendation would be to find an exercise that you enjoy doing, do it often enough to improve your health, and take your time; don't rush it. If you injure yourself it'll set you back to the beginning.

inetsee··on AMD Alveo V70 AI inference accelerator card
I have no problem imagining a security camera application needing to monitor quite a few video channels.
inetsee··on Ask HN: What's going on with Amazon Prime shipping times?
"They should be ... opening more warehouses."

Opening more warehouses would require hiring more people. I remember reading that turnover among Amazon warehouse workers is exceptionally high. Sooner or later Amazon will have to raise what they pay these workers, which will drive prices for products sold on Amazon to increase.

inetsee··on Ask HN: Good Fitness Band?
My cat is quite insistent. You really don't want to cross her!
inetsee··on Ask HN: Good Fitness Band?
I used to have a FitBit that I wasn't entirely happy with. After some health issues, I recently upgraded to a FitBit Charge 5 that I'm mostly satisfied with. It was quite inexpensive; I got mine for $99. It does continuous heart rate monitoring, but I have doubts about the accuracy of its resting heart rate calculation. It has all of the "interesting sensors" you listed, but I haven't explored them all. The one feature that decided me was the ElectroCardioGram (ECG) function. It's not perfect. It requires that you sit very still for 30 seconds with thumb and forefinger grasping the sides of the FitBit, and it only checks for A-Fib (Atrial fibrillation), but there aren't that many fitness bands that have that function, and it was important to me to get one with that feature.

My biggest disappointment with this band is the sleep tracking (which was also a failing with my previous FitBit). I have to get up at 7:30 to feed my cat, then I go back to bed for an hour or so. Both my old and my new FitBit record 7:30 as the end of my sleep period; they ignore the sleep time after 7:30. I'm also not convinced that a band you wear on your wrist can accurately track REM sleep.

I use the FitBit app for some other features and controls, but I have no idea about "Open data access, reverse engineered APIs, 3rd party data analysis apps".

All in all, I'm happy with my FitBit Charge 5, and I think it's a good value for its price.

inetsee··on Ask HN: What is the best advice you received in 2022?
This is not something from 2022. I read it decades ago and it has stuck with me all this time.

"Wishing without work, is like fishing without bait."

inetsee··on CDE 2.5.1
I used CDE professionally back in the day (a long time ago). It was very good in its day, but I use KDE now, and I would never go back to using CDE. If I were feeling nostalgic for old software I'd rather go play with TOPS-20.
inetsee··on The Chaostron: An Important Advance in Learning Machines (1961)
I got to the end of the paper before I noticed that it was published in the April issue of Communications of the ACM. I have a hard time believing that this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

I provide as evidence this line from near the end of the paper: "Thanks are due ... to Mr. V. A. Vyssotsky for manually simulating the 704 simulating STRETCH simulating Chaostron"

inetsee··on A Little Smalltalk (1987)
An archive of "The Little Smalltalk" code is still available here https://github.com/crcx/littlesmalltalk

The last update was six years ago.

inetsee··on Reverse Engineering a Cat Feeder to Boost Productivity
I was actually just thinking about a Tamagotchi-like program that required regular productive activities in order to keep a virtual pet alive, healthy and happy. A computer program would not need to deal with all that messy real world hardware; it would all be virtual.

You could also add a function that makes your virtual pet unhappy if you spent too much time reading Hacker News. Instant productivity boost.

inetsee··on Volume 4B exists
It might help if the title was more informative. E.g. Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, Vol 4B is going into press.
inetsee··on A surprising way to lose your files on Windows
A backup from months ago is (somewhat) better than a backup from years ago or no backup at all.
inetsee··on Character.ai says malicious\wrongful-takedown targets must pre-absolve enemy
I found this part particularly interesting: "If you are a California resident, you waive California Civil Code Section 1542," Can they actually say that they are immune from the California Civil Code?
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