jdeisenberg

Possibly waiting for a reasonable replacement for US tech. For example, if the US should decide to shut off MasterCard and VISA services to Europe, it would create non-trivial difficulties for the European banking system.

The restaurant was one of those “all you can eat” salad bars. It closed during the early part of the pandemic and had been vacant for several months with no buyers, if I recall correctly.

I think this is a reference to when Dropbox was first introduced. I recall posts dismissing it as “just something that could be done as well with a bash script”.

I’m looking at the currency block. Each box has a colored “drop shadow”. I spent a minute or so trying to figure out what the significance of the color is. Finally, I noticed that the color appears to cycle between cyan, magenta, and yellow. Is this a design element only, or do the colors actually have some meaning with respect to the symbol?

I’ve donated to the Smithsonian in the past. I am now wondering whether to continue doing so.

Other news accounts not behind a registration/paywall: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/01/g-s1-80602/smithsonian-impeac... https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/the-smithsonian-removes...

Here in Graz, Austria, if nobody wants to get off at a bus stop and nobody is there waiting for the bus, it continues right on to the next stop. It all seems to work, somehow.

This is perfectly wonderful!!!

Having looked at some of the links in the article, I just realized that one extra feature of roundabouts is that they allow U-turns (which is not always the case at an intersection).

I am learning German, and I will read something that I don’t quite understand, make my best guess at what it means, and run it through Google translate. Then I compare the results and it helps me see where I went astray. Similarly, I write something that I think is proper German, and again compare the results to what Google translate says it should be. It’s sort of like having a native speaker sitting next to you and correcting you (except you have to come up with the explanation of the correct answer on your own, which is where knowledge of gender, conjugation, and declension comes in handy).

Plain old JavaScript (without frameworks) holds up rather well. My simplified blackjack game from 1998 (modified in 2003) and a calendar program from 2001 (probably written before then) still work in a modern browser.

The calendar program uses document.write(), which is very embarrassing nowadays, but then again, that was what people did back in 2001.

Wondering how this sort would perform with Unicode input (given 256 buckets); specifically what the results would look like.

There are a few outposts of The Kebab Shop (https://thekebabshop.com/locations/), and here in San Jose California area there are a lot of Mediterranean restaurants selling shwarma.

Addressed in the FAQ: https://github.com/SixArm/usv/tree/main/doc/faq#why-choose-u...

Main point: ”USV provides typically-visible letter-width characters (such as Unicode 241F), whereas ASV provides typically-invisible zero-width characters (such as ASCII 31).”

If you want something JavaScript-ish with strong type inference, take a look at ReScript (https://rescript-lang.org/)

I think the ending of Anathem is possibly one of his best; it’s an acknowledgment that it is the ending, it’s rather tender and sweet, and it fits the mood perfectly.

My EV has a “paddle” on the steering column that you can pull towards you to engage regenerative braking. I use the actual brake pedal maybe 20% of the time or if I need to do a quick stop to avoid hitting someone in front of me. I did like this sentence in the article: “Before stopping, take your foot off the gas and allow the vehicle to slow down naturally to a complete stop.” Off the gas?!

Ah, now I understand. My apologies.

See http://worrydream.com/refs/Tesler%20-%20A%20Personal%20Histo... (specifically the sidebar “How Modes Degrade Usability”) There’s also a sidebar “Objections to Modeless Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste”

I don’t see a link on that page where I can download the software. (I am exceptionally slow-thinking today, so it may be in a very obvious place and I have overlooked it.)

Driving from San José California to Los Angeles with 20 or 30 minute recharging stops every two hours works great for me. I get to walk around, stretch, maybe do some shopping if the charging station is at a shopping center. Yes, it adds time to the trip, but (at least for me) it’s a lot less stressful.

A gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds, so your estimate of 10 pounds is about 20% too high. To add to what someone else posted in terms of metric to “intutive” equivalences, 1 km is about 600 paces (for me, it’s also the distance from my house to the Asian market)

People living in metric countries have these sorts of “intuitive” relationships figured out. If you ever go to Europe, you will not see people anxiously furrowing their brows over their calculators to figure out how much things weigh or how far it is to the end of the block.

And, of course, there’s an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/526/

That’s why NPR (National Public Radio in the US) uses a disclaimer: “This is a developing story. Some things that get reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops.”

Interesting application, but my license plate (yes, I did renew the registration earlier this year) appears to not exist. The VIN number search gives the correct results.

[Edit: the results page should say “active lien” rather than ”active Lein”]

You might want to look into ReScript (https://rescript-lang.org/). It has strong static typing with type inference, and it is very fast.

I would not be surprised if the students in my beginning programming class are using it; on a discussion assignment to give an example of a Python dictionary that you would want to use to solve a problem that interests you, about 60% of the entries had approximately the same structure for the concluding paragraph (all of them had different wording, but the theme was the same):

“This Python dictionary could be useful for $HOBBYIST who is learning about $HOBBY and could help people familiar with $HOBBY to remember terms or use it for guidance in improving their skills at $HOBBY.”

I scripted a tutorial video, recorded it, and edited it. Then I used WhisperAI to generate a transcript for subtitles . The question is: can I use “not by AI” on the video, or did using AI for the transcript make it partially the product of AI, and not really mine?

Some interesting information about the BMI in this opinion piece: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268... (Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus)

If your face becomes your password, what happens if you are in an accident and get a broken nose, lose a couple of teeth, and get some stitches? Will you be locked out until you heal? If there’s permanent damage to your facial structure, how do you “reset your password”? (I will admit I have not done a thorough survey of the existing literature; I’m guessing others have thought of this problem and it has long since been solved.)

Citizen Bike (https://www.citizenbike.com/catalog.asp?product_category_id=...) has 20 inch wheels. Not ultra-compact, but the one I have is pretty good.

Adding to the mix: `when` is used for “guard clauses” in pattern matching in Ocaml, Erlang, and Elixir, so it’s not entirely unheard-of in programming languages.