jordigh

He still parades that around as his magnum opus in his latest blog post:

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2024/08/five-most-produc...

Yeah, I think it's fair to judge him by it.

Genius? The one who came up with a new kind of science?

It's a sign error.

https://github.com/asig/MAD_computer_program?tab=readme-ov-f...

A port to GNU Octave...

   x = [
   -27,-11,-23,-6,-28,-13,-22,-6,-20,-5,-12,-5,-27,-14,-26,-13 ...
   -38,-29,-42,-28,-40,-28,-50,-16,-8,13,0,13,-29,4,-29,9 ...
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   42,84,46,85,44,50,39,52,42,50,39,51,41,85,40,85,39,86,33,86 ...
   38,51,33,48,35,79,35,58,34,79,34,58,34,57,32,56,34,80,32,79 ...
   32,85,30,83,31,83,31,80,30,82,30,79,31,55,29,55,33,49,23,49 ...
   32,48,25,48,24,50,22,50,28,55,17,78,18,79,20,79,20,80,20,84 ...
   21,51,18,48,19,50,17,48,16,48,14,48,17,49,14,49,19,85,11,86 ...
   13,48,12,53,12,48,11,53,11,54,15,57,15,58,14,59,14,59,-1,59 ...
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   -48,49,-56,71,-56,71,-60,56,-52,85,-54,84,-55,83,-59,85 ...
   -60,86,-64,86,-59,55,-58,54,-57,54,-55,55,-55,54,-55,50 ...
   -56,50,-57,48,-57,49,-61,49,-58,48,-60,48,-61,48,-64,51 ...
   -62,48,-65,50,-65,85,-67,84,-67,83,-67,79,-68,83,-68,79,-66,79,-64,79 ...
   -63,78,-68,56,-69,55,-64,78,-66,49,-72,49,-68,48,-73,48 ...
   -69,55,-73,55,-73,55,-73,48,-74,49,-74,54 ...
   61,71,61,65,60,73,60,63,59,73,59,72,60,65,58,60 ...
   59,61,54,56,59,74,55,78,59,75,54,80,54,80,48,80 ...
   46,79,55,79,54,56,48,56,47,57,46,57,47,78,46,78 ...
   45,78,45,58,7,76,11,66,10,66,6,76,9,66,1,66,0,66,6,75];

   l = reshape(x, 4, 522)';
   [x1, y1, x2, y2] = deal(l(:,1), l(:,2), l(:,3), l(:,4));
   sz = 1.2;
   xc = 140;
   yc = 90;
   fx = x1*sz + xc; fy = 176 - (y1 + yc);
   lx = x2*sz + xc; ly = 176 - (y2 + yc);
   plot([fx+1, lx+1]', [fy, ly]', '-b', [fx, lx]', [fy, ly]', '-b');
   axis tight;
   axis off;
   axis ij;
   h = title('What, me worry?');
   set(h, 'position', [140, 170]);

Which model? My Sansa Clips all died in various ways. Maybe I was too rough on them.

This makes me long for the days of RockBox on Sansa Clip devices.

https://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansaclipz...

Huh? No, the article says the stonemason chose a star because nobody would be able to tell that a 17-gon isn't a circle. I have heard this story repeated before in Gaussian biographies, but I'm surprised I can't find a single picture online that shows that this did or did not happen.

Does Gauss's headstone actually have a 17-pointed star on the back? I can't find any pictures of this online.

> On Sunday, Google posted a blog warning that any attempt to break up its ad business could rattle customers who choose to use Google's ad tech because it "is simple, affordable, and effective."

Has that ever been true? Every instance I know of monopolies being broken up has been good for customers.

You only feel this way because it's written about something you worked on.

* Co-Pilot is trained on copyrighted code without attribution: ludicrous?

* Github works with ICE: incoherent?

* All of Github's hosting code is proprietary and secret: ridiculous?

* Github tries to discredit copyleft: hyperbolic?

* Github is wholly owned by Microsoft who also doesn't like copyleft: conjecture?

As to SFC not having anything better to do... this is exactly what their mandate says they should do. This is what they collect money to do: to point people towards free software. If you want SFC to find something better to do, I assume you want them to completely shut down their organisation and stop complaining about undermining copyleft and stop complaining about non-free code.

Thank you. I've been struggling with a good story for configuration. I'm not entirely satisfied either with using environment variables for everything.

Using Docker, you can just put your env-vars in a file and execute Docker with --env-file specifying where your configuration is, which is what I currently do, but perhaps a .env file would be more standard and comfortable.

It is intended to replace spreadsheet use, and the database columnar restrictions are intentional.

Moreover, since it's using sqlite in the backend for the database, cells are allowed to hold the wrong type (and big, red warning colours light up when this happens). This is a sqlite characteristic. So while it mostly does enforce database-like behaviour, it also allows spreadsheet-like lax behaviour.

It really is a mixture of database and spreadsheet.

If Python in a spreadsheet is what you want, you might like Grist:

https://www.getgrist.com/

Disclaimer: I work there. I'm trying to make it easier to self-host. Send me github issues or pull requests if you have ways of making it better. :)

Laziness in Haskell is so hard for me to understand. I never have any idea what the runtime performance of something I write in Haskell will be. It's either blazingly fast or molasses slow, and I can never tell.

Took a while, but this commenter is finally correct:

> Why does Authy require I provide my cell phone number and email address? Why do I have to have a user account? This is completely ridiculous. I do not need nor want cloud syncing or backup. You are making Authy a potential target for attacks by associating a user to cloud stored 2FA information.

> This is not in the spirit of 2FA.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9100560

What's Authy's proprietary TOTP protocol? Is it just in fact HOTP, like Duo?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20936222

Not everything, depends on the system. On the NES, for example, you can only mess around with RAM if you find ACE, but if the cartridge is using CHR ROM, whatever you create with ACE must still use the only tileset available to the game. You can get creative drawing graphics with a fixed set of tiles, but you'll be constrained nonetheless.

There may be other constraints for other systems. I don't know the SNES architecture too well, but I assume even with ACE you're still limited in various ways to the constraints of the cartridges.

The game is currently available for 8 bucks along with hundreds of other games in the latest itchio bundle:

https://itch.io/b/2321/palestinian-relief-bundle

Aren't the backdoors gonna be in the baseband firmware that no phone allows you to modify?

I always felt that we basically "lost" with open source: Intel did the Management Engine and phones stuck everything in the baseband.

There's no real possibility of having fully software-hackable hardware. Someone else ultimately has control of all hardware, if they want to exercise that control.

He has written about it before, but listening to the podcast, the most interesting part for me that led to the Freund's discovery is that the hotspot had no debugging symbols attached to it. In free software, trying to hide something actually makes it stick out more.

I wonder if a subsequent, more sophisticated attack could add some bogus debugging symbols to better hide its track.

Let me see if I'm the first one to link to that classic story in the same series, "I cannot send email further than 500 miles"

http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

Or the Magic/More Magic switch

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

It's fun when physical reality meets the abstract models that we have built in our heads of these machines.

r/atetheonion

Actually, they lived about the same distance apart as Paris and Budapest.

They of course were aware of each other, but for the most part were separate. The Aztec empire did not include the Maya.

> The Stone of the Sun, now understood as a sacrificial altar.

Eh?

I still thought they couldn't figure out what it was for.

Hmmmm... It does say here that modern archaeologists think it was for sacrifices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_sun_stone#History_of_int...

As an aside, a pet peeve of mine is when people in pop culture portray the Maya with the Aztec sun stone, or any other such confusion between Mayans and Aztecs. They lived very far apart! It would be like confusing the French with the Czechs!

Ah, so that's why people are chair fencing during compile times.

I pronounce it "fsck", without a vowel, like "pssssst" when calling someone.

English has vowel-less words! A few, at least.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_words_without_vowels#A....

We have good record of when "I accidentally" started. Circa 2008.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-accidentally

"LOL" goes back to IRC so at least 1980s or so.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LOL#cite_note-mcculloch-1

This is pretty old. It's been around for at least a decade, maybe longer. Do you remember when you were working on it?

Can I get an explanation of the relationship between .NET and Mono?

I have vague memory of reading somewhere that Mono or maybe just MonoBuild was completely obsolete since everything was now open source in .NET.

Does Mono still have a reason to exist? Is it all incorporated into .NET now?

(btw, I still don't get why it's called .NET, and I don't know if assemblies are native code or bytecode wrapped in the same binary format as .exe, where is the ".NET for hardcore open source Linux nerds" blog post?)

It should have been called "issue 9", which would have been a great name, expandable to "Issue 9 from Google Labs", very unique, nicely abbreviated to i9 for compiler and filename extension.

I was there, along with many others, and I'll never forget that this language has a dumb name and it could have had a much better name:

https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9#issuecomment-66047467