Hacker News Reader

keithpeteron GCHQ Cracks Frank Sidebottom's Codes

A couple of quotes from OA with a personal 'translation'

"GCHQ told Sullivan that Sidebottom "had a small but dedicated following" among its staff."

Couple of people do Sidebottom dialogues as an in-joke to the extent that it begins to annoy co-workers.

"[After random outer triangles explained] 'Right, we've cracked it during a light-hearted training exercise.'"

Took a couple of minutes as a starter in a session.

PS: I use a Playfair style grid to jumble up my pass phrases to try to make them less susceptible to rainbow table attack. Am I wasting my time?

keithpeteron Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle

I have years of sunburn to prove that the Mersey can be warmer than Spain...you just have to pick your times.

keithpeteron Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle

Age and education selection when comparing HN with general population.

keithpeteron Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle

Pop up to Liverpool one day and see what you think. Best when it isn't raining and the wind isn't too strong.

Bold Street and Jamaica Street might be good starting points, then there is Renshaw Street and the Baltic area.

keithpeteron An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)

Education and the health service (think buildings and land as assets for the latter) are the two remaining ones apart from something like the road system. I'm sure they will try these soon.

keithpeteron Poor public transport explains the UK’s productivity puzzle

Quote from OA

"The first journey is a bus from the south of the city, Stirchley to, Birmingham. This 3.5 mile journey takes about 20 minutes between 6am and 7am, and about 40 minutes between 8am and 9am."

That would be the school run. To test my hypothesis, I'm going to try to run the results during a school holiday in a bit.

Very pleased someone has actually done what I have often thought about (but done nothing about) while standing at the 97 bus stop in the rain early in the morning... getting the data from the departure system. I wonder how I can get my hands on a sample of the data...

keithpeteron An Iraqi who saved Norway from oil (2009)

Using common goods to finance tax cuts is a conservative party policy and it has been mentioned in their manifestos, although not in bald terms.

They could therefore argue for a mandate for the policy.

keithpeteron 1969 and 1970 at Bell Labs

UK, non-government public sector, very senior people still have secretaries - often described as personal assistants. The PAs handle interfacing and information flow, the senior people can get on with the thinking.

keithpeteron Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry

https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/luciano-floridi/

Publication records help to separate the wheat from the chaff.

keithpeteron Why Did San Francisco Schools Stop Teaching Algebra in Middle School? (2016)

Spiral curriculum is actually a widely used concept in teaching...

https://www.teachwire.net/news/ever-increasing-circles-what-...

keithpeteron Teardown of a 50-Year-Old Modem

UK 1976 I was doing a computer science O level at the local technical college (Wednesday afternoon release from my school). There was a 19" rack modem with accoustic coupler on the front and a dial to dial the number. That was connected to a teletypewriter. We did some BASIC 'interactive' programming (the main projects used coding sheets).

The system was vulnerable to thunder storms I remember (line noise). All good fun.

keithpeteron Brexit – where now? The flow diagrams

May3 as dead as the Monty Python parrot.

Odds of no deal being offered 2/1, as is 2019 referendum

Fri Mar 29 17:34:54 GMT 2019

keithpeteron Brexit – where now? The flow diagrams

"I have no idea how you guys are going to get out of this one"

Neither have I, but I imagine that time, geography and economics will sort it out.

EU changing, old guard turning over. UK voters changing each year due to the grim reaper and 17 year olds turning 18 (about 600k churn each year).

Charts are really useful. Hope they are updated.

keithpeteron End-User Programming

But when librarians got their OPAC systems, they started writing reports to analyse lending patterns and identify stock that was not being borrowed, and identifying lenders that had overdue books &c.

So the decrease in effort needed lead to an increase in analysis of the information captured in the system - new uses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talis_Group

keithpeteron The Fortran Automatic Coding System (1957) [pdf]

"I fondly remember her making her grocery lists and taking notes on the used punch cards that she'd bring home from work."

Old cards were useful for making revision notes as well. And the 'paperthrow' command got accidentally put inside a loop on my batch jobs sometimes so I had plenty of nice large lineprint paper for notes. 1970s at university in UK. (We did Algol 68 but then I had to deal with fortran later as a postgrad)

keithpeteron TWA Hotel Inside Eero Saarinen's JFK Airport Terminal Open for Reservations

Good quality 1960s buildings made of concrete with stone flagging and wood paneling inside are nice spaces. I always remember the feeling of light and space in the 1960s blocks I worked in at University (1980s, buildings then 20 years old)

keithpeteron Thinkpad X210

Probably works out a tad lighter than the X200 with whichever battery the user decides to use. The unmodified X220 I'm writing this on weighs 1.6 kg with the 'stick out' battery and I recollect that my old X200 was about the same.

keithpeteron Thinkpad X210

"The fan only turns on if I’m doing something intensive like compiling go or scrolling in Slack."

Things like scrolling down a recent issue Web site are the main reason I'm not still using a vintage unmodified X200. I realise that the OA quote was probably tongue in cheek but I do find that surfing the Web has become a processor intensive activity!

keithpeteron Associations of Cognitive Function with Carbon Dioxide and Ventilation (2016)

Acoustic isolation is a motivator for double glazing in some locations. And the vents are small (6mm by 30cm full open).

Most Victorian era houses have 'air bricks' in various locations (terracotta bricks with a small grid of holes in them) and the houses were pretty leaky.

UK government is moving to remove * cooking on open gas from the building regulations for new homes in a few years (big methane/burning fume generator). Eventually as post above parent says we will move to more rational ways of heating the houses. Piping an inflammable gas to millions of houses has always struck me as a bit strange.

keithpeteron Associations of Cognitive Function with Carbon Dioxide and Ventilation (2016)

Just reached 4:30 sec and he has mentioned lack of ventilation in their house, which I know to be a common problem with new build housing through dealing with condensation problems.

UK: most of the bog standard double glazed windows have a little vent up at the top so you can open a fairly small slat and get a small air gap.

35min: his risk priorities are mould, particulate matter, volatile organic chemicals, co2, on the grounds that CO2 is easier to manage

keithpeteron Report examines origins and nature of 'math anxiety'

Quote from OA

"The UK is facing a maths crisis: according to a 2014 report from National Numeracy, four out of five adults have low functional mathematics skills compared to fewer than half of UK adults having low functional literacy levels."

And yet the pass rate at GCSE and previously GCE O Level has been fairly stable at roughly two thirds passing give or take a couple of percent for 60 years...

Downloading report now.

keithpeteron The ‘Mad Genius’ Mystery

Isaac Newton was doing chemistry with a range of nasty heavy metals for years. A sample of his hair was analysed some time ago and found to contain significant levels of lead [1].

Boyle, Cavendish and their cohorts investigated a variety of sources and were not empiricists in the modern sense. Remember that they had e.g. no concept of yeast, bacteria, and yet saw the daily baking of bread and brewing of beer. Not surprising perhaps that they saw similar processes in the chemical realm? A flavour of the times slightly earlier can be seen in the use of astrology for medical purposes [2]

[1] https://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2008spring/ISP213H/welcome/we...

[2] http://theshakespeareblog.com/2014/06/shakespeare-and-the-al...

keithpeteron The sad state of font rendering on Linux

"I think it depends on one's requirements."

Computers are tools, endpoints these days. I have been happy with Linux but then again my needs are not super-complex.

I have a recent freetype with a defaultish configuration and the results on my small by today's standards monitors are readable.

keithpeteron CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild

Personally I get along with nmtui from the command line (as user) but I appreciate the desire for a tray icon of some kind.

keithpeteron Why 80s BASIC still matters

bas55 [1] is the closest I can find to a Dartmouth style basic (so 70s rather than 80s). Alas constants are truncated at 6 places (internal calculations are all doubles). It compiles fine and works well complete with LOAD, SAVE and limited line editing.

Does anyone know of a portable basic interpreter that supports double precision all through?

The kind of stuff I (used to) do [2] requires more than 6 figures.

[1] https://jorgicor.niobe.org/bas55/

[2] https://sohcahtoa.org.uk/kepler/moon2.html

keithpeteron Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

Alas, the L series thinkpads have the trackpoint but rely on the trackpad for clicking. Nice fast machines that have good battery life (e.g L440) but...

keithpeteron Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

Yup, I have an X61s running Xubuntu 18.04 quite nicely. 2Gb and a cheap 64Gb SSD.

keithpeteron Oldest Viable Laptop (2017)

Getting around 7h to 8h off my X220 with a 'no-name' battery (the larger kind that sticks out at the back). Fine for the last couple of years.

keithpeteron Tech tips for people who are going to die someday (2015)

I learned to cherish manual controls and to think about the will and documenting the basics (I'm 14 years younger than Tom West was when he died).

keithpeteron A 26,000-Year Astronomical Monument Hidden in Plain Sight

John North's book Stonehenge: Neolithic man and the cosmos explored the consequences of the precession for early structures in the UK that he interpreted as having astronomical significance (opinions vary on that one).