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kephra

1,088 karma · joined February 14, 2011

http://kephra.de/

products:

http://kephra.de/xml-edifact/ UN/EDIACT parser using the semantics of the standard to create human readable XML.

http://w3dig.com/ Domain specific language to write search engines.

prototypes:

http://o3db.com/ a web 4gl in Scheme

/join #o3db on freenode

submissionscomments
kephra··on Words matter in ‘ISIS’ war, so use ‘Daesh’
Its interesting to read Daesh in Boston Globe, a western propaganda media. The usage of the degrading Daesh is very common in Russian friendly media like vineyardsaker or southfront.

Well, those old Russian propaganda experts knew, that its important to deny them their prefered words like "Islamic" and "State", but instead call them with a bad word, that accidentally is also an acronym of their name.

PS: consortiumnews is also using Daesh

kephra··on Arson Artist sets fire to FSB HQ entrance
and a bit explaining text:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/russian-performance-ar...

kephra··on Great Firewall rising: How China wages its war on the Internet
So we have two of them: one "appointed" by US, and one by China. For further enlightenment, meditate about the half zero ༳ in Tibetan unicode.
kephra··on [dead]
take a look at her about page - an 11yr old girl is owning and operating this business.
kephra··on The End of Software Versions
My idea for o3db is currently: I'm using date to calculate version number. But the server side will announce protocol and version. This allows both a continuous release, and experimenting with server protocols.
kephra··on On Tinder, Off Sex
The thing I wonder about her: She did not had sex for two years, and still wants to continue taking the pill, to be available anytime to men who are to stupid to ask (or to smell), if she has the 3 days when French games are topic.
kephra··on In Search of the Science in Economics
The main problem of social science like history or economy is that they are political shaped sciences. Both pick those pattern that fit into their world view, to form a religion like truth of how the world worked. And state payed historian or economic scientist will normally preach the view of their system.

I did not have time for this year Riksbanks Rris, but e.g. in 2013 we saw a typical price " should discard its mathematical pretensions " and better just tell its political agenda straight. Instead they used a positivistic computer simulation, which basically means: I have a row of theories (CAPM, OPT, EHM, ...) that have several unknowns and I tweak their parameters till simulation shows the results that I want to show.

kephra··on Building Web Applications with Make
Make has a templating system, e.g. to generate .html file automatically from .t fragments. My Make_HERE_CMS is based on Make and here Scripts.

Look at: http://kephra.de/blog/Make_here_CMS.html

oh well I should really document the xslt part for the left side picture gallery of my site.

kephra··on The Threat Coming by Land
it starts promising with:

> Landlords are eating the world.

but it then falls short, by only pointing to the tip of the iceberg, the rising prices in city centers. But the problem is much bigger in the rural, in 2nd and 3rd world, where former small farms are replaced by big agriculture corporations.

> To understand why, we have to look at the reasons land has value in the first place.

And he totally fails here. He fails to explain, that land ownership depends on the state monopoly on use of force, and legalization of murder, rape and genocide during the time the state acquired the land. He fails to explain that money equals debt, debt is often preferring land as security, and therefore land prices are doomed to rise globally.

I do not expect a Marxist analysis in Economist, but I would at least expect some in deep comparison of how different countries cope with this problem. Point to massive buyout of agricultural land in eastern Europe, point to the housing bubble in Spain, point to how Hartz IV stabilized the German housing market, ... but this article is only pointing to the iceberg in front of the unsinkable.

kephra··on Ask HN: CTM gave CS the “kernel language”. Is there a “kernel database”?
Old but classic is C.J.Date's "An Introduction to Database Systems". This book covers most concepts required for databases, and the reason why relational databases had been an improvement over prior key-value, hierarchical, and network databases.

One could consider relational language as a database kernel language.

kephra··on SICP Distilled: An idiosyncratic tour of SICP in Clojure
What is the sense in teaching SICP in a language that has no tail optimization? McEval would run straight into the wall.
kephra··on A neuroscientist who believes addiction is not a disease
Both do same error, that they start with premise of curing addicted people. The same error that nearly all psychologist or psychiatrists share. They declare people who are not normal as insane, and want to change them. A better way, imho, is to make people conscious that they are different, and thats important for them to find a place in life, where their difference is a bonus.

One of my favorite parable, is the imagination: You are very talented. You can lay eggs. Society defines being healthy as not picking on other chicken or own feathers. But its not you who is insane, the cages are a system of insanity.

The extreme cases of junkies on the street, and alcoholics in their flat come into mind, when thinking about addiction. Those are extreme cases of people who have no place in real life also. The drugs, are their way to find a place in life to be happy. Even if only for a short time. Teach them ways to become autonomic, to find their own path through life, and addiction will calm down by itself.

kephra··on Anti-Web-Design Manifesto (2013)
> 6 No non-standard fonts

I really hate those. Especially sites like github who capture the Tibetan Unicode block for their font, as this is a character set that I need. http://kephra.de/src/WylieUTF8/

ok I'm likely one of the few who can read Tibetan, but this shows a typical US ignorance, and certainly gives github a bad karma, as they make it impossible to display any Tibetan text on github.

11: Sites that can be viewed better without CSS, if you are a NoScript user. e.g. main page of Medium shows a grayed out layout where its not possible to click on articles without JS. But the become readable again once you disable CSS also. eBay does similar.

kephra··on Ask HN: Do you use an antivirus?
I'm using hierarchical backup. Logfiles of backups could tell when and how maleware spread. And even more important, one can restore a system after infect quickly.

I'm using a detached screen for ssh master control, and an rsync script to sync servers to my backup server, from where hierarchical backup is done to USB disks in the most simple way: `cp -al` and rsync. I have 3 piles of disks. One attached, one in the shelf, and one at a neighbor and shuffle them weekly.

I'm using network scans, and keep things containerized with tight fitting firewall rules.

kephra··on Deep learning for assisting the process of music composition
The generated sniplets have a lot of pentatonic intervals. Of course pentatonics makes music more harmonic, but we are used to more disharmonics adding color. I can not look at the notes sheets, but I guess the genenerated music has less disharmonics then original Irish fiddle.
kephra··on Developers who can build things from scratch
I think most people first think about developers who can not build from scratch. Those who require frameworks, and can only fill the gaps.

So one trait a from scratch developer must show, is being a toolsmith. Most startups do not have the time to build everything from scratch. Instead they have to pick tools to solve their problem. A toolsmith can quickly validate if a tool is suited for the task, and is able to create new tools if necessary.

So there are few things one can check before hiring a developer: A toolsmith published his tools, frameworks or libraries. A bughunter contributed to 3rd party projects. ...

Or in short: A developer who did things from scratch, will be proud showing them. An this will show where his strong and weak points are. ( e.g. my weak point is design )

kephra··on I Will Kill You [video]
I there an alternate source for this video, who does not censor?
kephra··on Oracle’s license agreement as it pertains to reverse engineering
lets wait, if Oracle does a DCMA on Archive.org

I guess some more people did screenshots, or pdf prints of that page, just for the case Oracle wants a Streisand Effect.

kephra··on Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?
I solved many challenging problems, e.g. I wrote a parser generator, that can generate itself, I wrote an UN/EDIFACT parser that was parsing the human readable UN standard to create a parser for a semantic translation. My Y2K PTFs run on every MVS and OS/360 system. I did a lot of machine learning in the last 10 years, e.g. optimizing maintenance of Siemens power plant turbines or quality control for injection molding machines.

But ... I'm taking the biggest challenge right now. I'm coding my Onyx database client idea for 3rd time. The hardest problem was to start o3db. I failed badly with Onyx 20 years ago by burnout holding over half a million lines of C++ in flow together with nearly 10k lines of my own 4gl, during the 3rd customer installation of Onyx. I was very shy of coding UI/UX afterwards, escaped deep into server stuff, machine learning - escaped as far away from user as possible.

So, my biggest challenge was to start Onyx again: A user facing UI/UX for common business database applications with its own fourth generation language. I've decided for Scheme as an intermediate language this time, and the prototype running well. I now have a non recursive Scheme interpreter and GUI running in browser, able to process the meta tables defining an application. Its still a long road to my vision. But to start a project again, I failed with a burnout 20 years ago, and to code it with actual technology, was the biggest personal challenge.

/join #o3db on freenode, if interested in a startup to create common business database clients for the web.

kephra··on How to implement a spreadsheet
I know a dirty Spreedsheet for browser. I first seen it in IRC, iirc. I was a greedy copycat to paste it into my site, for the case paste server goes down.

http://kephra.de/copycat/zarasheet/

I kept the references. Both the original fiddle and the authors website are linked from my page.

kephra··on Ask HN: Most hacker friendly laptop on the market?
> a good work machine that would suit all three roles

You need a server that is hosted in the internet, a desktop system with a good mouse and keyboard, and two or more screens, and a laptop that is portable and cheap.

I really can not see, how to combine those 3 different roles, into one machine, as those roles have different locations: Server room, desktop and shoulder bag.

For laptop the only requirements are: max 2lbs as one has to carry it, maximum $300 as a laptop can be damaged or stolen easy, and it must run 100% free software without binary blobs, when it comes to wifi and graphics.

kephra··on Two ways of thinking about economics
I wonder, why he is ignoring the iron law of wages: Under free market conditions, wages tend to the minimum necessary to sustain the life of the worker.

When free market is interrupted by state, union power or lack of workers with a special skill, the nominal wages rise. But the situation for the workers will stay same, because of the Iron Law of Wages constrain. There will still be some days left end of the month, when he runs out of money. Because when wages rise at a local market, the housing cost will rise next at this market.

This can be seen best in Switzerland where wages, taxes, and housing costs differ in every canton. Similar if you compare housing costs and wages in upper state New York, and in NYC. Housing costs and taxes will rise, if wages rise. Pushing those with the lower wages out of the market of better housing.

So if a state wants that minimum wages or unconditional income grants have a positive effect on the people, then the same state must invest in social housing first, to lower the housing costs, before raising wages.

kephra··on Ask HN: How to learn about the history of computing?
I would advise to hands on machine. You can run many classical machines in emulators like Hercules now.

e.g. Try a bit on COBOL and REXX to process records in a batch. Next play around with Panel Features, Overlay Generation, CICS and CODASYL to write classical interactive applications. This will show that web is just 3270 on steroids, with a much bigger memory and CPU footprint.

Now read Stonebraker and C.J.Date, and realize what a relieve relational medium size databases had been. That the burden of non relational databases only makes sense for small size high performance databases that fit into RAM, or big databases that have to scale over a cluster.

You can also explore Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth, and P-Code machines. Operating Systems like Oberon or Spin. Each of them will offer an insight of how virtual machines evolved. And languages like Lisp, Smalltalk, and Forth are eye opening as they enforce their paradigm.

kephra··on Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”
One must note, that this interview was given to the German newspaper "Die Zeit". So its important to note, what he did not mention:

The repayment of Germans debt is only delayed till Germany has a peace treaty. The 2+4 contract is not a peace treaty, but deliberate "instead a peace treaty" just allows the Russian occupied part to join the US, UK and French occupied parts.

The Euro-Zone is facing a dilemma. A debt cut, followed by inflation and taxing of private assets, would require that Greece still has monetary sovereignty. But all Euro states, even Germany and France, gave up their monetary sovereignty. None of them is a complete sovereign state anymore. An obscure bureaucracy in Brüssel is creating laws, that national governments just have to sign. And entering EU is like a roman Catholic marriage. A nation can join, but not leave EU.

kephra··on Ask HN: Share an idea?
I sometimes even registered the domains, e.g. toothing.org The name offers various cell phone games, even the toothing hoax itself.

The next odd idea requires expert knowledge in Babylonian contracts. Every change of ownership without a contract was theft. Contracts involving people required a cancel clause for each side. And ownership on people without contract was punished by death, as illegal slavery. So most contracts are marriages. The contracts are highly formalized, so one can use them as templates and exchange the names. Print them on a clay tablet, burn them, and send them by mail. I'm sure marriage contracts would sell, especially those with the cancel clause: "and when she says you are no longer my man, he can throw her into the river".

The 3rd and most challenging idea would be a project and freelancer site that does not suck. Where projects, prices and skills do not race to the bottom.

And last shameless plug about something real You can contact me on #o3db @ irc.freenode.net - currently developing a Browser-4GL in Scheme.

kephra··on Crystal Language
imho, starting a new language with Boehm GC is a very bad design choice. It means, that one just allocates memory, and does not care for managing it. Even worse, it prevent linking any library, e.g. a 2nd thread running Lua+C, that cares for its own memory, because Boehm GC runs over the complete memory, not only the one the language has to manage.

You basically need 3 types of memory: First for the objects in your language, 2nd for foreign light weight objects, where you only know a pointer, and 3rd for foreign heavy weight objects, that gets their memory from your GC.

> it uses stop-world

A fully concurrent GC is impossible, if variables are mutable. Regardless how tricky your GC delays the problem, there will come a point, where it has to stop all threads to collect the edge cases. This creates the GC dilemma, because currently only number of cores and amount of memory becomes cheaper, while single core performance stayed same for nearly 15 years.

kephra··on Hn Downvote notes
If someone upvotes your negative comment, the complete thread goes up a bit. Thats the opposite, that your want with a downvote.
kephra··on The End of the War on Drugs and the Emergence of the Cannabis Industry
I've heard rumors, that Monsanto is behind the legalization of marijuana, planing to sell seeds, fertilizers and herbicides.

Is there any truth behind this rumor?

kephra··on Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You
NoScript will prevent most of those evil trackings by default. e.g. cdc.gov displays fine without any JS, and google analytics or addthis on my untrusted list anyway.

Its still possible to browse without JS most of the time. Some pages are crippled by design, so disabling CSS might show the content. Others provide a escaped_fragment variant. But a stupid JS antipattern is sometimes used to display normal content with JS. One big problem are domains like ajax.google. This is often used to enhanced website, but google using it to track users.

When talking about evil Google, one needs to add YT. A friend of mine once claimed: You watch a stripper, if you visit YouPorn. But you strip your privacy, if you visit YouTube.

kephra··on How not to interview someone who already has a job (2011)
So a HR who successfully poached an employed coder, hired someone who is willing to drop work at the moment he gets a better offer.

The other HR stupidity is, that its much easier to get a raise, if you switch jobs often, then if you stay in a job long enough to be productive.

The result are projects broken by HR causing to much fluctuation.

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