kevhito

How many 'r's are there in the next 30 seconds of this [1] song?

[1]: https://youtu.be/l7vRSu_wsNc?si=SndkB6GBaRyhvNNA&t=61

If we consider outright slavery, would that statistic count a slave as a "non-contributing" member of society? After all, they must be fed, and housed, but pay no taxes. What a burden they are!

Like freeways, it's not clear that increasing the baseline ram for basic laptops is an effective way to mitigate software bloat. Rather it likely creates bloat.

Ironic then that [0] (the first hit when I search "emacs org mode tutorial") says:

    You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code= and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, +strike-through+.

[0]: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html

Me: tell me the current date please

Chatgpt.com 4o: Today's date is March 11, 2025.

Claud.ai 3.7 sonnet: The current date is Tuesday, March 11, 2025.

gemini.google.com 2.0 flash: The current date is Tuesday, March 11, 2025.

grok.com: The current date is March 10, 2025.

amazon nova pro: The current date, according to the system information available to me, is March 11, 2025.

Please keep in mind that my data and knowledge were last updated in October 2023, and I don't have access to real-time information.

chat.qwen.ai 2.5-max: I don't have access to real-time data, so I can't provide the current date. However, you can check the date and time on your device's clock or by searching online. Let me know if you need help with anything else!

chat.deepseek.com: Hi there! I suggest getting online to get real-time information. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to let me know!

anthropic/claude35sonnetv2: Today's date cannot be [2024-11-23], as that is a future date. I can only verify that we are having this conversation today and cannot independently determine the current date. You may want to check your system clock for the accurate current date.

meta/llama32.90B: I don't have real-time access to the current date. However, based on our conversation history, I can tell you that my knowledge cutoff is December 2023, and you mentioned earlier that the conversation started after that. You can check your system clock for the accurate current date.

mistral/mistral-7b-instruct-v0: I'm unable to determine the current date, as I don't have real-time access or the ability to check your system clock. You should check your own system or a reliable online source for the current date.

google/gemini-2.0-flash-exp: I cannot give you the current date. I do not have access to real-time information.

I like the idea of users being able to pick their 3-hour window and timezone, and maybe only can change your window setting once per day (or maybe only pick a new window that starts at least 24 hours in the future). But crucially, each such 3-hour window and time zone combination has entirely isolated and independent content, as if it is a different site.

So my community could be 7:02-10:02pm EST. And if I instead switch to say 6am-9am IST instead, I can check in with the folks who like to meet in the mornings in india, but I am temporarily gone from my own local community.

"This is completely wrong." Is it completely wrong? Or maybe "somewhat" wrong? Maybe just lacking nuance? I know nothing about the answer to this question, so this is an honest question.

Using just a plain old search engine, for things like "national drink of the netherlands" and simlar queries, I am directed to Wikipedia's Jenever page as the top hit, and Wikipedia's list of national drinks lists Jenever and Heineken as the entries for the Netherlands. Search engines also give page after page of travel guides and blog posts, most of which list Jenever at or near the top of of their listings. One travel guide calls it "the most famous Dutch spirit and most famous Amsterdam liquor, Jenever, also spelled Genever or simply Dutch gin."

Maybe also need to show that there are no other naturals between 1 and 7? And also that numbers greater than 7 can't be a divisor of 7?

I have another fork that is still (mostly) maintained and used as well: https://github.com/kevinawalsh/logisim-evolution

The REDS-HEIG version you link to has more development activity, support for a wider variety of FPGAs, and a few other advanced features. My version has some neat features not found in REDS-HEIG fork, and usually aims to keep the interface more beginner-friendly and streamlined for use as student's first-contact with digital circuits.

What do you mean? All the inputs are continuous: light sensors, LIDAR, infra-red, inputs from mechanical sensors from the driver. Sure, the sensor package's hardware/firmware/software converts these to discrete inputs before it reaches the Driving AI, but all of the Buridan's Paradox results still apply to those sensor packages. They can't perform their tasks in a finite amount of time -- either they will sometimes fail to make a decision at all, or they will render an invalid output (e.g. rather than outputting voltage corresponding to logical 0 or 1, they will go into a meta-stable or astable output mode that is not a valid output voltage).

The paper specifically details several situations in which humans are the ones making the decision, and the result is the same. There is no bounded-time decision procedure that can take continuous (i.e. physical) inputs and render a discrete decision.

The missing piece of "just choose to always go left" is that this is a degenerate and uninteresting case. No decision is being made.

The range must be discrete and at least 2 possible values.

There is nothing about optimality at all here. Even if both possible outputs are equally "optimal", there is no procedure to pick one in a finite amount of time.

> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior.

The idea that a vaccine is a punishment is disturbing. I'm glad to have been able to get it.

Did you get the pattern wrong? From the screenshot, it really looks like the pattern is: close "x", then title, then icon, then a gap before the next tab.

At least, that's what I thought it was, and now I'm not sure. Without a border, there is no way to tell which "x" goes with which tab. Without a visual grouping using some kind of border or shading, wouldn't the "x" make more sense located next to the icon and title?

> you can publish macOS software without paying $99 year.

Can you point to straightforward apple instructions for doing so?

I publish an open source project used in classrooms, mostly used by my own students but also others. Despite strong and principled objections, which I hung on to for years, I have simply given up and now pay the fee. I'd love to not have apple be the gatekeeper. But they are. Every release, every update, every summer when I go to fix a few bugs, the restrictions get tighter and tighter, and old workarounds stop working.

I work entirely on Linux and Win10, but I maintain a mac laptop and pay the $99/yr out of pocket just to keep this project alive. I've spent tens of days trying to find a way around either of these requirements, but it's just too difficult (for me, or for my students, or for others wanting to try my software).

And for those of us who do not trust these private, for-profit (and imo corrupt and predatory) companies with our financial data? What then? There is a reason Intuit does not want me to be able to give my tax forms directly to the government. I refuse, even though it is ostensibly "free" (hint: it isn't really "free" at all, and we all know that, because Intuit wouldn't be fighting so hard if it were).

I was just recently at a gender-inclusivity seminar. The speaker asked everyone in the room to give their name, but specifically asked for NOT everyone to state their [preferred?] pronouns. Why not? Apparently the speaker is currently in a community were certain transgender members feel quite strongly that stating pronouns is itself problematic and hurtful.

For those of us not quite up to date on social movements, and for slow-moving organizations, this is obviously tricky to navigate. My workplace is just starting to encourage everyone to state their "preferred pronouns" prominently when introducing themselves and on all correspondence (e.g. in email signatures), and to avoid gendered pronouns when possible in many situations or at least use "singular they" (e.g. in abstract examples or documentation). Last week I thought that was quite progressive. This week I have learned that "preferred pronouns" is no longer an acceptable phrase, that "singular they" is offensive to some, that avoiding pronouns itself is problematic (at least in SE's CoC, apparently), and that asking someone to give pronouns is problematic and hurtful to some. I don't know where that leaves me or my workplace.

Instead of adding 3 bits, maybe they should have dropped 3 bits. A rollover every ~20 years is just asking for latent buts to blow up. A rollover every ~2.5 years is just business as usual. Go big or go small. Don't design things to break just after you retire but before your coworkers do.

> I became an Software Engineer and now live in a major city, thanks to the affirmative actions adopted by India...

You mean from reservations in school / university admissions? Or does that even extend to private employment? Is there widespread resentment?

I'm really curious about the parallels (or not) between racism in the US and caste in India, esp. affirmative action. The US never really went all-in on AA like India did with reservations -- more like pretending if we mostly ignore race then racism will go away -- but it seems like neither approach has really gotten to good place (yet).

I'm very confused by your comment, and I hope you can clarify. I'm familiar with the colonial/European origin of the "cast system", but having been to India a few times and studied/read a bit, saying that the word has no proper native equivalent (to be blunt) seems both irrelevant and kind of disingenuous. Regardless of the word's origin or colonial reasons, it seems clear that caste-related issues are very visible and very present in India today. Do you agree? You seem to admit as much. But you also seem to downplay the entire existence of caste.

I'm really not familiar with the tribe/clan system in Iraq and Syria. My experience in some other former british and french colonies made it clear how the colonial system benefited from or even created and promoted ethnic rivalries, racism, tribalism -- yes absolutely -- but none of those situations seemed to really be a direct analogue of India's caste system. Do most people in India think of caste pretty much the same way as Americans think of ethnicity or racism?

Maybe you can also talk a bit more about Modi and his "low caste" background, because I've been curious about this myself. How much do you make of his "caste" as part his political identity? Do you see this as a sign that the caste system is dead/irrelevant/never-existed? Or that the low castes have triumphed? Or is he a pawn/token in a bigger game?

What is the difference between "the server I meant to communicate with" and a "server ... with authority to communicate on behalf of my intended peer"?

This seems like a distinction with no meaningful difference, outside of esoteric things like hardware-based attestation where you actually do want to identify a peer with the specificity of an actual physical piece of equipment. As soon as we introduce names that are not physically bound, we have a level of indirection that erases any distinction you were making.

From wikipedia, it says "limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. It may also be used when there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. In some instances, an agent, mixture or exposure circumstance for which there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but limited evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals together with supporting evidence from other relevant data may be placed in this group."

Anecdotally, I see alongside some unpleasant-sounding items, a lot of common things on that same list like: aloe vera, Ginkgo biloba, engine exhaust, pickled vegetables, and cocamide DEA. It seems to me that mere presence on that list doesn't mean much without further context -- why it was put on the list, the relative danger of it compared to other things on that list, etc.

My preferred solution for the err handling stutter would be something like "whenever".

func Foo(x int) (int, error) { var err error a, err := whatever() if err != nil { return 0, err } b, err := whatever() if err != nil { return 0, err } ... }

becomes

func Foo(x int) (int, error) { var err error whenever err != nil { return 0, err } a, err := whatever() b, err := whatever() ... }

Essentially, "whenever" just means "insert this line at every point in the remainder of this code block where err is assigned a new value.

It is explicit, simple, easy to understand, and would be identical in function to how most errors are currently handled.

Being charitable, I think the parent wasn't saying it should be. But even in some fantasy ideal-government world, the budget is finite and zero-sum. By giving money to some fishing expedition with no clear expectation of any result, we are taking it from some other use.

I like the part where you skipped right over "a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person" so you could quote "an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay".

It's okay to be wrong. I distinctly remember believing the (false) pencil story once, before reading more about it and learning the (far more interesting) actual story. And also realizing that the false pencil story pushes certain goals and agendas, too, so probably isn't accidental.

Well, I suppose you mean: with the only moving part being the water itself. A hydraulic ram can move water uphill easily without any external power, electricity, etc., using basically only simple valves. If I could build a hydraulic ram of ice, does that count?

Can you give me a citation for your first quote (from George Ward). Although it seems to show up on a lot of self-described "climate skeptic" pages, I can't seem to find any legitimate source for it. It shows up in wikipedia as well, but the citation there just leads to the same tangled mess of "climate skeptic" pages that all seem to cite each other.

I'm really curious if George Wald said this at all, and if he did, what specifically he was talking about. Nuclear proliferation was another of his areas of activism, for example.

Digikey can be intimidating. The interface is kind of clunky, and for a beginner (like me!) it's overkill when you just want a couple of 10uF capacitors but get 60,000 hits for every variation of exotic capacitor ever made, and pricing for units of 1000s.

I find jameco.com very friendly for a beginner. Prices are about the same as elsewhere, shipping is fine, selection is fine for a beginner, and usually it's usually pretty easy to narrow the search results to just a few parts that have fairly clear differences. They have a pretty nice email newsletter too, essentially the only newsletter I allow through my spam filters, and the only one I've ever clicked on non-accidentally. The regularly feature hobby projects on their front page, from premade kits to more advanced stuff.

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly

I agree, $18k for insurance, or $24k, is an enormous burden for most Americans. I was just trying to point out that that the ACA price the parent was calling an outrageous seemed completely inline with every other insurance policy I have ever had, ACA or not. Insurance in the US is just plain expensive, no doubt about it.

I'm not totally clear on the different situations here. I thought the tax penalty was only about $3k for even fairly wealthy families (family of 4, $150k/yr salary). It sounds like you felt you couldn't afford ACA insurance ($17k) and couldn't afford to pay the penalty either, so you went out and purchased $3k of "insurance" you don't actually have any faith in and didn't really want. Am I confused about the penalty amounts? Or you just felt that if you were going to pay $3k, you might as well give it to Christian Medishare?