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marcolinux

87 karma · joined July 30, 2014

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marcolinux··on New type of dice guarantees no tie when deciding who goes first
What about the site? Mostly text, with [load images] buttons. I like that!
marcolinux··on Virtual Threads for a scripting language in Java 8 without Loom
TIL about jactl! Just reading the site right now. Many thanks for: no colored function (no async/wait) !

Any tips on using with gui/swing? rendering images/simple html, that would be awesome!

And what about (gasp) JSP? Or any other templating? It is old school, yeah but I like jsp include (with params) and jsp 'web components' (tags).

Anyway, thanks for writing jactl!

marcolinux··on The unreasonable effectiveness of VMs in hacker pedagogy
While you are at it, also: #PeopleWhoDontKnow_QuasarVue, when the topic is frontend/webUI.
marcolinux··on Freshness of Repos
Nix, first. AUR, second. My prefered, termux, visible in the second zoom.
marcolinux··on Ask HN: Do You Use a Debugger?
java 14, helpful NullPointerExceptions? https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/358
marcolinux··on Firefox 64 Released
About gestures: firegesture seems to have just vanished, so Im using easystroke (linux). It works with any app, not just firefox.
marcolinux··on Awesome Linux Software
How could that be! Gkrellm.net is not ont that list. Great monitoring app for your linux desktop. I use it since 2000, I think.
marcolinux··on Scientists discover 7 ‘Earthlike’ planets orbiting a nearby star
> from a distance of approximately 6 billion kilometres.

or 5 light-hours. Still absolute awe :)

marcolinux··on Looking for life on other planets? Go deep
The article made me curious about lumenhancement. Seems to be about this 3D datasets of caves: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/NIAC_Caves/
marcolinux··on What is the difference between deep learning and usual machine learning?
Oops, accidentally flagged GP. Sorry for that, hope the unflag works :/.
marcolinux··on Accurate CRT Simulation
Hopefully is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_TXVm8jzM
marcolinux··on Your USB cable, the spy: the NSA’s catalog of surveillance magic (2013)
From the article: ''But why stop at network data? The NSA also uses some fairly exotic tools to grab computer video, keyboard strokes, and even audio from inside more difficult-to-reach places by using passive electronic devices that are actually powered by radar. These devices, charged by a specially tuned continuous wave radio signal sent from a portable radar unit (operating at as little as 2W up to as much as 1kW of power in the 1-2GHz range), send back a data stream as a reflected signal, allowing the NSA’s operators to tune in and view what’s happening on a computer screen or even listen to what’s being said in the room as they paint the target with radio frequency energy—as well as giving a relative rough location of devices within a building for the purposes of tracking or targeting.''

I call BS on this one, everybody knows radar cant go through cars/walls. It would be a too big of an equipment to be of any practical use.

marcolinux··on Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
And according to them, valgrind (and linux) can be qualified as beautiful piece of code[1]:

"Valgrind is perhaps the most amazing and useful developer tool in the world. Valgrind is a simulator - it simulates an x86 running a Linux binary. (Ports of Valgrind for platforms other than Linux are in development, but as of this writing, Valgrind only works reliably on Linux, which in the opinion of the SQLite developers means that Linux should be the preferred platform for all software development.) As Valgrind runs a Linux binary, it looks for all kinds of interesting errors such as array overruns, reading from uninitialized memory, stack overflows, memory leaks, and so forth. Valgrind finds problems that can easily slip through all of the other tests run against SQLite. And, when Valgrind does find an error, it can dump the developer directly into a symbolic debugger at the exact point where the error occur, to facilitate a quick fix." [1] https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html

marcolinux··on 550AU, Sun as gravity lens: see Center of galaxy in detail
I was reading [1], and was lectured on how the sun can be used as telescope and a very potent one, btw. Picture at [2]. Searching, I found the linked article. Quote:

"I anticipate that there will be a host of FOCAL space missions launched in all directions around the Sun, each probe launched in the direction exactly opposite to the star to explore with respect to the Sun position…. A FOCAL space mission could be used to magnify anything of interest outside the Solar System. One should then say that FOCAL will be used to magnify the nearby planetary systems, meaning not just the nearby stars themselves, but also their planets, halo disks, Oort clouds, etc."

According to some comments in the article (specially andy's, very informative), one could see another stars' Mercury! Very impressive. And since all EM range is focused, one can use the focal point for radio communication, ala NASA space network[3]. Some catches though: we need to send a probe to 550AU. That would take almost 200 years. Talk about planning ahead :).

[1]http://edge.org/response-detail/26774 [2]http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=22321 [3]http://io9.gizmodo.com/5714777/the-suns-gravity-could-be-use...

marcolinux··on Why Must Systems Be Operated?
From the article: "...a black box monitoring of the system is not sufficient. Black box monitoring, including external monitors, canaries, and so on, only tell the system which side of an externally visible failure boundary a system is on. Many kinds of systems, including nearly every kind that includes some redundancy, can move towards this boundary through multiple failures without crossing it. Black-box monitoring misses these internal state transitions. Catching them can significantly improve the actual, real-world, durability and availability of a system."

The author uses RAID, but this observation is valid for systems in general.I really wished that was some kind of guidance, manual or best practices available on how to design and/or auto-regulate those internal state transitions.

marcolinux··on Japanese scientists have created a new type of hologram that you can feel
Heh, who needs vi4gra when one can have an ultrasound touch [1]. Given the right modulation and frequency, I bet it can be very effective.

[1]http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2014/december/haptic-shapes-using...

marcolinux··on Ask HN: What's your favorite “read later” web tool?
Not sure if you are joking but I use bookmarks as my preferred read-later tool.

Firefox helps a lot with sync, open all in tabs, bookmark all and click/drag to reorder links.

I just put the link in "atHome" folder so to read it with more attention at,you guessed, home. The folder "atWork" is reserved for links where I must run some code, test some new library, etc due to more powerful machine. I have another folder "daily", for sites I visit every day (hn, soylentNews, hackaday, etc) and long posts eg with chapters (books, for instance); The folder "Weekly", for low volume sites, basically comics.

This, together with some speed reading, BS skipping and troll detect works very well, to the point Im often run out of things to read.

marcolinux··on The Elements of Drawing: John Ruskin’s Teaching Collection at Oxford [video]
I liked how he challenged our edge-detection NN in lesson 3. With a gray paper, it is possible to use a dark and white pencils, making 2D looks like 3D. He does it again in lesson 8, drawing some leaves.
marcolinux··on Writing tips and the psychology behind them
From the article: "Work as if each word you eventually publish or send will cost you $10."

Food for thought.

marcolinux··on Electric brain stimulation decreases IQ scores and racial prejudice
Oh the quotes! Same link [1],the next paragraph:

"A black man with an IQ of 85 and a white man with an IQ of 85 are about equally likely to have the character traits of poor impulse control and violent behavior associated with criminality — and both are far more likely to have them than a white or black man with an IQ of 110" -Eric S Raymond

1-http://esr.ibiblio.org/index.php?p=129

marcolinux··on Visualizing Math
Wow! The author is very committed. What a passion! The posts date back to 2013[0]. Definitely go to my visit-daily bookmark folder. [0]http://visualizingmath.tumblr.com/archive/2013/6
marcolinux··on Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels?
>There is a reason why electric cars are not allowed in races.

Interesting! If you have time, could you please elaborate?

marcolinux··on Mars has belts of glaciers consisting of frozen water
What a incredible image! If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is a very representative one. Very well done. Congratulations to the team.