mjhoy

Masters of Doom I read recently and devoured it in about two days. I am apparently starved for stories like that. I don't even like video games!

I'm about 40 chapters (~350 pages) through. I wouldn't say it gets better, or worse: I loved it from the beginning. If you aren't hooked by 100 pages, I'd put it down. However I'd recommend coming back to it later, maybe in a few years, try it again, see if you don't get more out of it.

Also, if you didn't read the Edith Grossman translation, try that, it is very smart and modern. The older translation feels a bit stuffy to me.

Don Quixote. Touches on a lot: perception, value, narrative, ethics, creativity. Above all it is funny as hell and beautifully written.

Types and Programming Languages, Benjamin Pierce, slightly intimidating mathematically for me but worth diving in, lots of interesting ideas, I'm only through to the second chapter.

The second parenthetical of this sentence sums it up, I'd say.

> He learned how latex condoms are made (by dipping phallic molds into vats of liquid latex, which is peeled off after it dries), and how they are regulated (the Food and Drug Administration considers condoms medical devices and dictates how they are manufactured and labeled).

edit: Main points seem to be that the FDA

- encourages latex, through labeling and testing requirements

- limits the range of sizes of condoms

- tests only vaginal intercourse, there can be no anal-sex specific condoms

There's a good post on marginal revolution that puts California in some perspective.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/the...

> As David Zetland points out in an excellent interview with Russ Roberts, people in San Diego county use around 150 gallons of water a day. Meanwhile in Sydney Australia, with a roughly comparable climate and standard of living, people use about half that amount. Trust me, no one in Sydney is going thirsty.

> So how much are people in San Diego paying for their daily use of 150 gallons of water? About 78 cents.

> Then superscalar came to microprocessors with the Pentium Pro.

Hmm, but wasn't the PowerPC 601 superscalar?

I had this very same thought today, reading Inside the Machine by Jon Stokes. Recommended. Amazing how abstract the programmer model can be from the real hardware.

I've never tried evil-mode, but I always thought it would confuse me when using things like helm and magit and org-mode that (sometimes) use emacs-like bindings for their controls. Do you run into any problems with this?

I was a heavy Vim user, and what worked for me was forcing myself to use emacs for a project. Other people use evil-mode, but I kept the standard key bindings. Use the help as much as you can, and learn about functions like C-h k and C-h m. I stayed with emacs for org-mode, for buffer management, and then for projectile, magit, flycheck, mu4e, etc etc...

All the more realistic given that the issue -- or a big fat hint at the issue, anyway -- was sitting in the public issue queue for nearly a year.

https://www.drupal.org/node/2146839

I will defend shitting in a bucket (although I agree with you in general). With a nice seat, some sawdust, and some care, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and in fact after using it for a while normal toilets seem outrageous.

http://theorganicsister.com/on-composting-toilets-and-humanu...

Back in college I used to check "rate my professor" when picking classes. I learned pretty quickly to avoid the highly-rated.

Not quite related, but if you haven't seen how emacs and org-mode handle ascii tables, it's pretty amazing! It will reflow automatically, and tabbing works just like you would expect in a spreadsheet application.

I once found Introduction to Algorithms in one, in Boston. I was impressed.

I was about to post about John McPhee, too, when I saw your comment. Excellent book, recommended.

Somewhat related, also great: Looking for a Ship.

Isn't it in Google's interest not to have a store filled with spammy stuff that confuses users?

The method of teaching might be the problem, but I think it's the wrong thing to focus on. A teacher who loves math, who is inspired by it, will teach it "right" (I think) even if ultimately they need to teach all of the boring routine steps to solving some particular kind of problem. At least that is what worked for me. Watching a teacher work with problems in class who loved math and loved patterns made me aware there was a "there" there.

I couldn't really tell you anything about category theory. But I am beginning to grasp monads. (At least in the context of Haskell programs.)

I think the important thing is to see how they work, see what they do.

btw, you might try this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6L6XeNdd_k

LastPass puts vulnerable in scare quotes.

But to my understanding, with this bug session information to the website could have leaked, and they don't seem to address this. Could an attacker have hijacked logins?

Nice. Works well for drawings/comics.

http://imgur.com/a/Xvu7K

> Should all high-ranking employees in the USA be vetted for appropriate (leftwing?) political views before being hired? That doesn't seem right.

That's a sly way of phrasing it, Dolimiter. Those crazy leftwingers are enforcing their minority morality on everyone! I'm a little sad you've taken it there, and in the top comment, because the original article was incredibly sensitive to the issue and by no means was calling for this. Nor do I think the commenters are. Mozilla is a special organization to a lot of people, for reasons intertwined with the idea of a free and open society, and that's one reason why this is a big deal.

> ... legally ...

Hence the problem (in my view).

Because "marriage" has important legal ramifications in the U.S., you are denying people rights if you deny them marriage.

I think you should be free to think about marriage _as a tradition_ as you want. But to enforce discrimination against people is a different thing.

The counterargument to fears about disease is ridiculous:

> But nature is totally random.

Does David Haussler really believe that? That whatever species exist in an ecosystem today is just some random set? That evolution is noise in the background? How would he characterize natural selection? Would he say we shouldn't care about invasive species at all, since what we humans introduce can't be any worse than "totally random"?

It's a bad argument, and the NYT should not have let him get away with it. They even go so far as to use part of it in a pull quote!

> I'd be sweating the fact that I can't parse the meaning of a word based on the context it's used in.

I would say that's _exactly_ what he's doing. He's considering what companies might actually mean by throwing the word "passionate" into job postings.

There's too much competing text, IMHO. Focus more on the message and photo. And it's really bad to have a big sign-up box that pops up before I've got a chance to let the inspirational message sink in. That just makes me want to leave immediately.

It's an interesting exchange. Scherer kept asking him where he had sung his songs; Pete kept insisting that he instead ask about what he had sung — that he would sing for anybody, so it wasn't relevant, and that his songs were always in good faith.

> MR. SCHERER: Witness, you have indicated that you are perfectly willing to tell us about all of these innumerable functions at which you entertained, but why do you refuse to tell us about the functions that Mr. Tavenner inquires about?

> MR. SEEGER: No, sir, I said that I should be glad to tell you about all of the songs that I have sung, because I feel that the songs are the clearest explanation of what I do believe in, as a musician, and as an American.

Scherer wasn't interested at all in what the songs were about.

> In 1955 he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, where he testified, “I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature.” He also stated: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.”

His mixture of politics, love, loss, and humor in his songs has always inspired me. He brings together traditions, mixes them up, fights the system, produces something beautiful. RIP.

I have a power strip to which the wireless router and modem are connected that can be turned off and off by remote control. Click!

> Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn’t actually been arrested.

Had to read that a few times to make sure.

What were his rights at that moment?