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ntrz

399 karma · joined August 7, 2019

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ntrz··on How to type “blimpy” in Emacs [video]
> you can do "g" motion, but I cant seem to get my muscle memory to remember that. to me "down" should always use whats visible on the screen, not just dumbly move to the next line.

You could always add key mappings to your .vimrc file so it works this way.

ntrz··on Why some GitHub labels are illegible
Wouldn't the results of that online visual contrast test depend on your monitor's color calibration, etc? Or is it designed in some way that avoids that affecting the results? I'd hate to think my body was infested with mold when I'm actually just using a crappy 10-year-old monitor.

Edit: I see from the FAQs there's some kind of display calibration portion at the start of the test; should have read the website more carefully before asking!

ntrz··on A rant on web font licenses
Yeah, agreed that it seems unlikely to be a problem for most typefaces. I just think it's a bit misleading to suggest it's guaranteed to unburden the typeface of any and all 'intellectual property' protections ("In the US, you can literally go and vectorize any font in the world and do whatever you want with it").
ntrz··on A rant on web font licenses
This sounds like a typeface is not copyrightable but only because the mechanism for protection is different (patent system). So by doing what the GP suggests you wouldn't be violating copyright, but you may be in violation of the design patent on the typeface?
ntrz··on Ask HN: Our nonprofit got shut down by PayPal. Help?
It does say this on the IRS site:

> Expect delays in data updates for the Tax Exempt Organization Search tool. We are still processing paper-filed 990 series received 2021 and later.

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/search-for-tax-exe...

I don't know anything about this, but that does kind of sound like forms from the 2020 FY and onward may not all be online yet.

ntrz··on My review of the C standard library in practice
How does the man page's "size_t fread(void *ptr, size_t size, size_t nmemb, FILE *stream);" disagree with the GP's "fread(buf, size_of_item, number_of_items, file_ptr)"? Both seem to support that "fread(buf, N-1, 1, f);" is "telling it to read one item of size N-1".
ntrz··on Modernizing C arrays for greater memory safety: a case study in the Linux kernel
Thanks for the explanation! That makes sense.
ntrz··on Modernizing C arrays for greater memory safety: a case study in the Linux kernel
The previous paragraph says

> ...due to yet more historical situations (e.g. struct sockaddr, which has a fixed-size trailing array that is not supposed to actually be treated as fixed-size), GCC and Clang actually treat all trailing arrays as flexible arrays.

But I don't know, that doesn't seem to match the result I am getting with clang 13.1.6. It does seem to respect the array size declared in the struct, not treat it as a flexible array. I get -Warray-bounds warnings if I try to access anything past o->variable[3]. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what they're saying or my example is screwed up.

Edit: Actually, I guess it does end up treating it like a flexible array -- it produces -Warray-bounds warnings when compiling, but the resulting binary works (and doesn't trigger asan). Not sure I entirely understand it though.

ntrz··on Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original
Don't you need to have an "GitHub-approved" fork (i.e. use the GitHub fork button) if you want to create pull requests on the upstream project in GitHub? Or is there a way to do that from the kind of repo you're describing?
ntrz··on Entering and Running a Tiny Program from the PDP-11 (PiDP-11) Front Panel
Heh, repeatedly toggling some of the switches too rapidly on there causes some interesting growth. My "EXAM" switch ended up dangling down past much of the documentation.
ntrz··on The 2012 Millennium Artifact
As far as learning what it looks like, there are photos on the site too (under "The Artifact").

The incorporation of Facebook is a bit silly but it's a student project, I guess the point was really for the students to consider the sort of unusual constraints and considerations that are required for such a long-term design. Seems unlikely anyone involved really expected to be updating that Facebook page for the next thousand years.

ntrz··on 9k-year-old Stonehenge-like structure found under Lake Michigan
> Also, continued public interest is probably one of the reasons that research grant money continues to be available to study something that was found 15 years ago.

Unfortunately for Dr. Holley, it doesn't seem to have been working out that way in this case (from his page linked above):

> ...state politics in previous years have meant that we have only been able to obtain limited funding for research and as a result little progress has been made.

ntrz··on 9k-year-old Stonehenge-like structure found under Lake Michigan
This was actually discovered in 2007, not recently. From the archeologist who discovered it:

> This site seems to gain a life in the media about every six months or so. Sadly, much of the information out there is incorrect. For example, there is not a henge associated with the site and the individual stones are relatively small when compared to what most people think of as European standing stones. It should be clearly understood that this is not a megalith site like Stonehenge. This label has been placed on the site by individuals in the press who may have been attempting to generate sensation about the story and have not visited the site. The site in Grand Traverse Bay is best described as a long line of stones which is over a mile in length.

https://holleyarchaeology.com/wordpress/index.php/the-truth-...

Another article with some additional context: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/archaeologists...

ntrz··on How I learned about corporate firewalls
> Our corporate firewall used to block any website or payload that contained the word "hack".

How else are you going to stop employees from downloading and playing NetHack at work?

ntrz··on FCC Approves 5 Year Satellite Deorbiting Rule
The article says "5 years after completing their mission", not 5 years after launch.
ntrz··on Code replay attack on the myGovID Scheme
Is it a second factor? The article makes it sound as though the MyGovID authorization is all that's needed to log in, and the official site (https://www.mygovid.gov.au/) says it's used "instead of usernames and passwords."
ntrz··on The feisty fog-catchers of Chile
The reason I read it as being a major issue is that it is apparently (maybe I'm misreading this) described as the reason the previous effort failed:

> Earlier attempts to turn the mist into usable water failed. In 1990 fog nets at Chungungo, a fishing village north of Los Tomes, captured 8,000 litres a day. Villagers argued about how to share responsibility for maintaining the atrapanieblas.

It sounds like the nets worked, and the only negative element of the project described in the article that could account for the failure is the issues around maintenance. And then it's mentioned again in the context of open "questions" of the current project. But maybe the emphasis wasn't intended by the author, I may be reading too much into it.

ntrz··on The feisty fog-catchers of Chile
What sort of maintenance does it require? The article describes it as the biggest implementation hurdle, apparently to the extent that it doomed a previous effort along the same lines, but doesn't go into detail on what it entails. Repairing rips or tears in the nets themselves?
ntrz··on The NetHack Challenge: Dungeons, Dragons, and Tourists (2021)
Various farming strategies have been severely restricted in recent versions of the game; puddings don't even drop real corpses now. There are definitely still plenty of ways to loiter around and boost your score, though.
ntrz··on Researchers home in on possible “day zero” for Antikythera mechanism
As far as all the sources I can find say, 'hone in' originated as an error for 'home in', but has become widespread enough to be considered an acceptable variant. If one of them is being let in erroneously by the nasty descriptivists at Merriam-Webster, it'd be 'hone in'. But either one gets the meaning across, so I don't see the issue.
ntrz··on Researchers home in on possible “day zero” for Antikythera mechanism
Merriam-Webster says 'hone in' is an "acceptable but far less common" variant of 'home in'. I think either one works.
ntrz··on The inventor of the screw-in coffin
The patent does say it can be installed at various angles, illustrated in figs. 25 and 26 (also of interest is fig. 27, which shows it buried in the bed of a shallow lake with a duck decoy affixed to the lid).
ntrz··on Ask HN: What is the most unique website you’ve come across on the internet?
Did whoever mirrored the site run s/kill/kiss? Really obscures Gene's true message I think.
ntrz··on IPv6 Watch
Seems like it tests a limited list[0] of domains associated with the site or service, with the final result based on a check of their DNS records. For Steam, looks like it only checks <store.steampowered.com>, <steamcommunity.com>, and <help.steampowered.com>.

It'd be nice if the site provided an explanation of the process, maybe with some way to expand a particular entry and see which associated domains were tested and which succeeded/failed.

[0] https://github.com/andir/ipv6.watch/blob/master/conf.yaml

ntrz··on Lost world revealed by human, Neanderthal relics washed up on North Sea beaches
Is the dredging process stripping a great degree of archaeological context from the items, or has being under the sea for so long already scrambled them up to a degree that we aren't losing all that much information by bringing them up in this way?

I get the impression that modern archaeology tends to emphasize viewing a site holistically and painstakingly recording as many details as possible, to the extent that some sites are just left alone rather than risk an imperfect or destructive excavation, so I'm curious whether anyone in the field is upset that these artifacts are surfacing as a byproduct of an unrelated civic project that isn't even trying to adhere to those standards.

ntrz··on Cargo cult programming (2020)
I guess I do a lot of cargo cult programming by the metrics in the article: if someone approaches me and demands a detailed explanation of the design principles involved in some minor function I wrote months ago, plus a list of the programming books I consulted (printed books -- no online resources, please!), I will probably score poorly in "eloquence" since I'll just be standing there slack-jawed and bewildered.
ntrz··on Archaeologists “flabbergasted” to find Cerne Giant’s origins are medieval
I've read that the dick had originally been sized more proportionately to the figure, but at some point it was merged with a large circular belly button, increasing its size/length.

I wonder whether that is the result the article is referring to, or whether there was an initial project to add a penis to the figure, followed by a distinct "this penis needs to be longer" revision later on.

ntrz··on Poll: 1.8M Americans have turned down jobs due to unemployment benefits
Note that the question was basically "which of the following influenced your decision to turn down a job offer", not "what was the primary reason you turned down a job offer."

Respondents could select more than one reason; it could be that many of these people had a more important reason for turning down the job like "child care obligations" or "the job didn't offer enough hours of work", but also selected "I receive enough money from unemployment" because that was one of the secondary factors they considered.

They also only polled 463 people and are extrapolating the 1.8 million number based on the fact that 13% (~60 people) included "unemployment insurance" as one of the factors that influenced their decision.

ntrz··on Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest
> The German court held that YouTube failed to make its enforcement authority clear in its contract with the account operator who posted the video.

Does YouTube's TOS really not contain statements giving them the ability to stop hosting any video, at any time, for any reason?

Edit: I guess not: the only content removal clause I see is this one, which is definitely not "we can remove your video for any reason, as long as we feel like it." I'm a little surprised they don't seem to have included anything like that.

> If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion. (from https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)

ntrz··on The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday
This definitely depends on the employer and your geographical location; for example, in California, clauses like this are not legal except under certain conditions: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
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