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pasta

1,772 karma · joined September 28, 2016

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pasta··on Tesla Model Y
When the force vector is coming from the back it has the tendency to go into any direction. When there is enough grip in the front you can steer. A heavy engine in the front means even more grip.

But that's all useless on ice. Even if the car was 100% balanced.

pasta··on Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
I went to a master painter for years. And the advice that he always gave was something like: to know how it will look you have to put the paint on the canvas.

And that's it. Put paint on the canvas. Then the rest will follow.

pasta··on Why is no one signing their emails?
True, but two different issues.

The domain part of signing is now being solved by DNS (PTR, SPF, Caller-ID). But signing still it has it's use because you also know the user exists.

And encryption is very useful because most emails are stored as plain text on some server.

pasta··on E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets
Trump tweeted that planes have become too complicated and that the old and simple form is much better.

His tweet sounds dumb but there is some truth in it.

As you say, planes and procedures have become very complicated. And I think there are only two options: making planes simple again which make them less efficient or let computers fly the plane and make the interface simple(r).

If you look at the rockets of SpaceX then you can say they are the extreme form of fly by wire and very instable when it comes to aerodynamics. But computers can land them within centimeters when they fall out of space.

So maybe that will be the future. Planes that are very efficient instable flying 'rockets' that are controlled by computers.

pasta··on U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says
This is an indication that user commitment is very low on Facebook.

As long as users are actively involved there is no need to send emails.

Sending emails is a (bad) trick to make people curious and make them login to your platform again.

I think the Facebook app is just 'dead' and Facebook is lucky to have Instagram.

pasta··on $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now
I think this is huge. Those are 'affordable' prices and VW admitted Tesla is way ahead when it comes to range.
pasta··on Nadella: Microsoft will sell war tech to democracies to “protect freedoms”
A lot of people are switching banks because they don't like that their current bank is investing in war.

I think Microsoft is going to lose users over this. Not much for sure, but it's naive to think people don't care.

pasta··on Sunlight through glass does not provide Vitamin D
Because he was a curious man and wanted to see every detail?
pasta··on Sunlight through glass does not provide Vitamin D
My question was: "Why does it block UVB?".

Found the answer on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-glass-block-UV

"With a band gap of 4eV, glass can't absorb any photons with less energy than UVB light; namely, it is transparent to UVA, visible light, infared, etc; but the higher energy photons can and are highly likely to be absorbed."

So it seems hard to create glass that doesn't block UVB.

pasta··on Is the Insect Apocalypse Upon Us?
I don't like your comment.

I'm not saying we should not act. I'm asking if we know what we are up against.

pasta··on Is the Insect Apocalypse Upon Us?
"the total mass of local flying insects had fallen by 80 percent in three decades"

Ok, but what if it is now back at the 'norm' and there were just too many insects all those times?

Do we know what the norm is?

I must agree that the quick loss of so many insects does not sound normal. But we also know that insects can swarm very quickly and become a pest in good conditions.

With climate change we have a lot of data from even thousands of years ago, so we have some feeling about the 'norm'.

Does a norm for the total mass of flying insects exist?

pasta··on An Honest Living
Stress comes from (the feeling of) responsibility you can't control.

So I think it's not about what you hate but about what you can't control.

Maybe you did not hate Windows, C# and EF, but when it turns out to be a big stress factor it can be good to swap and take control again.

pasta··on Going Solo, Successfully
To add: you can even charge by the hour in blocks of 4 if you feel more like it.

It will be the same as charging per half day, but it can help you and your client to accept that charging daily will be the next step.

pasta··on Color Spaces
It's also important to understand that color spaces are used for medium to medium conversions.

Human perception is always a part of this but not always the goal.

For example in print a color space can be used to control how ink flows on paper. A lot of ink for dark colors on thin paper will result in a mess. That's why a color space converted image for such a print will look waay to light. But the result will be a good dark print.

And ofcourse this looks much better to the human eye.

Edit: I might be confusing the term color profile...

pasta··on Going Solo, Successfully
For small projects you might not need a lawyer or accountant.

But when you feel the balance is right you should hire people who can help you with your problems.

At the moment you might do small projects but when project get bigger and your rate higher you will see that an accountant will become affordable.

And when you do multi million projects you will be able to afford a lawyer.

But one thing that is very important even when you are still 'small': register everything! What money goes in and what goes out. What the contracts are and all your email conversations with clients.

This will help you and future accounts and lawyers.

pasta··on Google and Facebook warn AI may do dumb things
(current) AI is not smart it's a method to have a reasonable predictable outcome from a wide range of inputs. But it is still a linear program.

Let say we program a self driving car to estimate the impact effect of a collision with an object. Then we 'learn' it that a crash with a soft object will be better for the human in the car.

So we think the car is smart because it can detect soft and hard objects. But in case of an unavoidable crash it steers into a group of people instead of a parked car...

The Pentagon (DARPA) is now investing in AI that learns from previous experiences (without feeding it a dataset over and over again). I guess other companies are working on this as well. That will create scary AI because then the program will be altered all the time making it 'smart'.

pasta··on Show HN: Open source balloon simulation with Three.js
My kids love it!

"Waah stop the traain there is a station coming up!"

pasta··on Show HN: Open source balloon simulation with Three.js
Press space to see the world from another side.

Use the left and right to 'steer'.

Also checkout his Short Trip which was posted here some time ago: http://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip

pasta··on Phones Emitting the Most Radiation
Ever seen that glowing ball in the sky?
pasta··on Exposing the Wayland lie (2018)
Because 3D is just an extra dimension for the same calculations?

The GPU does not accelerate 3D, but the computations (so 3D can be much faster).

pasta··on Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017)
This was in 2014 and now 4 years later a group of experts launched the first version.

Slat did not dismiss them because he said most are valid concerns.

But he is working with a large team of experts so most of the concerns might already be discussed.

pasta··on Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017)
It is built by experts.

Nobody know excactly how to do it. So it is great the first step is set.

The team will now alter the design to make it better.

pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
I don't understand. My customers are super happy with ProcessWire.

Have you ever tried it?

pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
Those SEO pages are horrible. I had the same problem.

But there are multiple reasons I choose Symfony 4 over Laravel.

And if you want a code comparison then this small example:

Laravel:

  class User
  {
  }
Symfony:

  class User
  {
    private $id;
    private $name;

    public function getId():?int
    {
       return $this->id;
    }

    public function setName(string $name): self
    {
      $this->name = $name;

      return $this;
    }

    public function getName():?string
    {
       return $this->name;
    }   
  }
Laravel looks a lot easier and quicker. And it is. But good luck next month when you can't remember what properties User has. Your IDE can't autocomplete it. And also good luck working with a team. Your team members have to look up the database model for the User to see what properties are available.

And this is happening in Laravel all the time. Very quick, very easy, a lot of magic but it will bite you in the end.

pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
As for using Vue and moustache template engines: you can set the delimiters Vue uses:

   new Vue({ delimiters: ['${', '}']...
pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
Even if this will be integrated I still think it might be a bad idea for some things because it goes into the separation of concerns principle.

A controller should not know about routes.

A model should not know about database design.

pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
I agree with the author. Symfony 4 is the best PHP framework at the moment.

Trying both Laravel and Symfony I think there is no need for Laravel (anymore). Laravel just has too much magic that will bite you later on.

The only thing you should skip in both frameworks are 'annotations'. But this is easy to do.

pasta··on Moving from Go to PHP Again
As a developer use ProcessWire instead of all the others.

Imho the best CMS for PHP.

pasta··on Facebook will reveal who uploaded your contact info for ad targeting
I don't have a Facebook account but I'm sure I have a profile because other uploaded my contact info, uploader pictures with my face, mentioned my name and so on.

It's almost impossible to hide from Facebook.

So you might hide your email address but how do you know others did?

pasta··on Compounding Knowledge
Maybe PI is a better example.

You might know it's 3.14... but not why.

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