284 karma · joined December 11, 2016
For example her take on / comparison of nuclear war with time war:
> After that, I was no longer afraid of nuclear war. The solution was easy. We already knew nuclear war was a risk, we just had to avoid the paths of timelines that would lead to it.
> I’m not interested in losing time wars, or winning them. In real life, I think it’s a great idea to avoid them entirely.
And on avoiding bad events:
> “Time is like a room. If you want to avoid bumping into the chair when walking across the room, you can do that — but you have to know that there is a chair and where that chair is in the room.”
> It left me with the clear intuitive feeling that as a species we could work to avoid a particularly bad possible event or move toward a particularly good possible event, but we needed some intelligence about what those possibilities are and where/when they are in spacetime.
Rust 1.56.1 will be released later today.
> To assess the security of the ecosystem we analyzed all crate versions ever published on crates.io (as of 2021-10-17), and only 5 crates have the affected codepoints in their source code, with none of the occurrences being malicious.
Preview of the new helpful error: https://i.imgur.com/pGpZOnr.png
From the Windows 3.11 to Windows ME/2000 era there where the DOS and NT kernel editions, both available at the same time.
I believe the missing Windows 98 SE was generally considered good, and the version many people kept using while XP was popular.
XP was not considered good at first, but had substantial improvements in SP2 and SP3.
Windows 8.1 didn't leave much of an impression, but was pretty workable.
Not disagreeing, but ad companies attempting to sue Google out of existence would be worth watching.
Sadly the improperly configured Outlook clients are still not extinct in some of the organizations we work with. Does anyone know a good guide (with screenshots would be ideal) of the settings they would have to change?
I've also had the eye looking problem, and yes, it was uncomfortable and harder to concentrate. But now it I'm around 30 it has become quite natural. Not a parent, but what I imagine might help besides 'just trying to do it' is seeing the use and fun of eye contact:
* Explain eye contact helps people understand you are interested in them. Of course hopefully you have some real, friendly interest in someone ;-). Friendly listening to someone and looking at them is a good step to getting more familiar/friends.
* Maybe help her recognize more of the expressions in and around the eyes. It is a very interesting part of the face. And you don't have to look someone exactly in the eye to see most of it... Besides angry/sad/happy, what are the little signs that show someone is becoming irritated, lost interest or getting bored, is thinking, is messing with you, disagrees (but maybe too polite to tell), etc. Recognizing it in movies, and possibly imitating the expressions can also be a 'safer' step.
* It works two ways. You let others see more of you by looking them in the eyes. You have to open up in a way, can get more self-conscious, and thus uncomfortable. Looking someone in the eyes can make them trust you more, helps them see your intentions, if you really mean what you say, that you know what you are saying... But you may just want to start opening up some more with people you already feel comfortable with.
Still, eye contact is culture dependent. For me, what helped me were these motivations, and that I forced myself to have on estimate 100+ little wel-intentioned conversations with strangers per week (Jehovah's Witness).
Is is definitely interesting to read about some unexpected properties that ancient concrete with volcanic ash as one of its ingredients has. For modern cement there is a different set of choices for binding materials, were you can choose the ingredients that are locally good available.
Also there are definitely mistakes that get made in modern construction. - Maybe the structure has enough rebar to handle the forces that act on the structure, but not enough to prevent the small cracks that hurt durability (although that is something that should be checked). - Maybe the detailing of the rebar is not correct. Lapping lengths are too short. Often I see that the workers who put in the rebar come up with creative solutions but understanding why it now doesn't work well is outside their expertise. - Maybe the concrete layer that protects the rebar (covering) from rusting is to thin or to porous. The amount of covering required depends on the exposure classification. And the concrete mixture influrences how porous the concrete becomes over the years.
For modern engineering you specify the exposure classes that a structure falls in. Carbonatation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonatation), a reaction where calcium in the concrete with CO2 in the air, which changes the acidity in the concrete. Chlorids, from sources such as seawater or de-icing salts, also impact the acidity of the concrete. Chemical acids, basically everything biological such as milk, beer, manure, and other acids dissolve the calcium. And frost can cause parts of the concrete to flak off. All those effects can get worse if the concrete gets porous. But all are well understood problems that inform the necessary mixture.
To be honest this game is a bit of a mess. Normally you would pick a font size or line length, and find a fitting lineheight last. Here we are for example guessing line length based on a given line spacing. But, still useful to drive the point home there is some relation.
I think it is a nice remark :-). Sometimes the design has to make a little concession, sometimes the construction. The best engineers are those that think along and try to find solutions, the best architects have some understanding of what is possible. And often 'everything is possible, it is just going to cost a lot'.
As a whole I don't know. But many from the generation of the war have learned to never throw something away. Have something like a day in the week to eat left-overs. And some of their children have learned to do the same. But that has been getting rarer for the last 20 years.
For the theory around periods, distribution and jumping it can just refer to these properties for LCG's, which are very well studied.
Testing an RNG design against the statistical test suites TestU01 and PractRand seems on first intuition the be the wrong way to go about it. First you should have a theory behind the RNG, and only then test it.
And to me it seems PCG does just that. The various output functions are carefully designed. Which bits are the best and which are the weakest for an LCG? The worst bits are dismissed. How can the best bits be used to pick permutations of the remaining bits? The output functions are well designed, but you will have to watch the video or look at the C++ source to see the theory behind them.
Then just about all known tests and theory to differentiate between true randomness and the results of an RNG are applied. Which are handily packed into test suites. That is the way to look at these tests. Not some sort of specific, arbitrarily chosen test. This is not the situation of Javascript engines that may get optimized to much for some arbitrary benchmark.
And those test where run against severely weakened versions of PCG, just to be sure the tests don't accidentally pass.
But you have a good point: designing solely against test suites is not a good idea. A result are Xorshift128+ and Xoroshiro128+. Even with some theory behind it, they are the result of varying constants until they do not fail any test on BigCrush too consistently. It may even sometimes pass, and that is what is claimed on for example Wikipedia. But along comes another test suite, PractRand, and it fails within a second of testing. It is optimized for BigCrush, but not really statistically good.
Her is a link with some nice information: http://www.uazone.org/multiling/euroml/annex02.html