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ramshorns

552 karma · joined September 3, 2016

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ramshorns··on Whoisinspace.com/
I liked checking that website, until it listed the Artemis II crew for weeks after they came back. Now I have no idea how accurate it is; I don't know what other source to compare it to.

But maybe there's a more reliable method it uses for tracking the ISS astronauts, and the Artemis II needed more human input or something. For what it's worth, both websites currently list the same ten astronauts.

ramshorns··on test, [, and [[ (2020)
How does that work? It doesn't look like ! is a command or shell builtin, so I guess it's an argument to if.
ramshorns··on Court Ruling shows the GPL is both copyright license and contractual agreement
Of course; those are freedoms 0 and 1 guaranteed by the license. It seems like "use" sometimes means "include in a downstream software package and redistribute modified versions of".
ramshorns··on How to use (or not use) a hyphen
My favourite example of this is using an en dash for a relationship between two separate things, rather than the more closely-connected compound adjective of a hyphen.

Italian–American relations: foreign relations between the governments of Italy and the United States. Italian-American relations: relatives who have moved from Italy to the United States.

ramshorns··on How to use (or not use) a hyphen
I thought it was about a comma? But the book discusses all kinds of punctuation.
ramshorns··on Actual is going open-source
Even that part is kind of misleading. Making the software open source doesn't mean that the subscription service has to shut down; those are two different decisions.

But maybe we don't have to be too critical. I tend to read "[project you've never heard of] is going open-source" as "here's a new project you might want to check out", but even if they really mean that the project is mostly shutting down, open sourcing it is a good thing to do.

ramshorns··on Implementing Cosine in C from Scratch (2020)
In that range, just returning x would be way better. Maybe even perfect actually - if x is less than 10^-16, then the error of x^3/6 is less than the machine precision for x.
ramshorns··on F-Droid – alternative to Google Play store
I use Document Viewer (org.sufficientlysecure.viewer). I haven't compared it to the others but it's pretty good.
ramshorns··on Linux's GPLv2 licence is routinely violated (2015)
Linux is licensed under GPLv2 with an additional permission (or exception):

> NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".

All the contributors license their work under this license with this additional permission. So in that sense it's not really Linus interpreting the GPL, and I don't think there's a risk of a contributor revoking this permission.

But maybe this doesn't apply to kernel modules and doesn't address the GPL_ONLY symbols thing.

ramshorns··on Words known better by males than females, and vice versa
It might still be a biased sample. Probably most people on this website regardless of gender are interested in science and technology.
ramshorns··on Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?
The amount of available space isn't the only benefit of using only one staircase. It also means the units can face outward in multiple directions and there's a more central common area.
ramshorns··on The Bongcloud Attack
One might imagine it'd be a draw after the fifth move, but the position after 1. e4 e5 is different from the position after 5. Ke1 Ke8, because of castling rights. So the threefold repetition doesn't occur until after 6. Ke2 Ke7.
ramshorns··on Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
Not really. I made the comment overly simplistic, probably 15 or 16 is a fine age to be allowed to start working.
ramshorns··on Labor shortage or terrible jobs?
Paying poverty wages is wrong, and child labour is wrong. They don't cancel each other out.
ramshorns··on When Should I Interrupt Someone?
Even the blog title seems to be about interruption.
ramshorns··on No Us Without You: elifdef and elifndef
Why does the C preprocessor need the #elif syntax at all? C doesn't have it, it just achieves "else if" by embedding the second if statement inside the else clause. But maybe that wouldn't work in the preprocessor?

    #if FOO
        foo();
    #elif BAR
        bar();
    #endif

    #if FOO
        foo();
    #else
        #if BAR
            bar();
        #endif
    #endif
I guess it works but it's clunkier.
ramshorns··on Ideal Chess – drop chess perfected?
I think a sort of reversed drop chess would be interesting: start with just a king each, and each turn you can either make a normal move or place one of your fifteen other pieces on its starting square.
ramshorns··on Vim Creep (2011)
How do you make that history? Something like an alias for cd that pushes them onto a queue?
ramshorns··on We Love GPLv3, but Are Switching License to Apache 2.0
Maybe unmodified AGPL software can be run as a network service without providing the source code because the source code is already available from the original author.
ramshorns··on The psychology behind ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’
Of course, what's actually not good for you is having to work twelve hours a day. Leisure time isn't the problem.
ramshorns··on The Nintendo Switch uses my open source code
What I'm thinking of would affect freedom 3 more than freedom 0. I guess by "use" I meant "incorporate in another program". But I still think it counts as free and open source because it doesn't actually prohibit commercial redistribution, it just switches to a different license type.

It's GPL plus an additional permission that noncommercial derivative works don't have to share the source code.

Anyway it's probably not actually a good idea.

ramshorns··on The Nintendo Switch uses my open source code
It'd be interesting to see a license that's permissive for non-commercial use and copyleft for commercial use. Or maybe the copyleft kicks in when the commercial derivative work starts earning a certain amount of money. It would be kind of like dual licensing under CC BY-NC and CC BY-SA.

I think it would still count as a free and open source software license, and it would allow small and independent developers to use the software without worrying much about the license, while requiring big companies to release the source of the derivative work.

ramshorns··on Some Math Problems Seem Impossible. That Can Be a Good Thing
The unfair coin that can't be more likely to give two different results than two the same assumes that each flip has the same probabilities (so k doesn't depend on how many times you flipped it or what you got). Which is fair, but maybe a coin could be built that tends to toggle between outcomes. If it was half full of honey, and you flipped it over once in your hand after catching to read it, it might be more likely to give the other result the next time.

Anyway, this is a bit outside the box; the point was that within a set of rules there was a problem that was impossible to solve.

ramshorns··on The Black Hole information loss problem is unsolvable
It leaves me wondering, is that data fundamentally impossible to collect, or do we just not know how yet? Sure, maybe the problem is unsolvable by math alone but that doesn't make it mathematically unsolvable. Maybe we could build or capture a black hole in the lab, put detectors all around it, and watch it evaporate, or something.
ramshorns··on Everything Is an X
Everything is a everything.
ramshorns··on A Spectre Is Haunting Unicode (2018)
That style of using full width characters for emphasis might be called vaporwave, or at least related to it.

V A P O R W A V E

AESTHETIC

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporwave

ramshorns··on A Spectre Is Haunting Unicode (2018)
It's invisible, it's a ghost character!
ramshorns··on Octotree – Proprietary Firefox extension contains AGPL-licensed code
It breaks it in the sense that it violates the license.
ramshorns··on 'changeme' is valid base64
So "valid+base64" is valid base64.
ramshorns··on Central Bank Digital Currencies are coming
Point taken, but it might be a bit better than literally being forced to use Facebook, if the Libra currency becomes ubiquitous. Governments controlling the economy doesn't sound too bad if the alternative is one or two huge companies controlling the economy.
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