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wolfgang42on Fixing Penn Station

Amtrak says[1] that while they technically have priority, they have no power to enforce it (and the DoJ isn’t doing anything about the problem); so the best they can do is write an irritated-sounding PDF[2]. I think they’d like you to call your representative and ask them to get this fixed.

[1] https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance

[2] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

wolfgang42on Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

Here are some pointers to why HN doesn’t have comments on job posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32586658

wolfgang42on Flexport is rescinding a bunch of signed offer letters

It’s certainly not new; here’s dang explaining to someone that you can’t comment on job posts back in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298769

And here he is explaining why: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32586658

> The short version: job ads are boring. [...]

wolfgang42on A Company of One

> When people say they find the "very idea of billionaires" abhorrent, what exactly is the solution here?

There’s a quote[1] which makes the rounds occasionally and I think sums up the sentiment pretty well:

> Ok how about this:

> No more billionaires. None.

> After you reach $999 million, every red cent goes to schools and health care.

> You get a trophy that says, “I won capitalism” and we name a dog park after you.

---

> Most billionaires net worth is highly centralised in the stock of the companies they founded[...] unless we are talking asset seizure I am not quite sure how you would do away with [billionaires]

Marginal asset tax rate of 100%? (Really, the main difference between that and the inheritance tax you favor is the timing.) The Wikipedia article[2] has a bunch of arguments for why that might be a bad idea, but it’s reasonably straightforward in principle.

[1] https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1241843944238923777

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax

wolfgang42on Researchers have found that micro-spikes etched into titanium rupture microbes

boppo1 is a bot account. The spamming of identical comments is a dead giveaway. There, see how easy and unhelpful that was? ;-)

Also, slinging spurious accusations at someone who’s written some quite interesting comments doesn’t seem like it adds much value to the conversation; and besides, consider the https://xkcd.com/810/ (“constructive spam”) effect.

wolfgang42on Sag-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the games industry

A “sufficiently smart compiler” is a (frequently mythical) one that can implement some difficult optimization on its own, rather than needing hints from the programmer. (See e.g. https://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html?0 for some discussion on the topic.)

wolfgang42on Sag-AFTRA votes unanimously to expand its strike to include the games industry

Assuming this[1] is the report you’re referring to:

> By the 2000s, so much information was being generated worldwide that only a small fraction (0.5% in 2015) of the digital data generated was being analyzed at all. [emphasis mine]

Not only is it ‘data analyzed’ and not ‘content consumed,’ but I can’t figure out what they mean by ‘analyzed’ either. Reading the rest of the paragraph makes me think that this is talking about things like clickstream data that businesses love to collect “so we can use big data to enhance user engagement” and then leave to pile up in their data warehouse once they discover that data analysis is hard; if so, this statistic is unrelated to the production:consumption ratio of “content” in the sense of things that people might want to look at on its own merits.

[1]: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_economy_...

wolfgang42on The Craft of Experimental Physics (2015)

Working backwards from the header in the linked PDF, I found “University studies, Cambridge, 1933”: https://www.worldcat.org/title/1197571

(Contents: Introduction, by Harold Wright; Philosophy, by R.B. Braithwaite; Mathematics, by M.H.A. Newman; The craft of experimental physics, by P.M.S. Blackett; Chemistry, by C.P. Snow; Physiological research, by R.K. Matthews; Biology, by C.H. Waddington; History, by R.E. Balfour; The study of the classics at Cambridge, by B.L. Hallward; English literature, by F.L. Lucas)

wolfgang42on Unicode 88 (1988) [pdf]

Resource forks are something different; the parent is referring to type and creator codes, which are part of the metadata for a file. (Type codes were also used to identify types inside the resource fork, which is maybe what you’re thinking of?)

The type code didn’t carry encoding information, though I believe the later https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Type_Identifier can.

wolfgang42on Unicode 88 (1988) [pdf]

I think if someone had tried to make encoding-in-filename a common convention it would have just resulted in people writing “.txt.ASCII” without understanding what that meant, and we’d have the same charset sniffing we have now plus another mess on top. (For example: when you have a “config.ini.UTF-16” and a “config.ini.WINDOWS-1252”, which should your program prefer?)

---

An anecdote: I was writing some code to send data to another company as an XML file. When I sent them a test file to validate, I got a complaint that it didn’t declare its encoding as UTF-8.

“Yes, our database uses UCS-2 for exports,” I replied. “Why, can you not read it?”

“Our system imported it just fine,“ they explained, “but it needs to say ‘<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>’ at the top and when I looked at it with a text editor yours says something else there instead.”

“Yes, it doesn’t say UTF-8 because it’s not UTF-8. Sounds like your system is OK with that, though?”

“Yes, the rest of the file is fine, but we can’t move forward with go-live until you conform to the example in our implementation guide...”

Actually changing the encoding proved difficult (for reasons I no longer recall), so I ended up shoving in a string replacement to make the file claim the wrong encoding, along with an apologetic comment; their end apparently did sniffing (and the BOM was unambiguous) so this worked out fine, but it goes to show just how confused people can get about what a character encoding a file actually is.

wolfgang42on Mashing Enter to bypass full disk encryption with TPM, Clevis dracut and systemd

My favorite bug report in this vein: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-greeter/+bug...

> Steps to reproduce:

> 1. Leave laptop unattended in a cold room with a warm cat.

> 2. Cat will sit on laptop keyboard.

> 3. Wait 1 hour.

> 4. Lightdm will become unresponsive.

Also included: “Alternative steps to reproduce if cat is unavailable or uncooperative about being placed on keyboard (see attached pictures)”

wolfgang42on Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

It still seems like useful feedback that this is something some people might find concerning.

wolfgang42on Record low sea ice led to catastrophic breeding failure of emperor penguins

Original New Yorker cartoon, since it took me a moment to place where I’d heard this before: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

(Transcription: a man in a tattered business suit sits across a campfire from some children who are listening to him speak.)

wolfgang42on Record low sea ice led to catastrophic breeding failure of emperor penguins

Cite for this figure: https://web.archive.org/web/20170710191300/https://b8f65cb37...

Yes, if you attribute all emissions to the company that originally took the fossil fuels out of the ground (“Scope 3 - use of sold products”), you get a fairly small list, for the simple reason that there aren’t that many energy companies in the world. But all of those “sold products” are being sold to somebody, presumably for a reason. So there are a bunch of ways to tackle the problem, both upstream (only 100 companies need to stop selling fossil fuels to massively reduce emissions!) and downstream (every drop in demand for those companies’ products!)

wolfgang42on Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

I hear that depression is often comorbid with ADHD, since people who struggle with executive function to the point where they’re having trouble keeping their life in order are also likely to get depressed about their inability do do anything about it.

wolfgang42on Show HN: Shimmer – ADHD coaching for adults, now on web

“Cannot provide any advice or guidance” is an exaggeration; that quote excludes (a) medical advice and (b) important decisions. It does not, for example, exclude advice on making unimportant decisions, which is a skill that a lot of people with ADHD could use help improving!

wolfgang42on Some tactics for writing in public

Some pointers to dang’s comments on the topic:

“notice-dislike bias”: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

“hostile media effect”: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...

wolfgang42on If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose

We put a lot of effort into not using rail for freight, it stands to reason that if we actually set our minds to it we could start using it more again.

(At least, I think that the argument you’re making is about modern logistics and modern rail freight being surprisingly incompatible. But it’s hard to tell since you haven’t actually provided a rebuttal.)

wolfgang42on Electron band structure in germanium, my ass (2000)

Original publication: Kovar, L. “Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass.” Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 7, no. 3, May/June 2001, p. 4, https://web.archive.org/web/20010620051228/http://www.improb...

wolfgang42on One week of empathy training (2019)

I think they’re talking about the coloring in `git diff`, `git log --patch`, etc, which defaults to red/green for removed/added lines, respectively. (This can be changed with the `color.diff.*` config options, as seen in git-config(1).) This UI also provides an alternative indication, in the form of -/+ indicators in the left column, but the coloring does help a lot—presuming that you can see it.

wolfgang42on X to Close – The origins of the use of [x] in UI design. (2014)

The pressed state for the close box was a sort of starburst thing, not an X. (Possibly you’re thinking of checkboxes, which were squares that got crossed out when they were checked.)

wolfgang42on Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

That’s not an advantage of ADHD, it’s an advantage of off-label use of ADHD medication. For people who do have ADHD, Adderall brings them closer to the neurotypical baseline; in fact one of the common helpful effects is less concentration in certain circumstances, so they can direct their attention where needed more effectively.

wolfgang42on Retro: A modern, pragmatic Forth

I was vaguely under the impression that Forth only dereferenced words from the dictionary into functions when you call them, but I admit I haven’t actually used it. In that case, being able to reorder your code so you can give the overview of what you’re trying to do before diving into the finer details of its internals does seem like a great help!

wolfgang42on Retro: A modern, pragmatic Forth

My take on this is that TANGLE-style reordering is much less necessary now that we have ubiquitous forward referencing and variables that can be declared in the middle of a function. If you read Knuth’s Pearls example[1], a lot of the code blocks would be separate constants or functions; but he’s using WEB to inline them to compensate for the one-pass compiler and associated limitations. In a modern language for the most part you already have the freedom to order your code blocks however you want, and you don’t need a separate tool to make this possible. At that point the main advantage that the technique offers is particularly extensive and well-formatted comments.

McIlroy also touches on this in his review, though from the other direction:

> Perhaps the greatest strength of WEB is that it allows almost any sensible order of presentation. Even if you did not intend to include any documentation, and even if you had an ordinary cross-referencer at your disposal, it would make sense to program in WEB simply to circumvent the unnatural order forced by the syntax of Pascal.

[1] Of “Knuth v McIlroy” fame: https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/BentleyEtAl8...

wolfgang42on Ask HN: Just moved to SF. How can I leverage my new location to skill up in dev?

I second the recommendation for Noisebridge; some additional practical advice:

- Be aware that NB is perhaps best described as a “501(c)(3) disorganization.” The entire thing is volunteer-run, more or less by whoever happens to be there that day, so it’s pretty chaotic and your experience as a newcomer can vary wildly depending on when you happen to visit.

- You can just show up! Ring the doorbell and hope someone answers (6-8PM is a good bet, though there can be people there at all hours). Once you get a tour, hang out and chat with people. As others have noted it can be a mixed bag who you run into on any given day. The space is open to the public, with all that entails.

- You might also try some of the regularly scheduled events (some combination of https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Category:Events and https://www.meetup.com/noisebridge/events/ should get you a sort-of-mostly-up-to-date view of things); that way you’ll have an organizer and a topic to start with.

- There are also a lot of other hackerspaces/makerspaces in the area! Many of them are more formal than Noisebridge, with all the differences that come with that.

wolfgang42on JavaScript macros in Bun

Cool, thanks! “Just use a template syntax that’s also valid code” is a neat trick; I was sort of headed in that direction, but having a concrete example is useful.

What are the commented bits like /* __REMOVE_LINE__ / and / __SCHEMA_IMPORT__ */ used for?

wolfgang42on Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

Mastodon instances have a section on the About page (under “Moderated servers”) which shows you exactly that. You can even get it programatically: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/instance/#domain_block...

wolfgang42on Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

Say you have a bug that caused 100,000 HTTP requests to hang, and you kick the node and make them all fail at once. One second later, 100,000 clients suddenly retry simultaneously, causing a huge spike in load which makes most of their requests fail. They use exponential backoff, so two seconds after that, 99,000 clients retry, causing a huge spike in load that makes most of their requests fail. Four seconds after that, 98,000 clients retry...

If you introduce a bit of randomness into the retry timing (say, multiply by 1.8~2.2 instead of a straight doubling), that thundering herd will spread itself out and be much easier to recover from.

wolfgang42on JavaScript macros in Bun

I’ve run into this in a few different contexts, which usually boil down to “I have a schema, and I’d like to automatically write code that uses it.” (Think things like API definitions, database models, binary serialization formats, and the like.) Trying to do it at runtime with something like io-ts results in a lot of indirection that’s hard to follow, and writing the files by hand results in silly mistakes because it’s tedious to get all the details right. Generating the files and checking them in gives you the best of both worlds: the readability of hand-written code, with the accuracy of automation. But I’ve never been able to get the generator itself as nice as I’d like; string templating mostly works adequately, but as the parent says it lacks integration with the regular toolchains.