zingermc

You could easily make a root-privileged daemon that listens for requests to install packages from users in a particular group.

You can see the directory by editing the URL: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/

Looks like rms-essays.ps exists, and there are .texi files for individual essays (at least "Right to Read" and "Misinterpreting Copyrights").

Breaking Bad would still be a show!

Walter White was a chemistry teacher, which implies he had health insurance that would cover chemotherapy. He also has a son with cerebral palsy, who almost certainly has needed medical treatment before.

The thing is, he only wanted to go to the "best" doctors, which his insurance didn't cover. He also refused to let his friends pay his bills.

You could still make this kind of choice with socialized medicine -- "I don't want the in-network doctors, I only want the best!"

Upgrade your business infrastructure to SaltyTwine™ today!

I'm finding the writing style of this article very strange. Is the author pulling some trick that other linguists would find amusing?

Even simpler, shouldn't the configuration be part of the fuzzed input?

Wow, the two-level grammar concept is incredible! I have some learning to do. Thank you for sharing.

Interesting! I think I am starting to get it. To double check, is running a grammar the same as parsing?

Maybe I'm being too literal, but how can a grammar be Turing complete? The usual definition of Turing completeness is being able to simulate an arbitrary Turing machine. Typical human languages don't do beta reductions like Lambda Calculus, so I fail to see how a grammar (or the language produced by the grammar) can be said to compute anything.

Many colleges in the US have (land) Quidditch teams. I've heard they sometimes have horrific injuries because the people on the team are not conventionally athletic.

It's more than nostalgia -- interacting with a physical object is more stimulating than an e-reader. Paper books have a smell, a texture, and a colorful cover. You might remember where something happened in a story because of how many pages you held in your hand.

It's important to remember that the metric of success in evolution is not outsmarting other people. It's how much you can spread your genes!

Soulver is very similar to a project I started working on a few months ago. I guess I didn't do enough market research!

While you're in the terminal, you might as well fire up `bc -l`, etc. I can't stand GUI calculators that don't display the whole formula.

I had a somewhat similar dream where I had an epiphany that everything in the universe is controlled by code, which I had the privileges to edit for some reason. I remember typing some HTML (`<span style="color:red">` and `</span>`) to create these small physical blocks. Slapping the blocks on either side of any object would turn it red!

You might be interested to hear another point of view. I am one of the people who tells others I'm bad at math, but it is because I struggle with mental arithmetic due to working memory deficits. For example, I struggle to keep two two-digit numbers in my head while I compute their sum. It's embarrassing, so the natural reaction is to try to make it funny.

Sounds like a good way to turn the galaxy into grey goo.

I'm running Chromium 54 on Arch Linux, which I am assuming is not affected, since that page only names version 53. Interestingly, there is no certificate problem on a Windows machine on the same network.

Anybody else seeing a certificate error on ftc.gov?

Self-driving cars need to support unplanned changes to the road, such as construction zones.

> In 1299, zero was banned in Florence, along with all Arabic numerals, because they were said to encourage fraud. Zero could easily be doctored to become nine, and why not add a few zeros on the end of a receipt to inflate the price?

I'm really curious about this part. It sounds like they were already using Arabic numerals. How did they intend to express numbers like the ones mentioned in the first paragraph, like 101?

Yes! Propositional logic and conditional/indirect proof strategies should be taught before any kinds of "proofs" are taught to students (I'm looking at you, trigonometry).

My guess is that they are using blockchain, but I cannot find any real details on their site, blog, or FAQs.

I am amazed by the fact that I never accidentally trigger this feature.

This is an extreme case, but if the policy is to slow down and/or stop, then that can be manipulated. Imagine your car takes you through a bad part of town and a group of people want to rob you -- they just have to stand in the car's path and it will stop.

It feels weird saying this, but there is a sort of physical threat that being behind the wheel gives you.

Maybe serif fonts are more readable on a high-resolution phone screen or "retina" display, but not on my monitor.

The edges of the serif font on the New Yorker's site just look blurry to me.

We are still waiting on a proof of the Church-Turing Thesis, so maybe that is next on the agenda.

I tend to agree with all of your points.

How do you feel about the 'eshell' mode in emacs? I think it's neat because it's basically a normal shell plus an elisp REPL.

I imagine a terminal emulator with access to a large library of functions (such as a trusted subset of npm modules) could be useful.

> With the older systems, the database update logic and the business logic are in the same programs. This is not good.

Can you elaborate? Sometimes it seems that business logic must be implemented in SQL, for example, or else you will get a massive performance hit.

That's a really good point! I have used the CherryPy framework before, but I've never used Python type hints before.