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zzygan

294 karma · joined January 26, 2009

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zzygan··on Efrit: A native elisp coding agent running in Emacs
There is a few solid prepackaged systems around now. Doom emacs is very comprehensive. Similar systems also exist rather than starting from nothing.

Elisp is a programming language that supports many ways to do things so there is lots of ways people do things.

zzygan··on Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code
No issue with AU credit card here. Is a credit card and not a debit card though
zzygan··on 3D Map of Shinjuku Station in Three.js
Is it still difficult to obtain a suica / pasmo card in Tokyo? Last time I was there it was difficult to obtain the card.
zzygan··on FSNotes: Notes manager for macOS and iOS – native, open source
Obsidian is made by the team at dynalist - it would be amazing if they added the outlining features from Dynamist into obsidian
zzygan··on FSNotes: Notes manager for macOS and iOS – native, open source
I love org mode for writing and that side of org is brilliant. It’s not just a task manager. In fact I’d love just a note taking tool that doesn’t care as much about tasks but focuses on a outstanding org mode note taking experience on mobile.
zzygan··on What to Know Before Debating Type Systems (2008)
The complexity is exactly is issue. So while it’s possible to implement on the .net runtime without type erasure, it’s hard.

Plus the only reason type erasure is bad is if you want reflection. Which in FP languages with a solid type system isnt idiomatic and safe anyway. Edit: value types are one other reason for not using erasure but Can be done other ways

zzygan··on What to Know Before Debating Type Systems (2008)
Disagree. Type erasure is actually one of th best possible decisions made by the java designers. Languages that have higher kinded types (Haskell, Scala)are virtually impossible to implement without type erasure. This is why the .net runtime doesn’t have languages with HKT
zzygan··on A 15-year-old weightlifting prodigy
Definitely a myth. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/phys-ed-the-benefit... Study Review: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/5/e1199.ab...
zzygan··on Inverting Binary Trees Considered Harmful
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing... There were earlier versions of that article as well. Joel kinda popularized the notion of those kind of problems
zzygan··on Hydra: A lightweight OS X window manager with a powerful API
Is there a way to do XMonad style layouts with this system? Since moving to OSX, I've missed Xmonad badly. The big thing that has been lacking is the ability for newly opened windows to automatically be placed into a grid, according to the layout that is currently defined, and then have the ability to shuffle windows around within that layout.
zzygan··on Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm
Credit card penetration is pretty high in Australia.

Its a few years old, but as of 2009 at least 65% of Australians have credit card debt. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Fe...

zzygan··on How I Created a Matrix Bullet Time-Style Rig With 50 DSLRs
Just in case you were wondering what kind of shots this rig can produce....

http://24x360.com/gallery

zzygan··on Google's Common Lisp style-guide
This must have come out of the ITA Software acquisition.... (Heading "Attention required" 'You must follow the ITA convention of using...') They were a big common lisp user apparently.

Google is normally very specific on the languages allowed for internal projects. A product/company acquisition with large assets written in common lisp would necessitate this becoming the "Google Common lisp style guide" rather than what it was most likely originally the "ITA Software" common lisp style guide. Speculation of course, but looks likely.

zzygan··on Helm: Open Source Real Time Discussions
I just finished installing helm in emacs. Of course its something completely different. Always confusing when something open source appears that has the same name as something else entirely. Not that it matters overall. http://emacs-helm.github.com/helm
zzygan··on Great work Visa, now I hate you
Yep, there is also the stipulation that no Shops in London are allowed to sell hot Chips unless sold with Fish aka Fish and Chips, because McDonalds has exclusive sponsor rights on Chips. I should say that English Chips really are nothing like McDonalds french fries.

Same thing, different brand

zzygan··on PageRank Algorithm Reveals Soccer Teams' Strategies
Zonal Marking is a fantastic site for tactical minded football fans. Highly recommended. Not overly surprised that its referenced 2 or 3 times on HN. Switzerland is the closest example of Chelsea/Inter in the case of Spain. Switzerland shut down the midfield pretty effectively, however Spain were particularly awful in that game, and Spain did remedy that situation later on.

In watching Euro2012, I have found it amusing about Spain being called boring by plenty of authors. The only way teams have found to stop Spain has been to park the bus, and let Spain have the ball for long periods. The negativity of opposing teams was reason for the lack of activity in the final third of the field. The result Italy in the final was a great example of what happens when a team tries to attack Spain. They get beaten soundly.

zzygan··on PageRank Algorithm Reveals Soccer Teams' Strategies
Pirlo for Italy was 34 for this years Euro's, and look at the tournament he had. Its possible if Xavi is rested appropriately that Spain can have the same effect in Brazil. Scary actually.

Stats are important to Football, but pure data is useless to sport in general without a way of applying the data. Interesting is how the data is applied more than anything else. Can comparisons across time be drawn to teams across era's to statistically determine who the best team of all time are?

zzygan··on There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
This is a good article, however the guy who has been pushing this for years and years now, is a man called Dan Lavry. In fact he wrote a very good, rigorous explanation a few years back,in very readable and well written form.

http://www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pd...

zzygan··on Why Is Payroll Hard - Ron Jeffries
Payroll is a really weird beast. In some ways business apps can be a challenge, and in others a real pain. Payroll is definitely one of the harder business problems to make generic.

I've just come off a payroll project that has been 2 and half years in the making, and I can say first hand that all of these things happen. And more.

Acquisitions, benefits, and here in AU award wages for hourly employees make things even more fun. Different sites of the same company can have completely different set of rules and regulations that they adhere to, purely because the unions decided to negotiate differently for a different site.

Ahh fun.

zzygan··on Show HN: An OS X music library I've been working on for the past year.
Its very nifty. Much appreciate someone taking on the behemoth that is iTunes.

I cant help but think of Audion when I see a paid music player on OSX. http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

zzygan··on My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine
Very interesting idea. I need to figure out a way to teach my kids about money and cashflow using something like this method. However, as cool as this story is, I swear I read it in one of Rich Dad Poor Dad books. Maybe this is the source of the books story. I'm not sure.
zzygan··on Australian Government doesn't understand startups, gov responds
Excellent links. Very interesting.

The problem I see is precisely the point you raise " Given that Australian venture funds don't see the opportunity it isn't at all clear why the government would think differently"

Is there a way to help venture funds find the startups that are actually happening here in Australia. Unfortunately not all of us have the opportunity to reach out overseas for funding

zzygan··on Free .NET Decompiler - JustDecompile
If its not open source, then the same thing will eventually happen that happened with reflector.

I'll stick with ILSpy when I work on .NET/mono

zzygan··on John Resig uses this
Minor quibble. The latest versions of chrome(12 onwards) let you de-obfuscate JS code, and set breakpoints in the cleaned up code. Just right click in the source tab pane, and the code get prettified.
zzygan··on Bitcoin befuddles US customs agents, thwarting visit by digital currency guru
As an Australian citizen who has recently traveled to the US under the Visa waiver program with the sole purpose of working (I was sent to the US by my employer), I can say pretty definitively that they dont have an issue with working as long as you have a return ticket (which they checked out in my case)
zzygan··on Canadian-backed report says piracy is a market failure, not a legal one
This is definitely the case here in Australia.

Apparently Australia has one of the highest TV piracy rates in the world due to the fact that TV networks here would wait a very long time (6 months or even more) between a show airing in the US and when they would show it here. Its slowly getting better here in that networks are doing "fast-tracked" shows that air a couple of days after the initial airing in the US, but this still only tends to happen for shows that are new and anticipated, and doesnt happen for older shows. I honestly cant understand the slowness, but there must be some reason.

zzygan··on Implementing Workflows on Google App Engine with Fantasm
This made me think that App Engine suddenly got support for a really old mac assembly language tool.http://www.lightsoft.co.uk/Fantasm/fant.html

I must be getting old.

zzygan··on Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie
So true. I've only fairly recently gotten into crossfit, and although it is very hard, and very intense, everything he talks about the article is focused on, comes up in various crossfit workouts, as well as a hell of a lot more stuff that makes you so much more versitile than just strength. The thing i hate about crossfit is the "coach" thing, but that must be something I just dont get.
zzygan··on PS3 Root Key Hacker Sued
Although I dont agree with SECA, their point of view is that once the console can run "uncertified" software then its only a matter of time before the pirates have their day.

I think that if Sony had just left the OtherOS option in the new consoles, and not removed the support from older ones and maybe improved it by allowing access to the GPU, then this would have taken a lot lot longer since there was no motivation for the hardcore guys

zzygan··on Trouble In the House of Google
Google is indeed getting worse for product searches. However Amazon is not the worldwide answer for product comparison since for the vast majority of their non book products they refuse to ship anything outside of the US, thus making pricing pretty much useless. Google definately has more usefulness worldwide.
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