Viewing profile — ajb

The one thing that gives me concern in their is "nanoda [the external proof checker] is [now] tracked daily". Although that would have caught this issue, we also now live in a worl…

This is a moving tribute. Stephen Wolfram's writing often has certain faults, which I mention only to be able to say that he has here transcended them; this is a genuine and heartf…

That's a likely motivation, but it's worth pointing out that it's against one of the HN community's other values: thinking things through properly, not just picking an option. The …

FWIW I have seen wind damage to a brick building, but with a shade sail, which while having a similar purpose is typically larger than a typical awning (although an awning on every…

Small ones like this may be fine, but buildings (especially old ones) may have surprisingly small margin for extra wind load laterally. What seems like a cheap option could require…

Indeed, I would be interested to know if this was more than just albedo.

There can be a difference between whose the fault is, and who is accountable. Usually, the entity you paid is the one legally accountable to you. This is not just a trivial detail:…

I don't know why you expect me to be a partisan for it, given the best thing I said about it was "driving on it is a non-event". Experimentation with junction design has been a goo…

I'm sure you know this, but for the benefit of those who haven't seen it before: it does not go anticlockwise. The"roundabout" in the middle is an illusion generated by the 5 norma…

Interesting. I think part of the reason people assume it's not possible is that (at least in the UK) there is so much faux-consultation which has approximately no effect; both in t…

Igalia is very serious about worker ownership. They aren't legally structured as a cooperative, as they don't technically meet the definition - as I understand it, they were nervou…

Substack is trying to turn itself into a social network, so comments on substack posts by other substack bloggers let people find other blogs. This is why half the comments on popu…

While the alcohol consumption can be a bit nuts, the UK has a relatively strong cultural tradition that what happens in the pub stays in the pub. That makes it a useful low-risk wa…

The problem is not necessarily job losses as such. When artisans were replaced by factory work, it took a long time for automation to actually reduce the number of workers. What ha…

The one I really don't accept is the Ryanair Russian Roulette pricing model, where they advertise cheap prices, but have many hidden tripwires that add a multiple of the sticker co…

The problem is that they also need to be big enough not to be rolled by aggressive behaviour such as lawsuits, pressure from politicians, etc. I mean, some of my domains are at a t…

In the UK, the old common law rule does not apply to land that has been registered centrally, that is then the legal definition of who owns the property. However there are still pr…

The UK used to have a distributed system - everyone had to have a solicitor store "deeds" of their property, which were a sort of paper blockchain of all the transactions the land …

I understand the frustration, but it's justifiable for the public to be concerned about AI in general because the novelty of the technology means that boundaries between beneficial…

A positive one, or a negative one?

The problem with this line of thinking is that the more humanity succeeds at becoming efficient at providing for its essential goods and services, the more the economy rests on unn…

Yeah that happens all the time. Anyone/thing with popular public releases has fans/journeys scraping the website looking for unreleased material or scoops. In the early days one of…

In the semiconductor industry this role is called Field Application Engineer. They do serious work, not just slideware, as your chip probably ships with drivers that were designed …

Interesting, I hadn't heard of Petersen's algorithm before. There's a similar algorithm by Lamport (of course): https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/fast-mutex.pdf .