Viewing profile — xenadu02

I think that overstates the case for the parametron though. Even compared to contemporary vacuum tubes they were slower. Contemporary bleeding edge vacuum tube computers could reac…

That's unavoidable. We now have shake alerts in CA but if the quake happens on the Hayward fault across the bay San Francisco isn't going to get much warning no matter what anyone …

The traditional model of compilation is the biggest issue holding back fast incremental compilation IMHO. Swift suffers from this as well. Even a simple change to one file results …

I didn't leave the Republican party, the party left me. Then again I'm some kind of crazy nut for believing that principles matter even if you lose the election and that cruelty is…

Also note this is a side-effect of the fact that mammals lost true 3-color vision then primates re-evolved it by mutating the yellow cone into green/red cones. If you look at the s…

One thing you learn if you study the Amish or interact with them personally: there is no "Amish generally" or "the Amish usually". Every Amish congregation makes their own rules. T…

Well studies show that early school start times are bad for kids anyway so schools should fix their schedules. Kids also naturally like to stay up later these days so more daylight…

I liken it to the story of Noah. Whether that was the mediterranean re-joining the Atlantic and thus oral re-tellings from a much much earlier event or merely a localized flood you…

You don't have to do the exercises or follow along with the book. No matter if you are new to the field or have decades of experience: almost everyone would benefit from watching t…

Most piston aircraft engines are still air-cooled which really means air and oil cooled. The oil is a big part of getting heat out of various parts of the engine. That also makes t…

That's a dangerous game to play. It requires them to bet that: 1. This AI-driven demand cycle is a temporary blip 2. None of their competitors will make massive investments in capa…

Wasn't this also one of the last chips laid out by hand (literally the masks were cut and laid out physically)? Or am I thinking of something else? I sometimes wonder if some desig…

> That said, (before things like SPF) it was easy enough to deliver email to anyone you wanted even if you didn't have your own real email account and SMTP server Yup, this was als…

Ah this one was so long ago I forgot about it. The realization that (on DOS) "copy con file.txt" as the world's worst text editor or "copy file lpt1:" was treating physical devices…

> This is false. They slow down disease progression by about 30%, as measured by cognitive outcomes. This is discussed in the article. Perhaps I am just not well-informed but 30% s…

I don't think that's quite true. Unifi 10GbE switches are cheap enough I have a 24 port PoE+++ one in my house and my 3 main WiFi APs are 10GbE connected. My MBP uses a 5Gbps Thund…

As a kid in the late 90s my mind was blown when I realized I could telnet to port 80, 25, or 110 and interact with the servers manually. Simple get: GET / HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: te…

Let's put all of that aside for a moment. When the first drugs targeting HIV arrived the results were undeniable. Yes the drugs sucked for various reasons and yes HIV would evolve …

By definition a free market in healthcare requires forcing some people to die from a treatable injury or condition to discover the optimal price. That's part of the definition.

That's by design. If currency doesn't devalue then stuffing it under a mattress looks like a reasonable alternative to investing. If we hit deflation you can receive gains for "fre…

> with the US actively sabotaging their access to information and hardware More like they didn't see the need and didn't invest in early computing and so lagged behind. Something t…

> Actually pre-ANSI C technically didn't have function prototypes, Thanks, I completely forgot they weren't called prototypes originally.

The percentage of times I prompt claude "what about checking if there are any child processes running?" or "Would using a lock here greatly simplify the design?" only to have mysel…

Not just this it is important to remember that there was no "aha!" moment where C was created whole-cloth by writing the first compiler in B then cross-compiling. The language B wa…

That's fair. I had hoped GF was not entirely giving up but was going to wait until the tech for new nodes was proven and cheaper to obtain. It seems that is not really possible at …