EdwardCoffin

6 ms·

1.
by EdwardCoffin 2mo ago
I can't find it at the moment (edit: found it [2]), but I am sure I read something about Jerome Lettvin [1] doing some experimenting with CO2 but for something like schizophrenia, and that despite having good results he had to stop due
2.
by EdwardCoffin 2mo ago
Objekt, Numerik, Logik, Klock, according to Wikipedia [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv#Physical_packaging
3.
by EdwardCoffin 3mo ago
On the other hand, the bars have to be cut no matter which strategy one uses, so this criticism of not being able to cut the bars into exactly equal pieces applies equally to the other strategies. This Egyptian strategy definitely does have
4.
by EdwardCoffin 5mo ago
I think it was C+@ (pronounced CAT, as I recall). Edit: pasting a comment of mine from here in 2019 [1]: The language is C+@ [2]. I dug up an article about it in Dr. Dobbs Journal, the October 1993 issue. This does not seem to be the artic
5.
by EdwardCoffin 6mo ago
I use one much like this four or five times a day, and have none of the problems described. I fill it through the spout though, so never have to remove the lid.
6.
by EdwardCoffin 8mo ago
This makes me think of Bane's rule, described in this comment here [1]: Bane's rule, you don't understand a distributed computing problem until you can get it to fit on a single machine first. [1] https://news.yc
7.
by EdwardCoffin 8mo ago
Though I was confident this was just a metaphor, I did try cracking a walnut using this method. I submerged three walnuts in a jar with some tap water, and let them sit for three years before trying to open them. It was a let-down: they we
8.
by EdwardCoffin 8mo ago
In the same vein is the talk Pathological Physics: Tales from 'The Box' [1] which talks about various physics papers written by amateurs and sent in to the physics department at the university the speaker was in. [1] https:&#x2
9.
by EdwardCoffin 10mo ago
Even if that's the intended meaning of literally , it is still a reckless exaggeration. I'm pretty sure that Stephenson's endings are no more abrupt than some of Shakespeare's (check out Hamlet and Macbeth) or some of
10.
by EdwardCoffin 10mo ago
>> ‘It was the development environment’ > No, it wasn’t. I kind of think it was . The best argument I think is embodied in Kent Pitman's comments in this usenet thread [1] where he argues that for the Lisp Machine romantics
11.
by EdwardCoffin 10mo ago
In the same vein was an incident where an improperly localized phone in Turkey caused a sent message to arrive with different characters, with very different meaning, and the fallout was two deaths [1], discussed here [2] [1] https:/&
12.
by EdwardCoffin 10mo ago
In a similar vein is this 2003 post in an MIT discussion forum by Scott McKay [1]. I'd also highly recommend that anyone interested in this kind of thing listen to all three of the Dynamic Languages Wizards Series panels from 2001: run
13.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
I know that Guy Steele joined Thinking Machines, but after they'd at least designed the CM-1. He talked a little about it in A Conversation with Guy Steele Jr. in the April 2005 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal. I don't have a
14.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
You're probably referring to A FEW NOTES ON THE CULTURE by Iain M Banks [1] [1] http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm
15.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, describing how he felt about it, from an interview he did with CNN [1]: CN
16.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
If caches have a place in a file storage format, they should at least be optional and separate from mandatory content, and I got the impression from the critique that they were neither.
17.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
I think the point of the criticism I read was that the edit should have worked. There is no reason why the opaque mess following what was obviously a definition of the contents of the spreadsheet should even be there let alone be depen
18.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
I remember reading an early criticism of the spreadsheet side of OOXML, where a simple spreadsheet with three cells was created: A1 containing '1', B1 containing '2', and C1 containing the formula A1+B1. That spreadshee
19.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
If there were another writer of non-fiction as deeply researched I'd compare McPhee to, it would be Robert Caro. I already knew from Caro's memoir Working that Caro did not use a tape recorder in his interviews with subjects, a
20.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
The Oxide and Friends podcast [1] did a whole episode on this: Coder's Block (25 Oct 2021) [2]. It had some good stuff in it, the best of which (for me) was: when stuck, write debugging infrastructure. [1] https://oxide-and-
21.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
It's unmentioned in the article, but Trevor Blackwell's PhD thesis, Applications of Randomness in System Performance Measurement [1] was advocating this in 1998: This thesis presents and analyzes a simple principle for building
22.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
This reminded me of Institutional memory and reverse smuggling (2011) [1] which has been most recently discussed here, here [2]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20111228105122/http://wrttn.in/0...
23.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
Thanks, I'd not seen that particular article before, and it has some things in there I'd not read in any of his other interviews. I think the article I got his take on Blade Runner from was the Paris Review [1] which is archived h
24.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
Well to be fair I already had that aversion, though I will use that on occasion. Ironically enough I am an aficionado of the Waters series facility [1], which requires one to write Loop definitions for certain constructs (like defining new
25.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
To the best of my knowledge Gibson has never talked about Tron being an influence. He'd already described cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome before Tron came out. He has sometimes talked about Blade Runner and worrying whe
26.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
This book was an important part in my learning of Lisp, along with Common Lisp the Language 2ed. It did leave me with a few biases that took a while to overcome though, like biases against CLOS and verbose names. I consider this book to be
27.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
For me, an article in the New York Times back in 2019 [1] really made me want to learn Old English. The article pitches two features: the grammar is easy, and it has kennings. Kennings are essentially portmanteaus, Old English words made
28.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
Inception the App [1], a movie tie-in app for the iPhone which played theme music from the movie selected based on your accelerometer data and the ambient sounds it could sense. [1] http://inception-app.com
29.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
He's also given many talks which are on youtube on the topic, one of which is his talk of the same name at the Beckman institute [1]. It's a little under 90 minutes and is enormously entertaining as well as being informative. [1]
30.
by EdwardCoffin 1y ago
The author also has an MFA in poetry

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