dsimms

8 ms·

1. 1.▲
   by dsimms 18d ago

   I had totally forgotten about the rain generator item in that edition of What If! I think because it includes this gem: Q. What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds? A
2. 2.▲
   by dsimms 5y ago

   In a day dream, it'd charge the batteries!
3. 3.▲
   by dsimms 5y ago

   or at sea! Nuclear mines, torpedos, etc. A lot easier to take out that SSBN or carrier I guess.
4. 4.▲
   by dsimms 5y ago

   Are you thinking of Dave in 2001? "Open the pod by doors, Hal." "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
5. 5.▲
   by dsimms 6y ago

   there are so many intersecting problems here, that I feel like we argue about different ones at the same time. Are you a human and want to query a database? SQL is probably it. (a SQL of some sort, but a pretty good shared understanding)
6. 6.▲
   by dsimms 6y ago

   ok, ok, the headline here is more descriptive but the one actually in the article is a good one: The Hole Truth
7. 7.▲
   by dsimms 6y ago

   There's a scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 that I think about often: Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses, bulwarks against
8. 8.▲
   by dsimms 6y ago

   Elon Musk, to customer: I'm sorry for your experience also Elon Musk, to product management: why don't we have a targa option? that looks amazing
9. 9.▲
   by dsimms 6y ago

   The struggle between semantic and page description is old. In some early arguments HTML "what's this markup thing, why not postscript with hyperlinks?" the most succinct counter argument was "yes, but what does it _mean
10. 10.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    also: earlier recent discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850
11. 11.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    the world should be append only!
12. 12.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    and they surely weren't the first to do that either, I assume now.
13. 13.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    This gets reinvented as a system matures, I think. IBM mainframes had TCP offload in the early 90's at least. (The NIC in that case was a PC running PS/2 plus some routing software. Worked great.)
14. 14.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    I agree: it catches entry errors, which is really handy in a system where you're hand-writing them twice. But if you're writing a computer system that's simply duplicating one entry from a human in two places in data store, i
15. 15.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdgzsF_O7oI&t=47 ?
16. 16.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    I feel like https://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen really drives this home.
17. 17.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    One day a chicken will finally win, which will be a pullet surprise... But seriously, congratulations to the winners!
18. 18.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    or honeypot rooms with super secret sounding military talk
19. 19.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    or honeypot rooms with soft porn
20. 20.▲
    by dsimms 6y ago

    I have to agree that Zoom just doesn't seem to care very much about privacy or security. Once? Sure, maybe an honest mistake. But, come on. Also, I have been enjoying this: https://github.com/arkadiyt/zoom-redir
21. 21.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    great article! It's not mentioned there, but I think the "conventional phone lines" meant fax, which was a pretty common gateway from the internet at the time. One of the McCools (can't remember if it was Rob or Mike)
22. 22.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    I should re-read Snowcrash. Was one of those texts the namshub of Enki by any chance?
23. 23.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    Tangent, sure, why not COBOL? COBOL in the cloud for example with Elastic Cobol: https://www.heirloomcomputing.com/elasticcobol/ ? I mostly just love the name.
24. 24.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    I was even going to say it was a missed opportunity for gittyup but maybe giddyup is better for TM avoidance!
25. 25.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    We're sorry, but this URL is not supported by Outline
26. 26.▲
    Combining two great companies: DoorDash to acquire Caviar(blog.doordash.com)

    6 points by dsimms 7y ago|1 comments
27. 27.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    I also have an Arabic book (which was super fun to read on plane post 9/11, oops), that likens it to Scottish's glottal stop, which seems right on in retrospect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4MJUi03GHM
28. 28.▲
    by dsimms 7y ago

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/feb/07/learn-arabic-... says: : We have a muscle in our throat which is never used except in vomiting. Think about that and pretend you are about to be sick. You w
29. 29.▲
    by dsimms 8y ago

    I wondered if they were consciously avoiding "journey"!
30. 30.▲
    by dsimms 8y ago

    Why Knot? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IF3UOQ4/