tragomaskhalos

30 ms·

1.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
It's a shame that the tyranny of volumetrics referenced in the article means that in the UK some of my favourite crisp flavours have been brief one-off novelty runs - coronation chicken, baked bean, and numerous flavours rolled out for
2.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
When it comes to Christmas songs, I'm afraid you will have to prise Slade from my cold dead fingers
3.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Built-in graphics commands are a massive win, and a big gap in today's standard language offerings for kids. Any old timer will tell you that the ability to trivially get sprites up on the screen, or hell even a coloured circle, is the
4.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
see also: microwaves A microwave needs two dials - one for power level, and one for time. Not a calculator keypad, not buttons with +1 and +10 on them or any of that nonsense - dials please. And start/stop buttons if you insist. That&#
5.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
many years ago an older relative went on a holiday to Spain and was outraged that their apartment did _not_ have carpet. I deemed it futile to point out that carpeting is desirable here because our climate is so wretched, but as flooring in
6.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
I had no idea that each 'Spoons has its own custom carpet design. They are a much-derided chain but this is a nice detail, and by keeping drinking affordable they ensure the next generation of Britons can keep alive the vital tradition
7.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
In the UK a misplaced apostrophe (in a plural or in possessive its) is called a "greengrocers' apostrophe", presumably due to folks in that trade being particularly susceptible to errors in their signs, in turn partially due
8.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
I would have crashed the Greek paper because we were not taught accents, but the instructions make it very clear the answers require them!
9.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
It's worth reiterating that Go was created by Google to solve Google's problems. If it also solves your problems, or a worthwhile subset thereof, then that is a happy serendipity, but it's not a design goal.
10.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Slightly younger than the punch card era, but one bit of "old" tech I don't miss is the line printer. We had one in an office with a nylon carpet, and you'd approach that thing with utter dread because some combination o
11.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Dismayed to learn that it's now virtually impossible to obtain an RPN calculator of any sort. Swiss Micros make HP clones but for the more casual user their prices are pretty prohibitive when compared to how 'mainstream' calc
12.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Based on the attitude of its advocates, a flat earth would lack science and mathematics entirely, so pi would be undefined?
13.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Prediction: one beaming grandma vs one bemused, crestfallen kid on Christmas morning.
14.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
My mum briefly worked as kitchen staff for Winston Churchill, and she tells the story that they had to wrap his stilton in a piece of greaseproof paper, hold it up and listen for weevils moving about - for only when it was at that stage wou
15.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Ha, indeed! To test this theory, next time I re-read the book I'm going to imagine Louis Wu speaking in a West Country accent throughout :)
16.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
In Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' the explorers are always eating 'hand meals': for the longest time I resisted the obvious interpretation and imagined some unfathomable futuristic repast, but let's be honest - they
17.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Also - material science and computation being less advanced, they just built bigger margins of error into everything that required resistance to force etc. Compare to today where everything is done to wafer-thin margins to minimise cost, he
18.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
OK I'm now imagining a 19th century job interview when the candidate is given three weeks to 'devise and construct a steam-powered apparatus capable of emulating the popular parlour game based on multiples of 3 and 5'. I&#x27
19.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
The vocabulary section is also very iffy, assuming some common Japanese words haven't changed their vowels in the last two centuries! The whole section is a reminder of how much we take for granted freely available and accurate informa
20.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Thought that as well, but try to imagine someone bellowing the word over the incessant clacking of teletypes and it _almost_ works ...
21.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
The London Underground used to have a freely accessible API for real-time data as well, it was useful to curl it to plan when to leave the house :) Sadly no longer.
22.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
I would say that if you want to do 'clean' Rust you could certainly end up in a maze of reference lifetime problems. However here your escape hatch is that you can just clone stuff or wrap it in Rc/Arc just to get it compilin
23.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
One thing not mentioned is that US usage has 'couple' as an adjective whereas in British usage it is a noun - hence "a couple hours" is incorrect in Britain, we must say "a couple of hours".
24.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
If I need to grok a complex nested data structure then YAML is a 'mare, but JSON is not much better - even with nice IDE support. TBH end up just running a script to flatten the whole lot into lines of key-value pairs, where each key i
25.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Here in London targeted use of parking enforcement is an infamous money-spinner for local authorities - in instances where they know they can clean up: case in point, our local hospital has basically no on-site parking, only metered parking
26.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Or indeed this poor sod whose surname is 'Null': https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/
27.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Heh - checkmate not stopping the game was also a feature of Atari 2600 chess; always fun to carry on until the computer had no pieces left
28.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
The real surprise, given the distances in miles and time, is how similar American and British English are - compare with Afrikaans vs Dutch for example, or how much (at least according to Wikipedia) Cypriot Turkish and Greek have both div
29.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
Ditto, and conversely, UK "apple sauce" vs US "applesauce": two nations divided by a common language and all that.
30.
by tragomaskhalos 3y ago
TIL that wanting to protect your rights is virtually indistinguishable from being a drug addict.

More ›