alex_stoddard
Joined 18 years ago
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96
Member since
Sep 10
Recent submissions
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Another very entertaining series, with a much more SF bent, by Eric Flint, with Ryk E. Spoor is kicked of by the freely available 'Boundary'.
https://www.baen.com/boundary.html
(Like 1632 it also has a dreadful cover - actively despised by Ryk I believe).
Comment · 5 years ago
I haven't fully grokked it myself. But it relates to the concept and implementation of a Lisp reader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_reader
"Unlike most programming languages, Lisp supports parse-time execution of programs, called "read macros" or "reader macros". These are used to extend the syntax either in universal or program-specific ways."
read-string is a convenience over calling read itself as it will take a string rather than needing you to create a java.io.PushbackReader yourself.
As such read and read-string were implemented as core to Clojure's self interpretation and implementation, not as part of a general safe serialization API.
Unfortunately the temptation was to reach for read-string for de-serialization in general as it was so convenient and in the core. In a dev setting where you control and trust all input that is fine. In other contexts it definitely is not!
Comment · 5 years ago
They do specifically say single use plastics where I suppose a lot of applications are in food packaging. It just has to last significantly longer than the food spoilage time to be useful.
Comment · 5 years ago
Uninformed speculation: I would hypothesize the mRNA process could react faster to flu mutations, the current vaccines are kind of trying to guess which strains are going to be important in the next flu season. It is also possible the mRNA technology could cover a broader spectrum of flu antigens.
Influenza genetics are weird: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/viruses/change.htm
Comment · 5 years ago
To me footnotes/endnotes exist as the least bad way of working with supplemental information within the constraints of the _printed_ page (i.e. it can't be dynamically re-rendered).
I want my electronic documents to do it better, with true re-rendering and inline/overlay display on demand. But it is partly a matter of taste, and there is also something to be said for a degree of skeuomorphism.
Comment · 6 years ago
Thank you kindly for providing the way to actually do the documented: "You can determine if make contains support for Guile by examining the .FEATURES variable; it will contain the word guile if Guile support is available."
Unix - the documentation is excellent if you already know how to do it...
Comment · 6 years ago
This seems like two examples of errors converting decimal fractions to percentages in hacker news in one day.
Very roughly it looks like they should have said 0.1 or 10%.
10% of combinded GDP is very much not an easy investment to make!
Comment · 6 years ago
"Under-promotion" - deliberately not changing a pawn into a queen is very rare and the unique properties of the knight do matter tactically. Under-promotion not to a knight can matter because of stalemate. (Most under-promotion is the domain of chess problems rather than games).
https://www.chess.com/article/view/a-guide-to-underpromotion
Comment · 7 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
Maybe I'm contrarian but I was deeply disappointed by The Matrix, mostly because I feel it wasted a fantastic premise and opportunity to explore such issues.
I found its approach to the philosophical issues it touched on was facile and pretentious. A very cool looking movie but it could have been so much more profound.
Comment · 7 years ago
It is on my to-read-someday list but Snow Crash was published in 1992!
Comment · 7 years ago
Any recommendations for books written post 2000 that might bear comparison to Orwell's "1984" come 2070?
The same propensity to develop a harmful (until my mother's generation invariably fatal) immune response attacking the body's own insulin producing cells might be an advantage to fighting off certain infections (possibly in a different genetic context or living with a different set of environmental exposures).