Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
Claude Clause.
Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago

  git clone --branch start https://github.com/djkoloski/anima_solver
  Cloning into 'anima_solver'...
  fatal: Remote branch start not found in upstream origin
Comment · 5 years ago
The opening of Borges' essay is absolutely brilliant writing:

> AT TRIESTE, IN 1872, in a palace with damp statues and deficient hygienic facilities, a gentleman on whose face an African scar told its tale — Captain Richard Francis Burton, the English consul — embarked on a famous translation of the Quitab aliflaila ua laila, which the roumis know by the title, The Thousand and One Nights. One of the secret aims of his work was the annihilation of another gentleman (also weatherbeaten, and with a dark Moorish beard) who was compiling a vast dictionary in England and who died long before he was annihilated by Burton. That gentleman was Edward Lane, the Orientalist, author of a highly scrupulous version of The Thousand and One Nights that had supplanted a version by Galland. Lane translated against Galland, Burton against Lane; to understand Burton we must understand this hostile dynasty.

Borges also admires Burton's footnotes:

> Thus Volume Six (which I have before me) includes some three hundred notes, among which are the following: a condemnation of jails and a defense of corporal punishment and fines; some examples of the Islamic respect for bread; a legend about the hairiness of Queen Belkis’ legs; an enumeration of the four colors that are emblematic of death; a theory and practice of Oriental ingratitude; the information that angels prefer a piebald mount, while Djinns favor horses with a bright-bay coat; a synopsis of the mythology surrounding the secret Night of Power or Night of Nights; a denunciation of the superficiality of Andrew Lang; a diatribe against rule by democracy; a census of the names of Mohammed, on the Earth, in the Fire, and in the Garden; a mention of the Amalekite people, of long years and large stature; a note on the private parts of the Moslem, which for the man extend from the navel to his knees, and for the woman from the top of the head to the tips of her toes; a consideration of the asa’o [roasted beef] of the Argentine gaucho; a warning about the discomforts of “equitation” when the steed is human; an allusion to a grandiose plan for cross-breeding baboons with women and thus deriving a sub-race of good proletarians. At fifty, a man has accumulated affections, ironies, obscenities, and copious anecdotes; Burton unburdened himself of them in his notes.

Comment · 7 years ago
With `. ranger`, if you change directory and then exit, the shell's working directory changes to where you left off in Ranger.

  $ pwd
  /home/grandpa
  $ ranger
  [ ... change directory ... ]
  $ pwd
  /home/grandpa
vs

  $ . ranger
  [ ... change directory ... ]
  $ pwd
  /home/grandpa/src
Comment · 7 years ago
This is really good fun! But it would be nice if I could finish up the problem I'm on when the timer runs out. Currently, it just gets taken away abruptly.
Comment · 8 years ago
You could test this by looking at whether pairs of fraternal twins are as similar on personality traits as pairs of identical twins. If they are more different, then genes are the cause.
Comment · 10 years ago
Why "infamous"?
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
Definitely, but I think Oxford University is more interested in teaching the underlying principles than tracking what's popular in industry.
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
There's a difference, though: QuickCheck randomly tries a large-ish number of possible inputs to try and disprove a postcondition, whereas formal methods prove the postcondition for all inputs. Practically, if the number of possible inputs is huge compared to the number of failure cases, it's unlikely that QuickCheck will find it. I strongly suspect - and this would be an interesting experiment - that QuickCheck wouldn't have found this particular bug, since Timsort has been in use for years without anyone noticing it.
Comment · 11 years ago
Utilities should be happy about this. One of their biggest problems is uneven load on the grid - low at night, too high during a heatwave - and this has the potential to make that problem a lot easier.

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