jpurnell
Joined 7 years ago
Karma
68
Submissions
22
Member since
Jul 15
Recent submissions
Comment · 25 days ago
I've spent most of my time working on tools to keep my agents on track, and keep code legible. Where I'm probably most strict in the tooling is on documentation, which makes the code review much more manageable.
Comment · 3 months ago
Wasn't a lot of Snow Leopard an exercise in removing old cruft from the PowerPC architecture, and the last release to support 32-bit Intel machines? From my perspective at the time, it was really meant to set up Mac for the next decade or so, which it did brilliantly.
Comment · 7 months ago
I first used an Apple IIe in an afterschool program when I was 7. I learned the rudiments of BASIC and wrote a bunch of spaghetti GOTOs. I woke up this morning and thought it'd be nice to write a little "happy birthday" BASIC program and throw it up on social media to celebrate Apple's 50th. Quick, easy, fun. Then I wanted to verify that it worked, but didn't want to do it with a GUI program…I needed to see it in green on black! So, I got a little more ambitious, and decided I'd make a BASIC interpreter in modern Swift.
Here it is, along with a few sample programs, including Steve Jobs' 1975 Atari Horoscope Program that Adafruit recreated earlier this year.
The package includes a Tutorial and Language Reference so that my 7-year-old can follow along.
Comment · 1 year ago
Comment · 2 years ago
I power up my Titanium Powerbook at least once a year or so. 23 years old and works just fine. I last opened it July 4, 2023, and there was a software update waiting for me.
Comment · 2 years ago
In the Danish system, each mortgage is backed by a matching bond. Thus, mortgage holders have two ways to pay off their mortgage: 1) pay the monthly payments or 2) buy the matching bond and, in effect, extinguish the mortgage. The latter option is valuable because when interest rates rise, the price of mortgages fall.
Comment · 4 years ago
A few professors in my undergrad econ department have done a lot of actual academic research into this, and, in fact, started the American Association of Wine Economists (https://wine-economics.org) with other economists who are interested in wine worldwide. They have a quarterly peer-reviewed journal, and the articles are genuinely interesting. Sample topics from the latest issue: "Does quality pay off? “Superstar” wines and the uncertain price premium across quality grades" or "Tracking the wines of the Judgment of Paris over time: The case of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Cabernet Sauvignon"
A few things I've gleaned from them over the years:
1) People definitely come to a wine tasting and think they have to sound smart. There's always someone who thinks they need to say "something-something oaky" to "fit in" because it's something they saw on TV. The point is not to sound like what you think a smart person sounds like, the point is to find a wine you like. Hard to get around it, but that's what a lot of articles like this are basically pointing out. It's not wrong, but it's also kind of missing the point.
2) People have different fundamental taste profiles – just like some people just like Coke instead of Pepsi, and a €100 Pepsi will taste "bad" to someone who's expecting a €100 Coke. But if you like Pepsi – and there is a real reason that bottle of pepsi costs €100 (e.g. materials, aging, process, etc.) – you're really going to like that €100 Pepsi.
3) As a consequence of 1), there are definitely wines that are more "marketing driven," and tap into that insecurity. I know a few people who have been offered thousands of dollars to steam off the label of empty bottles of wine they kept in their cellar for sentimental reasons, so that those labels could be re-glued to a bottle of whatever, so that they could then be trotted out to pump some dude's ego. It's a shame, but that's people.
4) @Antognini is pretty on target here. For the same vintage, if you open it up right away, you can get a very tasty "house" bottle of wine for €15, but you should taste a very significant difference in the €40-€50 of wine from the same maker. The difference is more likely to show up when you cellar it. The €15 bottle might last for about 3-5 years before losing its taste. The €40 will gain complexity and flavor for 10-15 years. A more expensive bottle from a reputable maker should/might/maybe/is supposed to signal that it's been made to last even longer, like 40-50 years.
5) Plug: A few years ago, I adapted a DOS app the aforementioned professors in my undergrad used in their blind tastings for iOS. You can see results of their tastings going back to the early 90s at http://liquidasset.com, and the app is at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/winetaster-3/id1491063699
Comment · 4 years ago
Fair, but if you're teaching an entry-level undergraduate CS course, you have to to start somewhere, right? Giving them a set of best practices and a clear syntax does that. And then, as students progress, they can be as creative as you suggest.
Comment · 4 years ago
So…why is this named for Stigler?