iasmseanyoung (u/iasmseanyoung)

iasmseanyoung commented on An intact slave's room found in Pompeii's ruins pompeiisites.org/en/comun... · Posted by u/agomez314

almeria · 4 years ago

The room was lit by a small upper window, and shows no evidence of having had any wall decorations.

So even slaves at Pompeii had a window to get light from, we see.

iasmseanyoung · 4 years ago

Roman plasterwork was applied in layers, and in first layer (which is quite rough) a diamond pattern is scratched. This is to increase the adhesion of the next layer (also known as the key). This is also true of lime plasterwork done through the ages.

As far as I can see only the first layer with the diamond pattern is visible one the left wall. The other layers may have not survived. Why would you bother to create a diamond pattern if you're not going to put more layers on?

In fact, the wall at the far end does show more layers, and also some decoration right in the the middle.

iasmseanyoung commented on UMN CS&E Statement on Linux Kernel Research cse.umn.edu/cs/statement-... · Posted by u/fhars

iasmseanyoung · 5 years ago

I do some maintenance work for the linux kernel dvb and infrared subsystems. I reviewed and accepted some patches from umn.edu addresses. They looked fine to me, however they're all around error handling, which can get pretty tricky with long error paths.

What else can I do than revert the lot?

iasmseanyoung commented on Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972) github.com/mortdeus/legac... · Posted by u/jnord

josephg · 5 years ago

It makes sense long would have needed a comment. It needs a comment because “long” and “double” are terrible names for data types. Long what? Double length what? Those type names could easily have opposite meanings and meant long floating point / double length integer. WORD/DWORD are nearly as bad - calling something a "word" incorrectly implies the data type has something to do with strings.

If you don't believe me, ask a non programmer friend what kind of thing an "integer" is in a computer program. Then ask them to guess what kind of thing a "long" is.

The only saving grace of these terms is they’re relatively easy to memorise. int_16/int_32/int_64 and float_32/float_64 (or i32/i64/f32/f64/...) are much better names, and I'm relieved that’s the direction most modern languages are taking.

(Edit: Oops I thought Microsoft came up with the names WORD / DWORD. Thanks for the correction!)

iasmseanyoung · 5 years ago

Yes, int_16/int_32 or something like that makes a lot more sense. Today, not when this compiler was written.

The PDP-9, PDP-10, and PDP-18 have 18 bits registers. The world had not settled on 16/32/64 bits at all.

Even the intel 80286 far/fat pointers are 24 bits.

iasmseanyoung commented on Low-carbon concrete stays strong with polymer lattice reinforcements newatlas.com/materials/lo... · Posted by u/panabee

iasmseanyoung · 5 years ago

Concrete has a high compressive strength without steel rebars. Steel rebars are added to concrete to increase its tensile and sheer strength. The article alludes that these polymer reinforcements can replace steel but then only talks about increasing the concretes compressive strength, which exactly not why they're used.