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kevin_thibedeau commented on Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study (2017)   theguardian.com/science/2... · Posted by u/surement
numpy-thagoras · 12 hours ago
Alright, I'll bite:

To defend Wildberger a bit (because I am an ultrafinitist) I'd like to state first that Wildberger has poor personal PR ability.

Now, as programmers here, you are all natural ultrafinitists as you work with finite quantities (computer systems) and use numerical methods to accurately approximate real numbers.

An ultrafinitist says that that's really all there is to it. The extra axiomatic fluff about infinities existing are logically unnecessary to do all the heavy lifting of the math that we are familiar with. Wildberger's point (and the point of all ultrafinitist claims) is that it's an intellectual and pedagogical disservice to teach and speak of, e.g. Real Numbers, as if they're actually involving infinite quantities that you can never fully specify. We are always going to have to confront the numerical methods part, so it's better to make teaching about numbers methodologically aligned with how we actually measure and use them.

I have personally been working on building various finite equivalents to familiar math. I recommend anyone to read Radically Elementary Probability Theory by Nelson to get a better sense of how to do finite math, at least at the theoretical level. Once again, on a practical level to do with directly computing quantities, we've only ever done finite math.

kevin_thibedeau · 11 hours ago
> numbers methodologically aligned with how we actually measure and use them.

We use numbers in compact decimal approximations for convenience. Repeated rational series are cumbersome without an electronic computer and useless for everyday life.

kevin_thibedeau commented on FCC bars providers for non-compliance with robocall protections   docs.fcc.gov/public/attac... · Posted by u/impish9208
more_corn · 12 hours ago
Or start assassinating them. They prey on the most vulnerable Americans. Why not declare war on them and start decapitating their organizations?
kevin_thibedeau · 12 hours ago
Gotta round up the people who lost their green cards first.
kevin_thibedeau commented on Building the mouse Logitech won't make   samwilkinson.io/posts/202... · Posted by u/sammycdubs
kevin_thibedeau · 12 hours ago
> $200+ for a hot-air rework station

The [insert random brand] 959D rework stations run around $55 and are suitable for hobbyist use.

kevin_thibedeau commented on The Size of Adobe Reader Installers Through the Years   sigwait.org/~alex/blog/20... · Posted by u/henry_flower
robin_reala · 15 hours ago
If you’re talking Mac, why on earth would you install Adobe Reader? I’m sure there’s a different set of 5% functionality for power users, but Preview does everything I need (including things like signature annotation, real redaction, joining multiple PDFs together) and it does it quickly and with everything enabled for free.
kevin_thibedeau · 14 hours ago
There are a lot of classic PDF features that are still unimplemented by alternative viewers. For work I have to use Reader for clickable metadata popups that other viewers don't support.
kevin_thibedeau commented on What are OKLCH colors?   jakub.kr/components/oklch... · Posted by u/tontonius
MontagFTB · 16 hours ago
> The way gradients work in OKLCH is pretty different compared to sRGB. In sRGB, gradients are calculated in red, green, and blue values, which often leads to muddy midpoints and uneven brightness.

I always understood those “muddy midpoints” as a failure to properly gamma correct the interpolation between two (s)RGB colors. Is that happening here, or is the mud coming from something else?

kevin_thibedeau · 15 hours ago
Grays run along a diagonal axis of the RGB cube after stripping gamma off. A straight line through the cube will brush by it. This is enhanced when transitioning from a primary (green) to an opposite corner (magenta).
kevin_thibedeau commented on What are OKLCH colors?   jakub.kr/components/oklch... · Posted by u/tontonius
vanderZwan · a day ago
Aside from a few criticisms that others have already raised I think this is quite a nice introduction to OKLCH and how to use them in CSS.

With that out of the way, I'd like to go on a tangent here: can anyone explain the modern trend of not including publishing dates in blog articles? It stood out to me here in particular because the opening sentence said that "OKLCH is a newer color model" and the "newer" part of that sentence will get dated quicker than you think. The main site does mention a date, but limits it to "August 2025" so this seems like a conscious choice and I just don't get it.

[0] https://jakub.kr/

kevin_thibedeau · 15 hours ago
SEO to protect old content from being demoted. It is annoying.
kevin_thibedeau commented on Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me   boston.conman.org/2025/08... · Posted by u/classichasclass
alistairSH · 16 hours ago
Generic American English pronounces the 'h' in hospital, hero, heroine, but not hour.

Same is true for RP English.

Therefore, for both accents/dialects, the correct phrases are "a hotel", "a hero", "a heroine", and "an hour".

Cockney, West Country, and a few other English accents "h drop" and would use "an 'our", "an 'otel", etc.

kevin_thibedeau · 15 hours ago
Now do historic. Suddenly all Brits turn into Cockney's.
kevin_thibedeau commented on Uncle Sam shouldn't own Intel stock   wsj.com/opinion/uncle-sam... · Posted by u/aspenmayer
x0x0 · a day ago
From my pov, it looks more like intel shit the bed repeatedly.

Missed on: mobile, custom chips in the data center, graphics cards, ai, and building out fab services they can sell.

Meanwhile, they took at least 5 years off of making their chips faster, and we're treated to the absurdity that the m-series chips are as performant in single core as anything Intel can build on a power budget 1/10th of Intel's.

I'm not sure what that has to do with outsourcing? It looks more like a comprehensive lack of execution.

kevin_thibedeau · a day ago
Intel was (is?) the largest sponsor of EE H-1Bs. Most such people coming from two countries where it's practically impossible to win the green card lottery. The upshot of that is a massive brain drain when these people have to leave.
kevin_thibedeau commented on It is worth it to buy the fast CPU   blog.howardjohn.info/post... · Posted by u/ingve
bullen · a day ago
Is it worth to keep your old CPU?

I still run a 6600 (65W peak) from 2016 as my daily driver. I have replaced the SSD once (MLC lasted 5 years, hopefully forever with SLC drive from 2011?), 2x 32GB DDR4 sticks (Kingston Micron lasted 8 years, with aliexpress "samsung" sticks for $50 a pop) and Monitor (Eizo FlexScan 1932 lasted 15! years RIP with Eizo RadiForce 191M, highly recommend with f.lux/redshift for exceptional quality of image without blue light)

It's still powerful enough to play any games released this year I throw at it at 60 FPS (with a low profile 3050 from 2024) let alone compile any bloat.

Keep your old CPU until it breaks, completely... or actually until the motherboard breaks; I have a Kaby Lake 35W replacement waititng for the 6600 to die.

kevin_thibedeau · a day ago
I upgraded two years ago to a Ryzen 5700 rather than a 5800 specifically for the lower TDP. I rarely max out the cores and the cooler system means the fan rarely spins up to audible levels.
kevin_thibedeau commented on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing   atomic14.substack.com/p/t... · Posted by u/iamflimflam1
bloggie · 2 days ago
Virtual com ports or USB CDC do not require a baud rate as it's not a real serial port. As mentioned ESP32 has native USB and Arduino/ESP-IDF use USB CDC over this port to communicate with a host computer. Serial.begin() is used for all kinds of serial ports including virtual serial ports. Those libraries probably require a baudrate argument for Serial.begin() which will be ignored. This is probably in the documentation for that function.

If the same function is used on a physical serial port (of which there are a few on ESP32 iirc) the baudrate argument will be used to set the baudrate setting in the peripheral by the library.

kevin_thibedeau · 2 days ago
The purpose of baud and other control settings for CDC devices is so that they can serve as a pass-through for a real UART that will need to know what those settings are. Those control packets can be ignored if that never happens.

u/kevin_thibedeau

KarmaCake day21290June 23, 2014View Original