Europe seems to be having a rough time dealing with costly energy investments involving unstable regimes.
Readit Newsmdf commented on Trump halts construction on nearly complete wind farm off Rhode Island thepublicsradio.org/envir... · Posted by u/doener
mdf commented on Improving performance of rav1d video decoder ohadravid.github.io/posts... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Since you seem to enjoy this kind of writing I'd love to get your feedback on something I've written a while back about branchless partitioning [1]. Despite it being content wise the most work to create of the things I've written about the topic, it found much less attention than other things I've written. So far I've wondered if it was maybe too technical? Would love to get an honest opinion.
[1] https://github.com/Voultapher/sort-research-rs/blob/main/wri...
Just finished reading your linked article. I found it interesting and I experienced similar excitement from the results as mentioned up-thread. There were some new things I learned, too.
I wouldn't say your article is too technical; it does go a bit deeper into details, but new concepts are explained well and at a level I found suitable for myself. Having said that, several times I felt that the text was a bit verbose. Using more succinct phrasing needs, of course, a lot of additional effort, but… I guess it's a kind of an optimization as well. :)
mdf commented on Improving performance of rav1d video decoder ohadravid.github.io/posts... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
There's something about real optimization stories that I find fascinating – particularly the detailed ones including step-by-step improvements and profiling to show how numbers got better. In some way, they are satisfying to read.
Nicholas Nethercote's "How to speed up the Rust compiler" writings[1] fall into this same category for me.
Any others?
mdf commented on Matt Godbolt sold me on Rust by showing me C++ collabora.com/news-and-bl... · Posted by u/LorenDB
The one thing that sold me on Rust (going from C++) was that there is a single way errors are propagated: the Result type. No need to bother with exceptions, functions returning bool, functions returning 0 on success, functions returning 0 on error, functions returning -1 on error, functions returning negative errno on error, functions taking optional pointer to bool to indicate error (optionally), functions taking reference to std::error_code to set an error (and having an overload with the same name that throws an exception on error if you forget to pass the std::error_code)...I understand there's 30 years of history, but it still is annoying, that even the standard library is not consistent (or striving for consistency).
Then you top it on with `?` shortcut and the functional interface of Result and suddenly error handling becomes fun and easy to deal with, rather than just "return false" with a "TODO: figure out error handling".
Generally, I agree the situation with errors is much better in Rust in the ways you describe. But, there are also panics which you can catch_unwind[1], set_hook[2] for, define a #[panic_handler][3] for, etc.
[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/panic/fn.catch_unwind.html
That doesn't really help if the website removes the parts of the page that are outside the current screen from the DOM.
A prime example: JIRA's backlog view. In the self-hosted version, you could easily find the issue you were looking for in the backlog view by just using the browser's search, press Ctrl+F, write some words, you have the issue you were looking for. The cloud version Atlassian forced their users into, OTOH, features their own implementation hijacking Ctrl+F combined with dynamically removing the issues not currently visible from the DOM, to ensure that no-one can have the convenience of the browser's built-in search.
mdf commented on What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine nrm.org/2024/08/mad/... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
I remember, as a child, attempting to reproduce the BASIC program in one of the MAD magazine issues. Somewhere, I had made a typo, which completely screwed the output. I guessed that the tediousness of the whole exercise was part of the joke, shrugged, and moved on.
Luckily, someone else succeeded: https://meatfighter.com/mad/
mdf commented on Mpv – A free, open-source, and cross-platform media player mpv.io/... · Posted by u/Bluestein
> It's of course work to do, and I'm not super motivated to send them that patch, and there's the question of it it would be merged
That's my issue; he calls for people to send patches, but anyone capable of writing such a patch is also probably going to see that he's not positive on the matter, and that his "patches welcome" is really pretty passive aggressive in this instance. At least, that's how it comes off to me. I would expect that, should I submit such a patch, it would simply be rejected on the basis that "it is not a general solution".
There's also a middle ground: Painstakingly describe the solution first, along with its downside of not being general in the same way as some of the existing features (I guess for example seeking back 10 seconds) are not, and ask whether a patch implementing this solution would be welcome before implementing it.
mdf commented on Making steel without emitting CO2 science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/ttfkam
The best place is next to nuclear power plant. Nuclear power is good because it has few restrictions on locations.
Optimally, next to a source of water that can be split into hydrogen, ready to be used for the chemical process producing the pure iron. (Not the process in TFA.)
An array of SMRs (small modular reactors) located at the steel factory could be used – and would be sufficient – both for heating and producing the electricity without interruptions caused by fluctuating prices or blackouts.
mdf commented on Harnessing heat from wastewater bbc.co.uk/future/article/... · Posted by u/cannibalXxx
There's a nice heat pump in Helsinki, Finland, as well, producing district heating from waste water.[1]
[1] https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2023/waste-heat-plays-a-signifi...