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mdiesel commented on Dangerous advice for software engineers   seangoedecke.com/dangerou... · Posted by u/gxhao
ChrisMarshallNY · 7 months ago
The right tool, for the right job.

If you watch an expert arborist (tree man) at work, you’ll notice that they’ve removed every single safety guard from their chainsaws.

Every now and then, there’s a nasty accident, but most of them respect their tools, and just make a lot of money (which you’ll understand, if you’ve ever hired one).

Same goes for pretty much any vocation.

That said, manufacturers have learned that there’s a lot of money to be made, selling professional tools, to insecure fools with money.

There’s a big ego hit, in LARPing a highly-experienced engineer, when you’re not one, yourself.

mdiesel · 7 months ago
The old saying "they've forgotten more about X than you'll ever know" is very true. A professional quite often has forgotten what it was like to be a beginnner, making them both very knowledgeable about a topic but also very likely to give dangerous advice to a beginner.
mdiesel commented on Project to formalise a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover   imperialcollegelondon.git... · Posted by u/ljlolel
timmg · 7 months ago
So: as I understand it, Fermet claimed there was an elegant proof. The proof we've found later is very complex.

Is the consensus that he never had the proof (he was wrong or was joking) -- or that it's possible we just never found the one he had?

mdiesel · 7 months ago
He probably did know it, it's remarkably simple. I can't remember how to format maths in a HN comment though to put it here.
mdiesel commented on Online Safety Act – shutdowns and site blocks   blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks... · Posted by u/azalemeth
cm2187 · 7 months ago
In fact that would likely devastate Labour’s already slim chances of reelection. And would make the argument for repealing that idiotic law wholesale something else than “let my constituents watch porn”
mdiesel · 7 months ago
It's the Online Safety Act 2023 and was going through parliament from 2019, I'm sure the moment it becomes sufficiently unpopular in the wider public we'll see the "2023" part gain more prominence. Starmer won't be able to say it's a bad idea, because he and his party have been supportive of it since, but there'll be the usual political maneuverings. I can't see people switching to vote Green because they suggested a digital bill of rights.
mdiesel commented on Raised by Wolves Is Original Sci-Fi at Its Most Polarizing (2020)   rogerebert.com/streaming/... · Posted by u/walterbell
YeGoblynQueenne · 7 months ago
The first season of The Expanse was great. Then it got progressively more meh with each season.

(obviously my personal opinion eh?)

For a really nerdy-oriented SF series try Three Body i.e. the 2023 Tencent version of The Three Body Problem. Again in my opinion the 2024 Netflix version, was one of the boringest things I've ever watched. I'm pretty sure if that had been my introduction to the Rememberance of Earth Past series I would have been left distinctly unimpressed.

For an example of what I mean by "nerdy-oriented", avoiding spoilers there's a scene where some of the characters are observing a certain celestial phenomenon. In the Netflix series they are sitting outside looking at something that should not be visible by naked eye. In the Tencent series they're sitting in a proper scientific station, i.e. a big room lined with PC workstations and side-rooms with bigger machines and printers, and they're starting endlessly at a single red line on a monitor while munching on junk food.

Another thing: a certain Chinese army base in the 1960's is decorated with picture-perfect, period hardware, big mainframes that a character is shown physically disassembling to service. In the Netflix series... honestly, I don't even remember. The attention to detail that only a proper nerd would notice is, to me, something genuinely new, like I've never see anyone go to all that trouble before to make sure a certain demographic won't scrunch up their face and go "that's not how computers looked in the '60s".

I should also say that there is certainly quite a bit of overacting (or over-directing) in the early episodes but they get over it later.

mdiesel · 7 months ago
I watched the Tencent version after reading the books, and it's the first time I've been able to get properly engaged while reading subtitles.

My goto for showing the difference between the Netflix and Tencent shows is the Shi speech about bugs. It's an important moment, but the Tencent version does a much better job of conveying that.

mdiesel commented on Santa Ragione says Apple is delisting Wheels of Aurelia 'without justification'   gamedeveloper.com/busines... · Posted by u/saubeidl
duxup · 8 months ago
>We firmly believe that removing fully functional artistic works simply due to infrequent updates undermines the value and sustainability of games as cultural and artistic products. Like books, films, and music albums, video games represent complete creative works that do not inherently require continual updates beyond maintaining basic functionality

Is the Apple app store there to provide that kind of perpetual access?

A book's perpetual existence is mostly because a physical copy exists, that's not really the same, nor is anyone assuring it still exists.

I do sympathize with the issue about requiring updates and etc, I ran into that with Google recently, but I'm not sure I buy into this idea that requiring updates shouldn't happen ever because "my game is like art and art doesn't require updates".

mdiesel · 8 months ago
If they provided a plausible way to sideload then they'd be on stronger grounds. It's the same as Stop Killing Games. Apple shouldn't carry the burden of hosting forever, but equally they can't just make something disappear forever.
mdiesel commented on Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean   icm.csic.es/en/news/major... · Posted by u/riffraff
hnarn · 8 months ago
> The stories and myths about the selfish people of our times will go on for millennia.

Except there is nothing inherently more selfish about ”people” today than at any point in history.

If anything, it might change humanity’s view of itself, and its capability to collectively handle major threats.

mdiesel · 8 months ago
There are a couple of key differences that I think could lead to a shift towards selfishness.

With the size of populations, there's less feeling of individual impact. If I don't do "my bit" then it's such a miniscule negative to society as a whole, it won't really matter.

We have a relatively new economic principle that if everyone acts in their own best interests, that will also further society's interests. That means there's no moral choice between what benefits me and what benefits others, I can always pick what benefits me.

These aren't universal, but are two simple reasons why selfishness could be more prevalent now than a lot of history.

mdiesel commented on Fragments of a rare Merlin manuscript from c. 1300   cam.ac.uk/stories/merlin-... · Posted by u/derbOac
ggm · a year ago
I've noticed recently historical works being handled differently depending on the materials. I think there's been a revision in the protocols: Maybe the white cotton gloves are mechanically harmful sometimes? I doubt they let somebody do it who just fixed their bike chain, but if you wash your hands before touching it's possible for parchment, it's not that big a deal.

https://library.pdx.edu/news/the-proper-handling-of-rare-boo...

mdiesel · a year ago
In the highly educational show Cunk on Shakespeare, she's told not to wear gloves when looking at an early book since doing so tends to result in people being more heavy handed with the pages.
mdiesel commented on Retreating Glaciers Expose 1,500 Miles of Coastline   e360.yale.edu/digest/clim... · Posted by u/YaleE360
yzydserd · a year ago
I didn't read every word of the PDF, but I didn't see a definition of coastline derivation. See the Coastline Paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
mdiesel · a year ago
They're using satellite photography and a resolution of 10m to measure.
mdiesel commented on Numbering should start at zero (1982)   cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transc... · Posted by u/checkyoursudo
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · a year ago
It is definitely my engineer myopia, but octaves in music should be called dozens
mdiesel · a year ago
I think we should call them doubles
mdiesel commented on Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)   exurbe.com/stoicisms-appe... · Posted by u/Tomte
mjburgess · a year ago
There's a lot in just the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius

But be aware that most writings about him are roman, and hence state propaganda which glorify his actions. In order to see more clearly what his actions were, just imagine being their victim. He perpetrated a genocide against Germanic tribes in retribution.

It's very hard to be a morally good roman emperor -- you can be seen as good by either the plebs or the elite of roman society, but not by nearly anyone else, and almost never by both even in rome.

I don't think its any accident the elite of concequering empires adopted this mentality. Though, no doubt, there were originally honest/moral/good stoic-philosophers they did create a kind of "retreat from the world dissociation" which isn't in my view, itself good. It's therapeutic in some situations, typically in cases of grief/loss/extreme-attachement --- but outside of these cases, you want to associate and attach.

Perhaps there's some case for a little stocisim in the face of social media today, or in the kinds of "adversarial environments" which exploit your attachment -- such as leading an empire (cf. Machiavelli: leaders have to be rutheless). There's possibly an argument that twitter turns everyone into a viperous courterier looking to attack each other's reputation and attachemnt-bait.

mdiesel · a year ago
On the scale of leaders: not being needlessly cruel, trying to consider the impacts of policies beyond the immediate, and dedicating your days to ruling rather than enjoying whatever pleasure you pick makes him one of the "good" ones. Maybe that's a low bar, but even today not all leaders clear it and certainly we can compare to Commodus who came immediately after and the sources for which are similarly patchy, to compare.

u/mdiesel

KarmaCake day256August 15, 2019View Original