rain

rain, 38 minutes ago to random

Haider is such an all-time great movie, one of the best of Indian cinema. It's an adaptation of Hamlet set in Kashmir, and the struggles of identity it grasps with are just as much about Haider/Hamlet as the Kashmiri people.

Plus, the adaptation of the gravedigger scene is spectacular. (And also the adaptation of the play within the play, which I won't spoil.)

https://youtu.be/YVq0L_I9tIk

rain, 2 days ago to random

Got unreasonably excited about this new, incredibly straightforward count-distinct algorithm. The CVM algorithm is a direct replacement for HyperLogLog, it nerd-sniped Donald Knuth for weeks, and it can easily be taught in an entry-level CS course.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-invent-an-efficient-new-way-to-count-20240516/

rain, 4 days ago to random

Got a FlyDigi "Vader 3 Pro" controller from AliExpress. Stunned at how good it is, it utterly annihilates every standard controller

rain, 7 days ago to random

I did a poll on here a while ago asking whether classifiers and LLMs were considered ML and/or AI respectively. Most people said classifiers were ML but not AI, and LLMs were both.

Well, Google's marketing team appears to disagree, calling a classifier "AI-powered" :)

https://blog.google/products/android/android-theft-protection/

rain, 8 days ago to random

Traditionally, Unix has used in-band color and other terminal signaling via VT100/ANSI escape codes, while Windows has used out-of-band signaling through separate function calls.

There are pros and cons to each, but I think overall I come down on the Unix side simply because in-band signaling has built-in synchronization.

You can actually see this with Windows today -- if you write to an unbuffered terminal (e.g. Rust stderr) and rapidly change colors, you'll see it get desynced very quickly

rain, 9 days ago to random

Most of my old IRC crew, all of whom were obsessed with Linux, use Macs for work these days. I, who used to make fun of them for being so obsessed with Linux, have used nothing but that since 2019 or so. How the tables have turned

skinnylatte, 9 days ago to animals

Cookie is REALLY excited about my food

#DogsOfMastodon #dogs

rain, 10 days ago to random

Animal Well is pretty stunning

rain, 15 days ago to random

It's interesting how much of the best of CS is realizing that a problem is hard or unsolvable in general, but using that as the start rather than the end of the discussion.

For example, the halting problem is unsolvable in general, but we have tools that can answer that question for many practical problems. Similarly, SAT is NP-complete, but SAT and SMT solvers are extremely fast for practical problems.

rain, 21 days ago to random

Is there a good, well-argued article on why OOP is a good fit for UI code? I've heard this talked about many times, but want to read something meaty from an experienced dev who has seriously considered alternatives to OOP

rain, 22 days ago to random

Something I realized the other day is that the syntax in Rust, C, C++, Java and many other languages doesn't let you specify two identifier tokens with just whitespace in between. Is this a general PL design principle, and is there a good justification for it?

rain, 22 days ago to random

My bank in India has its own gTLD -- I've never seen a bank in the US do this. Wild

rain, 23 days ago to random

disconcerting that "reading a lot of code and thinking really hard" is still unparalleled as a way to find bugs

rain, 24 days ago to random

We're past the "name source control systems after a very specific asshole" era and are now in the "name source control systems after martial arts" era

skinnylatte, 24 days ago to animals

Slow ambles with Cookie, who is recovering but still taking it slow. I’m very glad she seems to be responding well to the medication. That gives her a bit more time with us.

I’m so thankful!

#DogsOfMastodon #dogs

skinnylatte, 25 days ago to random

I spend a lot of time around straight cis men in my hobbies and sometimes when I see someone in the wild i don’t know and I’m like ‘is that this model of this thing’ and their eyes get bigger and it’s like they want to marry me but then they find out I’m super gay

rain, 26 days ago to random

"Are we supposed to start policing who is allowed or not allowed to use open-source and free software projects, which goes against these licenses themselves and their requirements?"

FOSS lets anyone use your project, but you can (and should) have lines on who you allow to participate in the project

whitequark, 27 days ago to random

as flawed as proposals like "PyPI Trusted Publishing" are, they're definitely helpful against Jia Tans. I don't want to be on a critical path to publishing opaque binaries of [project] but I don't necessarily want to maintain that manual publishing flow forever either, so asking a contributor to move to using an external service that stamps binaries seems like a decent compromise

rain, 27 days ago to random

Still can't believe basically every new Linux kernel version makes my computer go faster. Complete opposite of the general IT experience where updates just make things slower

skinnylatte, 1 month ago to magASEAN

I’ve been thinking about what queer marriage means to me, but also how it’s totally arbitrary and shaped by the environment you live in.

For most of my life I led a fairly socially open life; I was very out in the big Asian cities I lived in. I had very little social repression (having majority and economic privilege where I was) but had absolutely no legal rights.

#TootSea #Singapore #LGBT #LGBTQ