buff-a · HackerTrans

buff-a

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Submissions

"patent and/or proprietary intellectual property rights" in Coursera's TOCs

1 pointsby buff-a14 yıl önce0 comments

High-Assurance Web Programming with Coq Rock

jaked.org

1 pointsby buff-a14 yıl önce0 comments

Startup accelerators and Internet bubbles

blogs.reuters.com

2 pointsby buff-a15 yıl önce0 comments

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

truth-out.org

1 pointsby buff-a15 yıl önce-1 comments

Lights out for Light Apps

gamasutra.com

2 pointsby buff-a15 yıl önce0 comments

Mark Cerny Says Single-Player Games Will Be 'Gone in 3 Years'

industrygamers.com

2 pointsby buff-a15 yıl önce0 comments

comments

14 yıl öncediscuss

I was thinking more along the lines that without the eye, the idea of light being projected in any direction at all has no meaning =) And then we could get started on the concepts of time and ordering.

But since I'm no longer a third year physicist contemplating the nature of existence, I just simulate light statistically. And sometimes that means doing things like "Photon Mapping", which is precisely raytracing, but the kind of raytracing you get when you know how to optimize an algorithm implemented as a computer program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment#Delayed_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mech...

14 yıl öncediscuss

>Ray tracing involves projecting light from the "eye" towards the scene, whereas in real life the light is being projected from the scene towards the eye.

I can't write a decent reply to this without having terrifying flashbacks of late night cramming for third year physics exams. But basically, raytracing's idea that "if it didn't hit your eye, who cares" is somewhat backed up by theory =)

14 yıl öncediscuss

Any good hacker will code around bullshit.

14 yıl öncediscuss

Of course there is evidence: the stock market wasn't invented until 1999. Before 1999, noone dared buy stocks because they were afraid they couldn't sell it later. Its historical fact.

14 yıl öncediscuss

This [1] was a joke.

This [2] was for real.

  [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qi_AAqi0RZM#%21

  [2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/03/how-casual-sexism-put-sqoot-in.php

14 yıl öncediscuss

I think you hit the nail on the head. The number of brogrammer entrepreneurs out there is huge. They are equivalent to Big Jims Baha XTReme Racing Shop that slaps lifted suspension on other people's 2WD Tundras.

But then there are a few start-ups who are designing and building fuel efficient diesel engines, or fully electric cars built from the ground up. These guys will absolutely know thermodynamics etc.

So if someone built "mycollegematehavingsex.com" and got 40,000 sign-ups via launchrock, who fucking cares. If they made twitter-for-squirrels and got 10,000,000 active users before the Great Nut Famine of 2015 killed the company, then there may conversations to be had.

14 yıl öncediscuss

Because its actually:

file.rb:

  require 'stuff'

  class foo
    def something
      alert = UIAlertView._alloc \
        ._initWithTitle _S("Hello"),
        :message, _S("I'm MobiRuby"),
        :delegate, nil,
        :cancelButtonTitle, _S("I know!"),
        :otherButtonTitles, nil
      alert._show
    end
  end

Instead of

file.h

  #import <stuff>
  @interface foo
    -(void)something:(BOOL)what andthen:(CGRect)thisthing
  @end

and then file.m

  #import <otherstuff>
  #import <yetmorestuff>
  #import "file.h"
  #import <oh shit is this in the right place?.h>
  #import <i think this is ok>
  #define SOME_HACK
  #import <this better come after that define up there.h>

  @implementation foo

  -(void)something:(BOOL)what butthen:(CGRect)thisthing
  {
   alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] 
                initWithTitle:@"Hello"
                message:@"I'm ObjC"
                delegate:nil
                cancelButtonTitle:@"I know!"
                otherButtonTitles:nil];
     [alert show];
  }

Fuck that.

1. Don't Repeat Yourself. Computer have more memory than 1986.

2. Don't forget to turn on warnings-as-errors, otherwise that code above will compile and then break because (of course you noticed) the method declaration doesn't actually match the declaration but the compiler doesn't care because its a brutal hack.

14 yıl öncediscuss

>Sounds like a reason not to buy a 2015 Honda.

Ah yes, the "free market" in action. That has worked so well for us in protecting our privacy, as evidenced by the plethora of commercial software with EULAs that respects the user's rights.

Or are you saying Richard Stallman is going to build us a car next?

Here's how it works:

1. Government is constitutionally forbidden from collecting this information.

2. Government observes that private corporations can collect this information.

3. Government grants private corporations immunity from prosecution and civil liability if it collects this information and hands it to the government. Threatens prosecution and civil liability if corporations fails to collect information and "something bad happens".

4. US Supreme Court pretends this is acceptable by ignoring "intent" and "consequences" and then goes on to uphold "intent" and "consequences" in every other case before it.

14 yıl öncediscuss

Honda Civic 2015 EULA:

23.1.23.44 (Page 198 of 301) "Your use of this vehicle grants us your irrevocable and permanent consent to download, transmit, or otherwise obtain the information contained in the onboard data recorder, and to share that data with third parties, including but not limited to law enforcement (without a court order), and marketing companies."

14 yıl öncediscuss

  * A wiki.
  * Google Docs.
  * Assembla.

Passing around a word document via email (or shared folder) makes about as much sense as passing around a C++ file, or the text of a facebook status.

14 yıl öncediscuss

"suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over."

A lesson for us all.

14 yıl öncediscuss

Like I said, its a book about dogma and cherry-picked studies. The dogma and studies were wrong. So if you want books about broken dogma and studies, read Code Complete.

14 yıl öncediscuss

Have to agree on Code Complete. The first edition was a load of waterfall bollocks and I couldn't believe anyone wrote code like that. It actively put me off a "proper" programming career. The second edition, apparently, reduced that shite, but by that point I wondered "if the author is just reproducing dogma, why bother?"

14 yıl öncediscuss

Sounds like someone said, "Make me a language that is hard to reverse engineer using IDA Pro".

14 yıl öncediscuss

But of course, to be allowed textual format for asset metadata, you have to buy the pro version. Or did they change that in 3.5?

14 yıl öncediscuss

A self-employed person can deduct health expenses against gross income. You are correct in that COBRA cannot be deducted in this way. But it can still be taken as an itemized deduction. I'm not a tax accountant, but my tax accountant is. Another gotcha: if you're taking the 60% markdown on COBRA from Obama, then no, you're not allowed to write it off at all, but I wouldn't be complaining about that.

14 yıl öncediscuss

If you lose your job you may have to pay a lot more (COBRA) for a limited time

No, you'll pay the same as you were paying. Its just that before, you thought you were being paid $100,000 when in fact you were being paid $120,000, and out of that came your health insurance and the other (more-than-) half of your social security and income taxes.

14 yıl öncediscuss

>PS. For that matter, Xcode 4 is not radical enough too. We are still typing a lot of boring cruft ... But it's a huge difference with Xcode 3 and other IDEs out there.

I can only conclude that you have absolutely no concrete experience of the state of other tools and languages. Eclipse, IntelliJ and Visual Studio with Resharper are lightyears ahead of XCode 4 when it comes to assisted programming.

Here's the clue: all of these tools expose the code DOM to tool writers. Even if Intellij didn't have over 100 different ways to refactor code, I could write my own. Fuck, I wrote a Resharper plugin that loaded javascript file to manipulate the dom and pass it to StringTemplate [1] The javascript file then decides based on what is at the cursor which templates to display when the user hits Alt-Enter. Think for a minute about what has to happen under the hood for that to happen. Then think what else is possible. Then realize that its not there in XCode 4.

[1] http://www.stringtemplate.org/

14 yıl öncediscuss

Most programmers fall into one of two categories: console editor (e.g. vim) or IDE. The IDE camp includes Visual Studio, Eclipse, IntelliJ, SlickEdit, NetBeans, MonoDevelop, etc.

These IDEs have an almost identical design language. I am at home in any of them and picking up new ones is pretty straightforward.

XCode 4 on the other hand has a completely different design language, and one that is limited in what it can do, but verbose in achieving it.

Limited, for example, because while I have a 17" MBP and a 23" monitor, I can't have the Project Navigator open at the same time as the Error Navigator. I can't view code and disassembly. I can't have code side-by-side in a split view.

Verbose, for example, because when editing a Scheme, it opens a custom, modal dialog, and if I press "Manage Schemes..." it rolls up and then rolls down another custom, modal dialog. If I then hit "+" it opens another modal dialog on top of my modal dialog. I thought we got rid of this kind of shit with VB6.

I've built a complicated IDE or two, and every time there was a custom, modal dialog, it was because we were rushed for time. Good non-modal design requires thought and effort. Flexible UI requires thought and effort. A simple, powerful design language requires thought and effort.

I would put money on XCode 4 not so much being "designed" as "rushed". Or perhaps "designed with lofty goals" - and one of those being "not like any other IDE, so that programmers learning on XCode will be completely thrown by any other tool".

14 yıl öncediscuss

Gosh, I know. That's awful. Its much better that hg allows people to type hg mv, rather than forcing lazy people to modify the .bashrc file so that they can type "ga" instead of "git add".

I mean, I know "hg mv" is actually longer than "ga", but by golly, expecting unix shell users to know about the alias system built into the operating system is just the kind of elitism we can expect from linus.