hf · HackerTrans

vor 6 Jahrendiscuss

One particularly mnemonic collection of switches is 'plane':

    perl -plane 'my $script'

which iterates over all files given on the command-line (or stdin) and

  + (p)rints every processed line back out
  + deals with (l)ine endings, in and out
  + (a)utosplits every line into @F

I am aware that -n and -p are mutually exclusive, but as -p overrides -n, it's seems simpler to just keep 'plane' in mind and remove the 'p' if necessary.

vor 6 Jahrendiscuss

[Late reply -- forgot to hit the button. ;]

Thank you for the pointer and, more so, your contributions.

That screenshot of SICP in Emacs -- running side-by-side with the built-in Guile interpreter -- induces peculiar sensations. An echo of how things could've been and possibly still are in some obscure(d) corners of the Net. An interactive learning environment that at least points in the right direction. It certainly looks elegant and somewhat inspirational to me (though my inner Alan Kay is voicing some profound objections ;).

In any case: you carried that torch for a while, don't be hesitant accepting apparently undue credit -- there's too little, in any case, to warrant worry. ;)

vor 6 Jahrendiscuss

If you wanted to delve into the original 1984 LISP/Scheme version by Abelson and Sussman, I recommend you take a look at

https://opendocs.github.io/sicp/sicp.pdf

which is based on the MITPress HTML version, released under a permissive CC-by-SA license.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/index.html

(nb. The pdf starts out with a curious little 'texinfo foreword'. Being able to type `info sicp` in one's shell? I wonder ...)

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

What? Do the docs on the page really say that[0]?

':back' is mapped to 'H' -- in correspondence to the usual Vi/Vim paradigm to move the cursor with the home-row keys, hjkl. ':open' is naturally mapped to 'o' and drops you into a tab-completable shell. ':tabopen' -> 't' and so on.

The key part, as in Vim, are /not/ the mnemonic, highly effective shortcuts. Rather, it's the modal workflow that Vim and it's spritual descendants bring to the table. I'll leave it at that (sounding like a damn preacher already).

[0] Now that I've looked at it, it becomes clear that they're selling rather directly to Vim-acolytes. Pity, perhaps.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Neat, thanks. Works identically with the slightly smaller fork called Pentadactyl (http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/).

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

FDE: Full Disk Encryption.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Sure, I'll try to elaborate.

Suppose you're reading a biography of Huygens. You may find yourself inspired to memorize a few of the basic facts therein. Dutifully, you feed his life's dates, his major acquaintances and maybe a few places of importance into the SR system of your choice. You are committed and keep repeating those facts in ever-increasing intervals.

After a few years a random conversation touches upon the very subject. To your delight you discover that you are able to hold forth on Huygens, the man and his time.

To your surprise (and this is my contention [and experience]), you also find yourself able to speak with some level of accuracy about tangential matter -- eg. the theories he worked on -- without ever having either added related facts to the database or dealt with the subject matter in the intervening years.

In other words: recall of a whole web of interconnected pieces of knowledge may be strengthened considerably by spaced repetition of just a few of the central facts.

In my experience there's no specific 'encoding' procedure necessary. I never put any thought into carefully selecting facts for the spaced repetition treatment, yet the effect usually manifested itself. So, yes, I would say it's a 'recall' phenomenon inasmuch as the brain does all the heavy lifting.

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I wrote a program I fancifully called 'Human Unit Tests' to aid me in my studies (learning a diverse set of constants for biophysics). I can very much attest to the effectiveness of spaced repetition.

But, /boy/, do you need to stay on the ball. You can't really afford a cavalier, let's-see attitude with this (given any non-trivial amount of items-to-be-memorized). The review process needs to be as much part of a daily routine as workouts ... Yeah.

On the other hand, there's one reward that doesn't usually get mentioned (as in the fine article re-submitted here[0]): the strengthening of corollary knowledge (or coordinate terms, for the linguistically inclined).

[0] Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809762

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I simply cannot wrap my head around the direction of the Unicode discourse.

We're discussing the appropriate code-point for different smiley faces, obscure electrical symbols[0] or, in the present case, half stars to express film or book ratings, yet we have no complete set of sub- and superscripts!

Am I mistaken in thinking it odd, that there's a complete Klingon alphabet but no representation whatsoever for most Greek or Latin subscripts? Or what if, heaven forbid, I'd want to use a 'b' index/subscript? Tough! Not even the "phonetic extensions", where subscript-i comes from, provides it.

Refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_supersc... or look for SUBSCRIPT in http://ftp.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.txt

Surely there's the one or two actual scientists on the Unicode consortium? Or even the one odd soul still sporting a notion of consistency who finds it only logical to provide a "subscript b" if there's a "subscript a"?

How am I wrong?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958682

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The author states, as regards the interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger diagrams, that

  [i]n two of the four cases, there’s an obvious positive correlation between
  perceived skill and actual skill, which is the opposite of the pop-sci 
  conception of Dunning-Kruger.

In my corner of the universe, you don't get to cherry-pick which pieces of data (ie "what instances of two sets of random variables") you bestow the golden twig of correlation upon. If I'm not entirely mistaken, correlation is very much a global feature, not a measure of proximity of two points on a chart.

So, yes, Dunning-Kruger (as evinced from the diagrams sported here) indeed seems to make a weaker claim: that there's no correlation between “perceived ability” and “actual ability”. As such, this claim is as far from the "pop-sci conception" of Dunning-Kruger as it is from the author's.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The word seems entirely appropriate.

As a European, I have not been able to convince family members or friends that aren't intimately acquainted with the US-American situation that there is no universal, legislative framework for paid or unpaid maternity leave.

They usually respond with a variation of "this can't be right; you must be misinformed; it would be horrible if that were the case."

And you (as a populace) aren't even fighting for it! Not visibly, at least. So, honestly, you seem to be the one hurting all sorts of causes with this misdirected attitude of apologism.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

It is astonishing to me, how widespread fisher-wife's-tale-level conceptions about fundamental aspects of our existence are.

I devoutly hope that you are not, upon contemplation, equate a well-versedness in general knowledge with mindless memorization. Is emergent behaviour of neural networks really that alien a concept? Is it possible to believe, in all earnestness, that factoids such as these remain isolated and inactive in your memory until recalled?

These questions aren't there to test your ability to learn atomic facts without rhyme or reason. These questions, pitiful as they may seem, try to probe the breadth of your mental landscape.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The author tells me to 'Please enable Javascript!'

I counter: 'Please enable HTML!'

In all seriousness, it's text, images, links. There are no user accounts, no dynamically updated database of 'favourited' sections, no per-paragraph instant chat, the page is remarkably atrocity-free!

Hence, this page seems very much un-Unix-y: Solve problems at the lowest level of complexity, what?

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The counter on the kindly linked donation page went from EUR 49.470 to EUR 65.126 in the last 60 minutes (precisely).

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

The point isn't easily settled, it seems:

I am having a hard time to find financial statements from Debian.

Ubuntu, or rather Canonical, being a private company, doesn't seem to release financial information. The Ubuntu main page doesn't even provide a 'donate' link anymore.

Which leaves RedHat, at last. A public company, of course[0]:

   Operating profit 2014: $ 1.3e9
   Net total income 2014: $ 178.3e6

[0] http://investors.redhat.com/financials-statements.cfm

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Those are some rather interesting documents, thanks!

In 2013 FSF paid $ 689,239 in salaries and, astoundingly!, $ 48,995 in credit card fees.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

I freely confess to being flabbergasted by these displays of less-than-rigorous thought processes.

How would a free software project 'pay it forward'?

They are in a very similar position, aren't they?

Edit: For some reason, I can't reply to child comments (probably a cool-off time-out at work?).

Just a short note here, then: $1.25e6 for the FSF translates to 10 developers like Koch being paid (the donation page quotes "120000 EUR").

That's ten. For the whole FSF. As an example of a well-funded project. I'm not going to comment on that. HN would rightly give me months of cool-off time.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

You are using Ubuntu, I see from your profile. How much have you paid them?

This is how the stories goes: we haven't figured out how to make good work worthwhile.

Perhaps we can learn something from our vast experience in profitably peddling shit?

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

Ah, but what is discipline? Shifting the vocabulary burden around doesn't accomplish much. Discipline easily translates to will power (to do even in the face of adverse circumstances).

But haven't we learned recently to consider will power a finite resource? Something that cannot be switched on at will arbitrarily[0]?

The author himself escapes this accusation only by the skin of his teeth in the next-to-last paragraph:

   How do you cultivate discipline? 
   By building habits – [...]

Habit. This word, comparatively unprepossessing as it may sound, sits really at the core of the discourse[1].

Whenever my thoughts stray to punishing myself for lack of discipline, I try to remember to leave that martial outlook towards life to the Spartans[2] and reflect peacefully on my habits instead.

[0] Except, tongue-in-cheek, if you add sugar.

[1] Lest I leave an opening: It already is in Covey's seminal 1989 'Seven Habits', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Habits_of_Highly_Eff...

[2] In this way, trying to force discipline may easily lead to results that are as devastating as those that the author foresees for motivational strategies.

vor 11 Jahrendiscuss

A monitor like this would be the end-all-be-all for my scientific workflow woes. The paper du jour on the e-ink and the journal and ipython on what I call "the lightbulb" (read: TFT).

I have already been fantasising about and doing a spot of research into building one on my own by using an Arduino (I wouldn't need as high a refresh rate as this little marvel) and one of PervasiveDisplays'[0].

I gave up convinced there was no sane way to actually connect this contraption to my laptop, and the USB solutions mentioned below do not instill hope.

[0] http://www.pervasivedisplays.com/

They seem to be doing a bit of open-source advocacy, too: http://repaper.org