ghswa · HackerTrans

ghswa

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Submissions

Is Titan submarine the most daring space mission yet?

bbc.co.uk

1 pointsby ghswa11 years ago0 comments

Operation Acoustic Kitty

en.wikipedia.org

2 pointsby ghswa12 years ago0 comments

Apple security rules leave inherited iPad useless

bbc.co.uk

27 pointsby ghswa12 years ago47 comments

Care.data is in chaos. It breaks my heart

theguardian.com

2 pointsby ghswa12 years ago0 comments

Interactive Map of the Universe [Flash]

policymic.com

1 pointsby ghswa12 years ago0 comments

The NHS is selling your private data – here's the price list [pdf]

hscic.gov.uk

252 pointsby ghswa12 years ago114 comments

Samsung smartwatch revealed by patent filings

bbc.co.uk

2 pointsby ghswa13 years ago0 comments

Behind the scenes photos of the Boston bomber manhunt

bostonmagazine.com

1 pointsby ghswa13 years ago0 comments

Optical strontium clocks could redefine the second

phys.org

11 pointsby ghswa13 years ago7 comments

comments

9 years agodiscuss

At Christmas they put white lights on all of the trees except for Pete Conrad's which gets red lights. At his funeral his crew mate Alan Beam said "Pete says that while he was here he was always the shortest astronaut, but he doesn't want his tree to be the smallest tree. Pete wants his tree to be special the most colorful tree because his motto is, When you can't be good, be colorful."

I also think it would be respectful to the women who died in the space programmes to edit "his life" to "their life".

10 years agodiscuss

These are the first groups that came to mind. They may not all seem applicable all of the time but I would argue that making your site accessible to as many of these people as possible would improve the experience of all of your users.

- Partially sighted users that are not technically literate enough to use assistive technologies.

- People with physical impairments that affect their ability to use input devices and may also dictate the types of device they can use.

- People with low levels of technical literacy.

- People with poor literacy in the language of the site.

- People with dyslexia, not forgetting those with poor working memory or slow processing speed.

- People with dementia.

- People with a host of other mental and cognitive disorders.

12 years agodiscuss

The online version of page 3 will remain unchanged.

12 years agodiscuss

Are you referring to discussions on their mailing lists? If so, could you link to them?

12 years agodiscuss

According to [1] it's W xor X. Interpreting that literally suggests that read only memory is disallowed as well. I'd be surprised if that's actually the case.

[1] http://www.openbsd.org/33.html

12 years agodiscuss

I think you'd be surprised; this gave my wife some interesting ideas ... for work.

For what it's worth she's an academic in computing.

12 years agodiscuss

I don't think that's particularly wishful thinking, however, your alternative phrasing could be seen as equally, if not more, leading.

When quizzed on the behaviour of a C program I would expect a careful and experienced C programmer to consider the behaviour described by the standard (which standard?); unspecified and implementation defined behaviours; and deviations from the standard in both the compiler and the environment. Often I'd expect the answer to be "it depends".

12 years agodiscuss

It's a gotcha for anybody, like me, that expects a branch name to be 'just' a string.

12 years agodiscuss

If you're that worried why not cut it short to "We liked your attitude, you seem intelligent, and well-spoken, but we have concerns about your knowledge of <some key area>." There can't be any risk there, surely?

12 years agodiscuss

"I did write a compiler manual in 1958, which by chance was actually used as the textbook for one of my classes in 1959(!)"

How many people in the world could claim something similar?

12 years agodiscuss

Even worse when it's not even a politician from your own country. I'm looking at you Rand Paul.

12 years agodiscuss

It's important to remember that the "year of code" initiative is not related to the new curriculum coming into force in September 2014. My wife is writing a book for the new curriculum and, from what she's told me, it sounds quite good.

At Key Stage 1 (ages 5 to 7) children are taught about algorithms, that they are a way of breaking tasks into a sequence of steps that can be reused to solve problems.

They will also be taught about the pervasiveness of software - about the different kinds of devices and appliances that rely on software.

Finally, they will be taught about privacy. I'm not sure of the content but I assume it'll be about managing information about themselves.

12 years agodiscuss

Reading about suicide in the news is incomparable to the kind of direct intervention I'm talking about. As john_fushi commented[1], the best thing you can do is talk about it and his suggestion of calling your local suicide helpline for advice is an excellent one.

On a personal level, I've found that talking frankly about suicide greatly reduces my desire to act on any suicidal feelings. This effect is greatest when talking face to face with somebody I know and trust.

However, worrying about whether or not somebody trusts you should NOT stop you from intervening. If somebody shows a desire to listen and help my in such a situation I'll have a much greater level of trust in them than I did before, even if they were previously a complete stranger or somebody I dislike.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7228997

12 years agodiscuss

I'll chime in here, if you don't mind - I'm bipolar[1].

My health often deteriorates for short periods of time, perhaps a day or two, sometimes a week or so. In these situations there is often some trigger - high workload, poor sleep hygiene etc. My mood doesn't usually reach such an extreme that it causes any significant difficulty day to day.

Episodes of illness that have a significant detrimental impact on day to day life seem to build up slowly. They start out like the episodes described above but they just keep on going until my mood is so extreme that day to day life becomes very difficult to deal with.

My most recent episode of this nature was probably caused by the stress of a couple of deaths in the family, a daughter who doesn't want to sleep, a wife commuting across country to work, a high workload myself and (frustratingly) mental health services not providing care when I could see my health was deteriorating.

It's been around 6 years between my last two episodes of that nature.

Poor sleep hygiene is by far the biggest risk for me and it becomes a vicious cycle if I'm in a manic phase. Other than that, continued high levels of stress are a problem but only really if I'm dealing with multiple stressors.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

12 years agodiscuss

As somebody who's been there (on both sides) I don't believe that anybody who might act on suicidal ideation would not have already considered suicide as an option.

I'd say that, if you're worried, starting a conversation about it (in person) is just about the best thing you could do. A "missed diagnosis" is far worse than a "misdiagnosis".

Sorry for the pun.

12 years agodiscuss

So sorry for your loss EMRo.

If I were anywhere nearby I'd have come along to the memorial service but the Atlantic is quite big... I hope the service goes well for you all.

Sadly the troll(s) in this thread are demonstrating the kind of prejudice that can make it difficult to have a serious discussion about the more immediate problems faced by people suffering from mental health problems.

12 years agodiscuss

Does gcc make any kind of assumptions about signed-overflow? For example, would it eliminate the comparison in this code:

  int8_t i;

  /* ... */

  i += 1;

  if (i == 0) {
    /* ... */
  }

12 years agodiscuss

I'm enjoying this so far although a couple of things have made me scratch my head in the example code allocating a vector.

  int create_vector(struct vector *vc, int size) {

    vc->data = 0;
    vc->size = 0;

    if (vc == NULL) {
      return VECTOR_NULL_ERROR;
    }

    /* check for integer and SIZE_MAX overflow */
    if (size == 0 || size > SIZE_MAX) {
      errno = ENOMEM;
      return VECTOR_SIZE_ERROR;
    }

Accessing the fields of vc before the NULL check seems like an error. Also, would it not be simpler to change type of the size parameter to size_t so that it's the same type as the size field of the vector struct?

12 years agodiscuss

"No. The output might be beautiful, but the language is most certainly not. Awful to debug."

Absolutely agree but, as far as I'm aware, this "more modern alternative" does not exist.

12 years agodiscuss

Regulation 5b allows the Secretary of State for Health to disclose confidential patient information for any medical purpose. No need for a national emergency.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/1438/regulation/5/ma...

:edit: gohrt pointed out that I'd overlooked the restriction to medical purposes in regulation 5, thanks.