chm

They advertise a "fair" distribution. Note that

    98% of all bytes and blackbytes will be distributed to
    current Bitcoin holders who bother to prove their
    Bitcoin balances during at least one of distribution
    rounds.

and that

    Then the number of bytes and blackbytes you receive in
    each round will be proportional to the balance of your
    Bitcoin address in the snapshot block of that round.

So the rich get richer, again. This is not "fair" in the sense that I thought they meant ;)

chm

9년 전discuss

Alright, I was feeling quite whiny yesterday. My opinion of Windows is not that bad - I bought a license, which is enough said :)

I don't prefer OS X over OpenBSD or Debian. What I like is that I can mostly just hop from one to the other without doing a context-switch. Things (mostly) work as I expect them to from one box to the other. That's not true for me on Windows (but that is to be expected).

I learned about computers on Windows, from 95 to Vista (briefly touched it and then left for Unix). I used to memorize countless contextual menus and options and paths between each, so that I would see how to solve a problem when it arose and could diagnose it without access to a computer. I still do not have the same ease with Unix.

What I have gained by using Unix is real knowledge about how computers actually work, not only how the OS itself is built. And in my anecdotal experience, typical users of Windows (at work, college and friends) unequivocally understand and know less about computers than typical users of Linux do. That is true of Mac users in general but the effect is less pronounced than with Windows - most Mac users that I know have a basic understanding of the command line.

But take this for what it is: personal experience.

chm

9년 전discuss

No. ~1200 PCs and laptops. I understand that it seems like I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Either I have been incredibly unlucky (or stupid in my choices), or Mac hardware is of better quality.

But you're right that it's anecdotal.

chm

9년 전discuss

I understand your point about having to give an honest shot at Windows - I bought a Win10 license some months ago. It's fine.

Until I wanted Emacs.

Until I wanted to uninstall software.

Until I wanted to setup a VM in VirtualBox (set up a Win2k12 Server VM tonight, and it simply failed to boot 3 consecutive times, then booted up in a "repair" mode, and then failed to boot again, just to boot up again after the 5-6th try. Wonderful).

Until I wanted a damned clock that keeps time (always have to manually stop/start automatic time in the options).

I really want to like Windows but I can't. It feels like it's going out of its way to annoy me. Booting up a fresh Debian install feels so much better... I just feel like I have to understand how things work much more. Linux is a sharp tool, and Windows feels like a clunky bicycle.

chm

9년 전discuss

My experience with hardware that comes pre-loaded with Windows is that it is utter crap. Or so it seems - it works fine once you remove Windows and install Linux for example. I have kept none of my previous Windows machines. None. They all decay so fast, BSODs after months of use, constant reboots just because things don't act right, general instability, sluggishness, etc. I have only recently built myself a new Linux tower. Much more pleasant.

OTOH, ALL Apple hardware that I have bought (multiple iPads, iPhones, iPods, Macbook Pros, iMacs) still works as advertised and is in good shape (I always buy and use Apple Care). I have just recently begun to use my Linux desktop more because my 2009 MBP is starting to feel a bit sluggish.

People can whine all they want about Apple (I personally will not buy the new MBPs, wait until next year's model). The truth is they've set the bar so high that anything less than perfection (which IMO is mostly what they gave us during the last decade) is seen as unacceptable. The same cannot be said of Windows - at least according to my experience since Windows 95. I recently bought a brand new SSD and a license for Windows 10. One day after installation, Windows crashed and had to "repair" itself. To be fair, it has been running flawlessly since.

chm

9년 전discuss

Some important parts:

    The examples we're finding are so bad, I cancelled some
    weekend plans to go into the office on Sunday to help
    build some tools to cleanup. I've informed cloudflare
    what I'm working on. I'm finding private messages from
    major dating sites, full messages from a well-known
    chat service, online password manager data, frames from
    adult video sites, hotel bookings. We're talking full
    https requests, client IP addresses, full responses,
    cookies, passwords, keys, data, everything.

    Cloudflare pointed out their bug bounty program, but I
    noticed it has a top-tier reward of a t-shirt.

    Cloudflare did finally send me a draft. It contains an  
    excellent postmortem, but severely downplays the risk
    to customers.

chm

9년 전discuss

I really like my FX-8320E but it's definitely not a speed demon. It struggles in single-threaded performance, in such tasks as web browsing... Even running vanilla Debian 8, browsing Reddit in Firefox is a bad experience. Images load very slowly (I have a 200mbps connection) and seem to make the rest of the processing hang. It's good for compilation though, and I can play recent games with it and an R9 280x.

chm

9년 전discuss

    non-Touchbar

I've configured some of the new MBPs with touchbar and I really dislike the bar. No ESC for me is a complete no-go. Otherwise I haven't used the huge trackpad enough to know if I like it or not. And the keyboard, well, I found it just ordinary. For me, especially in a work environment where lots of people move around, MagSafe is essential.

I can understand a company buying the new MBPs simply to replace old ones, but personally I will wait a year. My 2009 MBP still does the job.

chm

9년 전discuss

I read "mozza", then I "got" the web reference, and immediately disliked it. I don't really understand how moz://a is better than Mozilla, but I don't categorically oppose it either.

New branding is fine but the choice here is a bit more debatable than the examples you point out, where each of the brand names are spelled 100% with the alphabet. In OP, 3 characters in 7 are not letters.

Edit: Maybe Mozilla could have suggested an addition to UTF-8 and used that new stylized character "://"?

chm

10년 전discuss

What I remember of L'étranger (other than the story) is its short sentences and rhythm that drags you into the story right from its opening words: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte." I found that the short sentences combined with Camus' French worked wonders to force me into the story. I just could not stop reading, and I really felt inside Meursault's head.

If you shared that feeling, then we could say the translator kept the spirit of the book :)

chm

10년 전discuss

I agree that historical context should be taught in classes. I wrote a Master's adding plenty of historical notes about "why" this and that approximation was thought of, and proposed. Sometimes it doesn't take much - just reading the early Schrödinger papers can give you an idea of his train of thought. It really helps make sense out of theory, for me.

chm

10년 전discuss

No, the "o" in "coke" is not how the one in "coq" would be pronounced. Another poster mentioned that it sounds like more like the "u" in "cuck".

chm

10년 전discuss

FWIW you would pronounce "Coq" much more like "kuhk" than "cock", if that makes sense. But that depends on the accent :)

chm

10년 전discuss

It depends on the processors the machines use and the actual sharing of these processors. I agree it looks more expensive but it might not be upon further analysis.

chm

10년 전discuss

To me this is what's important. I mainly use VPSs because I'm lazy! I have a bunch of 5$ droplets that I use for development, and even sometimes just to move things around the net more easily... For my particular use case, I don't need to change unless Lightsail offers me a less crowded core.

Really, it just seems like AWS is fighting DO on this one, to get a share of their profits. My impression is they're looking for DO & AWS customers to stay on an Amazon-only stack. The comparison made by the commenter above actually makes me consider Vutlr and Linode :)

chm

10년 전discuss

Yes, and having worked with Fortran code for years, we used the routines to calculate... and Python to analyze the data. A colleague even scrapped old Fortran routines in favor of Python + Numpy, as he could be more productive without a noticeable slowdown in his work, as the data analysis part was the bottleneck. So I reiterate my point: I like the project, I like the idea, but we need more information regarding the performance of the routines. Otherwise, using e.g. Python full-stack could be much less of a hassle.

chm

10년 전discuss

I really like your project. I do question its usefulness however. If you get any performance hit from using these, you beat the point of using Fortran (over say Python) in the first place :) Don't you think?

chm

10년 전discuss

There are many questions yet to be answered wrt PoS, but one that I have yet to hear a good explanation for is the initial coin distribution. A blockchain would be mined for a set period of time, and then PoS turned on. A great advantage of PoW is its simplicity. Want some coins? Work.

chm

10년 전discuss

Colonizing Mars and "saving" Earth are not two opposed goals. You don't have to choose one or the other. You can do both. The problem I have with the argument proposed by McKay (and a lot of others) is that it's way too simplistic and misguided. It makes Mars colonization supporters like the ultimate pessimists, people who have already conceded the Earth battle to be lost. This is simply not true but it is implied by the argument.

chm

10년 전discuss

Unacceptable. Proper formatting is a prerequisite. It's not about being elitist - it's about readability and efficient communication. The equations in these "theses" are so badly formatted I would have taken off marks if an undergrad gave me something similar.

It's fine if you have a handful of equations in your text. But for a PhD in maths? Unacceptable.

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