Hacker News: mjmdavis

New comment by mjmdavis in "A WebGPU implementation of Augmented Vertex Block Descent"

mjmdavis — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:31:40 +0000

This is really awesome. Great work.

I aspire to build cool stuff like this in WebGPU.

Very excited for the future of the web.

New comment by mjmdavis in "Have you ever seen soldering this close? [video]"

mjmdavis — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 01:20:30 +0000

The microscope is from Keyence. An entry level model I believe. I have access to one with 3 lenses on an automated turret. They’re excellent for inspection and make for a ton of fun when you have anything small and interesting to look at.

They don’t have an API which is a big miss from my perspective. Every inspection requires a human operator to drive the thing.

New comment by mjmdavis in "I coded something dumb and I'm proud of it"

mjmdavis — Wed, 15 May 2024 16:00:15 +0000

Honestly this comes across as a smart solution, not a dumb one. You big smartie. Such a smart guy. Geez. You're so smart, you're very productive and are helping advance society. Thank you.

New comment by mjmdavis in "UK becomes first country to ban default bad passwords on IoT devices"

mjmdavis — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:25:48 +0000

This is pretty sensible cybersecurity policy. Just don’t do what BT did on their HomeHubs and generate a brute forceable password based on a hash of the ssid and some serial numbers.

New comment by mjmdavis in "Ask HN: What's Up with Google?"

mjmdavis — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 05:06:56 +0000

I wonder how much this has to do with do not track and the search engines optimising towards people who don’t enable do not track / limit cookies.

Ask HN: An Issue Tracker for Hackers

mjmdavis — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 13:38:22 +0000

I've used Jira and "CA Agile Central" / "Rally" for tracking issues in the past. I use OmniFocus personally. One of my major gripes with all of these is that they don't make it easy to access your data. For both my team and my personal tasks I want a bug tracker that:

* Has a SQL based query interface.

* Is scriptable with Python or Javascript.

* Has an API that that allows me to CRUD tasks for integration with other tools.

I know that a lot of things are out there but the experience for a power user kind of sucks. Jira is shockingly slow and JQL is not fun to use. OmniFocus is not scalable for me and my partner. Which tool is simple, fast, and exposes the data in a way that makes it easy to manipulate?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26724733

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mjmdavis in "New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services"

mjmdavis — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 16:38:39 +0000

Why does the guidance linked from the article here: https://esd.ny.gov/guidance-executive-order-2026 mention a 75% reduction and the actual order linked from there: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/no-2026-continuing-temporar... mention 50%?

Are they updating the order minute to minute?

New comment by mjmdavis in "Open-source “pandemic ventilator”"

mjmdavis — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 21:57:37 +0000

This has genuinely given me hope. It would be great to see more ideas and work around this.

New comment by mjmdavis in "Open-source “pandemic ventilator”"

mjmdavis — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 21:56:07 +0000

Doing this could deprive hundreds of people of a life saving device.

Respected Mathematician to unveil new proof of the Riemann Hypothesis

mjmdavis — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 03:06:16 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/quasilocal/status/1042359040305704960

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029459

Points: 18

# Comments: 4

New comment by mjmdavis in "Ask HN: Learning multiple languages vs. mastering one"

mjmdavis — Wed, 23 May 2018 12:48:35 +0000

Programming Languages are just like Human Languages. Every culture builds a common form of expressing ideas based around their shared values, needs and outlook.

Restricting yourself to one Human language limits your thinking and perspective. Each time I acquire a new Human Language, I find myself thinking differently and understanding people more deeply. Speaking French and German allows me to be a better communicator in English.

Human Languages can also provide means to an end. Learning German allows me to become a German Citizen. Learning Mandarin would allow me to start a business in China.

The same goes for Programming Languages. As mentioned by others, different Programming Languages were developed by people with different values, needs and outlook. Each time I learn a new Programming Language, I learn new forms of expression for my problem.

Programming Languages allow you to do different things. Depending on what you want to do with your career, choose differently.

Some languages are more useful than others. If you only know Java then you have a lot of learning ahead. I would explore in this order:

  * Python - You can do almost everything well in Python. Make lots of stuff  
  * Command Line & Bash - How systems are glued together. Deploy the stuff you make.  
  * GNU Regex & awk - How to find things and process text. A key building block of programming is processing text.  
  * HTML5 & Javascript - The right way to make most visuals. A frontend for your stuff.  
  * C - How all the above works underneath. Understand the stuff you made.  
  * SQL - How to handle data in databases. Persist the stuff.  
  * Haskell - Pure functional programming. Your Python and JS code will improve. Make the stuff beautiful.

What's the cost of a reunion?

mjmdavis — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 10:28:57 +0000

Article URL: http://mjmdavis.com/showing/2017/09/03/where-do-we-all-meet-up.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15173874

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by mjmdavis in "Show HN: Interactively explore different map projections"

mjmdavis — Sun, 21 May 2017 15:01:27 +0000

I don't yet have a very good understanding of the whole EPSG code system yet either. :s

New comment by mjmdavis in "Show HN: Interactively explore different map projections"

mjmdavis — Sun, 21 May 2017 14:58:04 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by mjmdavis in "Show HN: Interactively explore different map projections"

mjmdavis — Fri, 19 May 2017 19:52:15 +0000

One of the main reasons it's so popular is that is preserves shape, angle and north is always up. This means you can create a tiling map server and use the same tiles at all scales.

New comment by mjmdavis in "Show HN: Interactively explore different map projections"

mjmdavis — Fri, 19 May 2017 18:15:55 +0000

I think Healpix is included in the tool at the bottom. Also check out the last few in the list which are similar to Dymaxion.

Show HN: Interactively explore different map projections

mjmdavis — Fri, 19 May 2017 15:50:09 +0000

Article URL: http://mjmdavis.com/showing/2017/05/16/how-to-read-maps.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14376821

Points: 109

# Comments: 12