Hacker News: stirfrykitty

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Anyone who looks at this code instantly becomes insane"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:25:01 +0000

But isn't this the beauty of programming to begin with. Barring certain things like medical devices, cars, etc., where it has to be very orthodox, for stuff like Web back/frontends, and even gaming, this is how people learn, I guess. Sure, that code could be re-factored for speed, cleaner in appearance, etc.

Reminds me of the video driver (forget card) some Linux developers wrote that was ~30k lines of code. OpenBSD wanted to use it because the HW manufacturer wouldn't release the specs, but because the Linux code was GPL, the OpenBSD guys re-wrote it from scratch in less than 1/4 of the code.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Anyone who looks at this code instantly becomes insane"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:12:10 +0000

That's not bad, actually. It's one reason why I hated leaving Perl for Python. Python is a little too orthodox sometimes.

What I'm seeing is where frameworks are becoming the new "programming languages". People now bicker over what framework to use rather than first master the language they are using for a task. I tend to favor the method of "do the simplest thing that works".

New comment by stirfrykitty in "In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:30:18 +0000

I never said it wasn't useful. Obviously there are people who need it. I just won't pay for it when I already do by paying for house water. Our tap water is clean here in Texas.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "The Internet Loves a Rest Stop in Breezewood, Pennsylvania"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:19:39 +0000

The picture in the article shows they still have the very old school Taco Bell sign from way back. I guess if it still works...

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Europe’s Cities Weren’t Built for This Kind of Heat"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:11:02 +0000

My cousin lives up in East Anglia in a house built in the mid 1300s. They have bought box fans for every room otherwise they cannot even sleep. No aircon, obviously. The local council will not allow the house to be retrofitted since it's historical.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "How Much Water Do You Need to Drink?"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:59:54 +0000

I only drink water during/after lawn work. That amounts to maybe 32oz. Other "water" would include the half gallon or so of green tea I drink daily, along with my 4-5 double espressos during working hours.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "In the US, wells being drilled ever deeper as groundwater vanishes"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:51:03 +0000

Yet companies build plants on the Great Lakes, hoover up all the water, filter it, bottle it, and sell it to the unsuspecting, who happily buy it.

I never ever saw bottled water as a kid in Europe. It wasn't until I moved to the US where it appeared to be commonplace. When I went back home to England last year, they've got it in every supermarket I visited. Sad, really. I still just drink out of the tap here in Texas.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:22:28 +0000

Slashdot-esque post:

1. Set up AC company in Europe

2. Wait for panicked calls from sweltering people

3. Profit!!

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:11:54 +0000

Not really acclimation, but willingness to suffer through it. I hate it when my children want to play outside because I'm out there for less than five minutes and my shirt is soaked through with sweat, it's unbearably hot, and the insects are legion. When I leave work in the late afternoon, it's so hot my car takes 10 minutes to cool down to where it's comfortable inside. By then my Right Guard has gone left and I'm having cold air blowing on wet skin. It really does suck.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:08:04 +0000

Appreciate the comments. My brother lived in Denver for a few years. It's not really my cup of tea when I visited. Too much sun, and too high in altitude. I could barely breathe when I was there and my nose bled every day for the first three days.

My preferences would be Vermont, Snoqualmie, WA, Bellingham, WA, or the AK peninsula. Me and the sun are not friends.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 16:56:49 +0000

Good comment. I loathe Texas, but I'm here because of the wife and her family. I would prefer to live someplace where it's overcast 90% of the time, and where it rains at least twice a week. I also prefer snow on the ground for a couple of months. Here in the Houston area, the heat, humidity, insects, and sheer amounts of concrete all contribute to the lack of comfort. Moreover, there are too many people here all shoved into a space that really cannot accommodate them.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 16:52:30 +0000

And I mentioned same in my statement above. The entire lower half of the US would be largely unlivable without aircon. Even Alaska get 90+ in the summer, albeit for short bursts.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Paris breaks all-time high temperature as deadly heat wave grips Europe"

stirfrykitty — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 16:46:49 +0000

Meanwhile here in Texas, that level of heat is business as usual. I get that most places in the EU don't have aircon, as they rarely need it, barring southern EU, which I have spent considerable amounts of time in. I far prefer the misty moors of England over anything with tons of sun.

Having grown up in Europe, I do prefer their weather when it's normal for them. If only I could convince my wife to move somewhere with a proper 4 seasons rather than this hideous backwater of heat and humidity.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "How to stroke a cat, according to science"

stirfrykitty — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 16:00:12 +0000

Cats don't have owners, they have staff.

Cats are far more independent than dogs, which is one reason why I like them. Certain cat breeds can be very dog-like, particularly Arabian Mau, Abyssinian, and Norwegian Forest. All are ridiculously intelligent and will happily accompany you like a dog, have dog-like mannerisms, etc.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "History and Effective Use of Vim"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 20:42:58 +0000

Does that work in all shells?

New comment by stirfrykitty in "History and Effective Use of Vim"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 20:31:17 +0000

Been using vim since 1998 and rarely stray unless I'm typing notes for something unimportant and them I use Nano.

Back in the day when I was a Unix admin, we often worked in full screen terminals and when editing a config file didn't like having to close the vim instance to go look at something, so learned about this little gem:

:sh (go back to shell and do your thing and leave vim running)

Ctrl-d to return to intact and running vim instance.

As an aside, if you decide to use nano to edit config files, make sure you use nano -w (no wrap), otherwise you may find yourself with a non-bootable OS instance.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "MITM on HTTPS traffic in Kazakhstan"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 19:43:39 +0000

Let's say they make it mandatory. Would it be possible for a group of people with one having unfettered access because, say, they cross the border all the time to a place that has full Internet, and they use wget to tar/gzip entire sites, places this on a server in a city, and provides access with a self-signed cert that everyone involved with knows about.

Or failing that, some kind of digital dead drop with the files. If this could be updated a few times a week, that's better than not having access to material that you don't want the government to know about. It has to be possible.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Black soldier fly maggots: high in protein with a small carbon footprint"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 17:36:28 +0000

Andrew Zimmern would surely eat them and maybe has done. He's eaten everything else. I recall him saying the only things he will not eat are Durian and oatmeal (texture thing).

Editing to say he did eat grubs on one episode and said something along the lines of it feeling like a massive pop of pus in his mouth. I swore then I would never follow suit.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Black soldier fly maggots: high in protein with a small carbon footprint"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 17:35:03 +0000

That episode when Bear killed and "ate" the skunk was hilarious. I recall him saying that cooking it "smelled like burning tires". Hilarious.

New comment by stirfrykitty in "Black soldier fly maggots: high in protein with a small carbon footprint"

stirfrykitty — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 17:31:40 +0000

Or the "portions" that Rey was buying from the trading post in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.