Hacker News: zasdffaa

New comment by zasdffaa in "T-code – A protocol for implementing UART serial communications to an adult toy"

zasdffaa — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 12:59:47 +0000

Emotions have a purpose - disgust to keep us away, love to keep us together, lust to procreate, fear to chase us from danger. Without a purpose for an emotion, it's hard to see why these would happen. And maybe their emotions would be baffling to us because their world is so alien.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 20:17:42 +0000

It is questionable if it's universally innate, there being many atheists, but now you've explained it I can see your point.

Have to say you used some ill-focussed or ill-expressed arguments which is why I have been repeatedly chasing you for an explanation. Take that as you will. But thanks for clarifying.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 18:24:09 +0000

Ok, points taken, except with 'China and Soviet state official atheism'. I don't see the relevance to either trade or sex.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Intel’s Take on the Next Wave of Moore’s Law"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 18:21:15 +0000

Not sure if relevant but dram refreshes continuously.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 17:45:21 +0000

Strange comment - nobody was suggesting banning trade (even weirder about banning sex).

New comment by zasdffaa in "Findings from 3,300-year-old Uluburun shipwreck reveal complex trade network"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 17:35:44 +0000

I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure there were wide exchanges of peoples happened thousands of years earlier (eg. stonehenge burials came from a wide range of europe - this from memory).

Edit: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47938188

The ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.

Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.

The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north.

They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.

Details have been published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The migration to Britain was just one part of a general, massive expansion of people out of Anatolia in 6,000BC that introduced farming to Europe

New comment by zasdffaa in "What things did you purchase that enhanced the quality of your life in 2022?"

zasdffaa — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 12:11:42 +0000

Not being flippant, but some MDMA. It makes a huge difference to my quality of life if used occasionally.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Theseus and the Zipper"

zasdffaa — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 20:45:01 +0000

> The hash idea works even in mutable land

Uh, how? Other than removing it from the dictionary, mutating it then adding it back.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Stack Overflow questions are being flooded with answers from ChatGPT"

zasdffaa — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 20:42:55 +0000

Please give some links to a few such SO posts, thanks.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Show HN: A web front end for your Org-files"

zasdffaa — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 13:00:41 +0000

two-wrongs.org and www.two-wrongs.org get me a DNS lookup failure.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Emacs should become a Wayland compositor"

zasdffaa — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 12:54:30 +0000

Contact the people who designed and used Lisp machines and get their very, very expert take. Many are still alive.

New comment by zasdffaa in "EmacsConf 2022"

zasdffaa — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 17:06:53 +0000

RPN is forth not lisp, and I seriously doubt HP got their idea from emacs. I think HP's RPN precedes the first release of emacs anyway. Edit: 1st release of emacs was 1976 so I take that last bit back.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Show HN: I wrote a free eBook about many lesser-known/secret database tricks"

zasdffaa — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 13:56:14 +0000

DB 'expert' here - agree completely. It's about profiling then banging your head against it and learning more from books/the docs/web. That's really it.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Show HN: I wrote a free eBook about many lesser-known/secret database tricks"

zasdffaa — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 13:53:13 +0000

I don't want to diss this, it's useful to some but to say "Your database knowledge is outdated" is presumptuous to the point of insulting. It's basic to intermediate level stuff, like using CTEs to break up queries (and you don't discuss how this can overload the optimiser), and doing multiple aggs in one select.

I also can't C&P from your pages as they're images, but Ghost Conditions Against Unindexed Columns has '... AND type = in (3, 6, 11)' - is that right or did you mean 'type in (...)'. It also talks about multi-col indexes as being more useful in some cases, true, but very elementary.

This is good and well done, but please don't oversell it.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Fire and Homo Naledi"

zasdffaa — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:24:10 +0000

It was exceedingly narrow to the point that the first cavers chosen there were small women iirc.

Pic of them halfway down https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/09/homo-nal... plus article.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Ask HN: Do you feel bad when devices aren't utilized to the extreme?"

zasdffaa — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:22:14 +0000

Things have a purpose. You might use your oven 2% of the time, you don't turn it on and use it (or turn it on and leave it empty) 100% of the time just cos it's there. When the purpose is done, you stop.

New comment by zasdffaa in "The Book of CP-System [pdf]"

zasdffaa — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 17:15:19 +0000

Then may I recommend in addition Hacker's Delight. The 1st ed is most fun, 2nd ed has a lot more depth in certain areas (division IIRC) which you might choose to skip.

New comment by zasdffaa in "Mozilla acquires the team behind Pulse, an automated status updater for Slack"

zasdffaa — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 18:01:17 +0000

A good non-dev can be hugely helpful to devs and much increase their productivity. To repeat: a good one.

New comment by zasdffaa in "The sad history of Unicode printf-style format specifiers in Visual C++ (2019)"

zasdffaa — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:51:10 +0000

Do you (or anyone) have some idea why anyone could possibly have thought 16 bits would be enough? Many decisions are bad in hindsight but surely no hindsight was needed for that.

New comment by zasdffaa in "TSMC to make 4nm chips in Arizona for Apple, AMD, Nvidia"

zasdffaa — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:37:52 +0000

Speaking as a brit, the opium wars were an abomination but China does like to (or find convenient) playing the victim.