timrowledge

Recent Actions

• Commented on Pushing it back
  Pushing forward a bit as opposed to back, it looks like in a mere 250myears we’ll be totally out of luck, what with a new Pangea a-building. Guardian article on supercontinent coming soon Of course the rabid brexshitteers are already...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  Sharp spiky pozzolan sounds like sometihng worth mining from the Moon or assorted other space rocks. Mind you, it's spiky enough that it might be hard to keep machinery running for long. And as for old housing, I've stayed in...
• Commented on Pushing it back
  It’s completely obvious that this is prima facie evidence for a lost time-traveller. I mean, come on. Also “impact crater”? You clearly don’t know how big a GCU is....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I can assure you that this most definitely occurs on a fast motorcycle, and it is most definitely fun....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  If one doesn’t have a working F15 or similar in the (underground, obviously) garage, how can one even mad scientist? Let’s be serious here....
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Some way above i saw “MilSF” and misread it as “MilfSF”; but I think one could argue that Heinlein covered that some time ago. Weber is kinda doing so as well since Honor has definitely become a character describable as...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  “And, EV's contribution will be greater, because they are heavier, yes? ” FFS, not again. Tesla model 3 weighs about the same as BMW 3 series. They use less friction braking, so generate less brake dust. It’s not rocket psychiatry....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Smalltalk has only six - nil, true, false, self, super, and thisContext. You could kinda-sorta claim ^ as a seventh but it’s just a syntactic alias for thisContext returnTo: thisContext home sender. The assorted flow control commands in other languages...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  There’s this thing about UIs that provide proportional spaced fonts ; they can also use fixed space fonts in places where it might make sense. And choosing a sensible font that makes sure a capital i does not look like...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Why, yes, I have had to read and proof code, though only for 50 years so I’m just a newbie I guess. Fixed width fonts are not a solution to anything in my opinion. And yes, I’ve read (and written)...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  80 etc columns? You mean... surely not... are you people still using fixed width character fonts? Damn, I haven’t had to suffer that nonsense in 40 years. Those dead-text languages just don’t get any better....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  But just how much Chlorine do we need in the moderator pool?...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  For those with fond memories of The Small System Journal (aka Byte) you might like to look at the fairly large collecction digitised online at archive.org. My favourite (for obvious reasons) is https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08 If nothing else, the adverts are hilarious...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  "Come on, this isn't rocket science!" No - it's much harder to solve. Nasty people will seize on any word/phrase that is being used to describe people they dislike and turn it into a slur. We only need to recall...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Damn! That’s brilliant! So much for “no, I never microwave cats; it’s too hard to get them in” (I think a quotation of Bun-Bun?)...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  “And why does cooking meat make "a lot of noise"?” Have you never tried getting the cat into the microwave?...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  “Not sure how to categorize BJ.” Oh c’mon - I cannot believe you left that one on the table; BJ sucks...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  Good grief no. We’re not even close to optimal. I could really use an extra manipulatory appendage- an arm, or a prehensile tail would be a good start. Maybe two, though two tails might be a bit outré. A third...
• Commented on Finding true love in the cosmos
  “I'm sorry but I don't buy the Culture universe as anything other....” La-la-la, we’re not listening! :-)...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Similar, though Mech.Eng & IDE; the first computer I built involved designing my own graphics card, 6DOF input device and writing a (rudimentary) 3D solid modeller in assembler. NatSemi 32000 assembly at that. The next one was a tablet (in...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  “They later changed into terrorists ” Yeah, and I was adjacent to two of their major atrocities in London- one below and one above, ground. Oh and the car that suddenly exploded as I drove past; we never got conclusive...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Well, it might be treated that way now but back when I was in Silicon Valley the full version was “move fast and break things, then build a better one”. The idea was to not be afraid to try, fail,...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  On code optimisation - The sigline version Don't (for experts only) Don't yet The mantra I used to teach classes Make it work Make it work right Make it work right fast While simplification can yield great results, sometimes it...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Push the wires in wrongly and you might let the magic smoke out of you. Almost managed that one myself as a kid....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Oh FFS “since EVs seem to be consistently heavier than ICEs ” no they don’t. I refer to a number of prior threads on this very blog....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'm fairly sure that work was funded at least in parat by Nathan Myhvold. Somewhere out there is a video of the demo system operating. I think it was designed to target the female mozzies for somereason? My favourite story...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  It was Wagner...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I find myself a bit torn between monarchs and presidents; both have been terrible, both have been ok. The hereditary bit is a big problem though, not least because it is a form of slavery. Gilded, certainly, but wrong nonetheless....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  I can translate a little here, having grown up in the UK and lived a good while in the US/Canada. Sub-compact - a car that would be considered a normal family car in the UK. Compact - a big car...
• Commented on Minor updates
  “stop eating the bread if your fingers and toes begin to tingle and you start to see visions” Where’s the fun in doing that?...