HN user
This! Any graphical history for git that doesn't let you show all branches at once is trash. (Like the one in Visual Studio) The interactive rebase editor in Git Graph is very nice too.
I also love how smoothly you can jump between git CLI and GUI in VS Code.
I'll have to look at how to compare arbitrary commits in Git Lens and whether it is in the free version. That's the one thing I still rely upon TortoiseGit for
You have no donate link... if you're gonna be on big sites like HN, you might as well have a donation link so that hopefully you break even on App Engine.
Yes, it does. If it is 'hardcoded', then the intelligence lies in whatever 'hardcoded' it, not in the entity following the 'hardcoding'. Genetic algorithms have a certain amount of intelligence, although slow and clumsy. The fact that the world's biggest genetic algorithm* can program a spider to build an elegant solution does not mean the spider itself is intelligent.
* If you treat the algorithm for spiders and beetles as the same... I strongly suspect that a significant portion of the algorithm is actually implemented within the genes. For example, control genes massively amplify the effect of small genetic changes, allowing creatures using them to evolve faster than those without.
Actually, whether admitting it is dumb or not depends a lot on whether you're dealing with an objective or subjective situation, and the odds * costs of being caught at wrong answers.
For an example of a subjective situation, in a poker game it can be useful to pretend to know you will win in cases where it is unknown, or even in cases where you know you have a weak hand. The other player's subjective impression of what you know is more important than its actual accuracy.
On the other hand, computer programmers and engineers usually are dealing with objective circumstances where not admitting you don't know results in things breaking and delays finding out the objectively true answer.
A common failing is to not recognize which of the two types of situations you are in, and just assume you should treat it like the one you are most used to. Hence engineering types may be ignored because they don't sound confident in their answers, and political types forget that that rules or legislation cannot override the laws of physics.
That's because the traditional economic definition of "rational" is an incomplete model of real world sanity that only works in incomplete models of the real world.
In the real world, you have to deal with the uncertain risk that the offer will be unfulfilled due to external factors, which always increases in time relative to present. You, the entity offering you the choice, or the entire environment both exist in, may not still exist in 60 months.
If the same offer is made 60 months from now, you should make a different choice, because the risk of non-existence between time of choice and time of reward has changed.
If the amount of hyperbolic discounting is genetically determined, then is likely that we are still adjusting to the massive drop in risk of death over the past several centuries.
It would be nice if you could tell if there is any local activity before signing up. I'm not giving a random web site my Facebook or email when most likely no one else local is signed up anyway.
I have to disagree there - there are other approaches to market-based funding of the creation of cultural communications that are not advertising based. For a very successful current example, see Kickstarter.
A very quick approximation seems to indicate it still isn't feasible. I saved 2 32x32 JPEGs using Gimp at quality 30. One is a cutout of a face from a photo, the other is random noise generated using the filter in Gimp. The resulting JPEG files were 427 bytes for the face, and 525 for completely random.
Now, I have no idea how much of that is the header. So, to help guess that, I saved a solid white 32px image with the same settings, and it was 164 bytes.
Worst case, generating every possible 427 byte file at one hundred per second, would take ~ 4.8×10^1008 × universe age (per http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2^%28427*8%29+%2F+100+p...)
Even if we figure all 164 bytes of the white file is header info, that leaves 263 bytes of image data in the face image, which would take ~ 5.4×10^613 × universe age. (Per http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2^%28263*8%29+%2F+100+p...)
If we got down to an 8 by 8 pixel black and white image, and generating 1 billion per second, it would still take 6 centuries. (per http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2^%288*8%29+%2F+1000000...)
So even a massively reduced version of the problem is still ridiculously impossible to explore.
I wonder if this would be explorable for some much tinier subset of the space of images. Like maybe 32 x 32 greyscale JPEG images with some limit on compressed size that keeps it to interesting images.
I'm specifically suggesting JPEG because it is a compression method based on human perception, so if we focus only on easily JPEG compressed images, we should eliminate a lot of the image that look like snow on a TV, and restrict more to images that look vaguely like something.
Unfortunately, I don't remember enough details of how JPEG compression works to make a reasonable guess how many possible JPEGs this is, and whether we are getting into numbers small enough to be feasible.
Yup, or even easier, a simple fork bomb. http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/understanding-bash-fork-bomb/#c... has examples in 5 languages, all shorter than this. :(){ :|:& };: in bash is the shortest example.
On the other hand, and machine with properly configured limits will mitigate either one.
The reason that is not available is that the universe of options for beginning programming has exploded since the old boot into BASIC days, and there is no longer agreement on the easiest way to begin programming.
As for the same set-up on every single Mac/PC, it's already there, it is just slightly harder to get to than you want. It's called a web browser, and there are numerous URLs you can go to that let you program right in the browser.
W3schools is probably the easiest to find, and lets you try HTML and JavaScript right in the webpage. http://www.w3schools.com/html/ and http://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp
The online version of "Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming" by Marijn Haverbeke has an integrated JavaScript console at the bottom to follow along. http://eloquentjavascript.net/chapter1.html
If anything, the problem is that there are too many answers, targeted at too many starting levels, so it is hard to Google for any likely phrases and get to the answer easily.Searching for "begin programming" seems to give better beginner answers, whereas "learn to program" tends to give more college-level answers.
I see no reason why a kid who is interested in how to do it, and grew up in the modern era around web browsers and search engines and such, would have any trouble finding something quickly.
Isn't the ability to sell bitcoins also important?
Unless you think farmers in Colombia and electric companies in California are going to start accepting bitcoins directly?
Hmm, perhaps you should consider a few differences between so called wage "slavery" and chattel slavery as practiced in pre-civil war US:
1) Modern workers are not owned from birth.
2) Debt is not forced upon you against your will, debt is a choice.
3) The alternative to choosing debt is not getting whipped nor killed.
4) Bankruptcy is neither getting whipped, nor killed.
It is case-sensitive, try the following instead:
http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Google%2CMicrosof...
I'm amused that you think it is possible to rewrite the whole thing without entering super brain mode. In my experience, generally the only way to reproduce such legacy reports is by reverse engineering how they currently work. (which will require super brain mode based on the above described current complexity) One would think someone in the business would know what the report is supposed to do, but I frequently encounter cases where no one does, they just want the report to work the way the old one did, whatever the heck that was.
I know of no solution not involving time travel to solve that for legacy reports and systems. Obviously going forward one can worry about documentation, etc. but with legacy stuff it is already too late to implement those rules.
One thing I don't like is nothing on Buxfer's site tells you they are dead - I was considering signing up as a new customer, but suspicious due to the lack of blog activity and the questions if they are dead on GetSatisfaction. They looked like a really decent web 2.0 style personal finance manager, with some really slick features. Way nicer than Mint.
I think gojomo has a really good idea here. However, there is no reason to bias it against Google's ad network. We need an advanced search option to find non-ad supported sites, that behind the scenes attempts to filter out every known ad network. The use case wouldn't be an all the time thing, it would be when you are searching and get results that are overly polluted with ad-based content. Having the option to filter to non-ad based content lets you focus on those sites that have a motivation other than page views for providing content. I imagine this would include both sites actually selling products and non-profit sites like Wikipedia and open source.
This is a common misconception caused by quoting mean life expectancy at birth, when the distribution is highly asymmetrical. High infant death rates cause low life expectancy at birth, but the life expectancy if you live to age 5 can be massively longer.
A 5 year old ancient Roman was expected to live to 48. About 35% of the ancient Roman population was over 30 years old. The highest listed age is 76, which is the life expectancy of a 70 year old, an age that about 1 in 50 ancient Romans achieved. http://www.utexas.edu/depts/classics/documents/Life.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#The_Popular_Mis...
Oops, nevermind, silly suggestion. It's already been done, you just have to Google "basic interpreter javascript" to find it.
http://www.calormen.com/Applesoft/ - Starts right at the interpeter
http://www.ngbasic.com/ - Has more of the classic BASIC feel, opening a window that looks like ye olde BASIC interpreter, but requires two clicks before you can find it.
http://www.quitebasic.com/ - Also starts at the interpreter, but with a more complicated example program.
I have 2 suggestions:
1) How hard would it to write a JavaScript/HTML port of it? I don't see why anyone in the modern day and age should need to download and install a program to play with BASIC. It should be possible to interpret BASIC directly in JavaScript, all within the browser. I don't believe any server round trips should even be necessary.
2) Have you let David Brin know about your effort? He seems to be doing talks on the subject still as recently as '09, so he might be able to at least mention it to people.
At what age do you think Alice and Mindstorm are usable? The main thing that catches my attention on Alice is it is targeted at High School or College level, but the article talks about his 11 year old son.
Where are the programming tools for 6 to 8 year olds?
(I started in BASIC that early, but then again I was programming C by 11, so I'm probably an exception...)
But I don't see anything here that blocks the "check in" approach, if anything, it makes it easier to implement. Instead of needing to develop your own app for each mobile platform and using their location API, you just make a web page that asks for confirmation to access the user's Google Latitude location, and all you need to do is develop the interface for whatever human provided info you want. The location pick up is taken care of. (Of course, I don't know how this compares to just using HTML5 location APIs... perhaps that provides a better approach for check ins.)
The only problem I see with this is that, in my experience, Google Latitude 95% of the time tracks location by cell tower, which doesn't even narrow down which block you are on, much less which bar you are in.
No, it is two different dichotomies. One is one-ancestor vs. multi-ancestor, with the first being correct. The second is no gene transfer between descendants vs. gene transfer between descendants, with the second being correct. So there was only one species to begin with, but then later, after it diverged into multiple species, those branches traded genes back and forth.
You completely left out the "if they do happen to play sports" in the actual article, which heavily colors non-sports players view of the article. I definitely agree that many engineers and programmers play sports... but I also strongly suspect that on average, an engineer or programmer is less likely to play sports than the average person, and more likely to be the kid who always was picked last to play sports as a kid and hence have negative views of sports.
One of the rules was that you had to keep talking (or at least reading) for the entire agreed upon period. Taking a break wasn't allowed in the rules.
I turn off my work laptop every day before undocking it to bring it home. I believe HP does not claim that this model supports hot docking. Also, if I forget to turn it off, it gets really hot in my sealed laptop bag...
$6,900 per panel adds up to about $3 million per lane-mile.
Typical rural highway costs for new highway are $3 - $9 million per lane-mile, with urban highways costing $5 - $20 million per lane-mile. (per http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/whatwedo/po...)
The estimated 7.6 kwh per day per panel mentioned in the article, if you assume it gets that every day, adds up to 3.344 mwh per lane-mile, which at average US retail electric rates, adds up to $120,000 per lane-mile per year. According to their website, these panels will supposedly be designed to last 21 years, vs. the 7 typical for asphalt roadways. That would bring the lifetime electricity production per lane-mile up to $2.5 million. (not accounting for inflation nor electric price changes over 21 years)
Frankly, I find their 21 year projected life absurd, but then again I live in a state with yearly freeze-thaw cycles shortening the life of roadways. Other than that, it seems like if they could meet their claims, it would be financially feasible to build roads using this stuff.
There's no such thing as an artificially high price in an open marketplace. Or, more specifically, it's impossible for the producer of a good or service to set a price that is artificially high.
That's not true. The real world is not the same as an idealized economic model. It is quite possible for a business to set an artificially high price, at least in the short term. In a competitive market, it results in the business getting less revenue, and quite possibly going out of business, but that is not instantaneous. If the price is merely sub-optimal, but not outrageous, it is quite possible that the overcharging business will make enough money to stay around for years.
Even John Maynard Keynes commented on those trying to profit by shorting irrational bubbles, "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." -- if you're a company benefiting from the current irrationality, that means you can stay around until the market returns to rationality. (For example, see Citibank, Lehman brothers, etc....)
This is without even accounting for the fact that these services are usually not pure commodity markets. They are in monopolistic competition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition), sometimes with only very distant substitutes, giving closer to monopoly control over their market.
In implying the penny gap can be eliminated, this article fails to account for mental transaction costs. No matter how simple a microbilling service is, there is still a mental transaction cost for deciding whether to pay or not. If my time is worth $20/hour (US average wage), and it takes me 3 seconds to read your microbilling screen and understand what you are charging, it has already cost me a penny. 3 seconds is enough time for the average reader to read 5 words. I would estimate you have about a minute to explain your service and charge for it, if you want the customer to spend a quarter on something that is worth fifty cents (or more) to them. (See http://szabo.best.vwh.net/micropayments.html or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment#Theory.2Fcriticism for more background on mental transaction costs.)
If the price of your freemium service is artificially high, then you are doing it wrong. The freemium model is for services where the price of supporting free users is less than the price of other ways of informing your paying customers that you exist. (Including cases where free users contribute value.)
The best way to structure the freemium model is such that you only charge for things that are natural scarcities, not things that can be freely replicated. For example, charging for support (human time to solve your problem) is better than charging for features. (Existing features aren't scarce, it costs nothing to roll them out to all users. Implementing new features is scarce.)
At 650 posts a week, I don't think that feed is highest rated. I've clicked plenty of articles from the feed that are low rated or brand new.
I wish there was a highest rated feed - the default feed is way too noisy.