About programming languages:
-First in which I wrote code: Locomotive BASIC (Amstrad CPC)
-First in which I wrote a significant amount of code: 68k assembly (Atari ST)
-First that I got paid to work in: C++ (BeOS)
-In which I have written the most code: C (portable / feature phones)
-In which I have read the most code: Java (Android)
-That I have used most recently: 68k assembly (Atari ST)
-That I'd like to learn: RISC-V-64 assembly (Linux SDL)
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Remember that, for everything that you do, your older self is watching.
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Ryanair: asks that passengers show up at the airport 2 hours before their scheduled departure.
Also Ryanair: complains that passengers drink at the airport while waiting for their flight.
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"Assumption is the maker of all failures."
It's easy to blame "the computer" or "the software" or "technology" when something fails in computing. However, those failures almost universally stem from some human(s) making invalid assumptions, implicitly or explicitly.
I have taught myself to analyze failures as invalid human assumptions, because I have found that I learn the most from analyzing failures from that angle. To best understand failures, look for the invalid assumptions.
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"Legacy code" is often code that you want to replace because you don't understand it. The problem is, before you can replace it, you need to understand it, and, once you understand it, replacing it is rarely the cheapest option any more.
[#]SoftwareEngineering
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I showed @eugenialoli where the power button is located on the RPi5, and I configured it to power down when turned off, so that it doesn't stay warm. That way, no need any more to unplug it every time we're done using it.
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Let's see. The median population of US states in the first census after they joined the union was 193k people, the geometric mean was 195k people.
Canada could reasonably claim to be cut into about 200 states (first-order approximation), should they join the USA.
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Planning a stay in Athens, I'll go lightweight and use a Canon 4000D (T100) w/ 18-55 IS. Total weight fully loaded: 640g. My primary camera body weighs more than twice that, naked.
Quite obviously, it's not the same image quality or ease of use... or price either.
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While sorting through my photography equipment, I have reunited a couple of lens hoods with their respective lenses. Those were the lenses that I had traveled with when moving last year, i.e. that are useful and valuable, whose hoods I had packed at the last minute and therefore unpacked early. I'm glad that I have the lenses fully equipped again. This is a good starting point toward doing more photography this year.
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LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube are competing for which one can bring my 4GB Chromebook to its knees. LinkedIn routinely hits 1GB, Facebook gets there occasionally, and I've seen YouTube hit 1.5GB.
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Done so far:
-rely only on Open Source leaf tools.
-build those tools from source instead of relying on pre-built binaries.
-mirror those tools' git repositories and work from my own mirror.
Not done yet:
-figure out how to build those tools while offline (go mod tidy, I'm looking at you).
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I simply do not trust anyone who claims that deterministic approaches are the only viable ones, or anyone who claims that probabilstic approaches are the only viable ones. Both have their unique applications, with some overlap where we can have interesting discussions, but neither will ever cover all categories of problems.
And, please, please, please, pretty please, stop claiming that anything probabilistic is inherently intelligent. There's no intelligence in throwing dice.
(4/4).
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As an example, don't try to apply deterministic computing to speech recognition. Leave that to probabilistic computing, which does an excellent job.
In the other direction, don't try to apply probabilistic computing to compilation: that's an area that needs isolation, hermeticity, reproducibility.
Passords: deterministic. Auto-completion: probabilistic. Finances: deterministic. Automative automatic lane tracking: probabilistic.
(3/4)
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It can be tempting to believe that probabilistic solutions are new and that most of the history of computing was deterministic, but that's not the case. In fact, Colossus, arguably the first digital electronic computer, was meant to solve arguably probabilistic problems ("find the likely settings of the first two wheels of the encryption key").
It's important to recognize that applying the wrong approach to a given problem can lead to dead ends.
(2/4)
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We have essentially two approaches in computing, deterministic and probabilistic, whose mathematical counterparts are respectively algebra and statistics.
Some problems, by their nature, need deterministic solutions. Some problems, by their nature, only have probabilistic solutions, and therefore need such solutions. Some problems happen to fall at the boundary between the two.
(1/4)
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I also want to do some creative work in my free time. I'll certainly want to release at least one demo in 2025, and I'm actively doing some mosaic pixel art that I'll keep doing, but I want to add something to that. I should restart painting, and probably add something else as a stretch, which could be papercraft, needlework, or knitting.
I also want to be physically active. I'll continue to ski when I can, and I'll try to ride a bike or hike as well.
This will be a busy year.
(2/2)
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To build my new year's resolutions, I first decide where I want my life to be in 5 years, and my resolutions should then be to do the first 20% of that.
In 5 years, I want to live in the same place as I do now, because I'm tired of moving around after 4 major moves in my 40s. For this coming year, that means making progress on the construction of our house, hopefully completing it by the end of 2025. It also means that I need to actively learn some Greek as I'm otherwise hitting a wall.
(1/2)
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Benchmarking my linux machines on the script that builds my development tools from source:
2011 Mac Book Air laptop, 2467M w/ 4GB RAM: 23m30s.
2014 Dell M6800 portable, 4810MQ w/ 32GB RAM: 5m55s.
2018 Lenovo X280 laptop, 8550U w/ 8GB RAM: 7m55s.
2023 custom tower, 13900K w/ 128GB RAM: 2m05s (at less than 20% CPU utilization).
2023 Raspberry Pi 5: 13m25s.
(untested: 2011 HP Z210 desktop, 2400 w/ 16GB, and 2015 Mac Mini, 4278U w/ 8GB, because they're not currently connected).
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When I restarted coding for 8- and 16-bit machines, I was mostly using pre-built binaries for my tools
About 2 months ago, I decided that I'd prefer to build my tools from source, and I created a script for that.
Over the last couple of days, I've tweaked my scripts so that one creates an offline mirror (a collection of git bundles), and the other builds from that offline mirror. That was, I can keep working and building things even if the public source files disappear.
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Today I learned that git doesn't have an easy way to mirror repositories with submodules.
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