matsdis

E-Reader benutzen um längere Texte zu lesen (im Flug-Modus). News auf PC lesen, nicht auf Handy. Browser plugin (LeechBlock NG) einrichten, das nach übermässigem News-Konsum eine Warte-Seite anzeigt, so dass die Seite erst nach einer Minute lädt. Dann kurz aufzustehen und überlegen ob man die Seite wirklich öffnen muss. Den PC einen halben Tag lang nicht benutzen, dazu Stromkabel raus, Tastatur/Maus entfernen. Zehn Minuten Meditieren, oder nur schon zwei Minuten lang bewusst atmen bringt viel.

Fun fact: Helikopter brauchen oft auch keinen Schlüssel.

Maybe my LLM detector needs an update, but only the headline triggered it. The article did the opposite for me.

Anyway, the author checks out, old github profile etc. Works in high frequency trading, which I despise because I think it is make-do work, moving money around a millisecond before anyone else has a chance, a huge technical effort with zero benefit to society compared to slower trading. I’ll file it together with adtech and bitcoin. But. The article is not about that. And I know that working in high frequency trading sure makes you qualified to talk C++ or FPGAs or anything close-to-the-metal. So, author background checks out. Verdict: not slop.

I feel old now. I can almost hear the noise of the drive trying to chew on this one.

Anyway, have some on-theme music video: BAD SECTOR by unfa (youtube.com)

The title is clickbait, but the article is well written.

It is tearing apart some points made in a talk (which I didn’t watch). The talk seems to focus on C++26 features (given that you are using C++) while the article argues why you still shouldn’t use C++ in the first place, despite the improvements. Mainly because the memory safety features are opt-in. There is also discussion about the CrowdStrike incident, and how it was more of a cultural problem than a language problem.

Yes but despite the footguns, C (not C++) is a relatively small language, not too hard to learn. And it’s the glue between kernel, system libraries, and all other languages. You don’t want to write big applications in it any more, but it’s still useful to know when you interface with existing stuff.

Depends. I would flag it in a code review on our product, and same for most TODO comments. It’s bad practice to leave them for your team to deal with, or even for yourself two years later.

But for explorative coding (mostly just one person, things like game development or creative coding, or before finishing your branch) I think dead code warnings do more damage than they help. They make you look at things not worth looking at right now, until you figured out what you want to build. Like unused structs or imports just because you commented out some line to test something. I didn’t turn all annoyances off, but I feel I should. I have a hard time just ignoring them. I think it’s better to enable them later when the code is stabilizing, to clean up experiments that didn’t work out. When I just ignore them I also ignore a more important warnings, and waste time wondering why my stuff isn’t working while the compiler is actually telling me why.

Also, in Rust many clippy defaults are too pedantic IMO, so I turn them off for good. Here is what I currently use:

[lints.rust]  
dead_code = "allow"  

[lints.clippy]  
new_without_default = "allow"  
match_like_matches_macro = "allow"  
manual_range_patterns = "allow"  
comparison_chain = "allow"  
collapsible_if = "allow"  
collapsible_else_if = "allow"  
let_and_return = "allow"  
identity_op = "allow"  # I'll multiply by one whenever I like!  
# Just disable all style hints?  
# style = "allow"  

I found it interesting that key travel time was considered, often it isn’t.

A similarly interesting article: Measure and reduce keyboard input latency with QMK on the Kinesis Advantage (2021) (Basically, took an existing keyboard and replaced the controller.)

The same story told from an environmentalist perspective: https://edconway.substack.com/p/no-kerosene-did-not-save-the-sperm

So what really saved the whales? Well, the answer is first, the whaling bans. […] In the face of this enforced shortage of whale oil, lubricant manufacturers and other users of whale oil had to try to find a satisfactory substitute.

Lo and behold, in the 1970s there was a sharp rise in research and development spending on esters. Chemists worked out how to create synthetic alternatives.

(The posted article has this too, and expands on the business side of it.)

Yes, I like it. It makes only one (big) mistake: a horizontal table-of-contents. Nobody does that. You can put it on the left, or above the text, but… not like that.

About marriage between cousins: Historically, the christian church has forbidden marriage between even very distant cousins. Intended or not, this has dismantled the power of large family clans.

Over centuries this has a clear effect on psychology: more individualism, a higher willingness to trust strangers (cooperation between non-relatives) and more. Joseph Henrich (anthropologist) has a whole book about this called The WEIRDest People in the World .

It doesn’t do OCR. It just automatically cleans up the pages for archival or sharing. (I use it to archive my handwritten notes and sketches, so technically yes ;-)

FairScan to scan documents.

If you’re interested in human intelligence, don’t miss Joseph Henrich’s book, “The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter”.

It has a few fun examples where historical people follow seemingly absurd complex instructions/traditions that are actually beneficial, while nobody ever designed them or knows what they do. It puts logical thinking into perspective.

That’s a good article. Here is a related deep dive: Pineapples! (PDF)

Because the pineapple leaves close their stomata during the day they don’t have the benefits of evaporative cooling! Plants heat up and unless there is a breeze to move the heat out of the field they are prone to plant damage, fruit sunburn and “cooking” or “boiling”. Growth slows when temperatures exceed 36°C and stops at about 40°C.