TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML)
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@anotherusername I read that recently too.
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@anotherusername Meh. Seems like the statute is in disagreement with what the Constitution says. You'd get tried in Idaho. Sure...maybe there'd be some appeals, but a statute can't override the Constitution...unless that's the Progressive thing to do, but I don't see there being much motivation to legalize murder.
Sounds about as good a strategy as raving about the gold fringe on the flag in the courtroom.
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@boomzilla yeah, but I like the way he ends the article.
When Free Fire came out, the publisher brought Kalt to Wyoming to speak at some publicity events. After one talk, someone suggested they drive out to the Idaho portion of the park to take some pictures. It's a beautiful area, by all accounts—an untrampled wilderness of lodgepole pines, grizzly bears, and waterfalls. But Kalt had no interest in tempting fate.
"I'm not going there for a million dollars," he said. "Not until this is fixed and probably not even then. The irony gods would have a field day with that one."
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I don't see there being much motivation to legalize murder.
I do, but that's because I'm a misanthrope and have been hoping for years that we'd finally get around to the global nuclear war we were promised when I was young.
True, I would probably be among the first ones killed if murder was legalized, but TBH, that's a check in the 'pro' column by my accounts.
Filed Under: Still standing by my 2004 prediction that we will have sterilized the planet by 2024.
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
legalize murder.
What's that even supposed to mean?
You can already legally kill people.
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@aliceif said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
You can already legally kill people
Can't legally murder them though.
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TIL "end-user computing" is a term people use.
End-user computing (EUC) refers to systems in which non-programmers can create working applications.
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@anonymous234 That particular rot set in with the design of COBOL and has never really gone away.
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It was a very fashionable idea in the 1960s and 1970s, and was the driving force behind interactive timesharing - the assumption was that using a computer meant writing programs (the idea of users working exclusively with existing applications wasn't really considered) , so they designed languages like Dartmouth BASIC, Smalltalk-72, and a horde of 'fourth-generation languages' that looked like very stilted English for querying the pre-relational databases still common at the time.
Smalltalk, being tied into the new WIMP GUI that PARC had developed, was actually intended to eliminate the need for professional application development in such environments almost entirely, and replace most system administration as well. Oh, the irony.
The idea was also related to the rise of RAD tools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it being a goal of most scripting and action-macro languages of the time (including Blakey's beloved Hypercard). A lot of the design of Visual Basic was predicated on the assumption that one person would mock up the forms in the RAD tools, then pass the program on to someone else to flesh it out.
While the idea does have merit, it carries some dangerous and invalid assumptions about how people use computers, and often worsens the gap between 'users' and 'serious developers' by expecting that the former want to write program code (as opposed to using indirect-coding programming tools such as action recorders), but that the latter won't be interested in easier tools of the sort that 'dumb users' would want.
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@ScholRLEA said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
While the idea does have merit
Not with current users it doesn't. The issue is that most users just don't think in a way that is organised enough to be suitable for programming. They don't think in terms of edge cases, failure modes and generalisation. At best, any program that they create even with lots of help will be fragile and impossible to port to even another computer running the same software (hard coded paths, etc.)
Of course, not all end users are that bad. Some would be quite good at programming if their interests lay in that direction. But ever so many aren't.
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@dkf The customary counterargument to the obviously correct point you've just made is a furious denunciation of the new technological priest class. I wonder how long it will take to arrive?
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
most
userspeople just don't think in a way that is organised enough to be suitable for programmingand furthermore have absolutely no interest in learning how to think that way.
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@flabdablet said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
new technological priest class
Perhaps I should put that on my business cards: Techpriest, cyberdeacon.
Though I'd have to get some business cards to do that…
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@dkf Part of the issue lies in what we call 'real programming' and what is 'not really programming'. Do you consider indirect-coding tools such as action recorders or RAD screen builders 'programming'? One could make a case for either position, I think, though for my own part I would go with the more inclusive definition, if only because the exclusive position would logically also dismiss things like genetic algorithms and higher-order function returns as 'not real programming', which is absurd.
To me, it's the assumption that 'programming == coding' that lies at the heart of the problem. The proponents of 4GLs and the like assume that users want to write code - which is obviously not the case, and for most would be a bad idea. Conversely, they tend to ignore things users often would want, but which they assume are not 'really programming', such as recording a series of actions to be repeated. These often are not seen as programming even if the tools actually generate code that can be saved and edited - an attitude that goes hand in hand with the assumption that 'scripting != programming', as well, which is still fairly widespread, or even 'interpreted program != real program', which isn't entirely unknown.
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@ScholRLEA I'm actually noticing an increase in "task automation" apps, IFTTT being the most popular example. But it might just be because of the general mobile apps bubble.
There's also something I call the "Mario Paint Composer effect". Look at all these videos: thousands of songs made in a program intended to be a crappy music maker for kids. There are dozens of free music editing programs better than that one, so why are people using that one? Because it's fun, and ridiculously easy to get into. Give them a "real" environment and they'll get confused and bored before they can write the first note. So it's less productive (per hour worked), but it pulls in users that would otherwise never produce anything at all.
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@aliceif said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
legalize murder.
What's that even supposed to mean?
You can already legally kill people.As @flabdablet alludes, there's more to murder than just killing. The article was speculating on a location that had apparent contradictions as to which court would have jurisdiction over a crime committed there. I think that contradiction doesn't really exist, but even if some judge agreed that it did, judges are not above cutting the occasional legal Gordian knot when they perceive there being something stupid going on. And not prosecuting a murder is pretty damn silly.
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@ScholRLEA said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
The proponents of 4GLs and the like assume that users want to write code - which is obviously not the case, and for most would be a bad idea. Conversely, they tend to ignore things users often would want, but which they assume are not 'really programming', such as recording a series of actions to be repeated.
Then there are things like rules engines, which are sometimes a good idea for the unwashed masses, but probably require someone capable of "programmer-like" thought available at least to help troubleshoot.
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@boomzilla said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
judges are not above cutting the occasional legal Gordian knot when they perceive there being something stupid going on
a.k.a. Judges Aren't Robots and thank goodness for that.
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
a.k.a. Judges Aren't Robots and thank goodness for that.
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@anonymous234 While yes, an idiot could do that and be recorded as having done that, they'd get to find that it also gets recorded that everyone else miraculously decides to exercise their sovereignty and ignore the idiot's bullshit.
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@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Onyx said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Water can't flow uphill back to the lake!
You can pump it back up and make pretty efficient energy storage.
I know you were kidding...but...
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@Polygeekery said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@flabdablet said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Celine Dion is immutable.
That's a shame...
Nonsense. Just push the MUTE button on your remote. Ok, you haven't actually muted her, but at least you can't hear her any more, and that's what counts, right?
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@Polygeekery said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Onyx said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Water can't flow uphill back to the lake!
You can pump it back up and make pretty efficient energy storage.
I know you were kidding...but...
If I hadn't been dead serious I wouldn't have added the efficiency remark. I just couldn't be bothered finding a link.
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@Polygeekery said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@PleegWat said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
@Onyx said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Water can't flow uphill back to the lake!
You can pump it back up and make pretty efficient energy storage.
I know you were kidding...but...
Storing potential energy by pumping water uphill is the whole point of having water towers, or a big reservoir on the nearest mountain. The most obvious use of the stored energy (and the least inefficient, natch) is to provide water pressure (which would otherwise have to be pumped on demand), but converting it back to electricity is also a possibility.
If there's a significant difference between peak and off demand energy cost, significant savings can be made by pumping it up during off hours, and then letting it drain down during the peak hours. Granted, you'd need a pretty big difference in energy cost from off demand to peak demand to make it worthwhile to convert it back into electricity to sell.
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@anotherusername said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
Granted, you'd need a pretty big difference in energy cost from off demand to peak demand to make it worthwhile to convert it back into electricity to sell.
It's been done. It works well.
Also, that's just awesomeness as it is a power station inside a mountain. It just needs is some dwarves and we'll be all set!
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
that's just awesomeness as it is a power station inside a mountain. It just needs is some dwarves and we'll be all set!
It occurred to me today that the silicon chips that make so much of modern life possible are literally just stones with special carvings on them. That's pretty awesome too.
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@flabdablet said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
It occurred to me today that the silicon chips that make so much of modern life possible are literally just
stonescrystals with special carvings on them. That's pretty awesome too.The uninitiated might even call them magical crystals.
However, I wouldn't call a flawless crystal of a very, very pure element a stone, even if it's an element that is a major component of most stones.
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@HardwareGeek said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
The uninitiated might even call them magical crystals.
The initiated can omit the word “magical” until they start thinking about just how their code actually compiles at all…
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@flabdablet and we're currently moving toward thin flexible sheets of organic material with special traces printed on them.
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@anotherusername said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
we're currently moving toward thin flexible sheets of organic material with special traces printed on them
...that one could be forgiven for describing as runes inscribed on special scrolls.
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@flabdablet ...that was the joke.
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@HardwareGeek said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
I wouldn't call a flawless crystal of a very, very pure element a stone
and I wouldn't call the surface of a CPU a "flawless crystal" :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivation_(chemistry)#Silicon
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@flabdablet said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
and I wouldn't call the surface of a CPU a "flawless crystal".
Details! We're in the land of real make-believe here!
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@anotherusername said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
that was the joke
and yes, it was funny... but what's really odd, and somewhat disconcerting once seen, is just how accurate it is.
What we do actually does meet most of the criteria for being classed as magic, in the strict sense of something that achieves real change in the world by means of special inscriptions with actual power, and even (if your dev workstation has voice recognition) the mumbling of spells in esoteric languages whose meaning is understood only by the practitioners and the daemons they bind.
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@flabdablet said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
What we do really does meet most of the criteria for being classed as magic
I'd consider wearing a wizard hat, except it probably comes with cat ears…
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
it probably comes with cat ears
that broadcast really annoying dance "music".
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@anonymous234 said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
declaring himself an "idiot of the 'Legal Society'" who is "incompetent" and not subject to federal law.
Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
It works well.
Yes, but the amount of energy is still tiny compared to what we consume. You'd need 25,000 Hoover Dams for them to power the entire US for half of the day.
Maybe you could fill it with pure liquid Osmium (23 times heavier than water). And then place it on top of the Burj Khalifa building. Now you'd only need 150 of them.
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@dkf said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
It's been done. It works well.
Gravitational potential energy is a durable, controllable and reasonably efficient form to store it in, but there are others.
Everybody has seen batteries, which store chemical energy. Not everybody is aware of flow batteries, which are to chemical energy as pumped hydraulic storage is to gravitational potential energy.
Unlike a normal rechargeable battery, flow battery chemistry doesn't involve dissolution nor deposition of bulk metal. Instead of having two reactive electrodes separated by an electrolyte through which ions drift, a flow battery reactor is like a fuel cell in having a solid proton-exchange membrane with chemically inert electrodes on either side. But instead of separating fuel from oxidiser, the flow battery's membrane separates two different kinds of electrolyte.
When they're discharging they work much like a fuel cell: H+ ions involved in the chemical reaction between the two electrolytes migrate through the membrane, causing a voltage to build up across it. On charge, a voltage applied to the membrane forces those same ions to migrate back the other way to make the reaction run in reverse. Pumps supply flows of stored electrolyte to the reaction cells, and the reactions don't reach equilibrium until all of the stored electrolyte is fully charged or discharged.
Apart from the durability that follows from the lack of metal deposition/dissolution in the reaction cells, the big advantage of flow batteries over other rechargeable chemistries is that you can design them with just about any combination of power output vs. storage capacity. If you need more power, add more reaction cells. If you need more storage, add more electrolyte tanks.
One of the more mature flow battery chemistries is vanadium redox, where the electrolytes are solutions of vanadium on one side and a couple of its oxides on the other, both in sulphuric acid.
Another interesting emerging energy storage technology uses heat.
At first blush this is really surprising, because it's well understood that mechanical heat engines have a fundamental efficiency limitation: under absolutely ideal conditions, the best conversion efficiency any heat engine can manage between heat energy input and mechanical energy output is given by 1 - TC/TH, where the Ts are the absolute temperatures of the hot and cold sides of the engine.
Gas turbines are quite efficient as real-world heat engines go, but a gas turbine with a flame temperature of about 1500K and exhaust at 900K can achieve an absolute maximum theoretical conversion efficiency of only 40%. Next to the typical car battery's 70% round trip efficiency, that looks pretty dismal.
But there's a flip side: the very same thermodynamic relationships that give rise to maximum Carnot efficiency mean that if you're using mechanical energy to move heat from a cold reservoir to a warm one, the ratio between how much heat energy you can move and how much mechanical energy you need to do that turns out to be the reciprocal of the conversion efficiency going the other way. This is also well understood: domestic heat pumps cost very little to run compared to their equivalent in bar radiators.
So if you built a system that ran an electric motor to power a heat pump moving thermal energy from one reservoir to another, then in theory you could subsequently extract all the mechanical energy you put into the pump from the ensuing temperature difference between those reservoirs.
The beauty of this arrangement is that heat energy is super-cheap to store. All you need is a bunch of mass with some decent insulation wrapped around it.
Of course in practice there would be losses due to irreversible processes like friction and resistance in the motor/generator windings, but with careful design it might be possible to minimize those to the point where the whole mad scheme actually looks practical.
Isentropic Ltd has been working on this for a while. Pity about the lack of commercial success; the tech looks really interesting. With any luck something will come of it yet.
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@HardwareGeek said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
a flawless crystal of a very, very pure element
Even when the basis of our technology is described in dry and completely precise technical language like this, it has a distinct whiff of mysticism.
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TIL Edge is ridiculously slow and unusable on old computers (that run Chrome just fine).
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@anonymous234 said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
TIL Edge is ridiculous
ly slow and unusable on old computers (that run Chrome just fine).FTFY
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TIL that there is no Wicked-pedo entry on either "Synthesis Kernel" or 'quajects', probably because Notability raisins. I created one for the latter, but odds are it will get axed as soon as it gets noticed because NOTABILITYOMG. Given the page's likely demise, I will now inflict the text on you, because why not.
In computer science, a Quaject is an object-like data structure containing both data and code (or pointers to code), exposes as an interface in the form of 'callentries', and can accept a list of callentries to other quajects for callbacks and 'callouts'. They were developed Alexia Massalin for the Synthesis Kernel in 1989, and named for the Qua! Machine, a unique hardware platform built by Massalin (where the term 'qua' comes from is unclear; Massalin humorously claims that it is a sound made by koalas).
The primary purpose of quajects is to provide an abstraction for managing Self-modifying code, by allowing runtime code optimization on a per-object basis. While the original Synthesis kernel required quajects to be written in hand-developed assembly language, this was done to avoid the development of a complex compiler; Massalin noted that a JIT compiler for a high-level language that permits runtime code generation, such as Lisp or Smalltalk, could also apply this approach, though she also asserted that the complexity of such a compiler was likely to be prohibitive.
Quajects differ from more conventional objects in two key ways: first, they always use a form of the Dependency Injection pattern for managing both interfaces to other quajects, and continuations out of the quaject; the list of callentry references for this is part of quaject creation, and may be updated during the quaject's lifetime. Second, and more critically, a given quaject's set of methods can be unique to the specific quaject; methods for a type or class of quajects are stored as one or more templates, rather than as fixed code, and while shared methods can be accessed through a common table of pointers, individual quajects can also have methods that are generated specifically to tailor the performance for that particular quaject's behavior.
References
Massalin, Henry (1992). Synthesis: An Efficient Implementation of Fundamental Operating System Services (Ph.D.). Columbia University. Retrieved 23 Aug 2016.
Poole, Gary A. (1 Dec 1996). "Qua". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved 23 Aug 2016.
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@ScholRLEA Anything at all that Massalin ever did should be considered notable just because it was Massalin who did it.
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@ScholRLEA Sounds like a number of current object systems that I know, though done in machine code Because Reasons.
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@anotherusername said in TIL (about the Dark Arts of HTML):
http://www.ozy.com/flashback/exploding-killer-lakes/65346
Whoa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8AonDeS8HY
yep. lakes can go boom.