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fredthedeadhead

Re:Minikotlin on Monday July 20, 2026 @05:21AM (#48976244)
> The compiler is itself compiled to WASM

Nitpick: it's Wasm, not WASM.

Wasm is a contraction of “WebAssembly”, not an acronym, hence not using all-caps. https://webassembly.github.io/spec/core/intro/introduction.h...

I really miss reading new blog posts and series from Shamus :(
Re:Ultrasonic Investigations in Shopping Centres on Monday June 10, 2024 @02:00AM (#40630658)
What does the author use to measure sound and create those graphs? I'm interested in automatically monitoring an annoying noise that's coming from a neighbour.
Re:A ChatGPT mistake cost us $10k on Monday June 10, 2024 @01:48AM (#40630605)
The blog post is 404ing, here's a Web archive link

https://web.archive.org/web/20240610032818/https://asim.bear...

The author has added an important edit:

> I want to preface this by saying yes the practices here are very bad and embarrassing (and we've since added robust unit/integration tests and alerting/logging), could/should have been avoided, were human errors beyond anything, and very obvious in hindsight.

>

> This was from a different time under large time constraints at the very earliest stages (first few weeks) of a company. I'm mostly just sharing this as a funny story with unique circumstances surrounding bug reproducibility in prod (due again to our own stupidity) Please read with that in mind

> The Google Cloud situation

What's the Google Cloud situation?

So, I think this hilarious, but link shorteners have to be stable, right? What happens when link shorteners go offline? Is there a way of decoding shortened links without the server?
Re:Relativistic Spaceship on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @02:13AM (#39271675)
Project Rho gives several compelling reasons why there ain't no stealth in space

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect...

Thanks, I missed that!

It looks like it landed on quite an incline, almost 45 degrees.

Are images of the damage available to the public?

"Imagery revealing damage to the rotor blade arrived several days later."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-years-on-mars-nasa...

Re:Heat exchanger masks for cold weather cycling on Thursday January 25, 2024 @07:55AM (#39129070)
The site is down, so here's a working archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240125111236/https://www.coldb...
I'm pretty interested in Breeze as an alternative https://breeze.social/

* There's no endless swiping. Users can only see a handleful of matches, each profile stays visible until users say yes/no on each profile, and the profiles are only topped up twice a day.

* All chatting is in-person, which is much more human than trying to text online. If users match, they can't chat. They both put down a deposit (about double the cost of a drink in a bar), pick a day & time they're avaliable, and Breeze automatically makes a reservation at a local bar (the first drink is free), or a park for a walk.

* Since dates require a deposit, and there's only so many days in the week(!), and users can't make new matches without first planning current matches, users don't get overwhelmed with connections - the existing contacts are prioritised.

* They're not owned by Match.com - which for me is a big plus! More disruption of their monopoly is a good thing.

The blog was removed after OkCupid was acquired by Match.com, which is another problem in online dating apps that isn't often mentioned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group#Dating_services_...

This chokes out competition, and users end up with several apps with some gimmick, but at their core they're designed to keep most users locked into actively dating, either to make the app seem popular, or to squeeze money out of them.

Re:Announcing SurrealDB 1.0 on Sunday October 29, 2023 @01:31PM (#38060758)
Fireship did a 'SurrealDB in 100 seconds' in case anyone would like a quick video summary: https://youtu.be/C7WFwgDRStM?si=va17q7zagn4lIoi3
Re:Why Are There So Many Colourful Houses in Bristol? on Wednesday October 11, 2023 @08:46PM (#37852215)
A couple of other peculiar colourful facts about Bristol:

* Ex-mayor George Ferguson (mentioned in the article) always wears red trousers, except when Bristol won the European Green Capital 2015 he wore green trousers in celebration.

* All licensed taxis in Bristol are blue, specifically Bristol Blue https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_blue_glass

Re:Show HN: AI Judges Your Spotify on Thursday August 31, 2023 @07:38AM (#37335626)
> You've listened to a shitty song a lot.

I don't know what song it means, the link is broken https://www.yourmusictastesucks.com/google.com

Re:'Screen Apnea' on Thursday August 24, 2023 @04:28PM (#37254133)
> Dr. Porges hypothesizes that the larger your screen, the less mentally taxing it can be. “As you narrow the visual field, you’re increasing the demand on your nervous system to exclude everything outside of it,” he said.

Scientific justification for my ultrawide. Fantastic!

Re:Features of Project Loom incorporated in JDK 21 on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:24AM (#37132167)
One high-level benefit of Kotlin Coroutines is that they're multiplatform, so one could write common Kotlin code that could compile to JVM, JS, or Native targets. Virtual threads are only for JVM.