2021-06-25 Nerd Roundup
Factorio, NATO, John Mcfee, git, dwarfs, and hacking. All here on this week's Nerd Roundup!
James Grenning on the roundup today. Lots going on in the tech world for nerds to browse.
| STORY | BUT WHY? | John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US | HN discussion covers nerds' reaction, including some first-person stories |
| Remembering the Time it Rained 6,000 Pounds of Marijuana on Yosemite | People remember that? no |
| Positions of Two NATO Ships Were Falsified Near Russian Black Sea Naval Base | Fascinating. If not immediately caught, over time these minor edits can make their way into the culture. Then something happens and an enemy can "plug in" to perhaps dozens of "proven" incidents to support their narrative. Coming soon for individual people and not just nation-states! |
| The absurdity of peer review | We've codified echo chambers and set up reward systems for those who become the most cliquish and accepted by the group. I dunno what that is, but it's not science. |
| Why the words "You Just Won The Lottery" may be the worst thing you could possibly hear | Just shoot me already |
| The only way to go fast is to go well (TDD at Factorio) | Both my favorite game and related to The Bobster. "...It feels slower, to write tests even for simple pieces of logic that just bound to be right, but the test proved me wrong several times already, and prevented annoying low-level debugging sessions in the near future....". Also a discussion of mocks and unit testing |
| IRS says Crypto Ransoms might be tax deductible | Does this mean that we might start seeing the crypto currency version of arson, where the criminals and the victims are the same people? Nice way to give yourself a bonus! |
| Deep Reinforcement learning will transform manufacturing as we know it | This looks like a nice hybrid between traditional software engineering and AI. If you could combine the simulation model with a semantic one, and have the computer explain in English why it's making the decisions it is, there might be a clear path to AGI here. Also related is the Hyundi purchase of a controlling interest in General Dynamics. No matter how it plays out, cool stuff coming to manufacturing. https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/hyundai-buys-boston-dynamics |
| Internet in a box | I love ideas like this: cheap, useful, and with the ability to help thousands or millions of people |
| A dwarf planet will come within 11 AU of the sun within the next 10 years | Who are these dwarfs and why do they have their own planets, stars, and galaxies? |
| C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) | related: JPL's Solar System model showing the orbit of this dwarf planet. Been wanting to play with this for a while but no time. |
| Theoretical Lenz Drive could make Star Trek Warp Technology a Reality | No more negative mass or negative energy. Now we've reduced the problem to "just" energy. Maybe the portable Sun will be invented next? |
| Git undo | Great HN discussion about the difference between thinking you know git and then getting hit with something you haven't done in a while and being completely stumped |
| VVV-WIT-08: the giant star that blinked | WTF? |
| Epsilon Aurigae: Astronomy's longest-running mystery show | related: similar system |
| NCIS 2 Idiots 1 Keyboard | Four hands on the keybaord hacking into super secure system and a guy watching eating a balogna sandwich. Or as we like to call it, just another day at the office. That's what I call mob programming, buddy! |
| HackerTyper | Look like you're coding/hacking simply by banging on the keyboard |
| Hacking Scene on Scorpion | Just another day in the life of a hacker. Good thing we're driving a convertible and that plane has 100m of ethernet cable! |
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