The personal website of Alex Weber
Unicode (that thing that gives us Emoji) is actually very complex… which kind of makes sense when you realize it’s trying to be the system to represent all of human written language. 😉
here is a collection of curiosities I’ve encountered in dealing with Unicode that you generally only find out about through experience. Enjoy.
Apple is on track to diverge from ARM and x86 to design its own proprietary instruction set. This good for the future of hardware–software co-design.
With all of Apple’s vertical integration efforts (own ALL THE THINGS) it certainly seems likely that they’ll want to bring this last piece in-house as well. The linked article astutely recognizes that small steps towards this have been made with the Apple Watch—apps are no longer delivered in bytecode, but instead in LLVM IR, which paves the way for their future proprietary ISA.
Source: The Apple ISA
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
– Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune
“People will stare. Make it worth their while.”
—Harry Winston
Hey! Remember the 4th amendment? Turns out that’s still a thing!
Seriously, props to this judge for reinforcing this previously-lacking area of rights.
Quote from the court follows, emphasis added.
After considering all of the facts and authorities set forth above, then, the Court finds, under the totality of the unique circumstances of this case, that the imaging and search of the entire contents of Kim’s laptop, aided by specialized forensic software, for a period of unlimited duration and an examination of unlimited scope, for the purpose of gathering evidence in a pre-existing investigation, was supported by so little suspicion of ongoing or imminent criminal activity, and was so invasive of Kim’s privacy and so disconnected from not only the considerations underlying the breadth of the government’s authority to search at the border, but also the border itself, that it was unreasonable.
PRO TIP: If you’re having problems with a thing, try turning it off and back on.
An electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer, and a software engineer are riding in a car on their way to a conference. The car’s brakes fail on a hill; but luckily the engineers are able to pull the car to the side without anyone getting hurt.
The electrical engineer says: “The problem might be in the electrical system. I will start by checking the fuse box.”
The mechanical engineer says: “The problem might be in the hydraulics. l will start by checking the fluid levels”
The software engineer says: “Why don’t we all get out of the car and get back in and see if that fixes the problem”
TL;DR: There are still some great, lean, focused pieces of software written by individual humans.
Photo: Dominic Alves, Flickr
Parkinson’s Law tells us that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Applied to software, this means that applications tend to bloatware, obese programs whose complexity makes them nearly impossible to debug and maintain.
Once upon a time, we were awestruck by the “solo climber”, the programmer who could single-handedly write a magnum opus on a barebones machine such as the Apple ][ with its 64 kilobytes of memory (yes, kilo — not mega, let alone gigabytes), and 8-bit processor running at 1MHz (again, mega not giga).
Source: A Salute To Solo Programmers by Jean-Louis Gassée
Hm. Interesting conundrum. Should politicians’ tweets be subject to more scrutiny?
$TWTR defends elected officials’ right to delete… but I think we all know the Internet never forgets. Twitter is covering their bases here, since they need politicians (and everyone who’s anyone) using their service if they want to survive.
I see this as being closely related to the excellent site NewsDiffs.org—in that Politwoops was also keeping track of that which has been said, even if it’s later altered.
Twitter says:
Imagine how nerve-wracking – terrifying, even – tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable? No one user is more deserving of that ability than another. Indeed, deleting a tweet is an expression of the user’s voice.
Open State Foundation director Arjan El Fassed says:
What elected politicians publicly say is a matter of public record. Even when tweets are deleted, it’s part of parliamentary history. These tweets were once posted and later deleted. What politicians say in public should be available to anyone. This is not about typos but it is a unique insight on how messages from elected politicians can change without notice.
Source: Twitter has killed Politwoops, which kept an eye on politicians
Wow! Gripping story of a real, daring escape.
As night fell over the East German town of Pössneck on the evening of 14 September 1979, most of the town’s citizens were busy getting ready for bed. But not Günter Wetzel. The mason was in his attic, hunched over an old motor-driven sewing machine, desperately working to complete his secret project.
Source: Up in the Air • Damn Interesting
The startup plans to start construction on a full-scale, passenger-ready Hyperloop in 2016. The prototype will run 5 miles through Quay Valley, a planned community rising from nothing along Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Source: Elon Musk’s hyperloop is actually getting kind of serious | Ars Technica
