darcyparker's comments

I don't think he is referring to an i3 processor, but rather https://i3wm.org/

I was pretty excited to come across this over the weekend.

In my first year of engineering (UBC), some 2nd years advised me to get an HP48 calculator. It was expensive, but worth the investment they said. I bought the 48GX, a 128KB memory card and some books... and glad I did. This calculator has served me well... but today some of the keys don't work as well as they used to. And I can't get a suitable replacement. I have and use an emulator on my phone and desktop - but its not the same. And the newer HP calculator keys don't feel great to me. In the meantime, I rely on the more reliable vintage HP15c (one built in the 80s with silicon on saphire and amazing keys).

I really appreciate SwissMicros building high quality clones of the best HP calculators. And I am super excited about what the hint of upcoming products based on Saturn Emulation. That must mean a DM48 is on the horizon!

Volta shows promise and I like that it's fast. But to me it seems like it will be hard to adopt until it supports `.node-version` file (a working standard among node version managers). For example, while some may want to use Volta, others will likely be using `nvm`. And a project's CI likely uses `nvm`. Volta has `volta` property for `package.json` to pin the node and npm version. That's nice and more specific than the `engines` property which can be a range of versions. But it would be better to keep things DRY and leverage the working standard for how node version managers keep track of the node version. (Otherwise a project has to maintain node version information in multiple places.)

https://github.com/volta-cli/volta/issues/959

I have a child starting kindergarten. 1/2 the class is attending in person M and Tu and the other 1/2 is via a chrome book and Google Meet. Wed all kids are attending via Google Meet (the classroom will be deep cleaned Wed). And then Th/Fr is like M/T, but the group that was in person is now at home and vice versa. Then they deep clean again on the weekend. (Their day is 6 hrs (less recess and lunch)).

Not only is it going to be challenging for the kindergarten kids to stay focused on their class via chrome book, the SAME teacher is managing the kids in the classroom and the kids online. The kindergarten teachers each have an assistant too (as they did before Covid-19) so that helps a bit.

I am fortunate my wife stays at home with the kids. I can't imagine what it will be like for parents of kindergartners who both work, or parents with special needs kids or parents who don't speak English. I am supportive of social distancing in these times. But its going to be tough on the kids.

Robo/FX was another graphical BBS that came out in the early 90s. I remember migrating from RemoteAccess to Robo/FX; it was quite the change from ansi art.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboBOARD/FX https://www.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/5eo8pz/roboboard_and_r...

I agree about the silicone keyboard.

I can understand many mechanical keys types will not be feasible in a small form factor. But there are good mechanical key designs that are small to choose from. For example, the ones on HP calculators (ie HP48GX...) The DM42 (a modern HP42S clone) has nice mechanical keys.

https://www.swissmicros.com/dm42.php

"The raw energy density of liquid ammonia is 11.5 MJ/L,[64] which is about a third that of diesel."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#As_a_fuel

(Note this is energy density by volume, which is the metric most care about. Energy density by weight of H2 gas is great, but the volume is enormous in comparison.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage

Ammonia has been long recognized as a great medium for energy storage and you can generate at the site of electric generation. But the challenge has been extracting the hydrogen from the ammonia. My understanding is that hydrogen crackers exist, but have only been successful commercially at large scale. A portable cracker that you can put on a car that extracts hydrogen on demand from an ammonia storage tank is the innovation we need to see. Apparently there is work in Denmark that looks promising... (And now there is this new membrane technology from Australia.)

https://www.mvsengg.com/products/hydrogen/ammonia-cracker/

http://www.ammoniaenergy.org/ammonia-cracking-to-high-purity...

Personally, I am cheering for ammonia as a storage means. I am not a fan of batteries found in today's electric vehicles because there are too many conflict minerals in them. Maybe Tesla will succeed mining colbat in Colbat Ontario Canada... But until then, it is probably coming from the Congo or Bolivia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-31/the-canad...

In addition to the efficiency concerns, France should be thinking about the conflict minerals that are likely in these solar panels. I am supportive of efforts to reduce energy consumption and alternative more environmentally friendly energy sources. And it's exciting to hear about new solutions for energy that appear affordable. But I am hesitant to use technologies that use conflict minerals. Before we make decisions about buying innovative products like solar cells, we need greater awareness about the materials they use and where they are coming from.

And @Risk http://www.palisade.com/risk/

Thanks - I never noticed the difference.

I am a proud Canadian who lives in the USA and have a little Canadian sticker on my car. It's my little shout out to other Canadians on the road. I guess we're quietly showing our pride to others. Being loud about it is not in our nature. But I do like that luge helmet :)

Github uses flash for the 'copy to clipboard' button to copy an http or ssh url to the clipboard.

It's an interesting trend that I have seen among my company's user base. It could be real, but it could also be an increase in false positives.

A possible explanation for the false positives:

Many large companies are seeing more and more machines moving to IE11, but have websites/tools that require IE8. Ideally each web site should explicitly declare compatibility/standard modes they require in their HTML. But for older enterprise software, this is not an option, so companies take the 'easy' approach of enabling compatibility mode for all sites and/or all intranet sites. A better approach when you can't edit the html of the web app is to use the group policy editor and set compatibility mode on a URL by URL basis. But many companies take the easier route. This is my theory that may explain the false positives.

If they aren't doing so, tools that aggregate browser usage should be doing additional analysis on the user agent string to get a better sense of the 'true' IE version. Perhaps using methods like ie-truth [1]. When I see trends like increased IE8 usage, it doesn't make sense to me... so I have doubts that these tools are testing the browser type accurately.

[1] https://github.com/Gavin-Paolucci-Kleinow/ie-truth

You're right its not artificial... my mistake. It is however rather new to the market in the USA and Canada. It has been around for a long time, but in small markets.

It's easy to evaluate if you have seizures. You don't need to wait for it to be definitively proven to make use of the anecdotal evidence. If you learned that aspartame could trigger a seizure, wouldn't you be cautious and want to see if a change to your diet would reduce your seizures?

I was 8 years old and my family rarely drank soda. I went from having a diet coke occasionally to occasionally having a regular coke, ginger ale, root beer, etc... So I don't recollect changing my periodic intake of caffeine.

I didn't do a thorough study of it... and I recognize that the logic that aspartame was a trigger could be wrong. But when you find something that appears to work and later hear of others who identified the same potential trigger and fix, then you start to believe it may be true. Personally I don't think there have been sufficient studies to show a connection or not. But people who have seizures shouldn't rule it out.

Unfortunately I can't point to an official study - just many anecdotal claims from people like me. When you google, I am sure you will see many such claims - including the 'internet hoax'. (The internet hoax is unfortunate because it takes away credibility from the many anecdotal claims like mine that sincerely feel real. More carefully constructed studies should occur.)

Rumsfeld was the CEO at Searle - the makers of Aspartame... And he used his political influence to replace the FDA commissioner so Aspartame could be legalized. That's a conflict of interest.

Interesting - thanks.

[Edit] - The ketogenic diet is interesting. And I can see how some would want to substitute sugar for an artificial sweetener to help achieve a low carb diet. But given Aspartame is a known trigger for many types of seizures, it should be introduced carefully.

The doubts about its safety are mine. I am skeptic about the safety of all artificial sweeteners - especially ones new to the market - given my personal experiences with Aspartame. From most American's points of view, Stevia is new and it is being promoted by big industry. It may have been around for a thousand years, but I seriously doubt any of my ancestors in the last 1000 years consumed much of it. I am fine with it being on the market... but until more people consume it routinely for a sufficient period of time, I am not going to rush out and incorporate it into my diet.