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liversage | 3 months ago | on: Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables

My understanding is that there are three mobile networks in North Korea: the normal one used by the citizens (they have smartphones made specifically for North Korea), one used by the government/military and one for tourists (requires a local SIM card only available in a specific hotel in Pyongyang).

The last one is connected to the internet and this is why you can see (or at least before the pandemic could see) Instagram posts from North Korea.

I have no idea if this information is still or ever was completely true though.

There's a somewhat dated but very interesting AMA on Reddit by an American teaching computer science in Pyongyang:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ucl11/iama_american_...

Reading about the internet knowledge possessed by North Korean students, I'm always surprised how they supposedly also manage to be some of the most cunning and evil actors when it comes to hacking.

liversage | 1 year ago | on: LINQPad – The .NET Programmer's Playground

One of many useful features of LINQPad is the output visualizer ("Dump"). Granted, there are now NuGet packages (very likely inspired by LINQPad) that can do something similar in a console app but LINQPad is interactive, allows drill-down and can export to formats like Excel. It's such a productivity boost.

The database integration is also great and allows me to write ad-hoc SQL queries using LINQ.

liversage | 2 years ago | on: Three American climbers solve the 'last great problem in the Himalayas'

The brand name 'The North Face' is inspired by mountaineering where the north face of a mountain often is the most interesting but also difficult side as it's always in the shade (in the northern hemisphere). E.g., the Alps have the famous classical north faces of Eiger, Matterhorn and Grandes Jorasses which are climbed by only the most accomplished mountaineers.

liversage | 2 years ago | on: New ancient ape from Türkiye challenges the story of human origins

There are early finds of Homo in China but these do not predate the finds in Africa.

Neanderthals and Homo floresiensis are not early ancestors and they lived at the same time as modern humans emerged. I believe that Neanderthals are a subspecies of Homo sapiens so they were able to interbreed with modern humans.

liversage | 3 years ago | on: Triple-dip La Niña confirmed as BoM makes declaration

Previous year (presumably the second consecutive La Niña event) the winter was exceptionally dry in the Alps leading to the current unprecedented snow and ice situation in that area so at least that year the snowfall was very limited.

The article states that the predictions should't be regarded as forecasts so obviously some years might not have the expected changes, but in addition the only expected effect of La Niña in Europe seems to be a drier autumn on the Iberian peninsula so I'm not sure how you arrived at your statements.

liversage | 4 years ago | on: U.S. Surnames with No Vowels

A famous case of this is the Danish man Victor Cornelins that was born in St. Croix but at the age of seven was brought to Denmark to become part of a human exhibition as a "negro kid" to attract visitors. His birth name was Cornelius which is not unusual in Danish so Cornelins must have been a simple writing mistake. However, this lapse is negligible compared to the racism he was subjected to.

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

liversage | 4 years ago | on: When Double Precision Is Not Enough

Or 128 bits. FORTRAN has a REAL*16 type (quadruple precision floating point number). I encountered this at university in a physics department that studied non- linear systems also known as chaos theory. Rounding errors can quickly become a problem in these systems.
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