tomchuk's comments

tomchuk | 1 year ago | on: The intricacies of implementing memoization in Ruby

Can't mention Fibonacci and memoization in the same sentence without me breaking out my favorite Python party trick:

    def fib(n, cache = {0: 0, 1: 1}):
        if n not in cache:
            cache[n] = fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
        return cache[n]

tomchuk | 2 years ago | on: Mechanical Watch (2022)

Very relaxing. Until impossibly small $15 Incabloc springs start flying around the room. I'm convinced these sublimate into a vapor the moment they fly out of view of your loupe.

tomchuk | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Offline resources during internet outages?

During a recent move, I found my WikiReader [0] from 2009 at the back of a drawer. Tossed some new AAA batteries in it and it fired right up. It contains a fairly complete offline copy of (2012-era) Wikipedia and some reference material for survival, medicine, farming, and repair of various mechanical and electrical devices. Remarkable little device for the $20 I paid for it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

tomchuk | 3 years ago | on: Plain Text Calendar

I have a shell function I use all the time to keep track of both calendar and timezones where our teams are located

  now() {
    cal -3
    echo
    echo -n "Local:       "
    date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "UTC:         "
    date -u --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "New York     "
    TZ='America/New_York' date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "London:      "
    TZ='Europe/London' date --rfc-3339=s
    echo -n "New Zealand: "
    TZ='Pacific/Auckland' date --rfc-3339=s
  }

tomchuk | 3 years ago | on: Apple is discontinuing the iPod

I have an older iPad mini for this purpose (but an old iPhone without a data plan would work too). I setup a separate home@<domain> iCloud account under my family plan and use it exclusively for streaming music vi AirPlay, cooking w/ recipes on Paprika, HomeKit controls, reminders, timers, etc. - no Slack notifications, no calls, no calendar reminders. The AppleTV goes on the same account too. It's really been a great solution.

tomchuk | 4 years ago | on: The case for induction cooking

Kenji Lopez-Alt, of Seriouseats and “The Food Lab” fame, is coming out with his new book, “The Wok”, here is his travel rig: https://www.instagram.com/p/CaxbNwdvOTR/. I’ve had a similar wok hob for years, and while fitting the wok to the curvature of the hob is essential, once you’ve got that figured out, it’s an absolute joy to use. Even, fast, powerful heat - nowhere near to a commercial gas hob, but neither is my gas range at home. My next home or kitchen reno will be induction, not even considering gas.

tomchuk | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: What is the best privacy-focused video doorbell?

I’ve divulged my camera & network setup. Sure, you could use that info to sneak up to my house, turn the gas off to my generator, cut the power, wait 3h for the batteries in my UPS to run out….

Or you could walk up and smash a window wearing a balaclava.

tomchuk | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: What is the best privacy-focused video doorbell?

I’ve been very happy with Ubiquiti’s Unifi Protect doorbell. It does mean having to buy into their whole ecosystem, but I was already most of the way there when I added the doorbell and a couple 4k cameras.

Recording to a local device does mean you have to consider things like power/network outages if you want remote access and recording to continue during those events. I’ve got all my network gear and the doorbell transformer running off a UPS to cover the time between a power outage and my whole-home generator kicking in. I’ve also got an LTE modem to fail over to on my Dream Machine Pro (Router/network controller/video storage).

tomchuk | 5 years ago | on: Why do they still make car alarms? (2015)

Depending on the make, this could be something you could disable via app/ODB dongle. I use the Carista app/BT dongle and have used it to disable the panic button on my last two Toyoyas.

tomchuk | 5 years ago | on: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

Couldn't agree more. My primary monitor is a 43" 4k LG at unscaled, native resolution. I can fit five 94 column wide terminals tiled across, each showing 140 lines of text.

Is the text super crisp? Nope. Would I give up all this space for smoother text? Not a chance. Would I replace it with a 43" 8k monitor? In a heartbeat.

tomchuk | 6 years ago | on: Folding@home now has 400k users fighting coronavirus

As mentioned, you'll need to ensure your /etc/fahclient/client.xml includes:

  <config>
    <!-- Folding Slots -->
    <slot id='0' type='CPU'/>
    <slot id='1' type='GPU'/>
  </config>
If you check your logs in /var/lib/fahclient/logs, you'll probably see something like:

  CUDA Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:7.5 Driver:10.2
         OpenCL: Not detected: Failed to open dynamic library 'libOpenCL.so':
                 libOpenCL.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or
                 directory
Take that missing library over to the Ubuntu Package Search[0] and it will lead you to ocl-icd-opencl-dev

  apt install ocl-icd-opencl-dev
Restart fahclient and you should see something like:

   CUDA Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:7.5 Driver:10.2
  OpenCL Device 0: Platform:0 Device:0 Bus:51 Slot:0 Compute:1.2 Driver:440.64
[0] https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=bionic&arch=amd64&m...

tomchuk | 6 years ago | on: Show HN: A directory of restaurants with links to buy gift cards to support them

The website lists a restaurant (Southern Proper in Boston) that shut its doors months ago. The space already has a new tenant, has been renovated and has new signs up.

Edit: It appears the site immediately posts any user submissions without any verification. I posted Toro, and it immediately went live on the site. They’re worth posting, because they’re sharing 50% of gift card proceeds with staff through the end of April: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9zIuPkB4U-/

tomchuk | 6 years ago | on: iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max

I was disappointed as well. But I get it.

After three years, Pixel users still have to refer to a guide [0] or track down a Google Engineer's Amazon reviews [1] to find a 3rd party USB-C cable on Amazon that doesn't have the potential to fry their device [2].

If I were Apple, I'd be hesitant to jump on to USB-C, when Amazon and gas stations around the world are selling $5 cables and chargers that are so out-of-spec that they introduce the very real possibility of damaging devices that will end up at the Genius Bar for an AppleCare+ repair/replacement.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/wiki/officialguide/usbc... [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFLICGQRF6BR... [2] https://www.engadget.com/2016/02/03/benson-leung-chromebook-...

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