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emptybits
6,421karma·1,004submissions·November 20, 2012
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Coded stuff. Cofounded companies and a charity. Successes & failures. http://bitmason.comDarren Stone, Vancouver, BC, Canada
"Once men turned their thinking over to
machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted
other men with machines to enslave
them." - Frank P. Herbert, Jr., 1965
"The programmer, like the poet, works
only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds his castles
in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination."
- Fred P. Brooks, Jr., 1975recent activity (1,004 total)
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It's "aluminum" in American English but also in Canadian English. Canada retains UK and French-influenced spellings for quite a few other English words which America doesn't (e.g. …
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In addition to the excellent Numberphile video suggested, I enjoyed this book quite a bit although it took me a while to get through. (I'm interested in graph theory but it's not my backgr…
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Cool concept. Some blink trivia, if you're playing to win: ;-) Don't play against young children.[1] Do play against women taking birth control.[2] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go…
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And just a few years later in 1986, the "Scotty uses a Mac" scene from Star Trek IV: https://youtu.be/LkqiDu1BQXY?t=64 …
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The British ambassador to China at the time, Sir Alan Donald, claimed that citizens were mowed down repeatedly by Chinese army tanks, turned to mush, and their remains were scooped, burned, and washed…
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The US relies on China more than any other country for its critical minerals.[1] I wonder how much this plays (or should play) into the current US-China trade war and all its noisy politics right no…
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FTA: The Ontario Provincial Police say, “We can knock on someone’s door and say, ‘We’re so worried about you, can we come in and chat?’” Yikes. I understand the positive spin is the police care about …
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Yes. But also: Parents, why are you letting your kids play with hardware long known to upload and preserve this data?
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s/can't/doesn't/
It's a company with the time, resources, and customer awareness to do this. They can . They have chosen not to.
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Something from a similar set of values: "Why I’m Sending My Child to Forest School and not Kindergarten" https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/why-im-sendin…
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Good job, Portland. Another approach to reducing discarded needles is to open needle-exchanges and safe-injection sites (e.g. Vancouver[1]). This also reduces infection from sharing needles, overdose …
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If you demonstrate that government employees changed files all over your hard drive during a "search" then I wonder if recourse or compensation or legal action is possible. I understand the …
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I'll start with my gratitude that a Canadian bookseller has found a way to make their bottom line work and afford locations in high-rent areas that stay open late. Also, I'd say their staff …
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Enter: steganography. Useful under totalitarian regimes, I would think. Unlike the burden required to hide gigs required for large file transactions, hiding mere hundreds of bytes for textual conversa…
247 pts
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Short heart-to-brain distance may also predict an ability to handle high G-forces as a fighter pilot. https://fightersweep.com/1411/agsm/ …
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Another fact about Bolivians ... they are, on average, the shortest people in the world. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-short... …
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In the realm of modern human-pedaled and electric-assist tricycles (e.g. for carrying kids, passengers, cargo, etc.) the single wheel at the back configuration is called a "tadpole" and it…