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Margaret Hamilton (checks wikipedia) studied mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1955.

Back in 1955, "computer science" wasn't a thing yet. Computers were the domain of electrical engineering and math, the latter of which was what Margaret studied..


Computer Science is just applied math.


Sylvan Clebsch and Sophia Drossopoulou (credited on Project Verona in a slide) work on the Pony, which has been described as a cross between Rust and Erlang.


I had to google for what "^H" meant.

Found an interesting answer and backstory: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/386870.html


I used to joke that I was going to have "stty erase ^H" etched on my gravestone. It's probably been 25+ years since I've last needed to type that, but I can still hammer it out crazy fast. Sadly, that muscle memory is taking up neurons that'll never be used for anything else.


> taking up neurons

As long as they're not being used to hold "celebrity" biographies ...

(Sometimes I'm sad I even remember some names ... There's only so much crap one should be asked to take in to live in society ...)


TIL Google had a Yahoo Answers clone...


Not exactly a clone, you had to pay to get answers on Google Answers.


> "Asker-accepted answers cost $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. In addition to the researcher's fees, a client who was satisfied with the answer could also leave a tip of up to $100." [0]

I'm quickly understanding why I've never heard of Google Answers.

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


It turns out advertising is still more profitable than charging users.


Correct!

^G^G^G We have a winner, folks.


I’d prefer ^D^D^G.


omg how is http://answers.google.com/ still up and running with a 2-generations obsolete UI framework.


But look how fast it is!!


Thanks, saw it in my lecture notes a while ago and figured it was a formatting error...


Isn't this bundling what caused the subprime crisis ? How is this time "guaranteed to work well" ?


Through the power of extreme sarcasm.


Maybe it's social media that is broken.


It seems that the downloadable pdf doesn't have a couple of tweaks that have landed in master (https://github.com/crypto101/book). Any plans to generate a slightly updated version ?

PS: Thanks for your work ! Watched your talk and it was a nice quick primer. Glad you turned it into a book with more detail.


Sure, I should get around to that :-) Really I'd like to make a docker image or similarly repeatable environment that can do builds -- right now it's way too tied to my own environment.

Also: I'm not sure org-mode -> TeX was a great idea.


I used to use org-mode exporting to reveal.js for doing slides. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bit of a pain to get everything set up, especially when collaborating with people who for some have failed to embrace the One True Religion^H Editor. So in the end I changed to using Markdown and pandoc to convert to reveal.js.

As a bonus, using pandoc to convert my org sources to markdown worked reasonably well.


Yep, I took exactly the same path. Still use org-reveal sometimes but pandoc is really great and anything-to-anything :)


I use www.leanpub.com for this and love them. They make publishing trivial, give you all the freedom and only take a small cut.


I looked at them before and they couldn’t do the illustration generation I needed, but maybe with some preprocessing on my side and some on theirs :)


The entire series of 20 lectures (uploaded by MIT) is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY&list=PLE18841CAB...


Rust + Rpi interests me and I might wanna follow along. Are they using an available kit from an online retailer ? Getting/shipping individual parts is a pain where I'm from.


> Here is another thought. One has to realize that nobody wants an operating system. People only use them because it is the only way to run the applications the users actually wants to use.

That reduces things to almost an absurd level, and literally tries to ignore reality.

---

I want X!

Ok, we need this and that to get there...

I don't want this and that, I want X!

But you need this and that to get to X...

I don't want this and that, I want X!

---

While it's true in essence, and people should always keep the end user and lofty end goals in mind, we should never lose sight of the ground, because that's where we exist.

Besides, different users want their operating system to do different things.

> At best an operating system is absolutely invisible ... but a new non-OS would probably be a better idea than a new OS.

This train of thought can be applied to just about anything. The best product for X would just get out of the way, and assist you seamlessly to do X.


It’s not absurd. If you want Y to get X and you would be perfectly happy to get X without Y then you don’t really want Y.


Because they actually live there ? As opposed to transient visitors ?

It's like going to your friend's house and rearranging the furniture there because "we were all born on planet Earth".


What constitutes a transient visitor compared to someone who lives there? I don't know what I will be doing and where I will be in a year. Never have. Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed buy property anywhere?


NZ citizens aren't under any obligation to put your interests before those of their fellow citizens. It would be generous for them to consider you, and generosity is good, all things being equal (and NZ has an admirable record as a generous polity). But the side-effect in this case it to allow poor New Zealanders to be predated on by the global rich. They have clearly decided to attempt to prevent this predation.


Please see my comment in grandparent thread relating to high quality subsidised public housing for a better approach to the issue.


The best balance of policies to deal with fair & equitable housing supply has been the subject of vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades. It's hardly going to be resolved in a comments page.

That's a different topic from what I was commenting on, ie. NZ's putative duty to write its laws for your lifestyle convenience.


Clearly hardly any governments have read or paid attention to the "vast tonnages of reports and research over many decades" relating to fair & equitable housing supply or they wouldn't be resorting to the level of populist BS that is prevalent in the world today.


You have not provided any further details on why this is better.

And you mention living a transient lifestyle. Please tell me more about the property you own in Singapore then, because i'm sure you're happy paying a double digit percentage stamp duty in a not entirely stable market for 1-2 years of living here.

/s


Americans are told they have to accept unlimited immigration and everything good and bad that comes with it. Not sure why NZ should be any different.


Lol, that's BS. It's very difficult, and impossible for many people to immigrate to the US.


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