Simon Wu

on the atlas · 24

• Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years8 savers
• Denys Beecher on X: "@LauraRbnsn @natgrace79 The feeling of having agency to respond to threats is important to people (see guns for self-defense). So important that they'll make up threats they can have agency over rather than acknowledge the ones they can't." / X1 savers
• Temml - Convert TeX to MathML1 savers
• PhD Simulator3 savers
• Physics-based Motion Retargeting from Sparse Inputs1 savers
• Prof. Lee Cronin on Twitter: "We invented the Chemputer to make chemistry universal with respect to digital programmability. This is why #chemputation should have significant reach across science & technology. https://t.co/01CDcrw8Ec" / X1 savers
• nvpkp on Twitter: "“wow have you noticed you’re making an assumption” buddy – https://t.co/AViSIFi0j1" / X1 savers
• Chinmay on Twitter: "@amasad Here are some specific examples of people who have maintained critical internet components: Paul Mockapetris, who is credited with inventing the DNS system. He was the sole maintainer of the DNS root servers for many years, and he had the final word on any changes to the system." / X1 savers
• 영노 on Twitter: "This makes sense. Three geometric shapes, on three different continents. The one in Asia is a monument to Allah. The one in Europe is a monument to art. The one in America is a monument to capital." / X1 savers
• guillaumehuin on Twitter: "I have received so many questions about the Grimace Trend and how McDonald's handled it. I shared on LinkedIn but here is an insider view from the social media team of what happened : - if you think we planted the grimace shake trend, thank you. So much. But you think way too… https://t.co/dMjxSu9jkD" / X1 savers
• About Dangerzone: Convert potentially dangerous documents into safe PDFs1 savers
• @sympatheticopp giving her charges the talk:1 savers
• Talia Ringer on Twitter: "Terry noted that he cannot visualize shapes and rotate them in his head, but that since he was a kid he has been able to do that extremely well *symbolically*. What if someone had told Terry that visualization is how we do math and that he cannot be good at it because of that?" / X1 savers
• Andi 🇦🇱🇺🇦 on Twitter: "copilot was spitting here https://t.co/wui5uN1gr3" / X1 savers
• llama2.c1 savers
• Before you try to do something, make sure you can do nothing - The Old New Thing2 savers
• jasmine sun on Twitter: "high school debate incentivized making the most extreme arguments possible to win at “impact calculus” yes, it got a lot of folks into CRT but the prior norm was justifying all policies under the threat of nuclear war. we were reading Bostrom x-risk arguments as 13 year olds" / X1 savers
• How to Do Great Work51 savers
• Understanding41 savers
• Advice for Early Career — Celine Halioua39 savers
• Quick thoughts on research12 savers
• How I use memory systems7 savers
• Attention Is Off By One – Evan Miller7 savers
• Fundraising Advice - Tracy writes2 savers

highlights · 12

• The feeling of having agency to respond to threats is important to people (see guns for self-defense). So important that they'll make up threats they can have agency over rather than acknowledge the ones they can't.

  Denys Beecher on X: "@LauraRbnsn @natgrace79 The feeling of having agency to respond to threats is important to people (see guns for self-defense). So important that they'll make up threats they can have agency over rather than acknowledge the ones they can't." / X

• Van Jacobson, who is the co-author of the TCP/IP protocol suite. He is one of the few people in the world who has access to the software that runs on the internet's core routers, and he has the final word on any changes to the software.

  Chinmay on Twitter: "@amasad Here are some specific examples of people who have maintained critical internet components: Paul Mockapetris, who is credited with inventing the DNS system. He was the sole maintainer of the DNS root servers for many years, and he had the final word on any changes to the system." / X

• Phill Gross, who was the maintainer of the BGP routing tables for many years. He was responsible for making sure that the routing was correct, and he had the final word on any changes to the tables.

  Chinmay on Twitter: "@amasad Here are some specific examples of people who have maintained critical internet components: Paul Mockapetris, who is credited with inventing the DNS system. He was the sole maintainer of the DNS root servers for many years, and he had the final word on any changes to the system." / X

• Paul Mockapetris, who is credited with inventing the DNS system. He was the sole maintainer of the DNS root servers for many years, and he had the final word on any changes to the system.

  Chinmay on Twitter: "@amasad Here are some specific examples of people who have maintained critical internet components: Paul Mockapetris, who is credited with inventing the DNS system. He was the sole maintainer of the DNS root servers for many years, and he had the final word on any changes to the system." / X

• It uses Linux containers to sandbox dangerous documents instead of virtual machines. And it also adds some features that TrustedPDF doesn’t have: it works with any office documents, not just PDFs; it uses optical character recognition (OCR) to make the safe PDF have a searchable text layer; and it compresses the final safe PDF.

  About Dangerzone: Convert potentially dangerous documents into safe PDFs

• Have you ever heard the computer security advice, “Don’t open attachments”? This is solid advice, but unfortunately for journalists, activists, and many other people, it’s impossible to follow. Imagine if you were a journalist and got an email from someone claiming to work for the Trump Organization with “Donald Trump tax returns.pdf” attached. Are you really going to reply saying, “Sorry, I don’t open attachments” and leave it at that? The truth is, as a journalist, it’s your job to open documents from strangers, whether you get them in an email, a Signal or WhatsApp message, or through Secur…

  About Dangerzone: Convert potentially dangerous documents into safe PDFs

• Terry noted that he cannot visualize shapes and rotate them in his head, but that since he was a kid he has been able to do that extremely well *symbolically*. What if someone had told Terry that visualization is how we do math and that he cannot be good at it because of that?

  Talia Ringer on Twitter: "Terry noted that he cannot visualize shapes and rotate them in his head, but that since he was a kid he has been able to do that extremely well *symbolically*. What if someone had told Terry that visualization is how we do math and that he cannot be good at it because of that?" / X

• it's actually kinda interesting that I could probably do one better than binary search x = index, y = value the goal is, find x where [f(x), f(x+1)] contains y because it's monotonic and almost linear, I feel like a regula-falsi style root solve approach would be even faster

  jasmine sun on Twitter: "high school debate incentivized making the most extreme arguments possible to win at “impact calculus” yes, it got a lot of folks into CRT but the prior norm was justifying all policies under the threat of nuclear war. we were reading Bostrom x-risk arguments as 13 year olds" / X

• Too often, I see relatively inexperienced developers dive in and start writing a big complex thing: Then they can’t even get it to compile because it’s so big and complex. They ask for help, saying, “I’m having trouble with this one line of code,” but as you study what they have written, you realize that this one line of code is hardly the problem. The program hasn’t even gotten to the point where it can comprehend the possibility of executing that line of code. I mutter to myself, “How did you let it get this bad?” Start with something that does nothing. Make sure you can do nothing successfu…

  Before you try to do something, make sure you can do nothing - The Old New Thing

• high school debate incentivized making the most extreme arguments possible to win at “impact calculus” yes, it got a lot of folks into CRT but the prior norm was justifying all policies under the threat of nuclear war. we were reading Bostrom x-risk arguments as 13 year olds

  jasmine sun on Twitter: "high school debate incentivized making the most extreme arguments possible to win at “impact calculus” yes, it got a lot of folks into CRT but the prior norm was justifying all policies under the threat of nuclear war. we were reading Bostrom x-risk arguments as 13 year olds" / X

• The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about programming, or that programming is somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else.

  Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

• Hippocrates (c. 400BC) is known for the excerpt "ars longa, vita brevis", which is part of the longer quotation "Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile", which in English renders as "Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult."

  Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years