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dhosek
Joined 8,859 karma
Writing a successor to TeX/LaTeX: https://finl.xyz

My book on LaTeX: https://preppylion.com

Writing fiction (and occasionally poetry): https://dahosek.com


  1. My then-fiancée had a cell number that ended with 5 zeroes and a 1 and she got many wrong number calls from people who were trying to reach numbers that ended with 0-001x
  2. Around 2009ish I parked our dark grey Prius next to another dark grey Prius while going to the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market and when I came back to the car, there was a third dark grey Prius parked next to the two original dark grey Priuses.
  3. Back in the 90s, I was on a trip and ended up parked next to a car which had a car alarm that responded to the key fob for my car alarm. It was very disconcerting.
  4. That plate wouldn’t be allowed in Illinois where there is a hard requirement that all digits follow any letters on the plate.¹ The thing that I find mystifying is that they charge more for a vanity plate that’s all letters than one that’s letters and digits.

    1. Although some specialty plates end up having suffixed letters, usually shown on the plate stacked.

  5. What makes something a publication is the act of publishing, not the format that it takes.¹ Copyright is implicitly granted at publication² although registration is required in order to sue for infringement.³

    1. Within some limitations: certain types of creative works, most notably typefaces, are excluded from copyright law, although it was determined that digital font files that describe the outlines of the characters are programs and thus eligible for copyright. Bitmap font files on the other hand, as an expression of a typeface design are not eligible for copyright.

    2. Although works created by federal employees as part of their job are explicitly excluded from copyright protection.

    3. Note though, that the timing of the registration impacts what you can sue for. If registration takes place after the infringement you can only sue for actual damages, but if it takes place before the infringement you can sue for punitive damages.⁴

    4. I should add the obligatory disclaimers that all of the above only describes US copyright law and also I’m not a lawyer (although I did used to watch Law and Order a lot) so everything in this comment could quite likely be completely wrong.

  6. I thought that was going to be what the article was about (or perhaps Lady Ada Lovelace’s ideas for programming).
  7. Pascal also distinguishes between functions and subroutines (procedures)
  8. Just looking at Fortran code fills the back of my mouth with the sensation I got from being around the printed IBM manuals in the basement computer lab at UIC of being around dust and powdered printer paper.
  9. This is a big part of why I’ve always eschewed GPL.
  10. And yet a larger percentage of the capital is concentrated in a smaller percentage of the population. I think about life in the arts—in the first half of the century it used to be that a talented writer or musician could make a living with their art. Not necessarily a huge amount of money, but something that could provide at least a middle-class level of living. Now a smaller number of writers or musicians make mind-numbing amounts of money while the vast majority of writers and musicians cannot make a living from art. We’re seeing a concentration of the rewards in everything into fewer and fewer hands while most get very little.
  11. Yeah, I’ve gotta fix a bunch of CSS there, but I’m focused on the book at the moment.
  12. His first seven films are the kind of good that most filmmakers would like to have throughout a career, not starting one. He was also a writer on The Smothers Brothers before his role on All in the Family. He was definitely one of the greats.
  13. If I was going to design a universe where multiple intelligences would evolve but never interact, this one would meet the requirements quite well.
  14. Oh man, I remember religiously reading his website back in 1999.
  15. It’s kind of funny that I was just thinking (as in ten minutes ago) it would be really wonderful to be able to wirelessly access login information from my Apple Watch to whatever computer I happen to be using (ideally in a way that doesn’t expose my credentials to a MitM attack). Of course it would have to be an OS-level integration across both Mac and Windows to be really useful, which means that it will probably never happen because capitalism, but I can still dream.
  16. Personally, I do not recommend jobs. Avoid them as much as possible.
  17. Good starting points would be the Christmas Special (Alan Brady Presents), “It May Look Like a Walnut” and “That’s My Boy” (just off the top of my head). There are two episodes where we got to see Van Dyke’s Stan Laurel impersonation which was absolutely amazing. Given how much he drank and smoked back in the 60s and 70s it’s a miracle he’s still on earth, but he is definitely a treasure.
  18. There are few (maybe no) moments of Dick Van Dyke that aren’t a joy to watch. I grew up on reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show and discovered Andy Kaufman thanks to Van Dyke’s short-lived variety show, Van Dyke and Company. Watching his dance moves (it’s a little amazing to realize how many dance numbers the Dick Van Dyke Show featured) is like watching an animated character dance, he was able to move his body in ways that suggest he has no bones. As a kid, I wanted to be Dick Van Dyke when I grew up and as an adult, I want to be Dick Van Dyke when I’m old.
  19. I had a student in one of my LaTeX classes back in the 90s who had a “I lust for latex” T-shirt.
  20. I still find it wild that Godbolt is his actual name and not some cool term used for the tool to see what compiler output looks like.

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