Recent content by bigfield

I find it's very useful when trying to understand system-related problems, such as narrating the flow of a program executing a command. Once I can tell the story of a system's behaviour in adequate detail, I can often figure out a good way to fix or extend that behaviour. There are probably...

A video about trains in Adelaide:

I see non-biodegradable wet wipes getting banned in future.

It's a bit like watching a vacuum cleaner salesman use his machine to pick up a bowling ball, but he won't let me hold the ball, and all I want to know is whether it'll still be able to get dog hair out of my carpet after a year.

Yeah, vibe coding looks impressive to people who can't actually write and review the code themselves.

I've tried ChatGPT and Claude for plenty of things, and one thing became obvious very quickly: these tools write bullshit with enough confidence to shame a real estate agent. But these AI tools can perform at least one role with satisfactory results: memory aid. At some point you've had a...

When I work from home I get salmon makizushi or banh mi from the local shops. I eat it out of the bag on the walk back home. When I'm in the office I buy something from the street mall. There's a place that does penne bolognese that's probably only as good as I make at home, but just tastes...

I'm not sure what you're thinking of, but it isn't binary and ternary trees.

You can do that with binary computers. Your choice of m in your m-ary tree depends on what you're trying to do with the data structure.

Hopefully no theist points out that only two of those orbital paths have an electron drawn on them.

When my father was coming of age, there was a clear path to success laid out for him: get a trade, work at the mines, play football, get married, buy a house and have kids. The Australian Dream. He was and is a fairly normal person: gregarious and confident. I always looked up to my father but I...

I didn't mean to suggest that Atticus is toxic. Quite the opposite. I think he's a character that most people would consider to embody positive masculinity. I'm sure the novel is better known in the US than down here, and if you were to ask someone who has read it they would agree that he's a...

In high school we read To Kill a Mockingbird. My teacher described Atticus Finch as a caricature of a masculine ideal: he was gentle, kind, and learned, and a great shot with a gun but only when it was absolutely necessary. It is childish (as befitting the story's narrator) but also a clear cut...

I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to ask of parents. Ideally every child would be raised in an environment where they get all the guidance they need from their parents and teachers, and we would not need to worry about the manosphere because no young men would buy into it. Based on my...

I think these two points are worth comparing: What we need is the antidote without the toxic side effects. Compassion, service and respect aren't an antidote to young men's "anxieties"; they're an antidote to everyone else's anxieties about young men. Young men want to solve their problems...