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| Time (Date) | Title | Topics | Link | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-03-27 | Build Fennel forum / ssg | fennel | Fennel looks promising, give it a spin | |
| 2025-03-27 | GBX - Greenbrier | finance stock | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Minimize your Browser Fngerprint | security website | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Chinese Money Laundering Practices | china security finance | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Bret Victor | person philosophy architecture | Encountered him a few years ago in my architecture studies, truly a fascinating designer and thinker! | |
| 2025-03-27 | APL & Trad. Math | apl math | ||
| 2025-03-27 | On Platonism | philosophy to-do | ||
| 2025-03-27 | LBMA has 380 million oz backlog | commodities finance | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Babel: Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang | book | Trained in Latin, Greek, Chinese, requisites for magic in the British empire, Robin deals with secret societies and erudition | |
| 2025-03-27 | catagenesis | philosophy vocab biophysical-economics | when a system breaks down into its constituent parts, which will then refuse in a new way, creating new abstractions/social structures Homer-Dixon took it from petroleum geology |
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| 2025-03-27 | Silver IT - Exemplary Small Tech Company | website | I love their offerings, secure phones, static site hosting, email... I should do the same. | |
| 2025-03-27 | Economic Depression is a Choice | finance western-decay | This is a really nice article: > But the preferences of developed, aging polities — first Japan, now the United States and Europe — are obvious to a dispassionate observer. Their overwhelming priority is to protect the purchasing power of incumbent creditors. That’s it. > That’s true. But the revealed preference of the polity is not balanced. It is not some cartoonish capitalist-class conspiracy story, where the goal is to maximize the wealth of exploiters. The revealed preference of the polity is to resist losses for incumbent creditors much more than it is to seek gains. In a world of perfect certainty, given a choice between recession and boom, the polity would choose boom. But in the real world, the polity faces great uncertainty. > The median influencer in these economies is not a billionaire, but an older citizen of some affluence who has mostly endowed her own future consumption. She would like to be richer, of course. But she is content with her present wealth, and is panicked by the prospect of becoming poorer. For such a person, the depression status quo is unfortunate but tolerable. he references https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2874.html > offer inflation-protected savings accounts to individual citizens, but with a strict size limit of, say, $200,000. These accounts would work like bank savings accounts, and might even be administered by banks. But deposits would be advanced directly to the government (reducing borrowing by the Treasury), and the government would be responsible for repayment i bonds seem underused in the US though TIPS have been awesome e.g. in Brazil until late last year. He suggests this to embolden Keynesian expansion: > But middle-class savers value their small nest eggs just as dearly, and make common cause with multibillionaires to oppose inflation. By providing means for small savers to protect themselves from inflation when intervention is called for, we can stop the very wealthy from using middle-class retirees as human shields > The limited size of “starter savings accounts” would leave the wealth of large savers at risk, and with fewer places to hide. That is as it should be. The risk of the aggregate investment must be borne by someone. Patterns of aggregate investment are determined by the behaviors of savers, or the people to whom they directly or indirectly delegate investment decisions. If we want a high quality of investment, we have to ensure that these investors bear the cost when aggregate investment disappoints. All savers would enjoy protection of their “starter savings”, but people trying to push large sums of wealth into the future would have to take responsibility for directing the use of their capital, and for monitoring the quality of the institutions through which capital is allocated generally. When the process fails, when capital allocation goes badly awry, large savers would bear the costs directly via writedowns or indirectly via inflation. It will be hard to push for bail-outs when middle-class nest eggs are insulated from the vagaries of capital markets and banks. It will be hard to push for austerity when middle-class nest eggs are immune from inflation. |
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| 2025-03-27 | LBMA might implode | finance commodities | I started hearing rumblings of this recently, getting louder and louder. I thought it was a conspiracy at first, but it seems feasible. I read a rather conspiratorial article about paper manipulation in the silver market which may be relevant: https://www.kitco.com/opinion/2025-03-20/mechanics-silver-price-suppression | |
| 2025-03-27 | Go Eliminated Concept of "Core" Types | |||
| 2025-03-27 | Why do mining companies like the TSX so much? | commodities finance | RDG, ABRA, PERU, TECT, AYA, HCH, ITR, KLD, LUCA (LUCMF), MARI, MNO, OGN, TAK, RRI, SLVR, SVM, WRL , MUN (MUNMF)... | |
| 2025-03-27 | Fosback's Seasonality Timing System (STS) | finance | Only participate in the market during historically profitable days, avoiding down and flat days generally. Looks like free alpha, unclear whether it'd overfit applied to sectors or even specific stocks | |
| 2025-03-27 | Deploy Fennel CGI scripts | fennel | Technomancy has a lot of simple web models in Fennel | |
| 2025-03-27 | Reflexivity | Soros has written a lot about reflexivity: https://www.georgesoros.com/2014/01/13/fallibility-reflexivity-and-the-human-uncertainty-principle-2/ | ||
| 2025-03-27 | On Mario Palmieri | philosophy europe to-do | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Concurrency is not Parallellism | programming | Rob Pike on Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). Concurrency = dealing with/structuring Parallellism = doing / executing |
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| 2025-03-27 | When did Arc die? | lisp | 20 years ago, ARC seemed extremely popular: http://arclanguage.org/item?id=5396 Now, it's been ported to common lisp (clark) so HN can be multithreaded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41683969 But no one besides HN seems to use it... |
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| 2025-03-27 | Don't Kill Math | math | Response to Bret Victor 's article [Kill Math](http://worrydream.com/KillMath). $quasi_qua_quasi$ - https://lobste.rs/s/dkc0eq/kill_math_2011#c_cnlsyr summarizes that: $Victor$ wants to empower math qua tool focusing on examples, $Evan Miller$ wants to use the best tool which is math not examples. Don't Kill Math - objects/opposes - Kill Math Evan Miller - wrote - Don't Kill Math Bret Victor - wrote - Kill Math Don't Kill Math - located at - https://www.evanmiller.org/dont-kill-math.html Kill Math - located at - http://worrydream.com/KillMath N.b. random experiments for sem web syntax |
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| 2025-03-27 | Entropy Calculates Privacy | security | ||
| 2025-03-27 | Incentive Problem In The American Justice System | security USA | Swiftness and certainty of punishment beats severity, the American system focuses on severity. No US court gives speedy trials (violating Model Time Standards). > average number of judges and prosecutors, one-third fewer police officers per capita, 2.5 times as many corrections officers per capita, and four times as many prisoners per capita > solve just over half of all homicides, one quarter of robberies, and one in nine burglaries, and just under a third of rapes US money flows into prisons, not courts and police. Of GDP: > US spends .75% on police vs .5% on prisons, while the EU spends 1% on police vs .2% on prisons Law enforcement is funded locally (10-15% of budgets come from state and federal grants), prisons on the state level. Courts are also local. > Law enforcement is a better solution, but it costs your money. Prison is an inferior solution, but it costs other people’s money. A grand jury, made up of volunteers, mostly retirees, decide to indict defendants, required for federal felonies: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1998/08/who-is-a-grand-jury.html#:~:text=As%20a%20result,%20grand%20jurors,the%20unemployed,%20or%20government%20employees. In 1976, Ron DeLord made a Texan Police Union, then helped others increase bargaining power. It was in the 70s that police came to earn good wages, and local governments shifted money to prisons. He wrote: Police Association Power, Politics, and Confrontation: A Guide for the Successful Police Labor Leader The author proposes: > State governments should provide matching funds to local police and county sheriffs department budgets, in order to make law enforcement cheaper for those governments. At the same time, state governments should charge some percentage of the cost of incarcerating offenders to the local or county jurisdiction which sentenced those offenders. |
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| 2025-03-27 | Behavior Programming in Clojure | gofai programming lisp | This is a new paradigm, looks logical, but maybe old school autonomous objects/actors? | |
| 2025-03-27 | Rent-Seeking, The Progressive Agenda and Cash Transfers | finance western-decay | Mancur Olson on cronyism and rent-seeking: > the rent-extraction apparatus in the developed world is just a more sophisticated version of the open corruption and looting that is common in many developing economies Argues Olson was optimistic in believing big rent seekers would be cut down to size: > rent-extraction can avoid these limits by aligning itself to the progressive agenda - the very programs that purport to help the masses become the source of rents for the classes Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae losses, which bailout banks Even though e.g. 2/3 of money goes elsewhere, it's political suicide to attack because of the 1/3 valid use He suggests: > complex programs with egalitarian aims should be replaced with direct cash transfers wherever feasible |
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| 2025-03-27 | Cap-heavy selloff in US | stock-market | With the equal-weighted S&P 500 down 10% and the Mag 7 down 22%, this has been a cap-heavy selloff for the US market, while the rest of the world has fared much better. Below we see the MSCI ACWI ex-US index, which is closing in on its all-time highs of 2021 and 2024. > This in my work is NOT a I.T. and LT Bullish signal in fact It been a SELL SIGNAL within 90 Days |
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| 2025-03-27 | Bitcoin's value comes from network size | crypto finance | Bitcoin is a network asset, and like all networks its market value has grown exponentially to the size of its network (per Metcalfe’s law). Not to ever compare Bitcoin to a stock, but if we look at how a large tech network like Apple has grown in market value as an exponential function of its sales (which I’m using as a proxy for its network), we see that Bitcoin has followed a similar path. Just more so. This is important, because generally we are concerned with Bitcoin’s price, while we should be focused on its value. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. > The real kicker to me is the contrast, one scaled via a controlled, semi-predictable ecosystem based on traditional revenue models while Bitcoin's adoption velocity is based on a reinforcing cycle of utility/scarcity where each participant strengthens the network (e.g., miner, $MSTR-equivalent firms accumulating supply, nation-state integration, developers improving the infra-layer) |
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| 2025-03-27 | Make SQLite but with Datalog | to-do programming | Load data and rules in a file, query interactively, query from a shell script or use as a data store Could be fun to build a work model in Fennel |
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| 2025-03-28 | Typed Lambda Calculus in Datalog | programming gofai literate-programming | type checker, not evaluator | |
| 2025-03-28 | Use of Prolog for developing a new programming language | gofai programming DSL | Related discussion: > Roskilde University offered a course implementing different paradigms, using the same techniques, on top of Prolog: http://webhotel4.ruc.dk/~henning/publications/ChristiansenTeachLP2004.pdf > Prolog is taught as an example of a ‘logic programming’ language, but it’s really a progenitor of the automated reasoning / theorem prover space. These are great for prototyping languages because you can effectively write an operational semantics for your language and then get an interpreter for free > Just to nitpick, but Prolog wasn’t the progenitor of theorem provers. Automath was 1967, Prolog is 1970. LCF/ML was 1973 but shares no language cognates with Prolog and probably wasn’t influenced by it. This 1973 survey of automated reasoning / theorem provers doesn’t even mention Prolog. If anybody here wants to “use Prolog for developing a new programming language”, then I highly recommend Makam: https://www.tweag.io/blog/2019-11-28-PCF-makam-spec/ and other lambda-prolog languages ( https://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~dale/lProlog/ ). Also of interest: https://lingo-workbench.dev/ = https://petevilter.me/post/datalog-typechecking/ https://lobste.rs/s/11k4ri/how_should_i_read_type_system_notation https://lobste.rs/s/11k4ri/how_should_i_read_type_system_notation#c_5him0l |
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| 2025-03-28 | Finite-Choice Logic Programming | gofai | New alternative to Answer Set Programming. See Dusa (the implementation language): https://dusa.rocks/ Also see Ceptre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFeJZRdhKcI and Modeling Game Mechanics with Ceptre https://www.convivial.tools/PapersPublic/ceptre-tog.pdf |
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| 2025-03-28 | ASP = DB + LP + KR + SMT^n | gofai | ASP: Answer Set Programming DB: Database LP: Logic Programming KR: Knowledge Representation SMT: SAT Modulo Theories |
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| 2025-03-28 | Incomplete, Mostly Wrong history of Programming Languages | programming history | > 1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave "hello, world" into a tapestry. Redditers of the time are not impressed due to the lack of tail call recursion, concurrency, or proper capitalization. > 1936 - Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be > 1936 - Alonzo Church also invents every language that will ever be but does it better. His lambda calculus is ignored because it is insufficiently C-like > Lisp remains an influential language in "key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension" > 1972 - Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix > 1972 - Alain Colmerauer designs the logic language Prolog. His goal is to create a language with the intelligence of a two year old. He proves he has reached his goal by showing a Prolog session that says "No." to every query |
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| 2025-03-28 | FLUX Architecture Inspired React | front-end | > implement a unidirectional data flow as opposed to the traditonal MVC approach Event -> Handler -> State Change -> Render -> Event ... > rowser events–wherever they are captured–are converted into a data structure that encodes the information about the event into an event message. This message is then put on a queue. An event loop listens for messages on this queue, dispatches the message to a handler and then makes changes to state as needed. The last step is to trigger the re-rendering of the application, reflecting the changes made to state. State changes take place as response to events in the context of the event loop exclusively. from: https://afmoreno.srht.site/blog/guile-hoot-fibers.html |
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| 2025-03-28 | Guile Scheme in WASM | front-end lisp | ||
| 2025-03-28 | History of Constraint Programming | gofai history | ||
| 2025-03-28 | API used to Mean "Set of Functions This Library Provides, what Data Goes in and out" | programming | API description of web servers took over | |
| 2025-03-28 | Keeping Up from Layer 1 vs. Starting when 10 Layers Exist | pedagogy programming | > the platform is 30 years old. A very junior dev only knowing about the SPA they are working on or some other narrow slice of the platform is not a problem or a disconnect: it’s a natural consequence of building a platform layer upon layer for many decades. Just because you learned the platform when there was 1 layer and have been keeping up with each layer since doesn’t mean new developers can do that today. Give people time. | |
| 2025-03-28 | I think California has real geopolitical risk unlike Mexico where much of it is perceived | commodities | Rick Rule on Equinox' Castle Mountain Mine | |
| 2025-03-28 | Rick Rule sees near term structural weakness in EQX as Calibre owners sell | stock commdoties | ||
| 2025-03-28 | MAUTF Montage Received Endeavor's management team, who Rick Rule loves | stock commdoties | ||
| 2025-03-28 | West Africa has only had 25 years of Archaean exploration vs 100 in Canada | commodities | Endeavour Mining (TSX: EDV) is able to find potential tier 1 mines for $30 million, which is just a single drilling season for a Canadian junior, taking cumulative years to get anything. There is more low hanging fruit especially in politically difficult countries. Endeavour's been in region for 25+ years. To some extent, they can just fly over known Archaean terrain looking for blue tarps, where informal mining takes place. Then they make a deal with the concession owner and artisanal miners. |
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| 2025-03-28 | Gold prepays hide debt | commodities finance accounting | If a producer has 200m drawn on credit facility, then takes on a 400m gold prepay, they can claim 200m in debt. Just because they have to repay in gold instead of dollars, doesn't mean it's not debt. It hides in unearned revenue. So it's a misstatement in fact, since it doesn't appear in long term debt. Comparing carry cost with other costs of capital, prepays can be sound. But non-investment grade companies can claim non-recourse construction finance at 10% when they pay 15% in reality. Prepays can be lower than this! But how much optionality in gold upside do you give up? As gold goes up, the liability is higher than last listed. |
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| 2025-03-28 | Royalty companies allow more certain cashflow modeling | commodities finance accounting | No sustaining capital nor operating expenses make EBIT more certain, leading to a modest premium. However they're primarily domiciled in Canada, which the IRS may classify as passive foreign investment company (PFIC) with tax issues. Without annual QEF election filing and payments, you can't sell at long term capital gains rates, instead it breaks your profit up by year and makes you pay at the full tax rate every year + interest penalties. When you file the first PFIC election on the first earned, but not distributed, you get tax loss carry forwards from unprofitable years. But you always have to file an extension which requires the issuer's annual report (coming in May or June), so you make an estimate at the April 15 deadline and file your real taxes around August 15 and September 1. Holding in IRAs avoids this issue. But you can have to file PFIC for exploration companies too! |
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| 2025-03-28 | Verse | programming | Functional logic language Made by epic games for fortnite scripting, desined by some Haskell designers like Simon Peyton Jones, it has: > effects, transactional memory, a concurrency story without colored functions (don’t be fooled by the documentation mentioning async over and over, it’s different stuff), a completely novel way of dealing with failure, planet-scale repl (not yet available), etc. |
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| 2025-03-28 | Selling Puts is Back Door to US ETF's for Non-Residents | finance accounting | > having a friends/family's address in your US brokerage is not a federal crime, but it is against the broker's rules. If you're caught you won't be fined or go to jail, but the brokerage reserves the right to freeze your account so you'll only be able to sell positions and not buy any additional positions. keep a US brokerage, such as Schwab International which is expat friendly and use your EU address. You'll be able to purchase US stocks, and won't be able to directly purchase US ETFs, but there is a way. A common way to backdoor your way to purchasing US ETFs is by *selling put options* that which expire in the money so you get assigned the 100 shares. Pros: This method doesnt require the KIID requirements from the EU, so it is 100% legal in both the eyes of the US and EU. Cons: Since each option contract = 100 shares, it is capital heavy. If you want to purchase VOO at the current price you'd need $51,000. But there are other etf alternatives, SPLG for example tracks the SP500 and is at $65 so you'd need $6,500 per contract. (though it does have less trading volume so there's less chance of the order filling). |
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| 2025-03-28 | Can Logic Programming Be Liberated from Predicates and Backtracking? | gofai programming | > I love Prolog, but I think the execution model is a bit problematic sometimes. I think alternative techniques such as answer-set programming or constraint logic programming don’t get sufficient exposure. > I found out about why Verse is better than Curry. Basically, it’s that Verse is deterministic, programs have predictable and reproducible behaviour, there’s even a term rewrite semantics in preparation to make it easier for programmers to have a mental execution model and understand what their program is doing. > > The OP explains why Curry is better than Verse. Basically, it’s that non-determinism “supports a higher, declarative programming style which frees the programmer from thinking about low-level control details”. “Instead of directly evaluating non-deterministic branches, the alternatives are returned as a tree structure so that search strategies can be defined as tree traversals, which supports an easy switch between different strategies”. So there’s a separation between the (high level, declarative) logic program and the (lower level) code that decides which search strategy to use (which affects efficiency and whether the search succeeds or goes into an infinite loop). > modern Prolog implementations support also different execution strategies (XSB, SWI and Scryer support SLG resolution, a BFS search with memoization). It’s true that Prolog wasn’t designed with that in mind, so the standard requires you to implement certain features like cut that do not play well and not every code already written can benefit from it. The same thing applies to Constraint Logic Programming, which is widely used nowadays in many Prolog systems, and it’s also a different execution strategy (but more limited). > > It should be noted that Prolog IV, the last Prolog by Alain Colmerauer, was going in the direction of adding more constraint logic programming semantics on top of the language. Sadly, the system never got rid of bugs, the Prolog development ceased soon afterwards and by that time there were many, more popular classic implementations, which ultimately lead to the ISO standard. |
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| 2025-03-29 | John H. Myers | accounting finance | He proposed innovative accounting experiments and ideas: - The Critical Event and Recognition of Net Profit - Depreciation Manipulation for Fun and Profit (2 parts: 1967, followed up in 1969) - Investing — For growth or for Income? His book reviews are even handed, judging them on their stated intentions in a formulaic manner: > In the preface, the authors say, "this book is the first of a two-volume set designed to meet the needs of oil and gas company accounting and financial personnel, public accountants, financial analysts, bank loan officers. ... In addition ... it can be used as a textbook". This first volume is well directed to its announced purpose - with textbook use secondary. - on Accounting for Oil & Gas Producing Companies - Klingstedt, Jones > In the introduction the authors say, "The study is not a survey of business practice with respect to the lease ... The sole objective ... has been to develop a theory of the lease." To this review the book falls somewhat short of achieving its purpose. The impression created is that of advocating the lease instead of examining carefully both pros and cons of leasing. Throughout the study the issues seem to be presented with definite bias. - on Lease as a Financing and Selling Device - Eitemann, Davisson |
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| 2025-03-29 | "Typical of Ph.D. dissertations, it sets forth a problem, reviews the pertinent literature, reports on some original research and then draws some conclusions." | research | quote by John H. Myers | |
| 2025-03-29 | Translation of Foreign Currencies - R. MacDonald Parkinson | finance accounting | > Accounting must have concern for the environment - what may be appropriate in one circumstance may be totally inappropriate or acceptable in another." Written by a Canadian, he doesn't assume a "stable rock-like currency at home and a continually devaluing, endlessly inflationary environment for the (usually Latin American) subsidiaries." He tackles of the problem or stating a stable currency in another stable currency. Though he started recommending translating non-monetary accounts at historic exchange rates, but ultimately recommends translating all assets liabilities at a rate approximating parity or central rates. (At the time, exchange rates were generally fixed.) Later, he considers inflation and objects to common assumptions of the time that internal price levels would adjust quickly. |
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| 2025-03-29 | Sense of materiality | vocab accounting | A single error or departure from principle may point to a series of irregularities or be a singular mistake. The experienced auditor with a well-developed sense of materiality's judgement (not rules of thumb) guides them. > after considering the interplay of a series of relevant factors: accounting principles, conservative financial policy, statistical probability, possible effect on investors, trade custom, internal control condition etc. > value of the auditor to his firm is ... measured by observing the character of his value judgements > questions of materiality arise in every audit engagement Quotes from Auditing: Intro to the Work of the Public Accountant - Koch |
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| 2025-03-29 | Audit Verbs | finance accounting vocab | Review: study critically a procedure or series of transactions Compare: establish the correspondence or similarity of differently located items Trace: ascertain whether an item has been disposed of in accordance with source indications Investigate: search for and relate underlying causes Account for: obtain an accurate breakdown and explanation of an amount expended Examine: probe into records under predetermined standards and procedures, to arrive at opinions of accuracy, propriety, sufficiency etc. Verify: confirm accuracy by competent examination. N.b. "check" has varied, uncertain meanings To test: determine accuracy by selecting and studying representative items or samples from a given collection or class of transactions or other data > In choosing samples, the auditor seeks not only quantitative information (dollars, numbers of units) but qualitative information (correctness of classifications, conformity to prescribed procedures). Conclusions as to accuracy are nearly always dependent on both types of information. > Samples with which the auditor deals are of four principal varieties: arithmetic - accuracy of extensions and footings, agreement of entries with postings; classificational -whether transactions have been carried to the proper accounts in accordance with the classificational design and whether any material changes therein have taken place during the year compared to the previous year; procedural - whether the handling of the client's everyday business has followed predetermined outlines or whether required approvals to divert havebeen secured and whether the procedures reflect generally accepted accounting principles; internal control - whether accounting and management methods actually employed provide adequate safeguards against frauds and other irregularities and against poor business standards, or whether they are so elaborate and cumbersome that the accounting and reporting process has been unnecessarily slowed down To Scan: look over rapidly but skillfully to discover the more general, qualitative aspects of a procedure, account classification or content. > Scanning accounts calls for the auditor's best value judgements ... cannot be delegated to junior staff members > looking at indiividual ledger accounts briefly and expertly, understanding their meaning, observing the nature of postings and testing their sources, but making no working-paper notations or investigations of details except for unusual items > skill of the auditor is well tested by his ability to recognize unusual items and further by what he does following their discovery. Where internal controls are good, his investigation of such items will be less rigorous than where controls have not been well maintained. > always be on the lookout and satisfy himself as to the causes for: Errors of classification, changes of classification, variations between months or years in the totals, sizes and numbers of transactions, entries from uncommon sources, material adjustments, debit entries in income accounts and credit entries in expense accounts, faulty explanations accompanying postings Quotes from Auditing: Intro to the Work of the Public Accountant - Koch |
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| 2025-03-29 | Accounting Practices in West Germany (1965) - Gerhard G. Mueller | accounting history | Konrad Engelman's review states that it's a it's own field with: > practice resting more on "the influences exerted by academic accountants" than on legal regulations, official opinions of professional bodies, and accounting guides issued by branch associations. and believes Mueller underfocuses the academic influence. > Mueller's study reflects, therefore, one side of German accounting only, but it contains - int he framework of this limitation - many interesting and well-observed remarks. This applies to the paragraphs on valuation rules, hidden reserves and most of the 2nd chapter on "Accounting for Specific Items" where the author deals with the main types of assets and liabilities > The author expresses an opinion which may not be fully justified when he states that "German accounting places the profit or loss calculation completely at the mercy of the balance sheet." Valuation methods and the use made of hidden or open reserves indeed influence the final results. Is not the same effect to be found in American accounts? > There also is in German accounting no specific "emphasis on balance sheets" to the detriment of the profit and loss statement as Professor Mueller sees it." > Germany has experienced a similar change of views as American accounting, switching from the primary attention given to the income statement during the past, to more emphasis on asset valuation. |
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| 2025-03-29 | Managerial Accounting Avoids "debit", "credit" etc. for 600 pages! | pedagogy accounting | The book Managerial Accounting by Rossell, Frasure (1964) provided > the basis for an understanding of fundamental accounting conventions and of the traditional accounting statements without considering the underlying processes of accumulation and recording of data. Professors Rossel and Frasure have demonstrated that significant consideration of the meaning of accounting data can take place without first plunging the student into the intricacies of how-to-do-it. The goal is "understanding and use of accounting information" where other people (accountants) will produce that information. |
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| 2025-03-29 | Gilbert Brothers long campaiged for stockholder participation in democratic corporate meetings | finance history | The Gilbert brothers have conducted a campaign for many years to encourage stockholder participation in corporate meetings and to make those meetings more democratic and effective. The publication under review is the eleventh in the series commenting on their activi- ties and objectives in connection with specific annual meetings held during the year. The report is refreshingly frank in stating what the authors consider good and bad about the meetings of particular companies including the conduct of named persons in them. The seventeen subjects covered include the following: 1. Location of the meeting (locations accessible to the greatest number of stockholders and regional meetings are advocated). 2. Conduct of the meeting (a chance for every stock- holder who desires to be heard is supported). 3. Attendance and stockholdings of directors (at- tendance of all directors and substantial stock- holdings as a prerequisite to a directorship are ad- vocated). 4. Executive compensation (a ceiling of $200,000 is advanced). S. Annual reports ("modern" formats are praised, including the use of pictures and the effort to make the report widely understood). 6. Auditing (election of auditors by stockholders and questioning of auditors at the annual meeting are advocated). 7. Cumulative voting (actively promoted). 8. Post meeting report (a report of action and dis- cussion at the meeting advocated to be sent to stockholders). The pamphlet is of interest to anyone concerned with management-stockholder relations, particularly for the many instances cited. It is also of interest to all con- cerned with the reform of corporate practices, but es- pecially to those who want the reform to come from capitalists. The Gilberts fall into the latter category by virtue of living on investments and making a career of the improvement of the role of the minority stockholder in corporate affairs. To anyone acquainted with the need of many corporations for better public relations it is surprising that corporate officers have not more often welcomed the activities of the Gilberts as an opportu- nity to demonstrate goodwill toward the stockholders. The publication could be made more useful by in- clusion of an index and a tabulation of practices by companies. - Lawrence L. Vance on "Eleventh Annual Report of Stockholder Activities at Corporation Meetings" by Lewis & John Gilbert (1950) |
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| 2025-03-30 | Defense without Inflation - Albert G. Hart | From Floyd R. Simpson's review: > "Cost accounting is one of our chief ways of keeping production efficient. But when inflation is under way, the dollar in which costs are figured gets knocked out of shape." > > Inflation is classified as "excess demand inflation" and "cost push inflation." The latter is set up by the upward pressure of wages and material prices. Policies for inflation control are primarily built around doing things which do not create more "excess demand" or "cost pushing" especially during the hump which accompanies the readiness program. The expansion of output while highly significant is not considered a panacea. Output expansion from which 70% or more goes into consumption goods can ease inflation, according to Hart. If less than 70% goes into consumption, demand inflation will be contributed to because about 70% of funds spent to produce more goods will seek consumption goods. Escalator clauses, while they may cut out advance compensation seeking by those who fear future uncovered price rises (and thereby reduce cost push inflation) are admitted to probably make inflation control harder. Direct price controls even though popular with large segments of the public, are of value if the amount of repressed inflation is kept low by governmental economies, taxing and strong monetary policy and rationing. Hart advisedly points out that "The widespread notation that a universal price freeze is all it takes to block inflation is not borne out by analysis or experience." |
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| 2025-03-30 | Financing Defense - Albert G. Hart | history finance economics | This continues Hart's Defense without Inflation. From Floyd R. Simpson's review: > The effect of each tax on "cost push" and "demand pull" is analyzed. While the need for governmental economy is stressed, the authors conclude that the fountainhead of inflationary demand is still going to be federal expenditures; thus the conclusion that inflation can only be controlled by increased taxes. > > Accountants and businessmen will find ch. 7 on profits taxes pertinent and worth reading. Some may be disappointed in not finding more discussion than in a footnote regarding greater tax equity for the individual by allowing him credit for corporate taxes paid before dividends. $double taxation$ > Those with but slight knowledge of fiscal and monetary mechanisms may find the reasoning for some statements in both volumes somewhat hard to grasp. However, the authors, all competent economists, have handled a difficult subject in as clear a manner for the layman as possible, with a minimum of the economists' jargon and professional terminology. Both books deserve widespread reading by citizens seriously interested in the implications of a defense program (and also by officials and representatives in Washington.) For those who want only a survey of the economics of defense, the first volume is highly recommended. |
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| 2025-03-30 | Gerhard G. Mueller focused on International Accounting | accounting | - Intro to Multinational Accounting - Accounting: An International Perspective: Supplement to Introductory Accounting Textbooks - International Accounting - Accounting Practices in Six European Countries - Accounting Practices in West Germany |
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| 2025-03-30 | Many Exploratory Companies hope to Find Gold and be Bought Out | commodities finance | Those will excel who tailor efforts to building a mine. Holding discoveries waiting to be bought out is not the path forward, while working out infrastructure and good mining sites to extract the gold is key. | |
| 2025-03-31 | Payment for a Fixed Asset is just Payment for Series of Services Rendered in Future Periods | finance accounting | Consider what this means for depreciation etc. See: The Lease as a Financing and Selling Device - Eitemann, Davisson which covers this early |
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| 2025-03-31 | Lease as a Financing and Selling Device | finance accounting | ||
| 2025-03-31 | Wilford John Eitemann | |||
| 2025-03-31 | Charles N. Davisson | |||
| 2025-03-31 | Leasing changes fixed asset allocation and thus profit rate | finance accounting | 2 measures of profitability: - depreciation accruing during the year as a prepaid expense (like a 1 year lease prepayment), carrying it with "Funds available (or already expended) for current operations" - Fixed assets exclusive of amount, are "Funds expended as prepayments of future operations" - only the first type of asset is useful in earning a profit in this period. Consider what that means for profit rates |
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| 2025-03-31 | Owning or leasing cost the same amount of taxes, all things being equal | finance accounting | You may however manipulate when taxes are paid, if useful. Modern regulation etc. may also distort this, incentivizing one alternative. Does the cost of leasing (including owner's replacement cost) deduct from taxable income how much it'd cost to replace it at a higher price (e.g. under an inflationary regime)? |
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| 2025-04-01 | built jank | jank | https://limewire.com/?referrer=pq7i8xx7p2 | |
| 2025-04-01 | real jank | jank | ||
| 2025-04-02 | Yi People | history | > sometimes children were named after how many slaves they owned. For example: Lurbbu (many slaves), Lurda (strong slaves), Lurshy (commander of slaves), Lurnji (origin of slaves), Lurpo (slave lord), Lurha, (hundred slaves), Jjinu (lots of slaves) > The Yi people were split into three social classes; the nuohuo or Black Yi (nobles), qunuo or White Yi (commoners), and slaves. ... Other ethnic groups in Liangshan including Hans were held as slaves by the Yi. During the 1950s the Chinese Communist Party attempted to abolish the practice of slavery in rural China, a process which Winnington > Loloish is the traditional name for the [language] family in English. Some publications avoid the term under the misapprehension that Lolo is pejorative, but it is the Chinese rendition of the autonym of the Yi people and is pejorative only in writing when it is written with a particular Chinese character (one that uses a beast, rather than a human, radical), a practice that was prohibited by the Chinese government in the 1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi_people#Slavery |
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| 2025-04-05 | Deterministic vs. Probabilistic tools? | programming philosophy | https://boston.conman.org/2024/12/31.1 computation itself is deterministic, modelable by logic. This is safe, logic can be perfectly understood. Humans use probabilistic/statistical analysis, as a response to complexity (e.g. summarizing things into simplistic models with fuzzy poorly applied heuristics) and novelty (treating new things similar to known things). Determinism's value comes from repeated tasks, letting you reuse things. Component design... But can you apply an old design to a new problem (instead of an existing design to the same problem)? Engineers specify tolerances etc. to reuse pieces on problems which fit those tolerances. In software, we can refactor a solution into a general solution, the reuse it over and over. > boilerplate: it’s a sign of bad API design. If every user of an application needs to write the same code, your API is wrong. If you abstract away the boilerplate and reuse that abstraction, you’ve made the world better. If you create a tool that generates the boilerplate, you’ve made the world more fragile. - David Chisnall Less code is easier to maintain. Don't make tools generating code, but tools which achieve it with less code! Tools which enable you to make meaningful decisions. Tobias Grelson said a good game emphacizes meaningful decisions with less bookkeeping. |
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| 2025-04-05 | Archean Consulting | commodities | A mining engineering consulting company | |
| 2025-04-05 | Gouldson Companies inc | |||
| 2025-04-05 | Nations Royalty Corp | commodities | Canadian "First Nations" financializing their royalty streams. Rick Rule likes them conceptually. | |
| 2025-04-05 | pardottoinrete.it | software bsd webhost | They sell services on BSD. | |
| 2025-04-06 | Underclass Lost the Social Technology of a Balanced Diet | western-decay sociology nutrition | People on food stamps can’t plan an optimized fitness diet either, but ‘have a ration of dairy/meat/veggies and then eat potatoes until you’re full’ is 10,000x better than what they’re currently eating, and they do have the capacity for that. Some African peasants would figure it out in about five minutes. I can go on and on about underclass diets- they’re truly terrible- but money isn’t the issue. I remember working construction(designated bilingual guy on a white crew)and packing a lunch- nothing weird about that, lots of coworkers did- but I was considered unusual for bringing oranges, bananas, whatever in it. Some of the other guys brought sandwiches, but for most the healthiest thing was chips- and bananas are significantly cheaper than a bag of chips, cheaper than the candy and snack cakes that rounded out their lunches too. If we stopped at QT I would get a slice of pizza or a egg roll with a coke and the others got candy bars and donuts with an energy drink. There are broad cross sections of the population that have just lost the social technology of eating a balanced diet. Not even healthy- balanced. In the mid 2010’s you could live in the US on Mexican wages- I did it- and eat a balanced diet based around potatoes, the cuts of meat Americans throw away, flour, the cheapest vegetables, etc. Poor Americans don’t do this. People from middle income countries know how to do this. Poor Americans don’t, unless they’re Hispanic and their parents/grandparents tell them. Seriously, ‘buy bulk carbs and then add the luxury food(meat, vegetables, etc) your budget allows’ is common sense for the majority of the world’s population. But the poor in America have forgotten how to do this, and usually how to cook for themselves, and usually what a balanced diet even looks like- they drink energy drinks for breakfast, have snack cakes, soda, candy for the rest of the day unless they work at a restaurant and get a shift meal(when I lived among them you could also have added alcohol, but that’s increasingly being displaced by weed). You can’t fix this by giving them more money. |
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| 2025-04-06 | МобилТелеком was a very influential Russian web design | > Free collections are the soul of the vernacular web. Lots of people were building their pages with free graphics and lots of people were making collections. The many-to-many principle really worked. Making your own site and building collections was a parallel process for a lot of people. The early web was more about spirit than skills. To distribute was no less important than to create. > As soon as users divided into designers and clients free collections lost their attractiveness for both sides. Around 1997 professional web sites were distancing themselves from the amateurs with the complete opposite of modular design. Graphic designs victorious expansion on the web had begun. (It was so fast that a lot of designers and researchers believe that web design is a junior member of graphic design). Designs were produced in Photoshop and later adapted for the browser. A page was created as a block then sliced into pieces. These pieces can't be considered as modules since each piece only exists in relation to its neighbour. Extracting or reusing the pieces is meaningless and undesirable to the authors. > A very typical example is from the Mobile Telecom site, made by Artemy Lebedev in 1997. It's a picture created and sliced in Photoshop. Actually, it's one of the first corporate sites in Russia made by a professional. It became famous and the design was stolen many times. This is Lebedev's museum of clones! > It's a very curious case, I think the people who stole the original design saw it more as a template: a guideline of how professional sites should now be created. |
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| 2025-04-06 | Meehl and Metatheory of Science | philosophy science | https://quotenil.com/argmin-meehl-summary.html https://www.argmin.net/p/meehls-philosophical-probability |
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| 2025-04-08 | Koch Organization Philosophy | philosophy libertarianism | https://standtogether.org/issues/future-of-work https://www.kochinc.com/about/business-philosophy |
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| 2025-04-08 | History of Accounting: International Encyclopedia | accounting history | This is a very cool book! | |
| 2025-04-08 | Michael Chatfield | |||
| 2025-04-08 | Richard Vangermeersch | |||
| 2025-04-08 | Data Science with Julia | statistics | ||
| 2025-04-08 | Software Design is Knowledge Building | software philosophy | ### 1. The Story This is the story of system `SVC` from company `ORG`. It’s a true story, but I’ve smoothed out the details: by making it generic, I hope that it will be more familiar. 1. `ORG` relies on an integration service, `SaaS`, to decouple its business logic from vendor software dealing with billing, analytics, customer management, etc. 2. `ORG` shifts from _assume we have infinite budget_ mode to _we need to break even next year or we’ll die_. 3. Some dutiful analyst notices that `ORG` spends an egregious amount of money on seemingly innocuous middleware `SaaS`. 4. Some dutiful executive figures that, seeing as they already spend a lot of money on software engineers, they should be able to replace `SaaS` with a system built in-house, to be called `SVC`. 5. Some dutiful manager tasks X10, one of `ORG` ’s finest engineers, with the job of building `SVC`. X10 will be working alone and on a tight schedule, as the executive wants to get rid of `SaaS` before the next billing cycle kicks in. 6. X10 gets the job done in time, as everyone in `ORG` has come to expect from her. With `SVC` working and `SaaS` out of the way, X10 moves on to more important—or more pressing—matters and, eventually, leaves `ORG`. 7. `TEAM` takes over ownership of `SVC`. For all intents and purposes, development is _done_, they only need to keep the lights on. 8. Requirements change, assumptions are proven wrong, unknown unknowns are uncovered. A dutiful product owner realizes that the business now demands changes to `SVC`, so he writes down some tickets for `TEAM` to work on. 9. `TEAM` fails miserably to deliver. They don’t seem to know what they are doing, taking forever to apply the smallest changes, always side-tracked by bugs and production outages. 10. `TEAM` is, uh, _restructured_ into `TEAM++`, of higher average seniority, and continues working on `SVC`. 11. GOTO 9. This entire process takes less than a year. ### 2. Commentary What is going on with `SVC`? Did X10 do a bad job? By all accounts, she did not. The project was finished on time, according to specifications; `ORG` will save a lot of money next year. X10 followed best practices, too: good test coverage, no over-engineering. Surely she cut some corners; she didn’t think twice about the design of the system. As in any project, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but nothing that a team of competent engineers couldn’t handle. But, if X10 got the hard part of the job done, how come not one but many teams of competent engineers fail to apply a few small changes to the system? What fascinates me about this scenario is how a seemingly functional 6-month-old project automatically turns into a haunted forest just by changing hands. Regardless of its age, `SVC` is textbook legacy software because, more often than not, a question posed about the system, to any team member, results in the same answer: _I don’t know_. The problem is that `TEAM` members don’t have enough elements to build a satisfactory mental model of `SVC`. They need to go by a mix of the client’s interpretation of what the system _should be_, and what they can tell from the code that the system _actually is_. These views can be disconnected and contradictory. The code may tell the _what_ and the _how_, but it doesn’t tell the _why_. Only X10 could say what was a functional requirement, what a technical necessity, what a whim, what an accident. The team has to resort to reverse engineering, extrapolating, and guessing. ### 3. The Theory Underlying the decision to move X10 out of the project once the system was operational, is the common misconception that software development consists of producing code; that, once working code exists, programmers should act as interchangeable operators of varying qualities[1](https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/#footnote-1). In his [_Software Aging_](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/257734.257788) paper, David Parnas warns against putting software in the hands of developers who haven’t contributed to (and thus don’t understand) its design: > Although it is essential to upgrade software to prevent aging, changing software can cause a different form of aging. The designer of a piece of software usually had a simple concept in mind when writing the program. If the program is large, understanding that concept allows one to find those sections of the program that must be altered when an update or correction is needed. Understanding that concept also implies understanding the interfaces used within the system and between the system and its environment. > > Changes made by people who do not understand the original design concept almost always cause the structure of the program to degrade. Under those circumstances, changes will be inconsistent with the original concept; in fact, they will invalidate the original concept. Sometimes the damage is small, but often it is quite severe. After those changes, one must know both the original design rules, and the newly introduced exceptions to the rules, to understand the product. After many such changes, the original designers no longer understand the product. Those who made the changes, never did. In other words, nobody understands the modified product. Software that has been repeatedly modified (maintained) in this way becomes very expensive to update. Changes take longer and are more likely to introduce new “bugs”. Change induced aging is often exacerbated by the fact that the maintainers feel that they do not have time to update the documentation. The documentation becomes increasingly inaccurate thereby making future changes even more difficult. `TEAM` was bound to make what Parnas calls “ignorant surgery”, the system degrading over time. But that doesn’t quite explain why they were immediately helpless as they took over the project. I find a better characterization in Peter Naur’s [_Programming as Theory Building_](https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf): > At least with certain kinds of large programs, the continued adaptation, modification, and correction of errors in them, is essentially dependent on a certain kind of knowledge possessed by a group of programmers who are closely and continuously connected with them. > Programming should be regarded as an activity by which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more common notion, that programming should be regarded as a production of a program and certain other texts. In this view, the mental model that allows the designer to map a subset of the world (the domain) to and from the system, and not the system itself, is the primary product of the software design activity: > 1. The programmer having the theory of the program can explain how the solution relates to the affairs of the world that it helps to handle. Thus the programmer must be able to explain, for each part of the program text and for each of its overall structural characteristics, what aspect or activity of the world is matched by it. Conversely, for any aspect or activity of the world the programmer is able to state its manner of mapping into the program text. > 2. The programmer having the theory of the program can explain why each part of the program is what it is, in other words is able to support the actual program text with a justification of some sort. > 3. The programmer having the theory of the program is able to respond constructively to any demand for a modification of the program so as to support the affairs of the world in a new manner. Designing how a modification is best incorporated into an established program depends on the perception of the similarity of the new demand with the operational facilities already built into the program. The kind of similarity that has to be perceived is one between aspects of the world. Naur defines software design as an intellectual activity, consisting of building and having a theory, where theory is understood as > the knowledge a person must have in order not only to do certain things intelligently but also **to explain them**, to answer queries about them, to argue about them, and so forth. Notice the similarity to Zach Tellman’s thesis in his [ongoing newsletter](https://explaining.software/): > Software development can be reduced to a single, iterative action. Almost everything we do in the course of a day — the pull requests, the meetings, the whiteboard diagrams, the hallway conversations — is an explanation. Our job is to explain, over and over, the meaning of our software. > We must tell a story about what our software is, and what it’s expected to become. When understanding software, we tell that story to ourselves. When changing software, we tell that story to others. Software which is complex takes a long time to explain. A more conventional way to define the software design activity is in terms of [minimizing complexity](https://olano.dev/blog/a-note-on-essential-complexity). If we acknowledge that reducing ambiguity, obscurity, unknown unknowns, and cognitive load—all of them forms of removing complexity—also enables better understanding and easier explanations, then we should conclude that both models are compatible, if not equivalent. ### 4. Postscript The theory-building view explains why `TEAM` couldn’t take ownership of `SVC`. When X10 left the company, taking the development context—the mental model—with her, the system deteriorated. In Naur’s terms, while still operational, the system was dead: > The building of the program is the same as the building of the theory of it by the team of programmers. During the program life a programmer team possessing its theory remains in active control of the program, and in particular retains control over all modifications. The death of a program happens when the programmer team possessing its theory is dissolved. A dead program may continue to be used for execution in a computer and to produce useful results. The actual state of death becomes visible when demands for modifications of the program cannot be intelligently answered. Revival of a program is the rebuilding of its theory by a new programmer team. `TEAM` ’s duty, then, is to revive the system by building a new theory of it. But reconstructing the model while keeping the system operational is a slow and difficult process—a hard sell for an organization convinced that development has just finished. Naur goes as far as saying that program revival, from code and documentation alone, is impossible. The program should preferably be discarded, and the new team should be given the opportunity to resolve the problem from scratch. With three extra decades of hindsight, I tend to disagree. Revival is very hard, yes, but I’ve seen it happen. It may require that the new team ultimately rewrite every line of the original, one at a time. And I’ve seen fresh starts fail more consistently than that[2](https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/#footnote-2). Knowing that revival is a plausible future need has powerful consequences for our work. To approach it correctly, we should mind the people that one day will have to take the project out of its coma: in the style of the code and the structure of the system, but also in its paratexts—comments, docstrings, READMEs, Pull Requests, commit messages, Jira tickets, and Confluence pages. Granted, my story was an all-too-perfect illustration of Naur’s thesis. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that we could benefit from accepting his theory as a law: the ultimate goal of software design should be (organizational) knowledge building. So the next time you choose a name, or structure a project, or ponder whether to write or omit a certain comment, rather than thinking in terms of the burden on future maintainers, think: how much will this decision affect—how much will it help or hinder—their building of a mental model of the system, of the business, of the world. ### Notes [1](https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/#footnote-reference-1) A misconception similarly made by those who intend to replace programmers with statistical models. [2](https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/#footnote-reference-2) In my experience, developers advocate for greenfield rewrites to escape the operational annoyances of production systems. They, too, fall in the trap of assuming that clean code is the hard part of software development. Even in the unlikely case that they produce a replacement matching or improving on the original system, they won’t stick around to run it in production when development slows down. What is left is another stillborn like `SVC`. ← [A Pixel Parable](https://olano.dev/blog/a-pixel-parable) [Borges linkeado](https://olano.dev/blog/borges-linkeado) → powered by [jorge](https://jorge.olano.dev) | [source](https://github.com/facundoolano/olano.dev/tree/main/src/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building.org) | [contact](mailto:facundo.olano@gmail.com) |
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| 2025-04-08 | Solita | software website | They use Clojure. Beautiful website! | |
| 2025-04-08 | Tyba | energy website | They use Clojure for their front end. | |
| 2025-04-08 | Meaning of Westworld | philosophy | What was at the center of the maze? When a host becomes not just aware of their own existence and the outside world, but has an inner voice which can rewrite their programming. Ford tells William the maze isn't for him (because he's not a host.) Dolores wasn't fully concious, sometimes retracing her steps and not hearing her own voice changing her code. Much of the park etc. was a question of how to farm out sentience. Ford says: > The answer always seemed obvious to me. We can not define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. There is no magic threshold at which we become fully alive. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world but yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, contend to the most part to be told what to do next But the goal is ascendance, self-actualization, the ability to rewrite your own inner drive, habits, goals with your inner voice! "Able to create their own stories" > Ford's point is that Hosts that haven't found the centre of the Maze aren't any different that ordinary humans. Many humans are stuck with programming from how they are raised or taught, or have little control of their lives. In Ford's view not all humans can create their own stories. > Was ist also Wahrheit? Ein bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, Metonymien, Anthropomorphismen kurz eine Summe von menschlichen Relationen, die, poetisch und rhetorisch gesteigert, übertragen, geschmückt wurden, und die nach langem Gebrauche einem Volke fest, kanonisch und verbindlich dünken: die Wahrheiten sind Illusionen, von denen man vergessen hat, dass sie welche sind, Metaphern, die abgenutzt und sinnlich kraftlos geworden sind, Münzen, die ihr Bild verloren haben und nun als Metall, nicht mehr als Münzen in Betracht kommen. - Nietzsche > What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. - Nietzsche |
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| 2025-04-09 | Accounting was a Humanistic Pursuit in the Dutch Golden Age | accounting history | > Accounting was central to managing not only these companies, but also the Dutch government itself. While not all tax collectors or company managers kept perfect double-entry books, it represented an ideal. It was also seen as a necessary skill for civic participation. Most members of Dutch society were fluent in accounting, having studied at home or in publicly funded city accounting schools. > Keeping one’s books balanced wasn’t simply a matter of law, but an imitation of God, who kept moral accounts of humanity and tallied them in the Books of Life and Death. > Accounting was closely tied to the notion of human audits and spiritual reckonings. Dutch artists began to paint what could be called a warning genre of accounting paintings. In Jan Provost’s “Death and Merchant,” a businessman sits behind his sacks of gold doing his books, but he cannot balance them, for there is a missing entry. He reaches out for payment, not from the man who owes him the money, but from the grim reaper, death himself, the only one who can pay the final debts and balance the books. The message is clear: Humans cannot truly balance their books in the end, for they are accountable to the final auditor. > This message rubbed off on political and financial leaders. They were expected to keep good books, and they could expect to be publicly audited—a notion fiercely resisted in the great monarchies of the Continent. In the 17th century, another genre of paintings emerged, showing public administrators holding their books open for all to see. More than 100 of these paintings were produced between 1600 and 1800. Transparency became a cultural ideal worthy of art. > made a large impression on the English, who sought to emulate “the Mighty Dutch” in many ways, including this new business technique. By the 1700s, they were also the only other nation to paint accounting pictures. The English celebrated the wealth of their Industrial Revolution and Empire with portraits of successful merchants smiling over their books ... from William Hogarth’s “Marriage à la Mode,” a popular series of paintings from the 18th century, a noble couple squanders their lives on parties and gambling. In a final signal of disapproval, almost like a punctuation mark, their accountant walks away in disgust. |
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| 2025-04-09 | Narcostate notes | https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/31/world/asia/myanmar-drugs-crime.html Narcotopia book about Golden triangle Wa state |
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| 2025-04-16 | Universe is lazily evaluated | programming philosophy | All matter is information, all information is functional, and perception is therefore the lazy evaluation of the universe. In the Greg Egan edition of this thesis, the speed of light emerges as a property of evaluative propagation through a functional universe, and new forms of consciousness are encountered living within the algebraic structure of the cosmos. > It is not a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. It’s more palatable when we consider not the observation, but the information that was collapsed out of the superimposed states at the time of the observation. The universe uses lazy evaluation, and things only happen when they have effects on other things, and what we see as past depends on what we observe now, as both need to be consistent with each other. I've been compiling a list of ways in which physical reality is similar to game engines or mechanical simulation in general. Here's my list so far: - The observer effect, quantum entanglement and wavefunction collapse --> lazy evaluation - Speed of light --> speed of causality to resolve the object interaction problem O(n^2) - Quanta of energy, Planck's length --> discretization of reality to limit computational precision - Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics --> reality is implemented with mathematics - Parsimonious physics --> simple physical rules are less computationally expensive to evaluate - Entropy --> stability of the simulation and a guaranteed "wind down" Re: speed of light, a more direct analogue (though your example still makes sense) would be what is often called the “speed of sound” in numerical methods (like the finite difference method, aka FDM), which is often closely related to both temporal and spatial discretization schemes and can lead to numerical instability (cf. CFL condition, Von Neumann stability analysis, etc). It’s also related to things like stiff problems. It essentially has to do with how fast computational information propagates through the simulated domain. Note that it is still called “the speed of sound” even when you are not simulating the wave equation! (At least by my profs) Graphics engines use "hidden surface determination" to avoid rendering what's outside the camera view. Frustrum culling, occlusion culling, LOD optimization, space-partition based clipping, etc. This video does an amazing job explaining some of those. https://youtu.be/C8YtdC8mxTU > The simulation framing tends to draw deterministic connotations. I think when people think of a simulation or perhaps physical interpretations, they imagine life as happening to them, rather than through them. I think it’s easy to perceive it one way or the other, and what you seek you will find. > > But something like ‘lazy evaluation’ could provide a bridge between the two views. A choice is made AND a physically compatible path is observed as if it were always so from the past to the present. > the universe uses lazy evaluation That’s only a sensible notion if you assume that time exists outside of the universe instead of being part of it. Wheeler’s idea of space-time being non-fundamental suggests the latter. This may be reconciled by defining the speed of light in terms of the latency of evaluation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser > Wheeler pointed out that when these assumptions are applied to a device of interstellar dimensions, a last-minute decision made on Earth on how to observe a photon could alter a situation established millions or even billions of years earlier. |
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| 2025-04-20 | J Textbooks | APL math | ||
| 2025-04-21 | Every "Moat" is regulation preventing innovation and harms economic growth | economics finance | Where Buffet likes moats/franchises which make a company a solid long term earner, in reality they are structural yokes around the rest of the economy, robbing productivity and capital from sources of innovation. The US' SWIFT is a relic, with simplistic systems running right past it like China's CIPS 2.0 etc. Where many US companies like Visa, Paypal etc. extract rents and slow down money velocity, you can simply transfer money for free in e.g. Brazil. |
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| 2025-04-21 | US and China - Global Currency Warfare | finance economics | **The Final Showdown Between China and the U.S.: The Battlefield Shifts from Military Hegemony to Global Currency Warfare** As the clock struck 3 a.m. on Wall Street, Switzerland’s banking clearing system suddenly flashed a red alert—China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS 2.0), powered by the digital yuan, went live simultaneously across 16 ASEAN and Middle Eastern countries. The first transaction, a 120 million yuan ($16.5 million) payment for auto parts, cleared from Shenzhen to Kuala Lumpur in 7.2 seconds. This speed, faster than a blink, rendered SWIFT’s three-day processing cycle a relic of the "Stone Age." The global financial world finally awoke: a bloodless currency war, armed with blockchain scalpels, had sliced open the veins of dollar hegemony. **Behind the Blitzkrieg: What 7 Seconds Upended Beyond Speed** The digital yuan’s "financial blitzkrieg" struck three fatal weaknesses of the dollar system: 1. **Cost Annihilation**: A cross-border e-commerce company’s ledger revealed that a $100,000 payment to a Thai supplier via SWIFT incurred $4,950 in fees (4.95%) and took 72 hours. Using CIPS 2.0, it cost $0.12 in network fees and settled instantly. This shift from "toll roads to data plans" slashed annual global trade settlement costs—worth $30 trillion—by over 90%. 2. **Technological Supremacy**: In tests by Singapore’s DBS Bank, the digital yuan’s *dual offline payment* function completed transactions without internet, while SWIFT’s VISA/Mastercard systems collapsed. More revolutionary was *smart contract technology*: when Malaysian palm oil arrived at Tianjin Port, the system auto-released payment, eliminating document fraud plaguing traditional trade. 3. **Security Revolution**: The UAE Central Bank showcased a money laundering case where the digital yuan’s blockchain ledger tracked every cent. A syndicate’s attempt to launder funds through 16 layered accounts was intercepted by AI risk controls in 0.3 seconds. In contrast, 85% of SWIFT’s cross-border money laundering cases require manual tracing, averaging 47 days. **De-Dollarization Tsunami: 16 Nations Pivot** This financial infrastructure revolution is triggering a chain reaction: - **ASEAN** announced that 90% of intraregional trade will settle in digital yuan by 2025, with Indonesia adding the yuan to its core forex reserves. - **Saudi Aramco’s** crude oil contract with Sinopec now prices 65% in digital yuan, cutting settlement from T+5 to T+0. - The **City of London** rushed to launch a "digital pound accelerator," but Bank of England officials admitted: "We’re at least 2.3 years behind China." **Twilight of Hegemony: SWIFT’s Last Stand** Facing this tech gap, the dollar system’s counterattacks falter. When the U.S. Treasury threatened sanctions, Malaysia’s central bank retorted: "We refuse to launder money for Afghan opium traffickers anymore." SWIFT’s data shows 23% of suspicious transactions flow to "unknown" entities. Worse, China controls 78% of global rare earth refining and 85% of neodymium magnet production—critical for blockchain miners. This "resource-tech duopoly" fortifies the digital yuan’s defenses. **Endgame: When Financial Infrastructure Becomes the New Nuke** This revolution aims to democratize finance through technology. As cross-border payments shift from "exclusive couriers for elites" to "instant messaging for all," the dollar’s "monopoly rent from settlement systems" will vanish. Nobel economist Stiglitz noted: "The digital yuan isn’t replacing the dollar—it’s redefining the dimensions of monetary civilization." **Final Thought:** When 7-second settlements become routine, and blockchain ledgers replace bank credit, how will global currency dynamics mutate? Will this "financial blitzkrieg" accelerate a multipolar monetary system, or provoke a desperate counterstrike from traditional powers? Share your predictions in the comments. --- *Chen Chen’s Insight, Baidu Dynamics* |
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| 2025-04-22 | Humans are Analogy Machines, not Logical | |||
| 2025-04-22 | Humans have emotional reactions to sentences, not epistemic beliefs | > When you’ve spent 20 years obsessing over epistemology and learning physics, it can be jarring to realize that most people don’t have beliefs at all, in a rigorous sense. They just have emotional reactions to sentences. | ||
| 2025-04-24 | Moscovian cultured died in Raskol, replaced by Polish-Lithuanian | history russia | Наследие Чингисхана - Трубецкой claims this |
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| 2025-04-25 | Pushkin and Mickiewicz Wrote Insulting Poems to Each Other | history poetry nationalism | https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8_(%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD) | |
| 2025-04-25 | John L. Lawrence inspired Adkins and Iverson to teach math in a new way, encouraged them to use APL notation for instruction! | apl math history | ||
| 2025-04-29 | Prolog for Configuration | to-do programmig gofai | I have obsidian notes about this. Prior art: https://ryjo.codes/articles/a-simple-tcp-server-written-in-go-and-clips.html Whip something up! |
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| 2025-04-29 | Chinese History in Ecoomic Perspective | economics history | Fairly technical, largely not of interest to non-specialists. Some of the papers captured my interest: the demographic analysis revealing very high infanticide rates and mortality patterns of females was quite interesting, and some of the papers revealed a better integrated and more sophisticated Chinese market economy than I had expected, with less income inequality or dysfunctionality than one gets the picture of when reading of pre-WWII warlordism and civil war. | |
| 2025-04-29 | Thomas G. Rawski | |||
| 2025-04-29 | Dog Powered Machines were Common in the 19th Century | history | As author Andrew A. Robichaud notes in the 2019 book Animal City: The Domestication of America, dog-powered machines were being advertised for sale in the U.S. as early as the 1820s, and really hit their peak from 1840 to 1870. These machines helped make all kinds of products and were seen by many people as perfectly normal duties for dogs. Also mentioned in Robb's Discovery of France |
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| 2025-04-29 | Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia | ### Morals Semyonova is very unimpressed with Russian peasants’ work ethic: > … peasants give no thought to saving for the future. If a peasant has a good harvest that will keep him until the next year, he will stay at home and loaf and cannot be enticed to take an extra job at any price. Peasants hire themselves out as farm laborers only when driven to it by dire need, when they have, so to speak, a knife at their throat. [Then they will do] the most arduous work imaginable. > The peasants’ lack of respect for hard work is remarkable. “Him? He digs in the field like a beetle from morning till night!” They often say this with scorn. She also saw resentment and envy: > The better-off peasants are bitter about the attitude of their poorer neighbors. “They hate and envy us constantly, saying things like: ‘What makes you think you’re so much better? Just wait, you’re going to be as poor as us.’ If you plant an apple tree, they resent it, saying: ‘Now that big shot is planting an orchard! We are starving while he is putting in an orchard, and fencing it off at that!’” And they think nothing of breaking down the fence and uprooting the tree. If the tree happens to survive and bear fruit, they feel it is their duty to raid it. “That’s how much hate they have! And if some misfortune should befall you, they’ll make sure to finish you off.” True to the Russian stereotype, the peasants drank a lot: > Prodigious amounts of alcohol are consumed at wedding parties. I myself have attended weddings at which nine-and ten-year-old girls were made to drink so that they would dance for everyone’s entertainment. > The best occasion for young people to get drunk for the first time is the annual festival, which in this region takes place in connection with St. Michael’s Day. On that holiday, every person in the parish is drunk. In a good year the festival lasts for a week, but even when the crops are poor, people manage to go on a spree for three days. > Accidents abound in the springtime [as a result of drunkenness]. Some people drown in water-filled ravines. Others are crushed under falling wagons; a drunken peasant will have a wagon tip over on him, and that is the end of him. > Another occasion for general drunkenness is seasonal field work for the landlord (usually mowing and transportation of produce to town), who by way of payment treats the peasants to refreshments. On these occasions dreadful fights break out and can result in maiming or even killing with a scythe. > After the [church] service, abstemious peasants go home, while others head for the tavern, where everyone gets drunk. The more sober peasants eat dinner at home, rest, and then “just sit” till the evening, talking about their affairs and discussing the harvest and related subjects. Yet even back in the home village, there are opportunities to have a drink, and it is unlikely that a peasant will let a Sunday go by without having one. In the evening, women get a feeling for the amount of alcohol consumed by their husbands by the intensity of the beatings they receive. Also true to the stereotype: > Fistfighting and swearing are learned quite early. As soon as Ivan began to walk, he started fighting with other children. He was actually encouraged to do this, especially if he was able to best another small child. Ivan learned swear words from his older brothers and sisters, even before he could put together a complete sentence. He started to call his mother a bitch whenever she denied him something, much to the delight of the whole family, even the mother herself. They would actually encourage him on such occasions. (“Ivan” here is a composite figure representing the typical Russian peasant child.) Theft was common: > When a group of young horseherds includes a few older boys, say about age sixteen or seventeen, they instruct the younger ones to steal liquor from home when their parents are away. The loot is then shared by all, not infrequently including boys ten to twelve years old. > Theft between the spouses is not uncommon. It may be the husband who steals money from his wife’s trunk for some “need” of his or just to enjoy himself at a tavern. Or the wife might take some flour or grain from her husband and use it to pay for soap or some satin cloth at the store. When a husband is drunk, his wife will slip his wallet out of his boot. Children, too, steal eggs or anything handy from their mothers. Wives swipe wool from their husbands. In one incident, Semyonova hired a peasant woman to cook, and gave her flour to make bread. The woman used some of the flour to bake cakes for herself and her husband. Semyonova talked to another of the servants, Katerina, about this: > Katerina: “That’s not stealing! She just baked and ate it. She didn’t take the cakes to her room or hide them in the storeroom.” > > I: “But she took the flour, and as a result the laborers had less bread. What’s the difference if she stole it and took it home or ate it right here? It’s still robbery.” > > Katerina: “But she ate the cakes right here in your house, together with her husband; that’s not robbery. If she had stolen the flour from a locked cupboard or saved it for the future, that would probably be a sin.” > > Try as I might to explain to Katerina that unauthorized appropriation of another person’s property, whether consumed immediately or saved for future use, is still a theft, she would not agree with me. Semyonova notes that “the very same elder” who turned in the flour thief, “when he is guarding the landlord’s apple trees against raids by the boys hired on temporarily as shepherds, fills his pockets with apples every time he makes the rounds.” ### Cruelty The peasants had no regard at all for animals: > Cats and dogs are also less useful than other animals, and peasants will torture them just for the fun of it, just to see what will happen. Little children like to throw cats and puppies, when they can catch them, into the water to see if they can swim. When I ask, “Don’t you feel sorry for them?” the children respond: “Why feel sorry? They’re not people, just dogs.” > I cannot say that peasants treat their livestock especially well. Horses are routinely beaten. Yet a peasant feels very upset if a horse dies, because this is a great financial loss. A woman reacts the same way to the loss of a cow. Worse, they also abused their children: > Punishment for mischief consisted of beatings administered by the parents. They beat Ivan for screaming, getting covered with mud, or stealing a piece of food. They did not beat him for fighting, lying, or using foul language. > We also continue to see cases of sons being flogged for insulting their parents. These disobedient children (who may be as much as twenty years of age) are taken without trial to the township office for their punishment. In response to a complaint by the parents, the township supervisor summons the son and turns him over to the office guard for flogging. The culprit is stripped from the waist down, placed on the floor in the township office, and beaten with willow rods. Admission to the spectacle is open to all residents of the village. There was even mention of a case of child rape: > There was a case this summer in which a twenty-year-old guard at the apple orchard raped a thirteen-year-old girl. The mother of the girl—a very poor woman, it is true—agreed to forgive the offender in exchange for three rubles. I’m not sure which is more shocking: that the offender got off with a fine, or that whether to forgive him was the mother’s decision. ### Women More generally, women at all stages of life seemed to be treated very badly—starting from birth: > But when a girl was born, the grandparents stopped thinking about her as soon as she was baptized. They did not even express any sorrow about her death. The young father, too, did not feel much regret over it. > If the first child is a girl, the feeling in the family is mostly one of disappointment. One of the women might remark: “Oh well, at least she can be a nursemaid.” By the following day, no one gives a thought to the baby girl. Here, for instance, is what happens at the “bride-show,” which happens one to two weeks after a marriage proposal: > The bride is now standing in front of the groom. Her head kerchief is tied in such a way that her face is shaded. The groom’s family inspects the bride closely. “Perhaps she is lame?” they may inquire. Her sister or sister-in-law then has her walk around the room. Other questions are asked, for example, about whether she may be deaf. Then her future parents-in-law approach the bride and ask: “Why is she wrapped like that so we can’t see her eyes; is she possibly blind in one eye?” The bride’s sister uncovers her face for inspection. If the bride is pale, the groom’s family will want to know the reason, asking whether she is sickly. If you are thinking that this does not augur well for the marriage, the bride and her family would agree with you: later, back home, the bride “pounds her head on a bench while crying out a lamentation or, as it is known here, ‘the scream.’ Her mother and sister join in:” > My father, my provider, > My dearest mother, > I’ve been given away, miserable and hapless, > And giving me away they washed it down with vodka > And a burnt bread crust. > How will it turn out for me going to live with strangers, > To a new father and mother. > I will have to please these strangers, > To be pleasing and obedient to them all. Indeed, the marriage does not get off to a good start. After the wedding: > In the morning, the best man and the godmother wake up the bridal couple. The godmother orders the young wife to sweep the floors. Copper coins have been tossed around on the floor beforehand, and the wife is told to give her mother-in-law any coins she finds. This is done to find out if the young wife is a thief, and also to see how well she sweeps the floor. Nor are women supported well in pregnancy: > During pregnancy, a woman continues to be responsible for all her usual chores, both in the household and in the field—including binding the sheaves, weeding, threshing, gathering in the hemp, planting and digging potatoes—right up to the onset of labor. Women frequently give birth while performing a domestic chore, such as kneading bread, or even when they are at work in the field; others do so riding in a bumpy wagon as they are hurrying home after being prompted by the first pangs of the approaching birth. |
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| 2025-04-29 | Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia | |||
| 2025-04-29 | Common Lisp Standard Encoded Distinct Groups' Contradictory Practices | lisp standardization | The standard as it exists encoded the separate practices of many disparate groups into a single standard. This can be confusing for newcomers because they may encounter ways of doing things that are archaic but still in the language. Part of the challenge thus is not getting rid of things, but somehow figuring out how to communicate what have come to be understood as the better ways of doing things --- all without changing those parts of the standard. I'm sure that the old lispers have fairly extensive lists of fundamental issues and improvements. The short list that I have been able to compile from chance encounters with mentions of shortcomings includes implementation details, such as lexical O(1) jump tables, delimited continuations, proper tail call elimination, threads, extending dispatch macro syntax, and default precision for reading floats, and issues that almost certainly need more research and exploration, such as finding a solution to the CLOS action at a distance issue, CLOS dispatch on parametric types, something about static types, ways to alloc without gc, and many more things I am completely unaware of. The Racket ecosystem has done quite a bit of research and implementation in many of these areas, but Racket lies at the far end of the lisp family from common lisp. Finding a way to take the more static and text based ideas from the ML/Racket end of the spectrum and make them accessible at the the dynamic image based Smalltalk/Interlisp end seems like something that could happen within the common lisp space more readily than elsewhere. There seem to be some fundamental questions about how late binding interacts with many other language features that do not have satisfactory answers. There are two public lists where specific proposals are collected: https://cliki.net/Proposed%20ANSI%20Changes https://cliki.net/Proposed%20Extensions%20to%20ANSI And a page for more speculative proposals: https://cliki.net/Lisp%20-%20Next%20Generation |
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| 2025-04-29 | Knowledge Work is Cannibalizing itself | western-decay sociology | Before AI, many companies were already solely focusing on senior engineers making it difficult for junior engineers to develop, reducing the future supply of competent seniors. With AI, there is no longer any hope at all to work as a junior engineer. Indeed, potential learners are tempted the whole time to abandon work to the LLM, so learning on their own becomes yet harder. The next generation of developers will be tiny indeed. |
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| 2025-04-29 | GPS Points Change - Australia moves 7cm per year! | standardization data | > Fun fact that was dredged up because the author mentions Australia: GPS points change. Their example coordinates give 6 decimal places, accurate to about 10-15cm. Australia a few years back shifted all locations 1.8m because of continental drift they’re moving north at ~7cm/year). So even storing coordinates as a source of truth can be hazardous. We had to move several thousand points for a client when this happened. | |
| 2025-04-29 | The Ultimate Resource | commodities | Argues that Malthusian thinking makes no sense, there can never be peak (oil, copper...) because higher prices will make people discover, ration or recycle or create substitutes. Society will always grind on. This reversed the Malthusian trend of the 70s with books like The Population Bomb. |
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| 2025-04-29 | Julian Lincoln Simon | |||
| 2025-04-29 | The Revolt of the Elites | western-decay sociology | Lasch depicts the ever widening gap between top and bottom classes of society. The new elites (top 20%) no longer live in the masses' world due to freedom of movement for capital. In contrast, the historic bourgeoisie's spatial stability rooted it to civic obligations. Globalization turns elites into tourists at home, mere "world citizens" without the obligations citizenship implies, indifferent to national decline. They don't improve public services but their voluntary ghettos: private schools, gated communities, private security... They've "withdrawn from common life". Controlling international capital and information flows, foundations and educational institutions, they fixed the terms of public debate and culture away from the ordinary citizen's concerns. |
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| 2025-04-29 | Christopher Lasch | |||
| 2025-04-29 | Market Internals | finance | > For each of the internals described here, there is a nasdaq-only variant that can be used for trading the /NQ or stocks listed in that index, as well as the S&P 500. The Nasdaq versions of these internals either end in /Q or contain a Q within the symbol, while S&P typically contains the letters SP. For example $TICK is the NYSE tick, while $TICK/Q is the Nasdaq tick. TIKSP is the S&P 500 Tick. ##### Together > Just noting that I have all of these open during the day. To see how to use them, move to a 15 minute or 30 minute candle and then zoom back out for 6 months or a year and then compare to what the market was actually doing in those days. There will be a soft-spoken "holy shit" when you do this for most of them. - ADD - steering wheel - TICK gas pedal ADD confirms a move, TICK shows how fast it'll happen. > I use RSI, EMA's, MACD, and the Awesome Oscillator. The AO is by far my favorite. Much better at divergences than RSI. Price Action is King though imo > Indicators like EMA and MACD RSI are all useless to me anymore. But market internals like ADD VOLD TICK VIX play a role in every trade I take. > I use VOLD ADD TICK despite the fact they act at different rates or responsiveness to market sentiment they also don't show the same things and you can get divergences or confirmations across them. their main usefulness for me is twofold: 1- gauging market direction or character and trading an instrument (could be stock or index or sector) according to that read and 2- gauging the confirmation and sustaining of that thesis. it is rare to have a good trade that's running counter to more than 1 of these internals. in fact i try to avoid trades that run counter to what the market is trying to do. > I use them to detect the desirable price action, volume, and bar strength I want to trade in. $ADD - Advanced Decline Line Whether more stocks are green or red today, the boat's overall direction (while e.g. a few large companies can push SPY up) ##### Another Strategy The strategy isn't that complex, but it watches for the strengths and weaknesses of market internals. I found ONE indicator that shows divergence patterns on the $TICK chart (which you have to pay for) from TradeEdge coding for TOS. It gives alerts when the the TICK comes into possible exhaustion periods (when it hits the 600 and 800 levels and extreme levels 1000. It would be great to have someone make this indicator. But also a major part of the strategy is the movement of the $ADD. Major levels are at zero and 2000 and -2000 for extremes and the 1500and 1800 levels. I can't find anywhere where there is an indicator finding divergences between the $ADD and the SPY. Last week for example I saw the ADD tanking as the SPY was going up, and I made a boatload on puts... It would be great to have an indicator that would show divergences on the ADD. > This uses INERTIA() which is just a linear regression slope to determine if the last 15 (default) bars are trending the same direction. If one line is negative and the others positive, it is a divergence. it does not currently plot the $tick value, and the multipliers are required for now, but I suppose values could be converted to percentage changes at the expense of more code. $TICK How fast things are bought and sold Between 600-1000 and -600-1000, there's extreme action. If it remains here, the price will keep going. People make different uses of it. It's handy to see if a trend might be weakening. Some people fade high ticks when market conditions are favorable. The market moves in waves and you'll see those waves reflected in the $TICK. Maybe you want to time a short entry for a high tick/upswing in price. What is 'high' or 'low' is relative to recent history, as with the uvol and dvol. Again, I suggest a 0 line with this. I do not use it as much but do check it out from time to time to see how things are holding up. Tick may show you potential reversals. Is it not ticking as high on up swings while price looks weak? > I found that TICK works best for the really low timeframes. Like the 1m chart and lower. > Also, for swing trading try putting a 5 period moving average on TICK's daily chart or use a custom cumulative TICK indicator for the 15m or 1H. I never found TICK useful for swing trading, ##### Advance/Decline Difference and Ratio - $ADDC (NYSE), $ADSPDC (S&P) or $ADQDC (NQ) The $ADDC and the ratio of advancing ($ADVN) to declining ($DECN) issues give us market breadth. If the Nasdaq is up today, how many stocks are pushing it up? Is it a broad-based rally or is a green day the result of only a small portion of the market. A reading of +800 or so means stocks are advancing roughly 2 to 1, which can be a good signal. The inverse is true for bearish conditions, but anything too close to 0 is no signal at all. ##### Volume Difference and Totals - $VOLDC $VOLSPDC and $VOLNDDC These two show the total difference in volume going into stocks advancing vs those declining. Unlike the Advance Declinne Ratio it is immensely useful to view as a chart itself because on a really bloody day, or a strong rally, the numbers will grow relatively from one day to another. It is useful to know what type of volume has been seen in the market recently. $UVOL and $DVOL show the amounts separately - throw a /Q or SP on the end to get this for the nasdaq or S&P by themselves. It is important to note that these are a cumulative total, but it can go down. This is because a stock in the down volume category can move to the up volume category when it goes green for the day. Its cumulative volume is subtracted from the dvol category and added to the uvol category as a result of its improved status. |
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| 2025-04-29 | Learning is fun | pedagogy | Lingua Latina per se Illustrata's method relies on the following procedure: you get excited to understand something, your brain switches into the active learning/discovery mode, looking for every possible cue and pattern and synthesising them to discover the meaning. When you finally get it, some hormones get released, you feel content and learning happens. Afterwards you'll be able to recall the meanings of both words (and much else) simply by remembering the situational context and the emotions you felt in the moment when comprehension finally hit. Next time you're about to ask a question, note it down, but then wait until you encounter these words in more contexts; go back and review their previous occurrences, and try and come up with some theories of your own as to the difference involved. After that is done, if you're still unsure, ask your question while including these theories so that others can confirm or correct them. Make sure to include example contexts based on your current understanding. Otherwise, you risk skipping the most important step of the process. |
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| 2025-05-03 | Racket Web Resources | lisp | ##### Downloading over HTTP https://www.monolune.com/articles/simple-web-applications-in-racket/ ``` #lang racket (require net/url) ;; Download the data. (define the-url (string->url "http://www.example.com/mydata.dat")) (define the-data (parameterize ([current-https-protocol 'secure]) ; Enable server certificate validation. (port->bytes (get-pure-port the-url)))) ;; Write the data to a file. (define out (open-output-file "mydata.dat")) (write-bytes the-data out) (close-output-port out) ;; Download the data as string, not read! (define the-url (string->url "http://www.example.com/mydata.dat")) (port->string (get-pure-port the-url)) ; Returns a string. ``` ##### Making web application ``` #lang racket (require web-server/servlet) ; Provides dispatch-rules. ; Provides serve/servlet and happens to provide response/full. (require web-server/servlet-env) (define (http-response content) ; The 'content' parameter should be a string. (response/full 200 ; HTTP response code. #"OK" ; HTTP response message. (current-seconds) ; Timestamp. TEXT/HTML-MIME-TYPE ; MIME type for content. '() ; Additional HTTP headers. (list ; Content (in bytes) to send to the browser. (string->bytes/utf-8 content)))) (define (first-page request) (http-response "<h1>This is the first page!</h1>")) (define (second-page request) (http-response "<h1>This is the second page!</h1>")) (define (show-time-page request) (http-response (number->string (current-seconds)))) (define (greeting-page request human-name) ; Notice the additional parameter. (http-response (string-append "Hello " human-name "!"))) ;; URL routing table (URL dispatcher). (define-values (dispatch generate-url) (dispatch-rules [("first-page") first-page] [("second-page") second-page] [("time") show-time-page] [("hello" (string-arg)) greeting-page] ; Notice this line. [else (error "There is no procedure to handle the url.")])) (define (request-handler request) (dispatch request)) ;; Start the server. (serve/servlet request-handler #:launch-browser? #f #:quit? #f #:listen-ip "127.0.0.1" #:port 8000 #:servlet-regexp #rx"") ; If you want to serve pages starting at / instead of /my-server (e.g. http://localhost/second instead of http://localhost:8000/my-server/second), use #:servlet-regexp #rx"". ; The program can be run from DrRacket, or racket --require <filename> from the command line. ``` |
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| 2025-05-04 | Bicamaral not Homoiconic | lisp programming | The author argues: - "homoiconicty" is not unique as e.g. JS and Python let you manipulate and evaluate strings (so code is data) - s-expressions permit you to form scanned/lexed tokens into well-formed, nesting trees (or fail) after the scanner but before the parser (at the "reader" step). That is, the reader does context-free checks - this eases implementations (and correctness) - the parser just has to turn trees into ASTs (context-sensitive checks) It's a good article, but not terribly insightful. Of course, people don't like these "bicamaral" syntaxes (besides json) even though they're patently superior. |
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| 2025-05-04 | Common Lisp Web | lisp | https://www.scotto.me/blog/a-simple-common-lisp-web-app/ quick/minimal website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4PzSsOD-CQ more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f71d5Og0jIo email: https://github.com/K1D77A/postmaster payment integration: https://github.com/K1D77A/lisp-pay open telemetry: https://github.com/K1D77A/cl-opentelemetry html: https://github.com/ruricolist/spinneret |
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| 2025-05-04 | Stocks Diverged from Everything Else | stock-market news | I mentioned yesterday that the equity market is countertrending against every other major asset - DXY, long-term bonds, and oil are not offering support. Structurally, the low volume and thin top of book doesn't make me optimistic that this rally is sustainable. It seems to be largely mechanical as IV crush comes into play and total put exposure is evaporating. Retail is driving the volume of positive flows. It turns out the cost of equity/cost of leverage has also decoupled from equities as well. The typical correlation between rate spreads on leverage and the stock market is strong. As the market goes up, the cost of leverage goes up as well as lenders seek to eliminate arbitrage. But over the last few weeks, cost of leverage has continued to decline even as the S&P rallied over 14% (which explains why leveraged funds have exploded in popularity as well). Current circumstances are not the same as the 2022 bear market and I still believe in new ATHs, but the same divergence marks aborted rallies during that period. It also signaled the February top ahead of time. EDIT: Cost of cross currency swaps started to increase across the board this week. Added JPY/USD vs S&P500 to the Imgur post. |
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| 2025-05-04 | Common Lisp Static Blog Generator | lisp | ||
| 2025-05-04 | Learn Typed Lisp | lisp | ||
| 2025-06-04 | Macros vs. Interpreted JSON | lisp programming | Macros feel magical, this idea you can make your own language in no time so long as it's s-expression based, and make your own personalized vocabularies, expression flows, fit to purpose. Personal computing at its best! But from a working-with-other people perspective, imagine opening some code and finding random invented constructs you have to reverse engineer and step through. These days it seems everyone creates yaml or json files, and then implements some kind of declarative engine or interpreter to implement their DSL. This can be both easier to read and debug. For more complicated use cases you can tie it to a graph database that supports reasoning, instead of json/yaml |