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While the standard 80 character limit for source code can be traced back to the
IBM punch card[1] it can still be seen as a good upper bound for how long lines
of text should be on modern high definition displays.

First thing we must acknowledge is that source code is not read in the
traditional sense. Instead developers scan the source using non-linear eye
movements[2] or stay fixated in a small area of code while working out the
logical details of code being written. The fixation on a single location, even
for more than a few seconds, leads to a loss of visual accuity. Which occurs
when the eyes do not perform frequent saccadic eye movements.[3] Further

martindale

Around 2006-2007, it was a bit of a fashion to hook lava lamps up to the build server. Normally, the green lava lamp would be on, but if the build failed, it would turn off and the red lava lamp would turn on.

By coincidence, I've actually met, about that time, (probably) the first person to hook up a lava lamp to a build server. It was Alberto Savoia, who'd founded a testing tools company (that did some very interesting things around generative testing that have basically never been noticed). Alberto had noticed that people did not react with any urgency when the build broke. They'd check in broken code and go off to something else, only reacting to the breakage they'd caused when some other programmer pulled the change and had problems.

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curl -s https://api.github.com/orgs/twitter/repos?per_page=200 | ruby -rubygems -e 'require "json"; JSON.load(STDIN.read).each { |repo| %x[git clone #{repo["ssh_url"]} ]}'

martindale

O(1) Block Propagation

The problem

Bitcoin miners want their newly-found blocks to propagate across the network as quickly as possible, because every millisecond of delay increases the chances that another block, found at about the same time, wins the "block race."

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// Just before switching jobs:
// Add one of these.
// Preferably into the same commit where you do a large merge.
//
// This started as a tweet with a joke of "C++ pro-tip: #define private public",
// and then it quickly escalated into more and more evil suggestions.
// I've tried to capture interesting suggestions here.
//
// Contributors: @r2d2rigo, @joeldevahl, @msinilo, @_Humus_,
// @YuriyODonnell, @rygorous, @cmuratori, @mike_acton, @grumpygiant,

martindale

# wiki page
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract

# Nick Szabo essays
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart_contracts_idea.html
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/smart.contracts.html
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/micropayments.html

# secure multiparty computation in bitcoin
https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/784.pdf

martindale

Share Counts

I have always struggled with getting all the various share buttons from Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, etc to align correctly and to not look like a tacky explosion of buttons. Seeing a number of sites rolling their own share buttons with counts, for example The Next Web I decided to look into the various APIs on how to simply return the share count.

If you want to roll up all of these into a single jQuery plugin check out Sharrre

Many of these API calls and methods are undocumented, so anticipate that they will change in the future. Also, if you are planning on rolling these out across a site I would recommend creating a simple endpoint that periodically caches results from all of the APIs so that you are not overloading the services will requests.

Twitter

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* {
    font-size: 12pt;
    font-family: monospace;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: black;
    cursor: default;
}

martindale

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Colours picked from https://robinpowered.com/blog/best-practice-system-for-organizing-and-tagging-github-issues/

###
# Label definitions
###
declare -A LABELS

# Platform

martindale

Extensible Scalable Coopetitive High Availability Trade Optimization Network: ESCHATON

I am the Eschaton; I am not your God.

I am descended from you, and exist in your future.

Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross