RIP Margaret Hamilton

#nasa #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing

Just saw a job ad for a "Senior Developer Acceleration Engineer", and can't help but think of #bofh and some sort of defenestration machine...

Why do so many of my personal projects stall at the point I try to think of a name for them?

I'm looking to hire a project manager!

I'm working on a project with materials scientists and physicists to build stacked quantum heterostructures, which have potential interesting properties as semiconductors, etc. It's a crazy process that involves crystal growers, driving microscopes with an Xbox controller, a adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators, and exfoliation with scotch tape. We need a project manager to help us ... well, manage the project.

Apply at:

https://utah.peopleadmin.com/postings/209788

Fine to ask me questions here or at ricci at cs dot utah.edu

#getfedihired

Does anyone know of an in-process #SQL DBMS lib like #sqlite but that has real typed fields?

Bonus points if there's an existing #python driver.

A simplified history of regular expressions:

- In 1951, Stephen Kleene invented regular expressions.

- In 1966, Ken Thompson built the first software implementation of regular expressions, in the QED text editor for CTSS. UNIX ed is a cut down version of QED, popularizing the tradition of regular expressions in editors. grep started as a standalone version of the engine from ed. em, ex, vi, and vim evolved from ed.

- In 1987, Larry Wall spread regular expressions to the next generation of programmers through Perl. Gravely, it uses backtracking, spreading terrible performance for decades. It derives its engine from the rn newsreader, which derives it from Gosling Emacs. James Gosling told me he wrote it from scratch.

- In 2010, Russ Cox, having spent time at Bell Labs, rejected backtracking and built RE2, a fast and scalable engine, generalized from work on Google Code Search. Its ideas have spread to Go regexp and Rust regex, a new generation of engines. These engines dynamically select between specialized matchers, depending on the pattern.

- Since 2025, Ian Erik Varatalu has been researching regular expressions for his PhD and has produced a fast engine using symbolic derivatives. It implements seldom-included intersection and complement and efficiently implements lookaround, which had been exclusive to backtracking engines.

#unix #computerscience

Out of context quote from a conversation with Jen.

Magneto-optical data recovery is going well so far! Watching The Next Generation while each 622.1 MiB side is imaged.

#retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

This is very funny

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/117241250895962141

Ah, fuck.

Anyone got a recommendation for where to go instead?

I use their DNS, VPS, and static site build/hosting.

Came back to my machine, and the laptop screen was blank.

Tried to wake it- nothing.

Rebooted, and it now only uses external monitors :/

Even xrandr doesn't see the other display any more.

How am I supposed to work out when the gym bros keep hogging the bench?

#cats #catsofmastodon

(explanation: the word for both cat and modem is māo, 猫)

Daughter just got home from school, upset that the teacher was deleting her comments from the chat.

Her comments were that she was disappointed the teacher had used "AI" to generate a poster.

It was the art teacher.

It was a poster promoting an upcoming art competition.

Hey #bike / #bicycle people:

Any advice on what to look for when buying a bike trailer?

Edit: for clarity, I mean a trailer to tow behind my bike and carry my shopping, etc.

@daedalus saw this on a bus this weekend, and wondered if it's the counterpart to Hexagon Security...

Saw seven cats this #caturday, declaring it a success.

#cats #catsofmastodon

Please be sure not to accidentally commit genocide when using an AI to disguise your plagiarism by replacing words with synonyms.

(presumably it was originally "1 mL of the final solution")

via r/chemistry: https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1vimpfx/a_tool_used_to_rephrase_plagiarised_text_changed/

Thought for the day:

Be the sort of employer people don't feel the need to unionise against.

[And help them if they decide to!]