I've had reasonable results from using AI to analyse code ("convert this code into a method call graph in graphml format" or similar). Apart from hallucinating one of the edges, this worked reasonably well to throw this into yED and give me a view on the code.
An alternative that occurred to me the other day is, could a PR be broken down into separate changes? As in, break it into a) a commit renaming a variable b) another commit making the functional change c) ...
Feel like there are PR analysis tools out there already for this :)
> The same people who brought back witching burning
Seems like it was more complex than that :
> Authors have debated whether witch trials were more intense in Catholic or Protestant regions; however, the intensity had not so much to do with Catholicism or Protestantism, as both regions experienced a varied intensity of witchcraft persecutions.
> The Witch Trials of Trier took place in the independent Catholic diocese of Trier in the Holy Roman Empire in present day Germany ... Between 1587 and 1593, 368 people were burned alive for sorcery in twenty-two villages, and in 1588, two villages were left with only one female inhabitant in each
> The son of a Puritan minister, Hopkins began his career as a witch-finder in March 1644 and lasted until his retirement in 1647. Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne sent more accused people to be hanged for witchcraft than all the other witch-hunters in England of the previous 160 years
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Hopkins
Note that in Scotland and England, witches were hanged, not burned.
Generally it seems it was mostly in areas where Catholicism and Protestantism were in close contact and had compete for believers or in protestant dominated areas.
The Spanish inquisition for the most pairt maintained the medieval view that witchcraft could not exist from a theological perspective and continued prosecuting belief in it as a heresy.
I'm not defending the church, though. They declared witchcraft to be an irrational superstition to delegitimize pagan beliefs a few centuries earlier yet had no qualms about embracing the same beliefs to gain a competitive edge when competing against protestants.
> BTW, the mentioning of HF will likely horrify chem-phobic readers
I would not say I am chem-phobic, but yes indeed that stood out. HF is nasty stuff, and yes requires some care I suspect.
The other details are fascinating, though - the intersection of mechanical, crystallographic, and RF (?) properties of a crystal that you can adjust through abrasives and selection of the cut.
Working with HF was extremely difficult before WWII, but it has become much easier after the invention of Teflon.
Teflon is not affected by HF, so if you use only vessels of Teflon to hold the HF solution and tweezers made of Teflon for handling anything that you submerge in the solution of HF, it works fine.
Besides using Teflon for anything that is in contact with the HF solution, you must do all work under a hood that evacuates the vapors of HF emitted by the solution, otherwise handling a HF solution would be very dangerous. It is good that gaseous HF is lighter than air, so after being evacuated it will continue to rise in the air, while becoming more and more diluted.
In my case the HF came in small black plastic cylindrical bottles of 50 perhaps 75 ml (could have been 100ml but that seems a bit big). Back then they were commonly available at local hardware stores.
The bottle was flat on top from which protruded its 'neck' — more a threaded spigot of perhaps 8mm in dia. and about 10 to 12mm high with a small hole in it for the HF to exit. A red plastic cap screwed onto the thread to seal the bottle.
If the bottle were ever knocked over (which it never was) very little would have spilled out (picture the threaded top and screw cap on the small bottles of Tabasco sauce and you've pretty much got it).
So the HF only came out in drops which were poured directly into a small plastic beaker of about 50ml containing about 20ml of H2O and the crystal. The crystal rested on some finely corrugated plastic and not lying flat on the bottom to ensure the etching process was reasonably uniform.
The operation was done outside and if I recall the HF was neutralised with NaOH.
The soln was very dilute and the process could easily take over an hour and was used mainly to finish off crystals that had already been through the abrasive process.
I don't know what type of plastic the bottle was made of but it was jet black.
The idea iiuc, is that pattern formation in animals depends on molecules diffusing through the growing system (the body) and reacting where the waves of molecules overlap.
To me , the 1952 paper is very important, since it shows up in theoretical biology a lot. Seeing generality at all these different emergence levels is really exciting to me. (and it makes me sad when others don't see it). Can you imagine? Set up a few gradients, and now you have coordinates. Put all the bits where they're supposed to go like uhhh... GLSL sort of loosly fits. How cool is THAT?
More recently I've gotten into all sorts of debates on HN by people who like Searle. Often the argument goes "Turing is all wrong, he knows nothing about biology."
Turns out towards the end of his life he was applying his knowledge to biology. Most of which experimentally verified, besides!
(ps. just to be sure: Never wondered how DNA encodes the trick? You started out as a clump of cells, all the same. How did one part decide to become the tip of your nose, and the other the tips of your toes? Segmentation controlled by Turing patterns all the way down!)
Oh! I really liked the essay - the idea that French 'analysis' was seen as a dangerous modern invention and contrasted with 'synthetic' geometric understanding of the world had political implications is fascinating. There could be parallels with the present day use of computer modelling (and now AI) being seen as a risky way to organise and run societies.
I agree that there is a lot of vague language around the practice of mathematics as a social and philosophical construct ('analysts' vs 'synthetics') but I'm not sure how that indicates the author does not understand what truth is. My understanding of the history of mathematics and science is that these areas of knowledge were much more intertwined with philosophy and religion than they are considered to be today.
So Newton saw no issue with working on the calculus at the same time as being an alchemist and a non-trinitarian. Understanding the world was often a religious activity - by understanding Nature, you understood God's creation - and in Naples it seems that understanding analysis was tied to certain political and nationalist ideas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_of_Chaos
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