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My favorite short story from Italo Calvino is The Distance of the Moon. RadioLab did an episode with it being read by Liev Schreiber [1] and it's wonderful! I believe it partly inspired a Disney Pixar short by the name La Luna [2].

[1]: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/28257...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbuq7w3ZDUQ


The author's conclusion:

I have argued that C’s enduring popularity is wrongly ascribed to performance concerns; in reality one large component of it (the “application” component) owes to decades-old gaps in migration and integration support among proposed alternatives; another large component of it (the “systems”component) owes to a fundamental and distinctive property of the language which I have called its communicativity, and for which neither migration nor integration can be sufficient. I have also argued that the problems symptomatic of C code today are wrongly ascribed to the C language; in reality they relate to its implementations, and where for each problem the research literature presents compelling alternative implementation approaches. From this, many of the orthodox attitudes around C are ill-founded. There is no particular need to rewrite existing C code, provided the same benefit can be obtained more cheaply by alternative implementations of C. Nor is there a need to abandon C as a legitimate choice of language for new code, since C’s distinctive features offer unique value in some cases. The equivocation of “managed” with “safe”implementations, and indeed the confusion of languages with their implementations, have obscured these points. Rather than abandoning C and simply embracing new languages implemented along established, contemporary lines, I believe a more feasible path to our desired ends lies in both better and materially different implementations of both C and non-C languages alike. These implementations must subscribe to different principles, emphasising heterarchy, plurality and co-existence, placing higher premium on the concerns of (in application code) migration and interoperation, and (in the case of systems code) communicativity. My concrete suggestions—in particular, to implement a“safe C”, and to focus attention on communicativity issues in this and any proposed “better C”—remain unproven, and perhaps serve better as the beginning of a thought process than as a certain destination. C is far from sacred, and I look forward to its replacements—but they must not forget the importance of communicating with aliens.


I don't know if this counts, but I solved [problem A5 on the 2005 Putnam exam](https://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/2005.pdf) using this method.


So what parameter did you introduce?


You can find the author's responses at this link: https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css/issues/432


So their reason seems to involve some usage of the NES Ness pun, but does that pun work in Japanese? Is there an equivalent shortening of Famicom, and does Ness's Japanese name bare any relation?

Pure curiosity, the author can do what they want.


According to the Earthbound wiki, the default name of the protagonist in Mother 2 (the Japanese version of Earthbound) is ネス (Ness), which doesn't really resemble the name of the Japanese name of the console (Super Famicom).

The default name of the protagonist of Mother 1 (released on the original Nintendo Famicom) was... ニンテン (Ninten).


Thanks, all that's left is whether the term NES is common in Japan as one of the bizarre American loan words for Japanese things.

Though, I suppose the author seems to somewhat regularly use the English parts of the internet. They'd pick up the term even if it wasn't common.


The Japanese slang terms for the NES/SNES are "Famicom" and "Sufami" respectively. HAL Laboratories may not have felt that those terms would make for a good protagonist name, especially since the characters are supposed to be American with American sounding names (like Jeff and Paula). But "Ness" is an anagram of SNES and is similar enough to other English names like Jess, Jeff, etc. But it's important to note that in Earthbound, the name Ness is not so much the default name as it is the first of the suggested names if you "Don't Care" what the protagonist's name is. In the Japanese manual in fact, the Ness character's title is "Me" and in parenthesis it says "Nesu" and Jeff, Paula, and Poo are named Friends 1, 2, and 3. [1]

So even though NES might not have been a term known to the general Japanes public, it didn't need to be. Ness is not the intended name of the character, it is only the most common suggested name and hence more like an easter egg.

[1] https://motherforever.net/official-artwork-of-mother-2/


Thank you. When I asked I was sure there'd be bigger Mother 2 fans than me that could answer. Rockin!


Considering that Earthbound parodied Western cultural stuff, the names probably wouldn't need to be Japan-specific.


On a somewhat related note, I'd been internally pronouncing `reflog` in `git reflog` as REE-FLOG for the longest time. It wasn't until I finally needed to use it that REF-LOG made a lot more sense!


Reflog, for when the person hasn’t been beaten enough already.


I still involuntarily vocalize it that way everytime I see it.


Consider adding this comment on the grandparent. Thank you!


The author wrote a follow-up article as well: https://thegradient.pub/a-speech-to-text-practitioners-criti...


And a corresponding HN thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790188


Not that it's important making this distinction, but what you're describing doesn't sound like occupational burnout; you've listed significant trauma that are only exacerbating your work-related stress, and I'm really sorry you're going through this!

First, I would agree with @codingslave in that you SHOULD NOT quit your job, if you can help it. Let me explain: Work provides important scaffolding when you are in a rut. It provides routine and social contact. Without it, it is possible you might start sliding into poor sleeping habits and withdrawing socially, which can make things even worse. At the very least, find a less stressful job to move to before leaving your current one. If this is hard to do, please reach out to family or friends for help. Please understand that it's absolutely okay to struggle and have bad days. Give yourself permission to feel.

Second, it's awesome that you're seeing a medical professional/therapist about this, and I encourage you to keep doing so regularly. "What should I do?" I think you're approaching this well. I wish you the best!


> First, I would agree with @codingslave in that you SHOULD NOT quit your job

I agree with this. There was a period of several years when I was suffering from mysterious medical issues that made functioning at work very difficult. Fortunately, I had a therapist at the time. At times I told my therapist that maybe I should go on medical disability.

My therapist advised that I should under no circumstances go on long-term disability. That if I did, I would likely end up being on medical disability for the rest of my life, and likely sit around being depressed forever.

Eventually, the mysterious medical issues went away, and I had managed to keep my job and sanity in the meantime.

I'm sorry that that OP has been going through so much. I know how rough this type of thing is, and it's truly hell on earth. What's always worked for me is to just fake it til you make it. Take everything one day at a time. Work towards getting your life to where you want it to be when you have the wherewithal. Do things that you find to be fun when you can. Eventually, a day comes when things are not so shitty anymore, and when that day comes, you'll be happy that you persevered.


I go through regular bouts of depression and burnout due to lifestyle, at this point they're more like colds as I handle them quickly with a system(due to how the business is doing/what's happening in life).

Others can feel free to agree or disagree with me, this is what works for me:

Read - A minor level of isolation is okay as long as it's not with your thoughts, read something uplifting or insightful (I recently read the Rosie Result, and Meditations post breakup).

Active - Physically, join a gym or running group, something social to at least be around people, you don't necessarily have to engage, but in climbing gyms for example, people tend to.

Active - Socially, like many have said: keep the job, join a group where you can help others, there are plenty of chances to volunteer, or join groups where you can help in Toronto, it's useful for distracting from what was, and thinking more about what can be. Talk to friends about your issues, maybe they're been through something like it and can help unlock an important facet as to why you're feeling the way you are.

Consistency - a pattern will help you to keep moving along, I can't stress enough that as long as there's no serious underlying psychological issue, only time and mental distractions will help.

Mental - Professional - Get help (I see that you are which is amazing, this is only to cover my suggestions). A good professional can help guide you along if you're willing to help them.

Mental - Personal - Meditation helps, I've recently been doing transcendental meditation, and honestly, it's pretty rad. It's not life changing, but it tones down the thoughts by a notch, at first the 20 minutes seems like forever, but after a couple of weeks, it's over in no time.

Time - Sometimes no matter how good your systems are, mental/emotional depression and burnout are no different that a cut, or broken bone. They need time, and no modern technology will accelerate it past the bodies maximum rate of healing.

Be patient, don't beat yourself up about not being productive, or positive, it's okay to feel like shit, or nothing at all, you win by not giving up, no matter how long it takes.


That is so true: “ SHOULD NOT quit your job, if you can help it. Let me explain: Work provides important scaffolding when you are in a rut. “


You’re spot on about the sliding into poor sleeping habits and withdrawing socially stuff. That hits so close to home it hurts :/

I’m on my way upwards now though, fortunately, hoping to find new employment soon.


Agree as well... Although working part-time is a quite nice option in my similar experience/or at least taking a job with limited working hours and slow paced environment. That offers enough opportunity to recharge from time to time.


What do you dislike about it?


I believe OP is referring to the terrible readability and color contrast, with that background color.


Terrible contrast? Firefox's accessibility inspector gives the text a contrast ratio of 15.17, with 4.5 being the minimum for what qualifies as good and 7 as the recommended minimum for good readability.

I change text colours in the web inspector a lot because plenty of websites these days are medium gray on light gray with a font-weight of 100, but this clearly isn't one of them. It's fine to say you don't like the colour, but the contrast is great.


It's not that the contrast is low (which is another problem on its own, I agree). It's the other extreme - too high of a contrast [1] by using a fully saturated yellow and black. The same reason you don't use #fff on #000.

[1] https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure...


Not to mention you can always toggle reader mode if you don't like the aesthetic choice of a blog.


Can you clarify whether you mean only the `attestationObject` should be sent to the server or that everything should be encoded as a single CBOR object and then sent to the server?


I mean why are ther multiple objects that have to be sent instead of a single cbor object. And why is some of it cbor and some of it json?


There are two complementary parts participating in the registration and authentication ceremonies, WebAuthn and CTAP. The response from the authenticator, as per the CTAP protocol standard, is encoded as CBOR. We need the JSON parts from the WebAuthn browser API for the parts in the ceremony that talk to the relying party (particularly for relaying the challenge responses, and allowed authenticator algorithms and behaviors).


Gets worse. Some of it is ASN.1 inside CBOR too. Some of it is custom binary format containing CBOR

The answer is as far as I know:

Backwards compatibility with bad decisions made in U2F

Also; relying on base64url is odd as there are no built in functions in JavaScript to encode and decode it.


> Also; relying on base64url is odd as there are no built in functions in JavaScript to encode and decode it.

I'm probably missing something, but aren't window.atob and window.btoa just that? It's not available in Node though.


btoa is base64 not base64url. And even if it was base64url, it takes a "binary string", so using it on, say, a Uint8Array is non-trivial.


Thank you, I didn't realize the URL safe variant of Base64 had a name and that it was this!


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