Some not so random links collected while browsing the interweb this month.
Myths of Human genetics, in which we learn to use cat coat instead of human genetics to teach basic genetic concepts.
Learning APL. Never got into APL, although I have deep memories of Jan de Leeuw’s implementation in R, but I thought this might interest some readers.
Introducing citations!, in which we learn that Org mode recently got a proper citation format. I tried a lot of backends (HTML, Pandoc) to get citations done right, but I was really missing such a native support.
Haskell for the Elm Enthusiast: “One way in which Haskell is different from both Elm and Rails is that it is not particularly opinionated. Often the Haskell ecosystem offers multiple different ways to do one particular thing.”
Philosophies of Rust and Haskell. I really like FPComplete blog posts, they are both instructive and they generally highlight nice features of a language or point to useful references. You may also like the Applied Haskell Syllabus.
Apple’s Plan to “Think Different” About Encryption Opens a Backdoor to Your Private Life. A lot of public discussions and personal blog posts have been posted since I first read this article. Needless to say, I don’t really care since I no longer use Apple services other than for streaming some music in my living room, but this inevitably leads to questions, isn’t it? Apple is way long from the Microsoft EEE philosophy (because they always will have fewer users), still they persist in imposing new standards with the hope users will finally take it for granted — this does not apply to this particular case, but I remember lot of decisions that were made that went the opposite way of what would have benefited the developers’ community. See also An Apple affray.
Static and dynamic network visualization with R, following a recommendation made by François on Twitter.
Early Retirement, in which we learn that retiring before 40 might be a good decision (assuming like the author that you have the financial means).
NeoVims built-in Language Server Client and why you should use it. Agree.
When is memoization automatic in GHC Haskell?. TL;DR: GHC does not memoize functions.
I learned that there’s something like ExplainShell, and it does a pretty nice job.
NetBSD Explained: The Unix System That Can Run on Anything: “You can even find a port for the Sega Dreamcast game console. Many people looking for new software to run on older hardware find NetBSD attractive. If you can’t find a Linux distro to run on your old machines, it’s a good place to look.”
GNU nano is my editor of choice. I think I’ve used nano twice in the past. Never liked it. Vi is available on every Linux/macOS systems, though.
On Digital Minimalism. Late to the party — I think I’ve read every single article on digital minimalism, still worth the read.
Less can be more. A natural consequence of the preceding principle is that you should avoid wasting your limited time and attention on low-value online activities, and instead focus on the much smaller number of activities that return the most value for your life. This is a basic 80/20 analysis: doing less, but focusing on higher quality, can generate more total value.