Website of Noon van der Silk
Posted on July 24, 2026 by Noon van der Silk A stack of branches. You might’ve already guessed what it is: stacked branches. But if you didn’t already know that, don’t worry, we’ll go over it shortly. But first, let’s discuss the problem. AI-generated code is hard to review Pretty much everyone using AI has this problem at the moment; it’s moderately easy to generate code that is mostly coherent,…
Posted on January 7, 2025 by Noon van der Silk You may find yourself in the following situation: You have a new computer, It requires the some latest kernel features to work (perhaps for WiFi or something else), You want to install NixOS, And the latest ISO you download doesn’t work. One potential reason for the failure could be that your new computer requires the latest linux kernelPackages in…
Posted on May 6, 2024 by Noon van der Silk As part of the interview process for a company I was recently rejected by, I wrote a blog post about HTMX and Haskell (and, JavaScript, but that was just a requirement :D). I think the post is interesting in any case, so here it is :) The Haskell component is in the Bonus content . If you want to skip straight to the code, you can just go direct to the…
Posted on April 6, 2024 by Noon van der Silk We are all familiar with the standard kanban/agile board settings: Backlog: Things we’re ignoring for now Todo: Stuff we’ve got to do this “sprint” In progress: Stuff we’re working on now Done Blocked There are many variants on these names, but they’ve remained pretty standard over all the organisations I’ve worked in. I myself now prefer a…
Posted on March 29, 2022 by Noon van der Silk Background I can’t remember when I first stumbled across SciRate . I’d had a fascination with scientific papers for many years, well before actually attending university (as a mature-age student) and starting to learn more formally. I would store them in a variety of ways, print them out and hang them up in my house; send them to myself on a mailing…
Posted on March 16, 2022 by Noon van der Silk You were born, cried, learned, made friends, and talked to no-one. You have survived off the land; launched a startup (the best one), managed thousands of people, and never been able to get a job, no matter what your resume says or how you change your name. You have travelled; and you have lived alone, isolated, and cold. You have been the best and…
Posted on June 3, 2021 by Noon van der Silk A classic Australian movie : A nightmare chase through hell in a never-ending, unrequited daisy chain of desire… . What is time? How do we measure a life? How many things did you get done today? What are you working on tomorrow!? Can you come hang out on Sunday!!? Recently, and also always, I’ve been thinking about how to manage a list of todos. During…
Posted on February 14, 2021 by Noon van der Silk Continuing the tradition started in 2018 , continued in 2019 over on the Braneshop blog , I was reminded I haven’t posted the books I read in 2020 yet. So, here we are: How Long ’til Black Future Month? by Jemisin, N.K. As a big fan of N.K. Jemisin I just wanted to read more of what she’d written. This is good for that; it’s a really nice dip-in to…
Posted on October 12, 2020 by Noon van der Silk So, I’m very excited to share that we’re moving overseas! We’re headed to Cambridge in the UK at the end of this month. I’m very lucky to be starting work with a very cool quantum computing company: Riverlane . Leaving Melbourne It’s going to be interesting leaving Melbourne. I’ve lived here all my life basically, and I’ve found a really nice group…
Posted on October 1, 2020 by Noon van der Silk Inspired by this recent paper - Towards decolonising computational sciences - I thought it might be a nice idea to write down a list of privileges that I can identify I have. I’ll probably update this list as I think of them. My list: White, Male, Cisgendered: I don’t often feel out of place. Healthy: Nothing has prevented me from finding work.…