Hacker News: 38529977thrw

New comment by 38529977thrw in "'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israeli arrest, torture"

38529977thrw — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 01:54:04 +0000

John J. Mearsheimer has weighed in on characterizing what Israel is doing against the Palestinians.

"I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.

What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”

Let me elaborate [...]"

source: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-...

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]"

38529977thrw — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 16:14:49 +0000

Thanks. Was wondering about electrostatic myself. Still wondering how the grate itself doesn't get stained due to the air flow.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Car Manufacturing Process Overview [video]"

38529977thrw — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 15:15:06 +0000

Interested in an informed comment on the paint application part. How do they keep those spray rooms clean from paint? I noticed the robots were covered up to protect against the spray but the floor was pristine.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps"

38529977thrw — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:57:25 +0000

It is odd since Ada is DoD's (bastard?) child and NSA is DoD but a little digging you get this from 1997 (with a singular mention of the word "safety"):

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5463/chapter/3

tldr; seems to be that the software development world has changed from the days that DoD was the "dominant" software developer, and Ada in the interim did not get adopted by the commercial sector (with safety critical exceptions in aerospace, etc. noted).

New comment by 38529977thrw in "The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps"

38529977thrw — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 14:50:18 +0000

the internet says "it tries to be".

http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/rm12_w_tc1/html/RM-13-9-1....

https://old.reddit.com/r/ada/comments/mme3jk/is_ada_memory_s...

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Text Editor Data Structures: Rethinking Undo"

38529977thrw — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 20:20:05 +0000

> ":earlier 15 minutes" takes you to the code as it was 15 minutes ago.

TIL. Very cool. tnx

New comment by 38529977thrw in "The pro-Israel information war"

38529977thrw — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 15:14:42 +0000

It is an interesting contrast to the situation in 'editorial rooms' (not virtual tiktok rooms) where most decision makers globally get their information. Some head of state in country X (entangled "innocent"* bystander state) is being bombarded by pro-Israeli 'official news organs' not some rando with a tiktok account.

* All those ignored UN resolutions

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Design Patterns in Dynamic Programming by Peter Norvig [pdf]"

38529977thrw — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 15:10:17 +0000

> Command(move(D)) -> “go”, Direction(D)

Did Rob Pike read this back in the day?

New comment by 38529977thrw in "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"

38529977thrw — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 02:39:41 +0000

The class that prints money and operates fractional reserve banks (in partnership with your local government) extracts a cut from everyone that touches or must use ("legal tender") their money. It's a function of interest rates and the fractional reserve multiple (k). Interest is paid on fictional moneys (accounting fiction) that is canceled but k-1/k fraction of the interest paid on the fictional money goes into the banker pockets. So implicitly (rk-r)/(rk+k) of the economy denominated by that money is exploitation of actual work done to make interest payments on non-existent monies. It's a great scam and it's nicely setup since all direct parties involved (depositors and borrowers) are made whole. But that portion of interest on magic money that bankers pocket was the product of actual work. It's a great racket. No wonder they fight world wars over who gets to print the magic money.

p.s. some basic math for the down voters. the most basic model with loans issued and serviced in one cycle.

D = total deposits

k = fractional reserve multiple. (iirc ~23 in US?)

r = interest rate. we'll keep things simple, and assume bank interest rate is same for depositor (rd) and borrower (rb) but usually rb > rd.

B = total loans issued = k * D

I = total interest earned = B * r

L = total liability of banker to depositors = D * (r + 1)

I' = total interest liability of banker to depositors = D * r

F = Fictional money created on loan issuance and destroyed on loan conclusion = D * ( k - 1).

X = Exploited wealth from public at large where interest paid for fictional money is wealth extracted structurally by the banking institution. X = I - I' = F * r

It's a nice chunk of money*. So X is wealth extracted from the society that must use a debt instrument that is created by fractional reserve banking. It is structural and "owner" and "worker" alike, anyone who has to make non-fictional interest payments, is affected.

* B = "United States Total Loans was reported at 12,228.056 USD bn in Oct 2023" /G

from Google "Depending on the terms of your loan, you may expect to pay as much as 50% of the mortgage in interest. The point at which you begin paying more principal than interest is known as the tipping point. This period of your loan depends on your interest rate and your loan term"

50%. k-1/k of that is wealth extracted from society. @k=23, 22/23 ~ 95%. Chew on that. The X factor.

So whether you are Elon Musk borrowing billions or Joe Schmoe borrowing for a car or a student for a loan, the overwhelming portion of the interest you pay is wealth extracted by a mechanism that were it not enforced by law, it would be blatant fraud.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "A Schism in the OpenPGP World"

38529977thrw — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 20:24:08 +0000

None of this explains why I need to give you my telephone number to get on your boat.

Identity is the core of the matter and that is invariant of the modes of transport. On top of that comes key management. On top of that you can build your secure application on whatever platform.

Total end to end encryption can only be built on top of identity and never (ever) on a specific channel. And TE2E should be the social goal.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "The Sheep Incident (2008)"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 23:54:19 +0000

"The outrage over the incident was intensified just a year later when the US media was tipped off to the existence of CHASE. The Cut Holes And Sink ‘Em program was the Army’s plan for discreetly disposing of dangerous surplus materials. It involved the scuttling of ships loaded with the deadly cargo up to 250 miles offshore. Unfortunately for the US Army’s PR department, some of the materials involved were mustard gas, Sarin, and VX. Apparently a good many people had serious misgivings about dumping dangerous chemicals into the ocean. These concerns were further reinforced by the fact that the Army itself wasn’t sure whether or not the metal and concrete slabs that housed the chemicals would survive the massive pressure during their 16,000 foot descent to the ocean floor."

I read that and the first thing that popped into my head was "the banality of evil".

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Why is Jepsen written in Clojure?"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 16:18:18 +0000

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Always interested in your thoughts on software matters.

You know my professional issue with Clojure is that it attracts poseurs. It's that strange spot in PLT that to appreciate it requires sophistication and experience yet barrier to entry (contra say Haskell) is much much lower and does not require the same. So you can get bragging rights without being someone like you who actually understands the cost equations in toto in context of picking languages. This human factor coupled with the technical matter of Clojure not being ideally suited for large scale code / long running / typical IT fubar realities.

You mentioned macros. I can tell you about 'sacred macros' that must not be touched :) Clojure may have addressed software compatibility but it has a human resources compatibility issue.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 14:15:02 +0000

p.s. it appears (speaking as an Iranian) that there does seem to be a overall cultural element that has contributed to this matter: information is highly compartmentalized (and likely has always been) in Iranian society, down to the family unit with parents carefully curating what aspects of family history is discussed in front of adults or when children are present. Per this theory, the information was there but the channels for its dissemination were selective and regrettably all bound up with state structures that went belly up and not maintained in the larger collective oral lore in accurate form. So for example, Shahnameh clearly mismaps known historic figures for mythical ones so some form of preservation was maintained but this was couched in occult symbolism that is accessible to a much more limited readership.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Why is Jepsen written in Clojure?"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 14:07:21 +0000

Just for the record, in Java (JVM) this is done (routinely circa first 'bean containers' of ancient history) via interfaces and class loaders. Using Java I can have n distinct versions of a class each implementing the same interface in the same process as long it is the interface reference that is passed around.

> immutability

Make a case for immutability being so critical to HMR. How does an immutable data allow for swapping of code.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 13:18:40 +0000

Financial or not, clearly the notion of maintaining records was not foreign matter to these Persians.

> It was likely closer to a 100 years or so. e.g. it seems that by the time of the Parthian empire the Greeks and Roman "knew" considerably more about the Achaemenid Persia than the Persian themselves.

That is a pretty ridiculous notion. First let's break down what you mean by Persians. Do you mean a Dehghaan (land owner / farmer) or a member of the ruling families or some random Persian cranking around somewhere? How about Greece? Did Greeks uniformly had access to the same knowledge about Greeks and Greece?

So we are talking about either what outsiders or national elite classes knew and maintained. And your 100 year limit is based on the ignorance of the foreigners and various bits of court gossip, (Greek) mercenaries, and whatever else passed for a "public space of discourse" back then. Correspondences, tavern songs, stuff like that.

Iran has suffered 3 cataclysmic invasions and each featured destruction of the state and intelligentsia. For this reason it is 100% true that quite a lot of Iran's history was "news" to latter day Iranians but to claim someone of a given cultural and educational background in Persia in say early years of Hellenic occupation had no clue what had happened does not seem reasonable. At all.

New comment by 38529977thrw in "Why is Jepsen written in Clojure?"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 13:09:15 +0000

It would have been worthwhile for them to mention why not use Java. I mean, grep for Java and JVM and that short blog lights up! It was good that they did stress the (very) small team size for the product as well. This was an aesthetic choice and I wish he had stressed that.

Java remains an excellent choice for concurrent systems, with a commonly accepted static type system, and all "java.util.concurrent" and the rest of JVM are native and the language and tools do scale to even monstrous sized "teams".

New comment by 38529977thrw in "According to Plutarch, Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates"

38529977thrw — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 04:32:48 +0000

> (it probably wasn't that clear to the Persians themselves what might have happened to one of their previous rulers after a generation or two)

Let's see:

Persians of a generation or two after Cyrus are Dariush and Xerxes. These guys were running a multi-national empire, had invented the satrap system to administer foreign conquests, were in the process of taking over Egypt, digging canals, had a relay system mail network with a catchy motto (per Mr. H himself!) of "neither rain nor snow blah blah blah" (likely in Aramaic), taking the time to carve in a pretty tough to reach spot in a mountain face in western Iran the specifics of which uppity rebel was put down, and how. Did they really lose track of what happened to their grandparents' (generation)?

That specific dynasty maintained meticulous records in Persepolis. Those archive and whatever historic records they may have contained however went up in smoke with the rest of the complex when Alexander paid a visit.

So, that contemporary Greeks (or any other non-Persians in the greater empire) had little access to Persian empire records and thus relied on oral lore seems to be a given. But that has little bearing on whether Persians were generationally clueless about their grand parents as you allege, or not.