<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: ddellacosta</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ddellacosta</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:49:15 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=ddellacosta" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Twelve-Tone Composition"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a pretty simplified and inverted way to look at it in my opinion.<p>In many ways atonality was the inevitable direction that late 19th century Romanticism was moving in, with increasingly ambiguous tonality expressed by composers like Wagner and Mahler. In the early 20th century there was an explosion of new approaches and techniques which started from this basis and pushed tonal approaches to the breaking point and beyond. Composers including Ives, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and others were all trying new things within the realm of atonality and while we tend to look back and map history into narrow movements and philosophies to suit our current thinking, I don't think there was necessarily such a "serialism period" so much as there was the Second Viennese school along with a bunch of other composers trying things out at the same time. And even within the Second Viennese school the approaches were distinct; Berg is known for being a bit more "loose" and romantic in his usage of 12-tone technique vs. the rigid formalist Webern.<p>Leaving aside the dubious assertions of what is or is not listenable, the reality is that art music in the 20th century became more and more fragmented as the entire music scene changed around the world. Minimalism was just one thing that happened after serialism. Even if we exclusively focus on music labeled "European Art Music" the 20th century was a period of incredible experimentation and exploration with many different approaches to tonality (and atonality) introduced.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:47:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441420</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Myself and most other programmers I know have at least once (more like 100 times) had the experience where you can't figure something out in some code you've been staring at for an hour, then another person comes along and immediately sees an obvious glaring error that you missed.<p>I can only imagine the same thing happens in newsrooms with text, especially when it is visibly very similar, like "2002" and "2022."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:26:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441104</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441104</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441104</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Type systems are leaky abstractions: the case of Map.take!/2"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> The basis of Erlang/Elixir/Clojure is that structs are just inflexible maps.<p>I mean the difference is that Erlang and Elixir have high-quality pattern matching baked in, not to mention stuff like dialyzer and set-theoretic types.<p>Clojure has multi-methods I guess, and stuff like defrecord that no one uses...and the turd that is spec. In my experience every Clojure codebase turns into map soup at some point without a tremendous amount of manual labor.<p>...so it's not as black and white as you're saying, I guess is my point. And for example, I'd always take Haskell over Erlang or Elixir even though Haskell's records are widely and justifiably derided, because the language taken as a whole is that much nicer to use, and stuff like lens smooths some of the rough edges over pretty well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:18:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47432102</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47432102</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47432102</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Type systems are leaky abstractions: the case of Map.take!/2"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I lol'ed</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 21:53:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431898</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431898</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47431898</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Type systems are leaky abstractions: the case of Map.take!/2"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I dream of a day when everyone is using statically typed languages that support row polymorphism a la PureScript (<a href="https://book.purescript.org/chapter4.html#record-patterns-and-row-polymorphism" rel="nofollow">https://book.purescript.org/chapter4.html#record-patterns-an...</a>)...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:46:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401402</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401402</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401402</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Total digression but yeah, that layout is stupid and the way those words are dropped in using Romaji makes no sense. That's not how Japanese people lay out pages on the web. In fact I don't think I've ever seen a Japanese web page laid out like a book like this, and in general I'd expect the English proper nouns and words that don't have obvious translations to get transliterated into Katakana. Smells like automatic conversion added by someone not really familiar with common practices for presenting Japanese on the web.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:50:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313598</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313598</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313598</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree, Clare Grogan is still who I picture when I think of Kochanski tbh, I loved her energy</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:05:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185602</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185602</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185602</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Haha I went and actually looked and yep, that's it...no wonder I couldn't remember</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:27:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185128</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185128</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185128</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As an American, Red Dwarf along with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy created a deep appreciation both for British humor and funny sci-fi in my adolescent self. I now own the box set on DVD and even have a random Red Dwarf novel I got at a yard sale (I forget which one of them wrote it though).<p>RIP Rob! Will be having a vindaloo, lager, and maybe some fish (Fish! Fish! Fish!) later in your honor<p>(EDIT: 100% talking about the UK version here, had no idea or forgot there _was_ an American version)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:15:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184968</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184968</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47184968</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "The Monad Called Free (2014)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah this is such an important blog for Haskell.<p>A classic that everyone should read: <a href="http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads-and.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monad...</a><p>I attended a talk of his at Papers We Love at Strange Loop in 2018, I didn't really read the description and I was vaguely expecting something Haskell related, and instead got this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=766obijdpuU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=766obijdpuU</a><p>I could barely understand it, but was impressed by what I could grasp. Dan Piponi's range is amazing, dude is brilliant</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:29:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915639</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915639</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46915639</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Young adults report lower life satisfaction in Sweden"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> They blamed social media for Americans.<p>I think you meant "blamed Americans for social media" but at this point they both kinda fit</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:29:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876004</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876004</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46876004</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "An Unfolding Scientific Revolution in Cosmology"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Heh <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmJkMhmrVI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbmJkMhmrVI</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 20:25:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711076</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711076</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711076</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Welp not much I can say to that or to RandallBrown's response, seems obvious our experience and way of thinking is pretty different on this matter.<p>(EDIT: Also fwiw I often use a spoon or whatever to scoop things into the bowl, vs. pouring, which means I have more control but can still offload the measuring part to the scale...)<p>Whatever gets the delicious baked goods in your mouth I guess</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:22:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709442</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709442</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709442</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "An Unfolding Scientific Revolution in Cosmology"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> In hindsight, the ‘seemingly’ part is key. When astronomers first gazed beyond the solar system, they noticed systematic deviations from the predictions of Newtonian gravity. Most scientists assumed that the problem was due to missing mass. But today, there is mounting evidence that this hypothesis is false, and that the observed discrepancy is caused by a breakdown of Newtonian physics. However, like the geocentric model of antiquity, the dark-matter paradigm lumbers on as the dominant belief, largely unfazed by the challenging evidence.<p>Yeah given that this blog is about "new ideas in economics and the social sciences" I was already feeling a bit skeptical, but when I got to this point and saw no mention of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Cluster</a> (I did not bother looking at the 4-year-old video linked to in that paragraph), I had to put this piece down. I subscribe to a number of astronomy youtubers and I have not heard anyone with data to back them up making this assertion.<p>As a counterpoint example, here's Dr. Becky (<a href="https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/smethurst" rel="nofollow">https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/smethurst</a>) from ~4 months ago obviously not coming from the perspective that dark matter is being ruled out, and right out of the gate she refers back to another piece talking about why we are (so far) convinced dark matter is legitimate: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyZzzgoLNE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyZzzgoLNE</a><p>So, yeah, as jfengel says...this seems like more MOND again from a dilettante. Skip it</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:56:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709048</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709048</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709048</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As a pretty experienced American home baker I don't understand how you can assert that it's faster to measure volume with cups or etc. than to put a bowl on a scale and simply pour stuff in, measuring everything in grams. It's not even close in terms of speed, convenience, _and_ accuracy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:53:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708224</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708224</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708224</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "What happened to WebAssembly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Makes me sad that PureScript doesn't have more adoption, not that I'm surprised. It's orders of magnitude better than Elm and even improves upon Haskell in some meaningful ways (row polymorphism).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 21:02:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46559289</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46559289</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46559289</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "James Moylan, engineer behind arrow signaling which side to refuel a car, dies"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You learn something new every day huh!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:21:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466333</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Liskell – Haskell Semantics with Lisp Syntax [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is not a direct response to the question of how laziness obviates the need for macros, but it mentions some specific relevant cases:<p><a href="https://augustss.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-evaluation-in.html" rel="nofollow">https://augustss.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-points-for-lazy-e...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:37:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294888</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294888</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294888</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Claude 4.5 Opus’ Soul Document"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torment_Nexus" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torment_Nexus</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:53:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46125917</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46125917</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46125917</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by ddellacosta in "Ruby is not a serious programming language"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't actually disagree but you could find similar criteria and write a similar piece for the vast majority of "professional" programming languages, including e.g. Python, JS, and C++, so this is kinda silly. "Computing is a pop culture" remains true, and the existence of this article in a magazine like Wired is a perfect example of that.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:07:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108317</link><dc:creator>ddellacosta</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108317</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108317</guid></item></channel></rss>