Hacker News: extempore

New comment by extempore in "AirPods Max"

extempore — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 21:09:09 +0000

Is there still no visual indicator that the wearer is in transparency mode? I am frequently in situations where I'm out in public and something warrants saying, where one or both of us are wearing airpods. Transparency mode would be worth so much more if other people were able to see that I can hear them, and vice versa. There have been so many improvements to apple devices which are obvious to anyone with an eye for what's missing but for which we've had to wait 5-10 years before they materialize, if ever. I am resigned to this being something I can look forward to in 2030.

New comment by extempore in "C’s Biggest Mistake (2009)"

extempore — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 14:39:19 +0000

He wasn’t being sarcastic.

New comment by extempore in "The Universe Knows Right from Wrong"

extempore — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 13:21:13 +0000

None of those things is murder, which is unlawful killing, usually premeditated. Maybe there is a society which doesn’t hold murder to be wrong, but I’ve never heard of it, and it’s hard to see how it could last.

New comment by extempore in "One company's plan to build a search engine Google can't beat"

extempore — Mon, 27 Jul 2020 07:39:05 +0000

FYI there’s a search mode called verbatim, and it’s not the same as putting the individual words in quotes. It’s hidden under the search tools menu. In my experience the results it provides always contain the search terms.

New comment by extempore in "Frank Abagnale on the death of the con artist and the rise of cybercrime"

extempore — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 18:43:04 +0000

Patch Me If You Can

New comment by extempore in "The Value of Grey Thinking (2016)"

extempore — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 18:23:52 +0000

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any, the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny.

No - not so that chance shall decide the affair, while you're passively standing there moping; but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what you're hoping.

- Piet Hein

New comment by extempore in "Lilith: x86-64 OS written in Crystal"

extempore — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 07:09:26 +0000

That seems decidedly unsafe to say, but even if you’re right, the second paragraph doesn’t follow from the first. “Everyone generalizes from one example! At least, I do.”

New comment by extempore in "Boeing Weighs Cutting or Halting 737 Max Production"

extempore — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 11:28:47 +0000

You are reading a great deal into an innocuous comment.

New comment by extempore in "New approaches shed light on the magnitude of sex differences in personality"

extempore — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 23:04:49 +0000

Did you read the memo as it was written, replete with links to supporting research? Or did you only read the maliciously leaked version which had stripped out all the links?

New comment by extempore in "New approaches shed light on the magnitude of sex differences in personality"

extempore — Sun, 15 Dec 2019 08:18:57 +0000

Stereotype threat is a product of publication bias. It doesn’t replicate. https://replicationindex.com/2017/04/07/hidden-figures-repli...

New comment by extempore in "Larry and Sergey: A Valediction"

extempore — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 04:09:02 +0000

The phrase “black art” in the paper refers to a technical challenge which only experts can tame, via methods which aren’t widely known. It has zero to do with ‘black arts” in the sense of witchcraft. The blog post drifts between these meanings, possibly with poetic intention.

New comment by extempore in "Show HN: AI Dungeon 2 – AI-generated text adventure built with 1.5B param GPT-2"

extempore — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 01:22:13 +0000

See also the video game with the unbeatable giant in Ender’s Game.

New comment by extempore in "My Decade as a Fugitive"

extempore — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 07:28:37 +0000

It says that, but it’s wrong. California has no statute of limitations on murder. This was recently demonstrated in dramatic fashion when the golden state killer was arrested for murders committed 30 years prior.

New comment by extempore in "CloudFlare is ruining the internet for me (2016)"

extempore — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 19:09:02 +0000

It’s interesting how smoothly this logic can move between “your country”, “your religion”, “your ethnicity”, “your ideology”. I am not making a case for or against any of these. But if pragmatic arguments for group punishment hold currency when there is known collateral damage, arguments from principle lose currency in equal measure.

New comment by extempore in "The Wave that changed the world (2017)"

extempore — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 19:02:55 +0000

I have a feeling you mean that they ignore known unknowns. Everyone ignores unknown knowns, because they are unknown.

New comment by extempore in "Why are cars killing more pedestrians?"

extempore — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 18:39:53 +0000

Consider that you were far more likely downvoted because you show no awareness that increasingly onerous penalties are ineffective deterrents when people don’t expect to get caught. If pickpockets can work the crowds at a pickpocket hanging, people will keep using their phones. Passing “tough on texting” legislation makes people feel like heroes but it is no panacea for the problem. And much of the danger in utilizing phones exists even when it is completely hands-free, which is unlikely to be banned even in the most restrictive case.

New comment by extempore in "Why are cars killing more pedestrians?"

extempore — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 18:31:28 +0000

Needlessly obnoxious retort, as gp is exactly right. There is no a priori reason to zero in on road design as a major contributory factor given the huge range of possibilities. One can easily apply profound selection bias in a complex problem simply by choosing which experts to ask.

New comment by extempore in "The longer it has taken, the longer it will take (2015)"

extempore — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:10:50 +0000

That’s Brook’s law: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later,”

New comment by extempore in "The longer it has taken, the longer it will take (2015)"

extempore — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 13:09:03 +0000

That’s Hofstadter’s law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.”

New comment by extempore in "Unison File Synchronizer"

extempore — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 19:50:57 +0000

Nor with a certain super cool language of the future https://github.com/unisonweb/unison