Hacker News: nudq

New comment by nudq in "Programming Language Checklist"

nudq — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 17:10:09 +0000

> a linguist (with some understanding of development)

Your wish has been granted: Larry Wall, Perl 6.

New comment by nudq in "What happens when your career becomes your whole identity"

nudq — Sun, 29 Dec 2019 10:37:40 +0000

> Einstein, Dirac, Pauli

It sure helps to be dead by now. Try James Watson for a really motivating example.

New comment by nudq in "267M Facebook users IDs and phone numbers exposed online"

nudq — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 09:25:15 +0000

A good idea if you want your personal relationships poisoned.

New comment by nudq in "It’s impossible to see the world as it is, argues a neuroscientist [video]"

nudq — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 16:53:30 +0000

The guy has been doing the TED circuit for ages. I once looked closer at his claims and his supposed proof by simulation and came to agree with the more negative takes at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588698

New comment by nudq in "Go Turns 10"

nudq — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 08:56:03 +0000

> Without a doubt, C has "lost" nothing, because it barely changed

Thanks to UB exploitation, C as implemented has been changing a lot over time. Old C was a decent low-level language. New C is barely usable.

New comment by nudq in "Mass cellphone surveillance experiment in Spain"

nudq — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 19:06:48 +0000

Controlled compromise of privacy for the sake of scientific insight seems like a good idea, until you realize that we either get profoundly non-replicable junk "science", or continued and unlimited re-breach of privacy for the sake of replication. Neither is any good.

I'm reminded of Raj Chetty who publishes papers based on exclusive access to IRS tax return data. (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-two-economists-g...) Not real science unless you can have access to that data, too. You can't.

New comment by nudq in "Iceland Grey Listed for Inadequate Money Laundering Policies"

nudq — Sat, 19 Oct 2019 14:39:17 +0000

> How do you prevent nepotism

Why prevent nepotism when everybody is a cousin?

New comment by nudq in "Ancient artifacts dislodged by climate change"

nudq — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:28:08 +0000

I don't think we can simply assume that starting position matters to "pulverization" after 1500 years.

Mobility is more likely; the mobile object moves along with the ice, the stationary one gets pulverized.

New comment by nudq in "Ancient artifacts dislodged by climate change"

nudq — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:19:11 +0000

> Some just choose to ignore them

Some... like smart people with lots of money.

Because, you know, the prediction market in nice oceanfront properties beloved by the coastal elites hasn't collapsed, even tough their tongues say they believe.

New comment by nudq in "Can genetics explain why some people thrive on less sleep?"

nudq — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 14:24:42 +0000

Going on title and comments only, sorry, but why does "it's genetic" count as an explanation for anything?

An explanation for this would need ecology. Why is it beneficial for some of us to need less sleep, but not for all of us? What are the trade-offs? It seems like needing less sleep has no downsides. Is it a novel, all-beneficial mutation that just didn't have the time yet to sweep the population? Or do short sleepers experience serious downsides?

There is no explanation in "we found a gene for it". Pretty much every personality difference is genetic, that doesn't explain why such differences evolved, or persist.

New comment by nudq in "The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control"

nudq — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 14:19:41 +0000

Because in the context of Epstein, intelligence doesn't necessarily mean CIA. Seriously, we can't say "Mossad" on Hackernews without getting flagged, can we realistically expect NPR to go there?

New comment by nudq in "Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome"

nudq — Sat, 17 Aug 2019 18:16:22 +0000

By following Chrome every time Google wants to removes access to parts of the web not sufficiently encrypted (to thwart ISP competition for ads and data) or not serving ads (like FTP) Firefox is working to keep Chrome relevant.

It has been going on for years.

New comment by nudq in "Elsevier threatens others for linking to Sci-Hub but does so itself"

nudq — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 14:07:04 +0000

Wouldn't Elsevier be able to legally link to Elsevier IP on SciHub even if you can't?

New comment by nudq in "How to Write a Lisp Interpreter In Python (2010)"

nudq — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 09:33:42 +0000

You realize it's problematic to emphasize typos, right?

(Thanks, would edit if I could.)

New comment by nudq in "How to Write a Lisp Interpreter In Python (2010)"

nudq — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 07:03:02 +0000

Not to take away from the side splitting hilariousness of this novel meme, but I just noticed Lisp is actually one of the few languages where you can't add spurious parentheses. If you find that a, (a), ((a)), etc are equivalent, it's probably not Lisp you're looking at.

New comment by nudq in "How to Write a Lisp Interpreter In Python (2010)"

nudq — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 06:58:08 +0000

You realize that the OP's concerns actually intesify if the author in question is perceived as an authority on the topic, right?

New comment by nudq in "Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months"

nudq — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 12:11:34 +0000

> if 18 months comes and goes and it isn’t the end of the world

No reason for concern. If failed climate prophecies had any effect, climate prophecies would be out of fashion by now. Nothing will change.

New comment by nudq in "Algebraic Effects for the Rest of Us"

nudq — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 10:23:40 +0000

> I think algebraic effects are more general

Not an expert on algebraic effects, but I suspect they are both more and less general.

On the one hand, "algebraic" hints at some constraints in the name of static typeability. Such restrictions wouldn't be present in Common Lisp.

On the other hand, Common Lisp only has single-shot downward continuations, so you won't get, e.g. nondeterminism-as-an-effect.

New comment by nudq in "Notes on a Smaller Rust"

nudq — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:23:41 +0000

I like how these three points aren't just "strengths of Rust", but...

> the necessary components ... to make imperative programming work as a paradigm

You know, before Rust imperative programming just didn't work. Didn't work as a paradigm, even!

New comment by nudq in "The Pike Programming Language"

nudq — Sun, 07 Jul 2019 10:34:37 +0000

Do you read your own comments? (Asking for a logician friend...)