Hacker News: samthecoy

New comment by samthecoy in "Contributing to WebSockets – Cryptocurrency Users"

samthecoy — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 11:20:39 +0000

Interesting! I think there's a tangible difference between "you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x" (as in, some public statement of views is a prerequisite to being allowed to use something) and "you may only use this product if you do not cause harm in some tangible sense".

While I'm not necessarily saying I agree with either, the first is certainly less reasonable than the second (and the two examples linked are of the second kind).

New comment by samthecoy in "Contributing to WebSockets – Cryptocurrency Users"

samthecoy — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 10:52:23 +0000

Could you give some examples of this trend? (Not aware of it, personally—curious to see an example)

New comment by samthecoy in "Magic Wormhole: Get things from one computer to another, safely"

samthecoy — Tue, 25 May 2021 08:24:31 +0000

> So you need to have a secure method of communication to transfer the code? Then why not just use whatever that is to transfer stuff?

Because sometimes that secure method of communication is speech. This is a particularly good utility for transferring information to parties that you can talk to verbally. Also, a bit quicker than plugging a USB stick in.

New comment by samthecoy in "Haskell: The Bad Parts, part 2 (2020)"

samthecoy — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 15:28:14 +0000

*not all inputs

New comment by samthecoy in "Haskell: The Bad Parts, part 2 (2020)"

samthecoy — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 15:25:37 +0000

Partial functions are not the same thing as "partially applied functions". Partial functions means that not every element of the domain is mapped to an element of the range, for example:

    divTenBy :: Double -> Double
    divTenBy n = 10 / n

If you actually call the above function you get a runtime exception. We really don't like functions that do this; they are called partial.

New comment by samthecoy in "Telegram and Signal the New Option"

samthecoy — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 16:53:00 +0000

This article is not well written.

New comment by samthecoy in "Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams"

samthecoy — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 21:32:11 +0000

A big benefit, especially with more people, is that it's relatively painless and socially natural to break out into multiple small discussions (as might happen at say, a coffee meeting irl). The awkwardness of 12-person video calls is extremely painful in other software.

New comment by samthecoy in "Commerce Department Prohibits WeChat and TikTok Transactions"

samthecoy — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 15:04:24 +0000

This is a misapplication of Popper's tolerance paradox. You do not describe our "being intolerant of their intolerance of our products (content, code, and signals)", but rather our "being intolerant of their products (content, code, and signals".

New comment by samthecoy in "FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord"

samthecoy — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 20:27:24 +0000

Facebook must make political decisions, because it must have a stance on content moderation. Even if that stance is "we shouldn't moderate content", that is a political decision. All possible actions and inaction around content moderation require political decisions, and you can't be in the social media business without having a content moderation policy.

New comment by samthecoy in "FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord"

samthecoy — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:54:05 +0000

If you work for a large social network with huge social responsibilities, discussions about ethics ought to be unavoidable, in my opinion.

If you're writing accounting software for paper suppliers or something equally banal with few ethical implications, then sure, there's no need (and less reason) to have water cooler conversations about pro-genocide agitprop or whatever.

EDIT to add that of course not all departments at Facebook make the sort of decisions that have a marked social impact. More referring to the content policy teams, and the news feed algo teams, and so on.

New comment by samthecoy in "How to Write in Plain English"

samthecoy — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 10:31:32 +0000

If anyone is interested, there is an excellent "plain style" guide which is recommend for much of the British Civil Service. It's called "Plain Words", and is by Sir Ernest Gowers. It's received an updated version in recent years.

New comment by samthecoy in "Instead of deleting account, NYT appends ‘1000’ to username and email address"

samthecoy — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:56:22 +0000

From the twitter comments: https://twitter.com/bicycult/status/1255122953798328320

They were still logged in and refreshed the page; they found out by going to their user settings.

New comment by samthecoy in "Writing, Briefly (2005)"

samthecoy — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 21:31:34 +0000

I know what that word means, but only because it appeared in Asimov's "The Stars, Like Dust", which I finished two days ago. I didn't know what it meant, and had to look it up.

New comment by samthecoy in "NULL license plate not such a bright idea"

samthecoy — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 17:03:30 +0000

At some point, can you not file some kind of harassment lawsuit? Is it legal to continue to send someone bills for which they aren't liable?

New comment by samthecoy in "Microsoft, Brilliant team up to offer quantum curriculum"

samthecoy — Mon, 27 May 2019 19:52:36 +0000

Does anyone know of a relatively accessible book that introduces quantum mechanics well?

New comment by samthecoy in "Varieties of Argumentative Experience"

samthecoy — Thu, 10 May 2018 12:07:11 +0000

You're right, but that reflects more on human psychology than the quality of the argument. I'd argue the problem with discussion of current events on social media is exactly this - quotes and arguments are selected for psychological potency, and not merit.

New comment by samthecoy in "Ask HN: What are topics that you want to learn but haven't gotten around to?"

samthecoy — Wed, 02 May 2018 15:02:40 +0000

Category Theory (and more advanced Set Theory). After taking an undergraduate Set Theory course I want to explore these areas of mathematics further. I'm currently going though Thomas Jech's "Set Theory" on the Set Theory side, but haven't yet found a good, undergraduate accessible, Category Theory text.

New comment by samthecoy in "Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits"

samthecoy — Wed, 02 May 2018 14:58:03 +0000

"Our results suggest that cancer care in the United States did not always avert deaths compared to Western Europe, and when it did avert deaths, it often did so at substantial cost."

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/pdf/10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0...

New comment by samthecoy in "Notice of Data Breach"

samthecoy — Thu, 29 Mar 2018 21:54:42 +0000

GDPR, the new EU Data Protection legislation, will actually require companies to issue notification of a breach of PII, within 7 days of becoming aware of it, I believe.

New comment by samthecoy in "Elon Musk Deletes Own, SpaceX and Tesla Facebook Pages After #deletefacebook"

samthecoy — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 17:12:01 +0000

Does doing this also delete Messenger? I'm aware there's been a little bit of decoupling of the two services in recent times.