Hacker News: sbmassey

New comment by sbmassey in "I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2"

sbmassey — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 21:16:41 +0000

Judging by the current state of DALL-E, the generated software will look good at first impression, but have lots of weird bugs when examined closely. So yeah, not much different to current software dev.

New comment by sbmassey in "‘Zoe’ becomes the world’s first named heat wave"

sbmassey — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 12:43:09 +0000

They should give the Covid variants relatable human names too

New comment by sbmassey in "Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online"

sbmassey — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 23:03:49 +0000

The bias of this mathematician and the rest of the Royal Society working group regarding vaccination is irrelevant to the subject of these papers, which analyse how and why misinformation is spread, and how correct information can retain credibility.

Reflexively trying to discredit them while being too lazy to read beyond the headline is a great way of making your own position look highly dubious though.

New comment by sbmassey in "Spotify is removing Neil Young’s music after falling out over Joe Rogan"

sbmassey — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 14:50:33 +0000

Feudalism is about the localisation of military and legal aspects of government. Libertarianism is about trying to restrict the power of government. Slavery requires a strong central government to be enforcible. Feudalism and Libertarianism are both anti slavery.

New comment by sbmassey in "Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts “Primates” Label on Video of Black Men"

sbmassey — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 16:45:37 +0000

According to the article, the video in question "featured clips of Black men in altercations with white civilians and police officers.", so the primates label could just as well apply to the white civilians or police.

New comment by sbmassey in "How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?"

sbmassey — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 13:01:51 +0000

It is anti-Marxist, in that Marxism requires that the whole proletarian class of a society unite, whereas wokism pretty much guarantees that society will be shattered into thousands of mutually suspicious parts.

New comment by sbmassey in "Bash 5.1"

sbmassey — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 15:26:55 +0000

They are a believer in defaults

New comment by sbmassey in "South Park creators have new political satire series with AI-generated deepfakes"

sbmassey — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:44:32 +0000

Maybe people will learn to no longer believe partisan information sources, and organisations whose reputation is based solely on the veracity of their content will predominate.

New comment by sbmassey in "Cockney Rhyming Slang History"

sbmassey — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 12:19:17 +0000

406, mate

New comment by sbmassey in "What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]"

sbmassey — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 17:06:45 +0000

Capitalism's basic meaning is that the means of production are owned by private parties.

Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists.

New comment by sbmassey in "One Word Broke C"

sbmassey — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 12:41:13 +0000

This would presumably include any pointer dereferences where the compiler cannot prove that the pointer is always non null.

New comment by sbmassey in "U.S. will suspend all travel from Europe for 30 days"

sbmassey — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 14:17:56 +0000

Rogan was interviewing Michael Osterholm, who seems to be of good reputation.

New comment by sbmassey in "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Tolkien Elves"

sbmassey — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 23:34:39 +0000

The Gloranthan take is that the Elves - Aldryami - are more-or-less human-shaped plants, making them rather weirder in a lot of ways than their high-IQ-long-lived-humanoid equivalents.

New comment by sbmassey in "Clojure: A Lisp that wants to spread"

sbmassey — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 03:23:21 +0000

Nothing is sharable between Common Lisp and Scheme, either, but Scheme is generally considered a Lisp.

New comment by sbmassey in "Unexpected places you can and can’t use null bytes"

sbmassey — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 20:46:25 +0000

Fine as long as you call the backspace character BS and the tab character HT.

New comment by sbmassey in "Britain’s Productivity Decline Is the Worst in 250 Years"

sbmassey — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 14:05:53 +0000

I don't think shedding ones britches has anything to do with Brexit, honestly, but if it helps you feel free, go right ahead.

New comment by sbmassey in "Britain’s Productivity Decline Is the Worst in 250 Years"

sbmassey — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:39:53 +0000

Make their own trade agreements? Hold their government accountable without having a circle of the government and the EU blaming each other?

New comment by sbmassey in "Being a good guy boss left me £1.2m in debt"

sbmassey — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 21:50:44 +0000

Imagine the chaos if she did take over and made a decision on Brexit one way or the other, though. Better to let the politicians take the heat.

New comment by sbmassey in "Facebook Libra Is Architecturally Unsound"

sbmassey — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 14:02:32 +0000

What are some good websites for discussing technical aspects of blockchain?

New comment by sbmassey in "Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments"

sbmassey — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 21:41:21 +0000

The US first amendment is against Congress abridging the press as well as freedom of speech.

In addition, Milton's 1644 Areopagitica is meant to be an inspiration for the first amendment, and it is all about the need for freedom of the press.