One of my criticisms, however, is simply pointing to how similar mainstream general purpose CPU architectures have become; they are all C machines. This radically simplifies the complexity on the compiler front where, it seems, the author is targeting amd64 and aarch64. Extending the compiler to rv64 will probably be straightforward.

I don't know anything about Odin, or its compiler implementation, but I imagine the language adheres to a view of the machine that matches the C machine model. Imagine a more esoteric language, the compiler would probably need an intermediate language matching the C machine model and in which the inline assembly would have to have survive some idempotent lowering to the intermediate representation before being further lowered to the object code. These details are what I am really curious about and probably the most intellectually stimulating.

The most interesting possibility is if the Odin compiler is itself written wholly in Odin. If this were the case, it would really show the power of the inline assembly syntax. As far as I am aware no optimizing compiler has really pushed this angle whilst targeting multiple instruction architectures. If I recall correctly, even the Plan9 C compiler moved some basic optimization to their genericized assembler, and I've not kept up with it as it's evolved into the current Go compiler.

Very interesting work as I have often though about inline assembly syntax in a high-level language. Keep it up gingerbill.

I now simply follow the main list and hit “hide” on submissions I believe I don’t have interest in. Of those that remain, I read the submitted link and far more often than not they are not submission worthy so I hit “hide” again. Of those that remain, I hope comments arrive and an interesting discussion ensues.

In the past if felt like there was always something worth sifting through the dregs for. I’m unsure of how much longer I can sustain the effort. The technical implementation of the site could make things easier, where you use techniques from sybil-resistance to counter noise, but then if the compute cost on the backend goes up by an order of magnitude and I’m not sure Y Combinator is interested in financing the upkeep of that.

Difficult choices await me in terms of whether I ought to continue investing time in sifting though. It’d save me a lot of time, but then I’d have to find some way of making interesting friends. And if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here to begin with. :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49149220

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I’m not at all against AI, however very intelligent people are empowering corporate masters with very little empathy for humans not fit for this brave new world.

I only participate on this site, for example, because there are rare gems contributed by wonderful people. I have fomo because of that. It’s getting rarer and rarer and I think I’m approaching the limits of what my fomo will tolerate.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49054606

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798301

Points: 20

# Comments: 5

As I stand on the flats of Salt Lake, the Earth is definitely flat. Also, I’m sure there are brown cows that produce milk that’s turned to chocolate milk. And since I didn’t directly observe humans landing on the moon, I can’t be certain of it to say.

Am I being facetious, perhaps. But I want to illustrate that people can be broadly split in to two camps. Those that believe individual agency is necessary for all. And those that believe individual agency can only be preserved for all by restricting it to the chosen.

If you’re happy with affairs however whatever camp you’re in differs from whatever camp your society is in, you will turn a blind eye. However, if you’re unhappy then you’ll feel all your problems must stem from your society’s fundamental misconception.

The world has lost, on my opinion, a mass of level-headed people. We don’t need to agree, but we need to talk. Forums like this depend on people taking their time to be nuanced and clear, however there is little reward in this as the quality of the HN audience slowly decays as the attention span of the general populace from which this audience is derived itself decays.

You give me a rational candidate p/q for log 2 and by the argument of the article I “construct” that p = q = 0.

In both instances I create a contradiction thus showing that you could not have provided me such a rational to begin with.

Now let me show you non-constructively that there are irrationals a and b with a^b rational.

To prove this I consider c = √2^√2. I don’t know whether this is rational or irrational so I invoke the law of the excluded middle.

Suppose c is rational. Then take a = b = √2 and we have a^b = c where a and b are irrational and c is rational.

Otherwise suppose c is irrational. Then take a = c and b = √2 and we have a^b = (√2^√2)^√2 = √2^2 = 2 and again we have our result.

What is the difference here? I have no idea whether c is rational or irrational. Either way I can make it work but I can’t tell you which possibility is the genuine one.

You can actually make better choices of a and b and show this result constructively.

This leads to a deeper question. Are there statements with no constructive proof and how do you prove that. This is beyond my expertise, but there are indeed high-powered logical tools that allow you prove such results for certain statements.

The stuff that human beings have done by simply looking at the stars and dreaming really hard is pretty awe-inspiringly incredible.

Now to prove P by contradiction, is to assume, the contrary, ¬P and construct an impossibility. But what you have really done here is prove ¬¬P. Now if you are a normal mathematician, you are classical, and hence you believe every statement A is either true or false, i.e. A∨¬A (A or not A, from any statement A, i.e. the law of the excluded middle). It just so happens that if you accept the law of the excluded middle then from ¬¬P you can deduce P.

An interesting question is why is the meaning of a proof of negation the construction of an absurdity? I guess this is philosophical, but if you accept the point of logic is to only conclude true things, then concluding an absurdity must be impossible, and hence if you assume something that leads to an absurdity, it follows that there must be no proof of the assumption because otherwise you'd have a proof of absurdity, and hence the meaning of a negation is showing that there is no proof of the pre-negated statement. In logic, ⊥ is used as the symbol for absurdity. Hence ¬P is really shorthand for P⇒⊥ (P implies absurdity), which is why earlier I identified A∧¬A with absurdity since when you have A and A implies absurdity, you immediately deduce absurdity.

If someone gives you a link-local address, you have to know which interface they want you to use, either implicitly or otherwise.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745777

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Mathematics is going through a huge, quiet, upheaval. The litmus test will be when, if ever, someone wins a Fields using a proof-assistant in an essential way.

I wanted here to write a more detailed rebuttal, but I ended up deleting it all. I don’t think people like antirez can be swayed. They’re committed to the grift, or at the very least are in comfortable enough economic circumstances not to care.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47190569

Points: 2

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47132707

Points: 3

# Comments: 1