Hacker News: tildedave

New comment by tildedave in "What even is an OS now?"

tildedave — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 17:18:39 +0000

got it, thanks!

New comment by tildedave in "What even is an OS now?"

tildedave — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 23:11:38 +0000

steve yegge is not tptacek (thanks for cryptopals, tptacek!)

New comment by tildedave in "Modern Computer Architecture and Organization - Second Edition (2022)"

tildedave — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:14:20 +0000

This book is the reason I was able to pass my computer architecture exams in grad school. Just lugged the 800 page monstrosity around an entire semester and read it every chance I could. A really wonderful book ... I should get a recent copy and re-read it again.

New comment by tildedave in "Differentiation Under Integral Sign (2015) [pdf]"

tildedave — Sun, 14 Feb 2021 01:31:15 +0000

Kevin Conrad has a more in-depth paper on this at roughly the same maturity level, also motivated by Feynman's story: https://kconrad.math.uconn.edu/blurbs/analysis/diffunderint....

New comment by tildedave in "What Gödel Discovered"

tildedave — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:01:53 +0000

The continuum hypothesis is more like Euclid's parallel postulate than a Gödel sentence - assuming ZFC consistent there are models with CH true and CH false (the cardinality of the continuum doesn't have to be the first uncountable cardinal).

Everything gets qualified with "assuming ZFC consistent" or "assuming Peano consistent" because any inconsistent theory proves any statement. More of a proof technicality than anything too profound.

There is a construction of a model of Peano arithmetic, so it is consistent, as long as you accept the system used in the proof: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentzen%27s_consistency_proof

Not sure if this sheds light on the parent commentator's question ... the terminology can be quite tricky.

New comment by tildedave in "An earlier universe can still be observed today, says Roger Penrose"

tildedave — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 04:39:32 +0000

As someone who took a number of mathetical logic classes between undergrad/graduate I always found this Gödel-sentence argument on the face-laughable, since the logical inconsistency was so easy to repair. My favorite critique of this was Hans Moravec's dialogue between Penrose and a robot AI, having resurrected his brain long past humanity's extinction: http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/10moravec.ht...

New comment by tildedave in "Why books don't work (2019)"

tildedave — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 18:54:08 +0000

Not a historian, but _Why the West Rules - For Now_ by Ian Morris was a good read. Covers the sweep of world history with the audacious goal of quantifying human development at all moments in history. It mainly focuses on the west (starting in the Mesopotamian region) and the east (starting in the area surrounding the Yellow river) and addresses questions like "why didn't China discover America" (basically - too far away). You might also find it interesting!

New comment by tildedave in "We Still Need Howard Zinn"

tildedave — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 22:21:48 +0000

Sorry to point you to more references, but the AskHistorians subreddit has a pretty good survey of views on the issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=zinn&restric...

New comment by tildedave in "Dune: The Battle for Arrakis – Extended Reference (2003)"

tildedave — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:25:25 +0000

I'm really excited for the movie and the casting looks incredible so far. I wonder how the 2 movie split is going to work narratively. The book itself has kind of a perfect 3 act setup but I'm not sure breaking the story at the end of the book's part 1 (or halfway through part 2) is going to feel very satisfying.

New comment by tildedave in "A Critique of React Hooks Addendum"

tildedave — Thu, 07 May 2020 15:48:08 +0000

I'd guess comments like this come from people thinking the primary complexity of Redux is the data store, rather than the "all changes to your state are represented as plain objects". The Redux FAQ goes into this: https://redux.js.org/faq/general#when-should-i-use-redux

Can't blame them missing the forest for the trees when you spend all your time writing the reducers and connectors vs the actions themselves.

New comment by tildedave in "Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner"

tildedave — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 14:07:54 +0000

I've been pursuing mathematics as a hobby for the last 2 years or so. I got a mathematics major in undergrad so my motivating factor was mainly to explore some areas that I hadn't done coursework on, primarily algebra and number theory. (I focused more on logic in undergraduate/grad.)

I really enjoy how the subject is divorced from a lot of the modern attention demands and encourages more of a 'zen' thinking style.

As others have highlighted, it can be difficult. I work full-time as a software engineer and at the end of the day there's usually not much left in the tank in terms of "creative work". The morning is usually more productive for me - generally I'll spend 10-15 minutes on the commute in reading over the proof of some lemma or working through some computational exercise.

Things that have helped me:

- Focusing on a particular problem area rather than just "mathematics". The classical problems of Gauss and Euler tend to be more my speed than the modern mathematical problems of Hilbert or beyond. What started my journey was looking into the insolubility of the general quintic polynomial equation, something you learn in high school as a random factoid but has a lot of depth.

- Studying from small textbooks that I can fit in a backpack, so I can "make progress" during my commute. Dummit + Foote might be a great algebra reference but it's just too bulky to transport.

- Limiting the scope of how I think about the activity - my goal isn't to master these concepts on the level of a mathematics graduate student, it's more on the order of Sudoku. If I don't get something, that's okay. People spend their whole lifetimes learning this material and I'm just trying to fit this into whatever creative time I have left after the full-time job is done.

New comment by tildedave in "The Twin Primes Conjecture Gets Solved for Finite Fields"

tildedave — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 02:04:46 +0000

Appreciate what you're saying, but the linked paper is talking about results in F_p[T], the polynomial ring.

New comment by tildedave in "The Twin Primes Conjecture Gets Solved for Finite Fields"

tildedave — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 20:03:36 +0000

Even if the number field is finite, there are an infinite number of polynomials for it. For example the finite field F2 has two elements {0, 1} but an infinite number of polynomials 0, 1, x, x + 1, x^2, x^2 + x + 1, x^2 + 1, «x^2 + x, and on and on. Some of these have nontrivial factors (x^2 + x = x(x+1)) and some don't (x^2 + x + 1 has no factors beyond itself and 1).

(The other answer to your question is more complete but also a bit more advanced, figured this was worth surfacing.)

New comment by tildedave in "How ‘Am I the Asshole?’ became the internet’s most profound query"

tildedave — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 17:59:07 +0000

Ah, just making the point that the questions don't occur in a vacuum. By the time something's bad enough to consult random strangers on Reddit the problem has sometimes escalated beyond the point. Often the "dump him" answers come with people also sharing their own life experience. (I've seen my share of the silly questions/answers too of course.)

New comment by tildedave in "How ‘Am I the Asshole?’ became the internet’s most profound query"

tildedave — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 15:16:47 +0000

A more charitable interpretation is that people have gotten into situations bad enough where they've ended up seeking advice from strangers on the internet. (Not every relationship squabble ends up in a reddit post.)

New comment by tildedave in "Sensitivity Conjecture Resolved"

tildedave — Tue, 02 Jul 2019 20:37:42 +0000

I listened to _Right Ho, Jeeves!_ this year from Librivox (https://librivox.org/right-ho-jeeves-by-p-g-wodehouse/) and I'd second his recommendation for it. Sort of a perfect novel.

New comment by tildedave in "A Solution for Loneliness: Get out and volunteer, research suggests"

tildedave — Tue, 21 May 2019 19:43:08 +0000

I've been attending a local UU Church for the last few months (raised no religion, this is my first spiritual community). While there's mention of the spiritual life I think about half the congregation would identify as atheists. There's no creed or mention of 'religion' and the individual search for meaning is repeatedly stressed. It's been a good addition to my life and very nurturing for the soul.

New comment by tildedave in "Is Google OAuth Down?"

tildedave — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 22:41:35 +0000

Was able to log in (finally)

New comment by tildedave in "Is Google OAuth Down?"

tildedave — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 22:39:20 +0000

https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/cloud-iam/19001 says they'll give an update by 4pm pacific

New comment by tildedave in "Is Google OAuth Down?"

tildedave — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 22:09:18 +0000

We're seeing our OAuth login attempts be redirected to a "Clear Your Cookies" page help. Clearing cookies does not resolve the issue.