Hacker News: warmfuzzykitten

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Matrix Multiplication"

warmfuzzykitten — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 20:23:30 +0000

Nice one! (Just as it is.)

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Why Zulip will stand the test of time"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 20:36:25 +0000

Slack threads seem designed to ensure you can't follow a conversation without branching off into numerous sidetracks, which are hard to find when you're directly addressed.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Log4Shell Vulnerability Test Tool"

warmfuzzykitten — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 19:56:52 +0000

I'm sure this is well-intentioned, but it seems also true that using this tool will give a third party, however benevolent, identification of your vulnerable website.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "90% of Everything Is Crap"

warmfuzzykitten — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 01:45:21 +0000

"Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness." - William L. Watkinson

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated"

warmfuzzykitten — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 20:29:30 +0000

Computing, much less AI, is not a hard science. Computing is an art that gets practical results in limited domains.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021?"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:18:32 +0000

Well, read on a little. The text quoted clearly blames monarchy on the Heathens. Paine then recounts the history of monarchy in the Old Testament, with an example of god Himself speaking against it as a form of idolatry, his point being not that the Jews are the source of monarchy but that scripture is plainly opposed to it. Concluding that section, Paine writes "And a man hath good reason to believe that there is as much of kingcraft as priestcraft in withholding the scripture from the public in popish countries. For monarchy in every instance is the popery of government." As a good 18th-century Protestant, Paine was of course against "popery", yet the historian doesn't claim Paine blamed monarchy on the Catholics.

The book itself was well-reviewed, but the takeaways are a bit disturbing.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021?"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 09:58:54 +0000

To be sure, the Declaration of Independence has a litany of wrongs committed by the English king, but that is hardly what it is remembered for, and "blamed monarchy on the Jews" seems an unfair summary of Common Sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Symbolic Mathematics with Julia Language"

warmfuzzykitten — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 22:28:02 +0000

How can actual people use Julia symbolics?

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Does It Matter If I Eat the Stickers on Fruits and Vegetables?"

warmfuzzykitten — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 22:29:39 +0000

If tomatoes come in a plastic box, can I eat the box?

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Five U.S. lawmakers accuse Amazon of possibly lying to Congress"

warmfuzzykitten — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:12:37 +0000

There are other possibilities than "they lied". The most likely explanation is that the branch in India used tactics that were specifically forbidden by corporate policy formulated in the United States, that corporate management was unaware that it took place, and is now plenty embarrassed to hear that it did.

It's not necessarily true, by the way, that they wouldn't have gotten flack from Congress if they'd initially testified that they use sales and product data only they possess to find out which third-party products are both profitable and vulnerable to lower-cost competition, use it again to design competing house brands that are identical to the third party products down to the smallest detail, and follow that up by using their website to promote the knockoff products as preferable to the third party products they've ripped off. This is not a standard industry practice and would likely not be defensible as "It's just a house brand, like Safeway Soup. What's the big deal?"

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Googlespeak – How Google limits thought about antitrust"

warmfuzzykitten — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 04:00:10 +0000

I have a problem getting to his point when the examples he shows at the start are so unlike what I see when I enter the same search phrases.

"COVID-19 trends in Palm Beach" didn't bring up any hotel listings. Instead I get statistics, cases, and a map of cases from the New York Times, and after that a list of ordinary links.

"the walking dead season 11" showed an ad from AMCPlus.com, which is fairly understandable since it's totally on point, followed by regular links, the first to wikipedia.

I know that what individuals see is customized to some extent, but I can't imagine what sort of search history he has that would get the results he shows.

If his examples are not typical, it seems possible his premise is flawed.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Alda – Text-Based Programming Language for Music Composition"

warmfuzzykitten — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 05:41:13 +0000

MacOS won't let me run alda by default, and I'm not sure they're wrong. There is an open source alda project, but these are binaries downloaded from alda.io. Who vouches for them?

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Tech CEO Says Workers Get Too Much Pay and Benefits"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 18:57:52 +0000

If he were actually "calling" executives in other companies to get them to agree to lower wages and benefits, that would be illegal activity in the US. Companies are not allowed to conspire to fix wages.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "B-tree Path Hints"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 18:51:00 +0000

The "path hint" sounds a lot like a cursor. Since a lot of b-tree traversal is ordered, knowing the last position in the tree is often valuable information.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Amazon.com's Conditions of Use – Disputes now resolved by the courts"

warmfuzzykitten — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 05:03:58 +0000

"the courts"? More like "in the state or Federal courts in King County, Washington". This probably isn't the equivalent of a patent troll insisting on a trial in East Texas, but they definitely cherry-picked a friendly jurisdiction.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Why Europeans Don't Refrigerate Eggs but Americans Do"

warmfuzzykitten — Wed, 14 Jul 2021 21:30:28 +0000

Someone writes this every six months or so. tldr; Europeans don't wash their eggs; unwashed eggs keep longer. But they would keep even longer if refrigerated.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Ask HN: You have one shot to redesign the Internet – what do you change?"

warmfuzzykitten — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 22:58:24 +0000

This seems unworkable. Gaining attention is intrinsically commercial activity. Attention has value; you can't stop it bleeding into the rest of the world. Some examples and questions:

- An "influencer" gets her photo on a Wheaties box. After that, the influencer doesn't have to do overt advertising to promote the cereal, their fortunes are bound together.

- In politics, as the former US president so amply demonstrated, attention is a currency.

- What about the exchange of ideas? Can one talk about the contents of a book without selling (or discouraging the sales of) the book?

- Is any mention of brand names to be prohibited? If you can mention a brand, unless all the brand's marketing has been completely ineffective, you are selling the brand. Don't like it? Pass the Kleenex.

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "HBO Max accidentally sent an integration email test to users"

warmfuzzykitten — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 01:13:15 +0000

Just got mine. I like it. Short and sweet. No ads. More like that!

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "1931: Kurt Gödel shows limits of math, logic, computing, AI"

warmfuzzykitten — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 21:14:54 +0000

I don't understand how Gödel showed limits of AI, or even addressed AI in its modern incarnation, which has little to do with logic. Perhaps some more knowledgeable reader can elucidate?

New comment by warmfuzzykitten in "Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility"

warmfuzzykitten — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 21:06:01 +0000

Backing up just a bit, what right does a state have to declare a web application a public utility? The jibber jabber about how Google might affect Ohio businesses seems just a distraction from the basic issue. A public utility is generally a business within the state that delivers essential services, like water and power, to areas in which there is no reasonable alternative, i.e., as local monopolies. If the internet itself is not considered a public utility - and indeed companies like Comcast and AT&T that deliver the internet as mostly local monopolies are not regulated as public utilities - how can a mere application on the web be considered a public utility? Even if it were, this would seem to be a matter for federal, not state, jurisdiction. The lawsuit seems more a publicity stunt than a serious action.