ezyang

21 ms·

181.
by ezyang 15y ago
What are reasonable rates for querying the API?
182.
by ezyang 15y ago
This probably won't win, but it would be great if someone could write a tiny app that converts search results sorted by date into RSS feeds. I might hack something up myself after I'm done with exams, if no one else does.
183.
by ezyang 15y ago
Yes. I argue this "convincing" process is at the very least a centralized process, and at the worst deeply problematic.
184.
by ezyang 15y ago
This misrepresents the tight interlock between client and specification. Suppose that there is a flaw discovered in Bitcoin that requires a protocol change. In a classic software system, the worst you'd have to worry about is a backwards in
185.
by ezyang 15y ago
Raise your hand if you like moon cakes. (To the down-voters: I wonder how many people managed to read to that segment of the article. I think the moon cake black market in China is independently interesting case of a currency with an expira
186.
by ezyang 15y ago
Note that such an exchange is necessarily centralized.
187.
by ezyang 15y ago
To clarify this some more, if the hashing algorithm is sufficiently broken, then I can doctor an arbitrary transaction of bitcoins to where-ever I want. If the old bitcoins are that insecure, they will necessarily become worthless.
188.
by ezyang 15y ago
I make a stronger claim then that, which is that Bitcoin must perform a transfer in the future, and that if this transfer is to be non-disruptive, it must be done in a centralized fashion. I will admit I debated over the title for some t
189.
by ezyang 15y ago
Would it help if I linked to various Bitcoin forum posts where I found descriptions of these proposed transition plans? I don't have a very good feel for the reputability within the Bitcoin community, and I feel that simple technical reason
190.
Bitcoin is not decentralized(blog.ezyang.com)
119 points by ezyang 15y ago|77 comments
191.
by ezyang 15y ago
You're not really talking about unit tests, then: you're talking about progressive integration tests, since the failure of a module "behind" your module can cause extra spurious failures. Now, it may in fact be the case that you may argue t
192.
by ezyang 15y ago
> shiny, whizzy, attention-getting things aren't scalable. If everyone did this, it wouldn't work. It would just raise the noise level. Unclear. In many ways, this is simply a logical extension of the well written cover letter, and if t
193.
by ezyang 15y ago
Yes, I don't think Byron was knocking API documentation in the form of comments. My interpretation is that when someone edits clever code they don't understand fully, they tend to add lots of comments—and that (not the comments) is absolute
194.
by ezyang 15y ago
Unclear. MIT's introductory CS course used to be taught in Scheme, which in many ways was a grand leveler because people who knew how to program imperative languages had to un-learn many things first. It was still considered quite a hard c
195.
by ezyang 15y ago
One important difference of Phantom from systems like Tor is that it doesn't seek primarily to be an anonymous way to access the Internet, but to be an anonymized network separate from the Internet. You can do this with Tor as well, but tha
196.
Unraveling the mystery of the IO monad(blog.ezyang.com)
4 points by ezyang 15y ago|0 comments
197.
by ezyang 15y ago
In many ways, this is where Haskell is as a language right now: we've compromised on many aspects because it was expedient to do so. But Haskell also has a reputation for pushing the envelope. Who knew you could get away with not allowing s
198.
by ezyang 15y ago
One of the things I want out of pure programs is reproducibility. If a pure fragment of code doesn't give the same result over multiple executions, that's not very reproducible. Maybe that's OK, but it does make my ears twitch.
199.
by ezyang 15y ago
I think what you're seeing here is not that we're dismissing all problems but that we look at some problems (say, distributed systems) and think "Man, our lives would be so much easier if we were purer." Of course there are trade offs, bu
200.
by ezyang 15y ago
In my opinion, this code comments itself, even more so than a manually, written-out parser would. Here's how I would think about it. What would a grammar for Lisp look like? value := list | number | symbol list := '(' value + ')'
201.
by ezyang 15y ago
Either's fine. :-)
202.
by ezyang 15y ago
The idea is that a gift card is "good enough"; some useful information can be derived from it, whereas an indirection is never "good enough"; if you're told your present is in another castle, you're no better for the wear: it's as if you've
203.
by ezyang 15y ago
Good suggestions, and I hope to do them.
204.
by ezyang 15y ago
Ah yes, I've failed to say anything about what data constructors are. I've updated that paragraph with a little more text. The end of the 3rd article is confusing, because the text and images don't match up! I've tried to reword the paragra
205.
by ezyang 15y ago
I'd love to know if you could characterize the feeling more precisely :-)
206.
by ezyang 15y ago
It's an interesting charge. Here’s my personal experience with the two cited resources, back when I was learning Haskell. YMMV. RWH’s “Here’s how you get the job done” style exposition did a reasonably good job of making me feel comfortable
207.
Tracing the compilation of Hello Factorial in GHC(blog.ezyang.com)
9 points by ezyang 16y ago|0 comments
208.
by ezyang 16y ago
A friend and I like to put it this way: after you learn information, you need to compress it. Find a way to make it take up as little brain space as possible. Then you're more likely to retain it, to understand it, to be able to use it.
209.
by ezyang 16y ago
If you do clean up code, please put it in a separate commit, not mixed in with semantic changes. Thanks!
210.
by ezyang 16y ago
The key about self-signed certificates is that while they don't give specific identity assurances, they do give identity assurances across multiple transactions with the website. That is, the website I talked to yesterday is the same one

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