latk

12 ms·

61.
by latk 13y ago
That would actually be a sound argument: If we assume a linear damage model for radiation exposure (which is a generally accepted model for these circumstances), then there is no safe dose. Instead, any exposure increases your lifetime ris
62.
by latk 13y ago
Indeed. I would also like to see that British study that claims a link between CTs and leukemia – I smell selection bias. It is however true that a CT does imply a significant radiation dose. This article is especially frustrating in that t
63.
by latk 13y ago
This article was trying its hardest to reinterpret “we have almost no data, and what we have looks boring” into a sensationalist story of master killers. 1/10 would not read again.
64.
by latk 13y ago
Maybe a solution would be to only communicate the bounds of a value rather than the value itself. E.g. Instead of “party A has 35% with sigma=2%” something like “we expect party A to have 33%–37%”. Providing a range is shorter than explaini
65.
by latk 13y ago
Two words: medicines and vaccines. Of everything there is a “too little” and a “too much”, which is especially true with programming paradigms. Some people write procedural code where OOP should be used, others abuse OOP for something that
66.
by latk 13y ago
The argument that every function has arity 1 is technically true (this is the whole point of currying) but is not useful when definitions like "let a b c = ..." suggest other semantics. It's possible you've had a differe
67.
by latk 13y ago
Currying can obfuscate what is applied to what. Consider in any ML language "a b c d" – we can see that "a" is a function, but we have no idea of its arity. Uncurried, it could be: "a(b, c, d)", "a(b, c)(d
68.
by latk 13y ago
This is a standard feature of many languages or libraries, and generally known as array programming – something APL is known for. It crops up in numerical libraries like "numpy" (Python) or "PDL" (Perl) where selected
69.
by latk 13y ago
The judgement on the case would probably not be much different, considering that the Prenda lawyers have also lost various other cases without naming any ISPs as defendants. This order discusses a motion by Comcast and AT&T for atto
70.
by latk 13y ago
This has nothing to do with patents . The article describes a case of copyright trolling , which is a completely different matter. Of course there are similarities between copyright trolls and patent trolls: Both acquire certain rights
71.
by latk 13y ago
Different languages get a different amount of execution time for the test cases. A factor is given in the table of available programming languages. It is interesting to see where the languages are grouped: Compiled Languages (1 × time limit
72.
by latk 13y ago
The parent post meant: “The Perl5 language can never increment its major version to 6, as the Perl6 name is already taken” – which is silly, as Perl5 is currently at version 18.
73.
by latk 13y ago
Java isn't a bad language, but the point is that it doesn't offer much what other languages don't. It's unique selling point is that it is there, and that it's widespread. Said politely, Java is “conservative” to in
74.
by latk 13y ago
Nobody has ever used Ruby because he thought it might be faster than Java. Java primarily competes against C++, not against “scripting” languages like Ruby and Python which have significantly shorter edit-(compile)-run cycles. Each of these
75.
by latk 13y ago
Good point(s), especially #4. The article compares an 80s language (C++) to a 90s language (Java), not to more recent compiler toolchains. Admittedly, there aren't many options here, and e.g. Scala (which I hope will be covered in futu
76.
by latk 13y ago
The UN do a world of good. Unfortunately, the US – which are the central actor in this surveillance scandal – do not respect the UN and other institutions of international governance.
77.
by latk 13y ago
LyX is halfway there. It is a visual editor for LaTeX, but it does not actually show the final result. Instead, it operates on an intermediate representation. Stuff like section headings, math environments and tables are shown correctly (
78.
by latk 13y ago
You are correct in stating that LaTeX is no silver bullet. The clear disadvantage of LaTeX is the tweak-recompile cycle, whereas graphical tools have instant feedback which is more suitable for design. But for automated typography (≠ desi
79.
by latk 13y ago
What are you talking about? Word does not manage spacing (and other layout) on the level LaTeX does. Word processors usually allow you to type multiple adjacent spaces, which does not make any typographic sense. Instead, LaTeX uses spaces o
80.
by latk 13y ago
Terrorism implies violence or threats of violence. Neither Greenpeace nor Chris Eaton can be reasonably labeled as “terrorist” or connected with terrorist actions. Calling such organizations and people terrorist is disrespectful to victim
81.
by latk 13y ago
The most amazing discovery I made was a minor mode that put a battery indicator into the status line. Emacs as OS – effectively true.
82.
by latk 13y ago
For me: a touchpad as the primary pointer input device. I use two fingers for scrolling and a two-finger tap as middle mouse button clicks. I really like that setup for web browsing, but it frequently messes up code in the editor.
83.
by latk 13y ago
Python is a very strict and comparatively easily parsed language. Python 3 is the clear successor to Python 2, and feels mostly the same for a programmer. The idea for Perl 6 was the same: Clean up the language, add new features at the expe
84.
by latk 13y ago
You make some very good points esp. wrt verbosity. However, I don't care about portability or not using experimental features for personal or exploratory projects: stability is silver, conciseness is gold. The "state" subs are a consequent
85.
by latk 13y ago
In the end, everything is syntax. In the first solution, the inner sub would be called as "$inner->()" or "&$inner()". With lexical subs, we get the much nicer syntax "inner()". This decreases the syntactic pain when structuring you
86.
by latk 13y ago
Almost ;-) The current perl version is 5.018000, so that would take 982 releases until the numbering scheme breaks down. Of course, Perl v-strings can have elements of INT_MAX each, but I doubt such high numbers would ever be used, for back
87.
by latk 14y ago
That article was more about declarative/functional programming than about the details of the Haskell syntax. Types are capitalized. Lower-case types in signatures are placeholders in polymorphic functions. The signature (.) :: (b -&#6
88.
by latk 14y ago
The main reason students should use non-low-level languages is to encounter new features, and new programming paradigms. Languages like C or Java don't have closures; this rules out real higher order functions. The type system of Haskell is