mjw_byrne

11 ms·

31.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
Perhaps I'm a dinosaur but I don't like the range-over-function addition. I don't think it adds enough convenience to justify the complexity it adds to the language, and the functional style feels at odds with Go's expl
32.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
I'd heard of the island of stability but this one is new to me. I love the idea of there being loads more exotic elements to play with, and substances with densities far exceeding 22 kg/l (which it roughly where it tops out with
33.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
I'm not sure this is true in principle though. For example, there's plenty of encryption in use today that has "perfect" security (in the sense that a cipher hasn't been broken) and which is transparent to the end
34.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
> The comment directly above you on the page right now gives an example of people getting the trade-off wrong, so your dismissiveness is pointless. I was only dismissing the way the article presented fraud tolerance as something deeper t
35.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
Yes, and that would be a genuinely interesting point. For example, it could be compared it to the need for regular backup testing, where we generally try to maintain DR readiness with artificial testing and certainly not by accepting a cer
36.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
Clickbaity, trying-too-hard title. The point being made is mundane: perfection is too expensive, so we settle for "good enough". This is near-universally applicable and near-universally understood. The author is trying to make i
37.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
Taking a useful concept and stretching it to an extreme in order to generate a counterintuitive-but-plausible soundbite is not the same thing as wisdom. Other examples that come to mind are "a complete rewrite is always a mistake"
38.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
There's a fun application of this argument to the bit in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, where a civilization runs a 7.5m-year-long computer program to calculate the answer to the question of life, the universe and ev
39.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
I find this kind of cynicism tiring. Full rewrites have major risks but also potentially major upside, let's leave it at that without getting dogmatic. I've had conversations with "veteran" (i.e. old and no longer well-
40.
by mjw_byrne 3y ago
There are other common examples of active and passive meaning the same thing. "The document is printing" and "the document is being printed", for example. It has no merit other than a popular consensus that it's cor
41.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
I feel like the lunar landing aspect is incidental, and this is fundamentally a "impossible-to-please parent for whom nothing is ever good enough" simulator :-)
42.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
Putting aside the long-term concerns such as building skills, maintainability, team dynamics and so on, there's a simple effort-based cost-benefit analysis you can do. To responsibly use a bit of software Not Invented Here, you have t
43.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
"If she talks to me again, I'm going to arrest you both and take away your kids" That part, at least, sounds like a power trip to me.
44.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
> No, it's not, unless you have logs or database records that links the IP address to a person (such as a login from that IP). And I bet you do, that's why it bothers you. Nope, the scenario is which this came up for me was abo
45.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
> And car registration numbers and passport numbers and street addresses are also personal identifiable information despite the fact that people does not have those either. Just like IP addresses The analogy doesn't work. A passpor
46.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
"Why do you think GDPR is some boomer with filofaxes thing?" I handle the GDPR compliance for my company so I've had to get stuck into the topic. Once you start actually trying to apply the various definitions and rules to t
47.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
EU tech law seems to be a bit of a rollercoaster. GDPR was conceptually a great thing (although its actual implementation smacks strongly of boomers with filofaxes ranting about FaceTok and Google Siri), the right to repair is good, the US
48.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
Absolutely, but IMO circles have as little to do with sin and cos as triangles do :-)
49.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
"triangles have very little to do with the true nature of sin and cos" <- this is what I mean.
50.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
True, however that doesn't mean x represents an angle. It means you can put a geometric interpretation on an abstract formula. e^ix = cos x + i sin x regardless of what x represents - if you were doing electrical engineering it might
51.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
The main thing to realise is that sin and cos are not fundamentally tools for doing geometry. The fact that you can use them for working out side lengths of triangles or converting polar to cartesian coordinates is somewhat incidental. It
52.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
"math never decreed that sine and cosine have to take radian arguments!" This is at best questionable and at worst false. If you only want to use sin and cos as functions for doing trigonometry, it is true that you can choose what
53.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
Ironically, the second example has a copy-and-paste bug: def make_pepperoni_pizza(): make_pizza(["pepperoni"]) def make_hawaiian_pizza(): make_pizza(["pepperoni"])
54.
by mjw_byrne 4y ago
Whilst randomly browsing on this site, I came across a piece of my own work! I made the chess piece pictured on the "kingwood" page. I _think_ that's the first time I've ever completely randomly stumbled upon myself onl
55.
by mjw_byrne 5y ago
I don't like this, for several reasons: - It's already hard enough to persuade people to use ISO 8601, which is obviously objectively superior to DMY or MDY in several ways. Consistent, widespread support for this uncertainty not
56.
by mjw_byrne 5y ago
Separate storage of file hashes would make tampering detectable. Actually preventing root modifying a file probably has to be done at the hardware level.
57.
by mjw_byrne 5y ago
Regardless of where you land on the racism/reverse racism/affirmative action/culture discussion, it's a sad day for science, academia and truth when simply presenting evidence (rather good evidence in this case, it seems
58.
by mjw_byrne 5y ago
Pair programming easily achieves the >2x speed boost though. The driver focuses on the technical details of writing high-quality code, implementation, proper variable naming and so on whilst the navigator keeps track of the overall task
59.
by mjw_byrne 5y ago
People often say that you can't burn enough calories to contribute significantly to weight loss, but I don't think this is true. I went from fat to lean by counting calories and exercising. An hour of hard cycling burns 1,200 cal
60.
by mjw_byrne 6y ago
This is a good example of the trade off between pretty/terse/clever and safe/correct/maintainable. Nginx is well-respected mature software but it's hard to see these issues as anything other than a design blunder.

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