pencilguin

13 ms·

61.
by pencilguin 4y ago
I frequently encourage programmers to delete comments. Any comment that answers "what" instead of "why" is a problem solved by deletion.
62.
by pencilguin 4y ago
"that & bool", yielding either zero or "that", is common enough, by itself, to matter.
63.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Yes, this is what is silly. That is not to say it's impossible that we, uniquely, possess the consciousness gene. Possession by demons is technically possible, too, and equally silly.
64.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Great, but anybody who says correctness is the point of types has completely failed to understand what types are for. Good types do work for you, so that you don't need to write the code to do that work. Correctness is a side effect, b
65.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Every big enough system has a few parts that would fit OOP, and a few parts that would fit FP. If your language supports those, then great, use those for them. The overwhelming majority of problems do not fit OO, and using OOP on them makes
66.
by pencilguin 4y ago
I read Continue reading Subscribe today with a 12-week introductory offer
67.
by pencilguin 4y ago
In 1970, there was still a middle class. Income was distributed according to the classic bell curve. Today, income is strictly bimodal. The lower-income lobe is the permanent underclass. The ragged tail of the upper class manages assets of
68.
by pencilguin 4y ago
In existing code bases, new subsystems can be fully modern. Old code can be modernized incrementally, e.g. replacing uses of naked pointers with smart pointers and then deleting destructor code, or replacing C-style for-loops with modern ra
69.
by pencilguin 4y ago
It is a good way to turn optimizations into gross pessimizations.
70.
by pencilguin 4y ago
The US doesn't have a middle class anymore. People taking six figures are just higher up in the underclass. They are still incomprehensibly far from the upper class.
71.
by pencilguin 4y ago
This has to be the silliest thing he has promoted, unless he is saying that (e.g.) quantum physics will not end up being computable. Consciousness as implemented relies on cellular processes, some of which necessarily involve quantum phenom
72.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Judging from the number of instructions in all its necessary extensions, RISC-V is RISC in name only. ARM ("Acorn RISC Machine") instructions are as absurdly many as x86's, which does not even pretend to be RISC. So it is sil
73.
by pencilguin 4y ago
RV is an open-ended collection of ISAs. Do not doubt that the number of instructions will grow as large as is found in x86 and ARM, making a mockery of the "R". I am ready for the successor, Risc-6, already. It can retain most det
74.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Japanese codes were transparent before and throughout the war. They were not Enigma codes. It was well known exactly when the Japanese planned to start the Pacific War, though intercepts did not say where. Many in the Navy were sure it woul
75.
by pencilguin 4y ago
The Pacific theatre was a whole other war fought simultaneously with the latter half of the other one. The Soviets killed up to 15 million of their own before the war even started. (This number may be an overestimate because most locales ha
76.
by pencilguin 4y ago
It is a fact that almost half the US voting population is ready and willing to vote in somebody who would arrange never to leave office. Numerous billionaires support that outcome.
77.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Ammonia trains might be a better answer.
78.
by pencilguin 4y ago
They do overlap. Each TAI second starts at exactly the same time as a UTC second. Or two of them, sometimes. Negative leap seconds are even worse than regular leap seconds.
79.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Millions of apps are committed to UTC, and will not be fixed. Fixing UTC just means not announcing any more leap seconds. Not doing a harmful thing anymore is always the best fix.
80.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Leap seconds are an abomination. Anybody who needs astronomical time is not using UTC anyway. If necessary, we could have a leap minute in a century or two. Google's 24-hour smear makes leap seconds, bad enough already, ever so much wo
81.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Regional collapses have happened. This will be the first global collapse. If it happens, it will be much earlier than you hope, as millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions force their way across borders, and fascist govern
82.
by pencilguin 4y ago
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Irrational is contrary to efficient.
83.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Not if they are careful enough.
84.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Maybe you are not clear on what "zero sum" means? But of course bitcoin is technically negative-sum, because miners don't pay in, but do cash out. And, some fraction of coin is lost and so not cashed out. Whoever can't c
85.
by pencilguin 4y ago
That is an interesting alternative. You need a battery that tolerates many many cycles, and being charged at 100x its usual discharge rate. Maybe a molten CaSb battery, from Ambri. I guess if all the cars can be wired to take in power, you
86.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Mine works down to a remarkably low temperature, but at that temperature is able to extract much less heat than the house needs to stay warm at that outside temperature . So I still burn a noticeable amount of propane, in bursts. A fuel
87.
by pencilguin 4y ago
As cost to produce falls, it will be used in more places. Ways to store and transport energy will be among those. LH2 is very attractive as aircraft fuel. But I take your point: for other uses, the production efficiency counts more. Conve
88.
by pencilguin 4y ago
There are already places where being without a cooling method other than sweating would be fatal, at least one day of the year. In many more places, crops are failing. People necessarily leaving these places will need to go where other peop
89.
by pencilguin 4y ago
The weight of one extra car will increase the operating cost of a 100-car train by 1%, give or take a bit. Using cheap hydrogen instead of expensive kerosene may save much more than that. Moving light hydrogen instead of heavy kerosene may
90.
by pencilguin 4y ago
Anybody who doesn't "disbelieve the efficient markets hypothesis" isn't paying attention. NRGV ("Energy Vault") was trading at a $2.4B market cap less than a year ago, and are now at $0.4B, still radically over

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