vacuity

28 ms·

391.
by vacuity 2y ago
My algorithms professor says Dijkstra was wrong about most things, but I think many of Dijkstra's opinions are justified or right. But certainly it wasn't the right time for many of his remarks.
392.
by vacuity 2y ago
As much as I like HN, I'm not sure the average discussion is all that, and for all its supposed virtues I don't see them in practice usually. But when there's a good thread, it's really good. I think it's worth navi
393.
by vacuity 2y ago
Personally I have my own set of beliefs on the use of LLMs, but I think you're even more cynical than me. In any case, Planck's sentiment cuts both ways. It is not necessarily the case that some change necessitates progress, but o
394.
by vacuity 2y ago
Why the Hacker News community is still running "AI is the second coming of Jesus", "AI is and will always be a mere party trick" (and company) threads is beyond me. LLMs are, at some level, conceptually simple: they take
395.
by vacuity 2y ago
Certainly, but I interject that I do dislike how the modern perception of "Luddite" frames them as unthinking objectors to progress when really they were protesting their economic obsoletion. We should have CEOs who care about the
396.
by vacuity 2y ago
While I think you're right, your sentiment tends to be used to justify a lot of the bad stuff that is outweighed. "Humanity" is a vague target and can somehow be doing great even when we have plenty of human rights abuses, cl
397.
by vacuity 2y ago
I think teaching requires not only that you understand how to do something, but also what someone else's incomplete understanding is. You need to address the root cause as to why the other person's understanding is so lacking, lik
398.
by vacuity 2y ago
I am engaging with the arguments you are making; I don't think you are engaging with mine. Reread my previous comment. Application designers do not get the luxury of somehow having high memory usage in an idle state but being able to c
399.
by vacuity 2y ago
That's true, my bad. But in that sense it isn't running unsafe Rust or C. It is more limited and provides a different context of safety. I misjudged @tuetuopay's assurance for safety, but I think my comments are generally cor
400.
by vacuity 2y ago
You're still going off of a "happy path" mentality. The user decides when an app should be idle or active, not the OS. The OS therefore pages in and out with no grand scheme and may be out of sync with the user's next ac
401.
by vacuity 2y ago
> So yes I agree that I don't get safety benefits. However, it does not mean I don't get increased reliability from it. Just type safety allows APIs to be expressed in ways you cannot hold them wrong. Heck, just getting a Resul
402.
by vacuity 2y ago
It seems like you're saying that if the user acts in certain patterns, the OS will just take care of it. Isn't the point of computers and technology to make it so that users are less restricted and more empowered? If many people d
403.
by vacuity 2y ago
An application that genuinely uses less RAM at any point of its execution, whether that's measured by maximum RSS, average RSS, whatever, is still better. Then you can have more apps running at the same level of swapping. It's tru
404.
by vacuity 2y ago
Don't mislead people like this. If you are writing C, oh well. If you are writing big unsafe Rust blocks, genuinely, you are holding it wrong . Rust's strength is that unsafe blocks are minimal and well-isolated, giving both the
405.
by vacuity 2y ago
You are right, but this is being hedged against the advantages of adding Rust. I daresay no one would agree to more work for no perceived benefit. If you want to contest this tradeoff, that's a different tack.
406.
by vacuity 2y ago
> I think you're giving people too much credit. Quite often they say empathetic things not because they're empathetic, but because that's the socially expected thing to do. They are so well-versed at this that they do it w
407.
by vacuity 2y ago
Capabilities are implied; seL4 did it (everyone cool does it) and Barrelfish designed their capability system off of seL4's. When I say multikernel, that is the main innovation of Barrelfish to take; the kernel design otherwise is more
408.
by vacuity 2y ago
Barrelfish! My dream project is developing a multikernel with seL4's focus on assurance. I want to go even further than seL4's minimalism, particularly with regards to the scheduler. I thiiiiink it doesn't have to be bad for
409.
by vacuity 2y ago
Your view is not espoused enough. Thank you for this comment. I'm not suggesting we just go and use seL4 myself, but it's a strong foundation that shows we don't have to be so cynical about the potential of microkernels.
410.
by vacuity 2y ago
Yeah, not a big fan either. I also saw some suggestion that current implementations of IOMMUs aren't highly secure. Performance is always the big opponent to security. I wrote about my thoughts on not necessarily relying on IOMMUs adja
411.
by vacuity 2y ago
I've been developing a notion that, in modern times, a microkernel is not the sole root of trust. It is just the most privileged component that glues other essential components. Without it, things fall apart, but we still need quality
412.
by vacuity 2y ago
Indeed. It's moreso the case that they view everything as "waste and corruption" and are making everyone miserable, but if you look at the (currently) top thread[1], it's a deliberate move at that. [1] https:/&#x2F
413.
by vacuity 2y ago
I think we need to define consciousness or soul or whatever first. In the sense of the mind, even, what is a mind? There is something that does have to have some connection to our physical actions, but how we conceptualize that thing is m
414.
by vacuity 2y ago
I agree, but I was under the impression we were discussing the finding of exceptional talent.
415.
by vacuity 2y ago
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould Developing ta
416.
by vacuity 2y ago
> Technology is necessarily a progressive force Technology is a tool. It is not a culture or a system. In fact, I think state and corporate use of technology for things like surveillance, censorship, frankly pointless jobs that somehow a
417.
by vacuity 2y ago
It outwardly manifests as hate, but most people don't think of themselves like that. People generally view themselves as the star of the story. We have subcultures that make people drift towards certain beliefs and outcomes, all the wh
418.
by vacuity 2y ago
Science is limited by what we can falsify, which follows from what we can observe. We should attribute no normative weight to whether something should or shouldn't be scientifically analyzable. So we should always improve our means of
419.
by vacuity 2y ago
I think the latter is the preferred one for HN, as the former is clickbait. At the very least the latter is a good attempt.
420.
by vacuity 2y ago
I've conceptualized this in the following way: be most skeptical of narratives that are strongly aligned with the mainstream narrative (more room for ignorance or malice; see Harvey Weinstein), and then most skeptical of narratives tha

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