AKrumbach

Not the grandparent you were replying to, but from the note added to the original linked issue (emphasis mine):

> Rust's type system is *intended to prevent memory unsafety. Upholding this promise is something we take very seriously*, .... It is a large priority of the Types Team to *fix all type system unsoundnesses* and to work towards there being a solid foundation to minimize the risk of unknown ones.

So, yes, if you have a group who "takes very seriously" the job to "fix all type system unsoundness", I would expect them to utilize some manner of formal proof verification that their type system is mathematically correct up to some defined limit.

I wish I could take full credit for this, but I'm paraphrasing Andrew Plotkin (developer for the Inform text-adventure programming language):

Steam machines failed because they tried to replace Windows with a worse user experience. In 2015, there were fewer native games and worse compatibility; nobody is going to just rise up and displace Microsoft from their entrenched throne as THE Desktop PC Gaming platform. Alternately, the Steam Deck is essentially inventing a whole new market; if players want a mobile, AAA game platform the only contender right now is a Nintendo Switch (which has an entirely different games library, with limited overlap mostly in "indie" game titles). So now instead of fighting Microsoft where they're strongest, they're fighting a console manufacturer in one place they can expect to be weaker.

Then once the Steam Deck is a widespread commercial success -- and from pre-orders, it looks like that's guaranteed -- Valve will have the foothold to push SteamOS as an equal games development space as Windows desktop. Coupled with the reports that Proton currently runs over 90% of the popular games which don't have a native client, this very well could introduce Linux (albeit indirectly) to the wider market in a way that could eventually challenge Microsoft's comfortable monopoly position.

or as seen on Twitter[1]: "Every January: One month hiatus from work, and I could finally publish my draft of the next bestselling novel

April 2020: Today I alphabetized the jelly beans"

1: not a reference to any specific tweet, just the general tendency of people to speak about grand plans and then never execute on them.

No; if you look at an old rotary phone, you're counting the number of finger holes in order to determine pulses.

To dial a 0, pulse the line 10 times.

> But I do not at all understand the enmity some nerds have for non-replaceable batteries.

Devices exist on a repairability spectrum, from the industrial appliance which is delivered with full electric schematics and every part stamped with a replacement order number, to the black-box NUSPI ["no user serviceable parts inside"]. The enmity is not really about batteries, but having that one question stand in as a measurement to ensure the device meets a minimal standard for allowing third-party repair.

> There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games. But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games.

I am less certain the meta-game is inherently about broadening the variety of status measurements, and more about setting the terms by which status is measured. A person who can win a large variety of such measurements might trend toward a broadening strategy such as you describe (since this is likely to favor their odds of winning any given contest), but ultimately the problem of of a "split decision" between multiple comparisons means we should expect any given contest to only ever use one means of status measurement.

Therefore the meta-game is about winning the selection process for that measurement (with the broad strategy being just one among many possibilities)....

No math proof, but I'd favor a cluster strategy as being faster to force a (partial) solution to existing clues.

> If the author means literally everyone dead, planet gone, then obviously it won't be "apocalyptic", but the science is suggesting it's likely to be really bad.

No, the science doesn't imply that climate change is going to mean literally everyone dead, only a massive cost to maintain things as they are today. Contrawise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said "the world will end" by 2030 if we don't stop climate change. (Source: https://thinkprogress.org/we-dont-have-12-years-to-save-the-...)

So, yes there are people being absolutely, ridiculously, unscientifically hysterical about the effects of climate change. Unscientific alarmism is just as harmful toward efforts to properly manage the global ecology as the unscientific denial of changes.

>> Apple : "The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings"

> ... If Location Service is enable, these services will have access to them ...

> The Author seems to miss the fact that the unknown service causing the icon to appear isn't in the list of individual settings.

OK, so how do we know what this mystery service does? The obvious candidates (E911/SOS, FindMyPhone, Location-based ads, etc) all appear in the list. I think this definitely raises questions about what remaining service is asking for location, and especially what that is being used for. Given that this article is coming from a security blog, there is a definite implication of questioning the intentionality / consent of a broad setting like "location services on/off" has unknown, unlisted users [and especially when most users of such a setting have individual toggles].

Also not in this thread until now, but two thoughts:

First: A car can be "the means of production", if you're a driver for Uber/Lyft.

Second: the issue I understand is that this website isn't letting one person take fruit from a tree, but treating all such things as open invitations for all persons to take from the tree. To your analogy, that isn't taking a single Model T car, but seizing the factory and stating you're making cars for the entire city with it.

I'd be even more specific than that: understanding the transformation to turn a looping function into a recursive one is the key gateway into being able to comprehend code which uses advanced call-stack manipulation patterns, such as continuations or coroutines. While I hesitate to call such methodologies _simpler_ code, such patterns still will certainly yield more maintainable, reliable code in a strict single-thread language such as Javascript.

Well, that isn't the only bug in the code, just the one which is being requested for prompting the warning. It's been about a decade since I've written significant C/C++ code, but something far more dangerous stood out to me:

Upon first reading, I'd assume they are seeing the maximum unsigned values, but their variables aren't declared as unsigned -- and C/C++ default to signed values. Secondly, representing the nth power of two actually takes n+1 binary digits, so e.g. 28 is a one, followed by 8 zeros -- overflowing any 8-bit variable, signed or unsigned! This is undefined behavior as-declared (signed values), but would be entered as a zero for explicitly declared unsigned variables.

Personally, if I were to be implementing this, I'd use bitwise operations to generate the correct values, and explicitly acknowledge in a comment something like "the following code knowingly breaks the abstraction of numeric values. It is likely not portable to other hardware, nor should you assume easy extension to other variable types. Das Quellcode ist nicht fur der gefingerpoken!"

A search on Google turns up this Common Lisp code, which appears to define a number of SI units (both base and derived) in the sort of manner described.

http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conve...

Given the way this appears to be defining some sort of class-based hierarchy, with the correct type requirements this code should perform exactly the sort of unit/type checking the grandparent post wanted, but I didn't go digging into the rest of the project files to confirm this code defined things in the correct manner for that to work.

Well, for a SNES/NES/Atari/Genesis/etc. classic device, the issue might not be getting ROM images but doing so legally. Sure, I could find a torrent containing the entire NES+SNES library for making retro-Pi... but that doesn't make it any less piracy if I don't own original carts for all of those games. The fact that so many classic PC/DOS games either have been put online by the original owners for free (such as SimCity or the Zork trilogy) or can still be purchased on Steam or GOG.COM (like Sierra's Kings Quest/Space Quest collections) makes this sort of device far less valuable from that angle.

Furthermore, that leads into a question of "Why should young people care about the copyright of 20+ year old games?" ... which probably is actually a very good question deserving of serious examination instead of mere snark.

It's not the form factor but the official FAQ page that really makes me think this is a RPi+UI, especially when the last question/answer pair is:

> Can’t I just buy a Raspberry Pi, an enclosure, gamepad, keyboard, and mouse, 3D print a faceplate, install Armbian, buy 30+ games, build the source for ARM or install/configure in DOSBox for each and every game, create a menu system with game art, and tell everyone about it at parties?

> No.

With no other explanation or expansion on that answer, it reads to me like "That was our idea, now go away". OTOH, if they manage to license a number of classic games which aren't legally available elsewhere (like the original Sid Meier Civilization, or Lemmings) this might be worth the surcharge.

Came into the comments to find this, and I'm going to expand on your description: I feel like quicksort isn't [uniquely] beautiful except when used alongside bubble sort to explain computational complexity (both big-O "worst case" and big-Ω "best case"). These were the examples that really made the concepts "click" for me.

By your logic, a labor union "strike" must also be extremely ineffective. (They require massive coordination and go against each individual's incentive to work.)

Yet they do work, and we don't call labor unions "government".

This argument seems to subtly imply that the only efficacious means to "level an uneven playing field" is government regulation, and not some other, non-government process such as boycotts.

Government regulation is, ultimately, only one item in the civic toolbox of society. If it turns out this is flawed, and will in the long run generate more negative outcomes than positive ones, abandoning the tool does not mean abandoning the final goal. Instead, we must utilize alternate means of achieving the same ends... or accept that corruption as the price of our chosen path.

No, that's my first initial and last name (A Krumbach).

Anyway, "puzzle" is now available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KYDTZ2AVWQfWCSACUvfl5gAIHzA...

If I counted correctly, you should be able to make a roughly rectangular shape out of the provided pieces. (Even if I miscalculated, I think they make a good exploration toy for the P2 tiling anyway.)

I'm at work right now, but give me a day and I will design that.

Which would be to say for fluency, the proof is in the punning.

I don't know about "won't have a clue what macros are capable of before..." -- there are quite a few use cases for macros which can be described easily to any programmer, even those who never used Lisp. I would like to believe it would suffice to say "macros in Lisp allow you to fully extend the the language with new primitives and abstractions in a way that no other language does", but examples are always helpful.

Lisp has a macro called setf, which takes any call which gets a value -- whether from a local function variable, or a class, to an array or hash table entry -- and converts it to the corresponding setter call. (If you define your own value places/types, there are also functions to make setf aware of how they work, so this isn't restricted to just some defined set of features in the language. Anything that holds a value in Lisp can be "setf" to a new value.)

There are a couple of other "big" Lisp macros in the language standard like with-open-file (which ensures a file is closed once control flow exits the body), loop (does pretty much what it says on the tin: provides whatever looping method you might want), or handler-case (try-catch style error handling; yes, Lisp allows for other methods).

Or how about the example I recently saw in a cryptography library. Since a lot of cryptographic algorithms use integer math modulo some giant number, this library defined a macro "mod-n" which took a base and some Lisp code, and re-wrote the code so the common integer math functions (addition, multiplication, etc.) would only return values "modulo {base}" --that is, return only values between 0 (inclusive) and base (exclusive). This meant their modulo math code looked (nearly) the same as normal, just standard arithmetic functions. This wasn't a very large macro either: only around 10 lines long (and about half of that being the list of operator replacements).

> Which makes me ask the question: do you, gentle Hacker News reader, really want diversity of opinion and why?

I speak only for myself, but the answer is an absolute, complete and emphatic YES. The reason is quite simple: in all of human history, there have been only three "families", broadly speaking, of epistemological methods[1]:

* Mysticism: you have been told what is true by an unquestionable (and often distant) authority. Think Moses descending from the mountain--only he can safely speak to God. While God is ultimately the original [claimed] source of the knowledge, it must be funneled through Moses first.

* Socratic debate: two humans can talk about the topic, trying to apply abstract reason to determine the "best" answer. Note that in a "pure" Socratic debate, only logic and not any evidence is used.

* Scientific study: humans can attempt direct inquiry of an answer from the physical universe. Note that logic need not apply to scientific answers: the results of many particle physics experiments such as the delayed choice quantum eraser are not "logical" in that they violate what "common sense" tells us the universe should allow.

Now, there no reason I had to use a religious example for the first family, but they do not exist for the other two: literally, both debate and science cannot work correctly if you do not admit the possibility of contrarian or "heretical" ideas.

Since I wish to live in a society jointly directed by reason and science, I must allow (and to some small extent, seek) contrarian and heretical ideas.

1: I'm speaking of epistemology not in the definition taught in philosophical classes (e.g., "How do we know what is real or what is knowledge?"), but a far more direct, literal, and practical application of how knowledge is generated and transmitted between societies/individuals.

Yep, three years' worth apparently! (Would have been nice to have a [2014] tag in the original title.)

"You will have to forgive me when I cannot fathom how actively meddling with a complex system, which requires a substantial investment by our species in terms of scientists, research departments, universities, government offices - is going to result in a tightly controlled, well predicted result."

Any model of atmospheric carbon dioxide which is sufficiently accurate for generating public policy should suffice in predicting the results. After all, the model itself should not care what simulated means are being employed in increasing or reducing the amount of said compound, only its' effect at each concentration level.

> Trump won't do what's needed which is the one thing that will ultimately set the country on the right course: abandon capitalism.

If we abandon capitalism, what alternative do you believe we should adopt instead?

> [T]here's a point when a politician is advocating for something so egregious that supporting said politician can no longer be ignored.

There are no words by which I can be sufficiently emphatic in my disagreement.

Politics [whether at the national level, or "mere" office politics] is the process of making group decisions. Democratic politics are built upon a shared group consensus. The only way this process can be valid -- that is, to have an outcome which accurately reflects the communal beliefs of the group -- is if the members can express themselves unhindered by fear of repercussion.

The only response in a democratic system to ideas with which you disagree is to argue against and persuade their audience to no longer support them. To do otherwise is to repudiate the very premises and processes upon which modern representative government is built.

> Sam Altman and PG have both been very vocal in their denouncement of Trump, so keeping Thiel as a partner seems incongruous at best, and down right spineless at worst.

You may have to clarify this for me, because it sounds as if you believe people with different political ideals can never work together, even on something non-political.

Came here to give the same answer. Between "Future of Programming" and the Mother of All Demos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY) I find it mindbogglingly depressing that it feels so much like the entire programming field has stagnated for the last 40+ years, re-implementing the same [flawed? limiting? incorrect?] ideas over and over.

> I found it kind of funny that the author's big conclusion was less state-directed action, leaning on the thought that somehow the economy will work out for everyone...

The original undirected market [that is: the natural environment, and evolutionary selection] seems to have regularly turned out OK results, even for sub-optimal organisms, for millions of years.

Now, do we have any guarantee that a similar system would work just as well in our economy? No -- but I read the point of the article as stating that the current system may claim such guarantees, but the housing crash and subsequent slow recovery can be read as proving the ineffectiveness of the "incantations" used by the government to direct the economy.

> ...proliferation of "schools" and "think-tanks" that provide a selection of justifications to do what you already wanted to do. The science of how governments should handle money is too important not to be made into a political football.

Given your description of economic policy markers as "justifications" rather than some manner of lever / control, why should we believe governments' monetary policy is based on science? If it is not, the author claims (and I am prone to agree) that abandoning this false belief in search of the truth will improve our lives far more than the comfort granted by it.