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CoastalCoder

7,854 karma · joined April 5, 2021

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CoastalCoder··on Alleged Chinese spy had 'close relationship' with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang
Yeah, but "somebody unlocked the story for you"!
CoastalCoder··on Why is this fingerprinting script creating bioweapons?
> Do you want me to pull a poem out of my ass?

My first thought was "Please leave such jokes for Reddit."

But now I'm curious in which subreddit(s) this belongs.

CoastalCoder··on Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain
Perhaps part of the answer is liability.
CoastalCoder··on Proton to 'Re-Interview' Staff About AI to See Who Gets to Keep Their Job
I had been considering Proton as a way to de-Google myself.

I'm glad to learn about this before pulling the trigger.

CoastalCoder··on Stop-motion movie Wildwood is a staggering masterpiece
I don't want to see Hacker News become a site where products are promoted, so I'm ambivalent (at best) about this submission.

That said... The embedded YouTube trailer really is quite compelling, IMHO.

CoastalCoder··on The No Kings Takedown Is Why You Shouldn't Rent Your Megaphone from Zuck
Maybe related to how much brain space they're willing to spend on that facet of life?

There are certainly parts of my life that would be more optimized if that weren't a constraint.

CoastalCoder··on Kevin Bacon's missing clothes finally delivered in Ireland
The baggage teams could use a few good men.
CoastalCoder··on Yet another way to invoke functions without parentheses
You might be interested in the book "Data Flow Analysis" by Khedker et al.

It's very compiler-focused, but it's one piece of the puzzle.

CoastalCoder··on Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting 'thank-you gifts' from birds [video]
I'm delighted that I'm not the only person who uses Greek pluralization for a Greek word.

I'm still a nerd, but at least I have company :)

CoastalCoder··on Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting 'thank-you gifts' from birds [video]
Well, there is a test.
CoastalCoder··on Woman who rescued injured crow keeps getting 'thank-you gifts' from birds [video]
One reason I've hesitated to firm this kind of relationship is the fear that, were I to accidentally trigger a violent / startled response from the bird, it could gouge on of my eyes before I could respond.

Anyone know how realistic that concern is?

CoastalCoder··on Americans Trust in Federal Government Sinks to New Depths
One thing I'm curious about re: Citizens United...

Do people have a problem with the validity of the legal reasoning, or with the court's wisdom in their final decision?

IANAL by a long shot. But I wonder if the constitution is pretty clear on the matter, but flawed in the sense that it sets us up for the current situation.

CoastalCoder··on Bot traffic from Yandex
I think you're saying that it's hard to articulate why some particular comment should be judged as having come from a bot. I.e., similar to the SCOTUS opinion regarding pornography: "I know it if I see it".

Is that correct?

If so, wouldn't that still admit someone providing a specific example? The whole point of my original comment was that I knew I wasn't judging these things the same as others were.

CoastalCoder··on Bot traffic from Yandex
I appreciate that response. I don't know if/how to convince you that I'm asking the question in good faith, but (FWIW) I am.

Regardless, wouldn't it be easy to point me to even one example if it's as prevalent as (I think) you're saying?

Or am I missing your main point, i.e. that what's being described can't be demonstrated via example?

CoastalCoder··on Bot traffic from Yandex
Can you point to a few comments that you consider examples?

I've never noticed occurrences of such stuff, so I'm curious what I'm failing to key in on.

Edit: and would someone mind explaining the downvotes? If they're meant to communicate something to me, I'm genuinely not understanding.

CoastalCoder··on Anthropic bans users from being 'cruel' to its AI systems
I think a closer analogy would be a vending machine owner saying you can't use the machine if you curse at it.
CoastalCoder··on Anthropic bans users from being 'cruel' to its AI systems
Bringing this up here for serious discussion:

To repeat a point raised on Reddit: wouldn't this imply that Anthropic is involved in slavery?

CoastalCoder··on ADHD as a circadian rhythm disorder: evidence and implications for chronotherapy (2025)
Then add in the use of powerful stimulants (e.g. Adderall) to power through a workday, only to have that cause insomnia that night, and a wrecked sleep schedule for the following 3 days.
CoastalCoder··on ADHD as a circadian rhythm disorder: evidence and implications for chronotherapy (2025)
> staying up late rocks. its the funnest. why would i give that up? just to pay attention better at work? no thanks.

You may eventually find yourself in a situation where the tradeoff is worth it.

E.g., you have a family to feed, and your ability hold a well-paying job hinges on your performance.

CoastalCoder··on If somebody tries to hot-patch an already-hot-patched function
I genuinely cannot tell if you're joking.
CoastalCoder··on An algorithmic failure beneath the secret ballot
Sincere question: why is "rapidness of reporting" so important that we'd trade away other important goals?

(Within reasonable limits, I mean.)

CoastalCoder··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
Do you have a theory for why that researcher died?
CoastalCoder··on cp: -r or -R?
Not just you.

Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern).

I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. ‘cp' or ’scp’ almost always meet my needs.

Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn to use ’awk’, but I just can't muster the motivation.

CoastalCoder··on ASML says it sold 'absolutely nothing' in Europe in 2026
It's a civil hierarchy, but I doubt that's what GP meant by "caste system".
CoastalCoder··on English: A vs. An
I grew up in New England.

My experience is that "thuh" is basically a lazy / informal pronunciation of that word.

But it's also by far the most common pronunciation. "Thee" would sound strangely hyper-formal, at least in my circles.

Edit: the sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49770609) also rings true to me.

CoastalCoder··on English: A vs. An
Just curious, what is your native tongue?
CoastalCoder··on Disney+ changes subscriber agreement to allow ads on every plan
Crunchyroll is skating very close to this line.

For paid accounts they don't show ads during an episode, but they're injecting their own little things before some episodes.

My policy now is that every time they do this, I suspend my membership for 2 months. So basically I pay them for 4 months of the year.

That lets me binge each complete season of anime, while still punishing their misbehavior.

It's trivial for them, but it feels like a small win for justice for me.

CoastalCoder··on How much oil-market buffer is left?
Nice summary.
CoastalCoder··on Compressing a flag to 11 bits
> I thought a flag is 1 bit

Well you see, it has to implement IStateful and IBooleanExpression, and both of those involve virtual methods so you have a vtbl pointer as well.

So that's 64+1 bits right there.

Then you also have the address-alignment requirements for that vtbl pointer, so practically speaking were talking 128 bits.

Or 80 bits of you're rolling dirty and say "screw it" to that alignment assumption.

Now if your on x86-64 and want to smuggle that bit value into the unused part of that "64" bit vtbl pointer, you could probably bring it down to just 64 bits overall I guess. Well probably want to let the compiler know about that though, before anyone tries actually using that vtbl pointer.

But, if we also need to make this accessible to Python, then...

CoastalCoder··on Houthis 'take control' of key island in global shipping route
Thanks for the tip about that book!

I'm case it's helpful to anyone, here's one review of it: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vxts5/comme...

Seems like a tough area of history to be certain about.

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