Hacker News Reader

Everything is vulnerable to Spectre.

Polynomial time is unbounded. Indeed constant Time is unbounded.

Unless you never get the real time doesn’t this just push out the problem to statistical analysis of differences between real and fake time?

Tloewaldon Meltdown and Spectre

I’m a bit puzzled how this helps prevent handcrafted binaries from exploiting CPU designs.

Tloewaldon Stimulus: A modest JavaScript framework for the HTML you already have

I do like the brief and to-the-point introduction. Stimulus seems somewhat similar, or at least similarly motivated, to a framework I've been creating as I go -- https://bindinator.com/

(It's gotten quite a bit bigger than stimulus as it's been used. Such is life.)

Tloewaldon Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

Use google.

https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/260789-new-android-malwar...

Tloewaldon Uber is officially a cab firm, says European court

It doesn't matter. Uber doesn't hide the fact that they charge more during demand surges, and the fact that there is a demand surge is more info than cab companies usually provide; typically they'll take your booking and lie about how close the driver is.

Tloewaldon Apple Says It Slows Older iPhones to Save Their Battery Life

Well it's not like Android phones advertise "comes with malware direct from Google Play store" and "malware can run your phone so hard it will deform, catch fire, or explode"

Tloewaldon Uber is officially a cab firm, says European court

Surge pricing is actually a great feature. It’s the low base bay, lack of benefits, and screwing with liability that are loathsome.

You had a choice of NO CAB or an Uber at triple rate. Didn’t want to pay? Clearly someone else did. Economics at work.

One of my early experiences with Uber was much the same, trying to get my family home from the national zoo in Washington DC in a sudden rain storm. Cabs — not available. Uber — surge pricing. Totally worth it.

That said I use Lyft exclusively now because of Uber’s moral vacuum.

Tloewaldon FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

> The two parties will drone on about how other candidates are "spoilers" who only benefit who you see as the worse choice. That's nonsense, your vote should go towards who you think represents your interests best.

You need to learn Civics. I could write in my own name since my opinions are closer to my opinions than the Green candidate. What would that accomplish?

If, one day, the US introduces proportional or preferred representation then the calculations will change. In Australia, for example, you can vote (1) Green, (2) Labor (say) and then if the Green candidate is eliminated your vote is counted for your second choice. But if the Green candidate gets enough support then you get your first choice.

Even then, Democracy is difficult. In proportional systems, small parties can have disproportionate influence.

Tloewaldon FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

The thing about the lesser of two evils is that it’s the lesser of two evils and picking it over the greater of two evils is a good choice. That said, the most important issue of our time is climate change and the difference there is utterly clear.

Tloewaldon FCC won’t delay vote, says net neutrality supporters are “desperate”

The Democrats were pretty much unable to pass any legislation worth a damn after 2010, which is why everything done afterwards is so easily undone.

One party is for dealing with climate change, privacy, net neutrality, healthcare, etc. It may be bad, but it's definitely _less_ bad.

Tloewaldon A Generation Lost in the Bazaar (2012)

Well put.

Having worked with plenty of software developed by the priesthood in the era of the cathedral might I observe that it was mostly fractally terrible. For every UNIX there were so many terrible pieces of software, and UNIX itself is pretty fractally horrible. (See “The UNIX hater’s handbook” for thorough criticism of UNIX as it was when when Raymond published his book.)

Tloewaldon Super Tiny Website Logos in SVG

I wish that CSS could be applied to them consistently.

Tloewaldon To Settle Infinity Question, a New Law of Mathematics (2013)

When your hand moves, does it pass through an infinite or a finite number of positions at a finite or infinite points in time? Infinity need not be big.

Tloewaldon MIT Economist Has a New Theory of Finance

Doesn’t seem like a new theory so much as a description of a possible lemma (...real soon now) for behavioral economics.

Tloewaldon DragonflyBSD 5.0

Apple did some pretty brilliant stuff with testing. E.g. they had it silently test install itself on random user devices, verify everything was fine, and revert for several versions prior to release (presumably they picked users with sufficient spare room). The actual rollout was stunningly issue-free.

As an aside, this is one of the several unbelievably slick updates Apple has pulled off in its history, including:

- the switch to 32-bit clean addresses only (which was probably the most painful switch Apple ever did!) in System 7.6

- the switch to PowerPC (which caused fewer problems than the 32-bit clean switch!)

- the switch to Mac OS X

- the switch to Intel

- the switch to 64-bit on desktop

- the switch to 64-bit on iOS

Microsoft, (in most cases rightly) vaunted for backwards compatibility has had horrific snafus such as DOS 5 being the first version of DOS whose RESTORE program could read BACKUP files from the previous version of DOS.

(It's also worth noting that NeXT itself managed to support four runtime architectures with "quad fat binaries".)

Tloewaldon The Absurdity of Nobel Prizes in Science

The only problem I foresee is that Berkeley will quickly run out of parking spaces.

Tloewaldon The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends”

I have fond memories of Mr Rogers, but really find it pretty unwatchable (and so did my kids when they were of age). They loved Thomas for a while and fortunately they didn't absorb the ideological disaster embedded in virtually every storyline (Topham Hat is a stand in for God and explicitly judges everyone at the end of most episodes based on being "useful" -- to him -- and obedient). There are no significant female characters (my children are girls so that was particular;y annoying; although Dora is more annoying despite having a female main character) and the merchandising is horrible (multiple redundant and incompatible sets of trains and tracks that are all horribly over-priced)

Spongebob is a far better show in all respects (I hated it until I had kids). Aside from being hilarious on several levels, it is remarkably socially conscious without being preachy. Oh and it even has some recurring non-pathetic female characters.

Tloewaldon “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

Oh of course you're right (/facepalm).

But does/did Solaris have anything worthwhile to offer over BSD/Mach.

Tloewaldon “Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product”

I doubt Apple or NeXT would have ported their platform to Solaris (from BSD/Mach). it seems to me that BSD would have been Linux if Linux hadn't happened.

Tloewaldon Why PS4 downloads are so slow

It's not just four years into launch since the PS3 was at least as bad.

Tloewaldon Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

So what this says is Cloudflare believes in providing service to anyone until it causes bad publicity. It's certainly not a morally courageous stand, but fits in perfectly with most tech giants.

Tloewaldon Why We Terminated Daily Stormer

I think this entire argument is classic "logic overreach". This is all socially constructed. There is no perfect logical algorithm for deciding what is reasonable.

The rule is more like "don't randomly screw people". Ok, we've decided to screw this Nazi website. Hmm, is that a case of randomly screwing people? Nope. OK, move along.

Tloewaldon On Melissa O’Neill’s PCG random number generator

Have quantum outcomes been tested for the kinds of statistical not-quite-randomness that PRNGs have? Aren't the measurements far too imprecise?

Tloewaldon Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

I agree that the author's arguments have been misrepresented, but as much by the author as anyone else. What we have is someone who is trying to couch borderline crazy views as reasonable and thoughtful and is smart enough to keep the lid on his underlying opinions with some success. But, read the author's footnotes for a real tl;dr -- he baldly states without evidence (indeed contrary to all the literature) that women are paid equally for equal work, that political correctness is a tool of leftists and authoritarians, and on and on.

His constant protestations that he's really interested in promoting diversity BUT is just the new "some of my best friends are X, but".

Tloewaldon 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream

"brogrammer"

https://www.desktopmetal.com/company/about/

I see a bunch of PhDs with backgrounds in material science (among other things). It's just possible they might have a clue.

Tloewaldon Hypnotized by Hyperloop

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

Payroll taxes are about 3/4 the size of income tax, and again you're ignoring the amount of federal outlays that are corporate welfare that benefits the rich. Again, Medicaid and food stamps allow people to take low income jobs and (barely) survive. In most OECD countries, higher incomes allow most employed people to meet their own living expenses (although their healthcare is still effectively subsidized).

Tloewaldon Inquiry education – from 1969 – is what we need today

Nail Postman, one of the two authors of Teaching as a subversive activity also wrote the prophetic Amusing ourselves to death.

I read the introduction to the former when I was in college in the eighties, and it has stuck with me. They argue that the role of education (especially in a democracy) is to imbue students with "foolproof crap detectors".

Tloewaldon Hypnotized by Hyperloop

Explain how the Concorde (an example in the article) benefited the poor more than the rich.