_a_a_a_

> because that's what us British do best: quirky and underwhelming

Yup. We're a bit crap and we know it. And that's just fine.

Without more backup I can only describe that as being fiction. Righteous fiction, where the good guy gets downtrodden and the bad guy wins to fuel the reader's resentment.

Cracking answer, thanks. Just a not-so-small question though, increasing IPC linearly exponentiates the complexity and therefore the price. Current CPUs like x86 already have enormous scheduling windows for OOO (something like 200 instructions) and similarly sized instruction retirement windows (the ROB I think). In your view, is throwing load of money at the problem a good solution? I feel it may come back and bite them later.

> it is impossible to estimate which would be the optimum IPC for a CPU with many cores

Weird comment. 'Optimum' can only be defined with reference to a given task. Otherwise it's like talking about the correct top speed for a car – F1 racer, or a little runaround?

A very quick skim of the article immediately brought these to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_sequence

(Edit: I don't know if it's true but I've heard a story that these sequences were actually used by car thieves to cycle through all N-digit combinations with maximal efficiency. Who says maths isn't useful)

Now, are there any combinatorists here who would be willing to have a private chat with me about something I stumbled upon a few years ago? Almost certainly well known, but I can't find any prior art and I've looked hard.

I had a mate who was very funny; his wit was razor sharp and cutting. I was often at the receiving end of it, mainly because he knew I would take it as funny, nonetheless it was an external projection of his unhappiness inside. Happy ending: he met a girl, and very quickly the brutal edge of his humour disappeared. A shame, because I enjoyed it, but seeing his happiness, it's well worth it.

I often try and make people laugh, partly from a feeling of inadequacy, but partly the habit set long ago in my abusive childhood. Make the particularly unpredictable and dangerous parent laugh and you got a few minutes of safety (including physical safety). It was a strong motivator to be 'witty'.

Great answer, and from others too, thank you all.

> Why go through the expense of...

Good question. I should have asked strictly about fusion bombs. These being a known-working example of energy production by fusion, why not use them when we can't get 'controlled' fusion working?

excellent, thanks

> I certainly had such challenges and I've always thought most people have

Just what the hell do you think emotional and physical abuse is? An overly strict parent? Perhaps you'd like to hear about what me and my siblings went through. It wasn't 'a challenge', it was a fucking deliberate attempt to destroy us as people and it succeeded. You want details? [Edit: don't ask for details]

Word. Mine was nightmarish (siblings didn't have it any better either). Sounds like the Disneyfication of interviewing.

OT but are there any links to resources about using fission/fusion bombs directly for energy production?

What is old german / high german / low german?

The moon is much cheese.

Lack of understanding of X almost inevitably leads to a lack of valuing of X. Then the incentives will become perverse.

The best bosses I've worked for are the minority who took the time to understand at least some of the technical side of things.

I'm always struck by the fact that I, as a lowly dev, am expected to understand the business yet the suits floating far above me think they don't need to know what actually happens down below. Bad mistake. Lack of knowledge is never a good thing.

Bigger yet by far https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_the_First_Qin_Emp...

He of the terracotta army. Not excavated yet for fear of damage, but I would so love to know...

I had reasonable experience with structure editors (worked on one long time ago, for beginner programmers) and at least in their naïve form they are a bloody pain to use, and far slower to get information in than a halfway decent touch typist. It's possible some improvements might make things better, but it's really hard to see. Happy to be proven wrong!

> Somehow though, in person I have a solid skill at teaching people technical information at a level they can understand it, I am quick to identify what types of analogies they will understand

That's interesting. There's something odd about me but I don't know what, I'm not like other people and they tend to consider me a bit weird (usually in a nice way). In turn, I often can't understand them. That said, what I just quoted above of yours pretty much describes me. I'm extremely good at putting myself in another person's boots for teaching technical subjects, and indeed I'm not too shabby at the social side of things - I'm often surprised at people's faux pas. And yet, people's behaviour regularly baffles me too. It's like I'm picking up a lot of some things but perhaps too little of another.

I did an online test for autism, expected to come out below average but much to my surprise came out above.

> you would probably consider me -a hard worker -a dirtbag -adept -foolish

Looks a bit like you're passing CLI arguments :-)

I'm glad you like the possibility of using the addition symbol or some variation on it. The idea that it would be ISA independent never crossed my mind, and perhaps just as well because as you pointed out, it would bomb. For that (ie. portability), use an HLL.

I fully understand your criticism, entirely correct, that machine arithmetic does not behave like mathematical arithmetic. I diverged from you where you say that '+' is mathematical therefore has a predetermined meaning. It has a conventional mathematical interpretation, often related to number addition, but it is a convention only and can be bent as far as you like provided you're clear about it (and a bit of common sense too; defining '+' as a square root operation would be pretty bloody stupid). No symbol in mathematics has any intrinsic meaning, including '+'.

Thanks for interesting discussion!

Slightly open-ended doesn't seem to be a problem for me on SO. Where I've really had a problem is the admins not reading the question properly then closing it as already answered elsewhere. I find that screeching like a banshee gets it apologetically reopened. Bit frustrating but a flawed SO is better than no SO at all.

  x++

is a postfix kind-of function

  a ? b : c

is ternary infix

Edit: arguably

  /* comment! */

is a function that takes an unquoted string. It's a no-op function so the compiler removes it at compile time (giggle)

I appreciate the detail you've given and you clearly know your stuff, but I think your looking at it too deeply, at least compared to me. Basically, use a familiar notation where a familiar notation would be appropriate. Your complex ad example is a good case where it probably isn't.

> What about adding two decimals?

  rx = ry +bcd rz

I'm really thinking of simple, simple changes. As you point out some situations aren't appropriate for it, in other cases maybe it is. Or maybe I'm just plain wrong and it never is appropriate. But it's just a suggestion and worth considering, no?

  rd = rs1 * rs2 + rs3

It's no different from parsing if/then/else. Provided one assignment maps to one opcode, it's unambiguous.

Good post! ok, for

  rd = rs1 addu8 rs2

use

  rd = rs1 +u8 rs2

etc. The + stands out, more clearly indicating addition. (to me anyway)

As for commutativity of +, it's not necessarily true. It depends entirely on what underlying operation + denotes. It's perfectly reasonable to use it for string concatenation, and that clearly isn't commutative. But if it's not in the case of an ISA, that's fine, just have the assembler reject it.

  >  rd = add rs1, rs2

I dunno, how about

  rd = rs1 + rs2

Alphora was supposed to be really nice to use and a definite improvement on SQL. It didn't have market share so it never got more market share, that's why it failed and not for technical inferiority.

> The few products that have attempted to implement TTM's ideas are 'hobby products' developed and supported by cranky, strongly opinionated and difficult to deal with individuals

Do you actually know anything about the TTM? Can you point to some of these products other than Alphora? (I've looked at them and their just research projects/personal projects IIRC). Do you think the SQL is the pinnacle of RDBMS languages? Cos it bloody well isn't.

Interesting; any pointers to the difference would be welcome, TIA

> For databases that are used for the majority of the business world, efficiency is generally a bigger concern than correctness; they'd rather have cheap and fast databases that lose a few transactions occasionally than something that actually provides consistency

'majority' is a strong claim. Any figures to back it up?

Young HN posters by the sound of it.

I don't think so, MENACE actually learned to play, this appears to be just a look up table for precomputed positions. Still impressive.