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another2another

306 karma · joined September 9, 2022

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another2another··on Storytelling lessons I learned from Steve Jobs (2022)
Was he yelling "don't ruin my product Google, Nest is a great product, don't ruin it!!"

Because... they ruined it.

another2another··on Roc rewrites the compiler in Zig
>Manual heap allocation can slow the program down non-trivially compared to using an arena

But GC has nothing to do with whether heap allocations 'slow the program down', it's who owns the lifetime of the allocated object - for GC not the programmer, but the runtime.

If I create a an object, and then then soon after deref it [MyObj release], then I know it will dealloc immediately after. I'm basically in control of its lifetime, even though it's ref counted.

If I call [MyObj free] and it's still owned by another object (e.g. I added it to some collection), that's OK because the object is still useful and has a lifetime outside of my control, and its destruction will be deferred until it doesn't.

But, with a GC object, if I call new MyObj() and then soon after try my best to destroy it, I can't because I'm not in control of its lifetime, the runtime is.

That's what I see the distinction between GC and ref counted (not GC), and why I mostly don't agree with so many people here insisting that ref counting is garbage collection. How can it be when I can easily be explicitly in control of an objects lifetime? I create it, then I destroy it, and it happens exactly in the sequence that I dictate.

For sure, ARC makes it a bit more subtle, but even then, I can reliably predict when an object will be destroyed and factor that into the sequence of events in my program.

-An Atheist.

another2another··on El Salvador abandons Bitcoin as legal tender
>Everything is a speculative asset. >Your marriage is a speculative asset that your wife doesn't cheat on you in future and actually loves you.

Spouses are not very fungible though, not that I've ever tried ! ...

another2another··on Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?
I'm surprised at the negativity your approach seems to have sparked in a few, but I found it really great, probably very effective as well and will probably start to use it at some point.

Thanks for sharing.

another2another··on Five years of Brexit reshaped Britain
It's like the modern equivalent of:

"Apart from [big long list of stuff people never thought much about before] what has the EU ever done for us?!?"

The Treaty of Rome indeed.

another2another··on Five years of Brexit reshaped Britain
I'd have to say that when the UK initially joined the EU most people probably didn't notice much of a difference, except that the euro made going on holiday and using the local currency a lot easier (I still remember the Lira in Italy being particularly difficult to get my head around). But otherwise it didn't make much of a difference in day-to-day life for most.

But now, leaving seems to be like constantly picking at a festering scab.

another2another··on Interview with Jeff Atwood, Co-Founder of Stack Overflow
"A fish rots from the head down" is the saying. And since neither Jeff nor Joel are the heads at SO anymore I'm not sure of the relevance here.

But we can all agree that they made a wonderful fish that has helped millions of developers (including myself) over the years.

another2another··on C++26: A Placeholder with No Name
Lambdas I would agree with and iterators, but in many other situations, e.g. templated collections it's easy enough to make a descriptive typedef.

And... I have seen this in the wild: 'auto isFalse = true;'

another2another··on Ask HN: How can I learn to better command people's attention when speaking?
So it's like the Dad in American Pie said: "Interested... is interesting!"

But Stifler is still the character I remember the most.

another2another··on Botan: Crypto and TLS for Modern C++
I don't have the source right now, but I believe a lot of the algorithms used are set in build time #defines so it might be possible to capture them at build time and store them with the encrypted data.

Means you'd have to find a compiled lib with the exact same settings to decrypt them though.

another2another··on Documented and annotated source code for Elite on the Commodore 64
Hmm, I wonder if that's what the second mission was to find?

I played it on the CBM64, and seem to remember being given a mission to find a stealth ship. Flew around loads, but never found it as far as I can remember.

another2another··on Documented and annotated source code for Elite on the Commodore 64
Well that is some well documented code, and no mistake.

It keeps mentioning a Cougar ship type, but I don't remember them in the game?

another2another··on Silicon Valley Tea Party a.k.a. the great 1998 Linux revolt take II (1999)
> plus LOBs which are almost always web apps these days.

And this is where Linux won over MS - it wasn't on the desktop (which is still a mostly terrible experience to this day), but in the server room.

Coupled with Java or Perl and OSS Databases (MySQL and Postgres), people began moving software off the desktop and onto websites. Better web browsers (something else MS tried to dominate and were rebuffed) also helped. This cut MS out of the loop on new popular web servers (apache), protocols, languages and infrastructure - probably deliberately. This then allowed alternative platforms like the new iPhone and later android to gain a niche which they've since expanded massively.

I think people saw the monoculture that was developing around Windows (from days of XP onwards), and didn't like it, so actively sought to make their own path, Linux became was keystone there (could have been BSD though also...).

another2another··on In Search of a Faster SQLite
>Async IO was in Windows NT 3.1 in 1993

To be fair, Windows tried and abandoned 2 different methods of doing it before landing on the current IO Completion ports.

another2another··on What we know about CEO shooting suspect
Also (I'm hoping) the trauma of taking another person's life must be hugely upsetting. I'm hoping it's not something you do lightly, and is not without personal consequences (guilt,shame, shock,.. dunno).
another2another··on Support for U.S. TikTok ban continues to decline
>To make TikTok unpopular more quickly, governments should probably mandate that parents make an account too.

Nice. It definitely worked for FB :)

But then I noticed all of the insane stuff that they started reposting and wondered if I ever really knew these people at all?

another2another··on Canadian mega landlord using AI 'pricing scheme' as it hikes rents
Another way to turn it into a more competitive market is to introduce large competition in the form of not for profit housing co-ops where the coop buys to rent houses, renters have to buy into the coop, and all profits are put into either buying or building new houses.

The coops keep their rents below that of the competition to attract new members, and can even reduce the rents after the initial outlay has been payed off.

This would then create a number of large semi-altruistic competitors that would throw sand into the capitalistic machine and inhibit price gouging.

another2another··on How immigration remade the U.S. labor force
> The quality of life has dropped dramatically in the original EU countries.

That doesn't reflect the reality that I see at all. The only area where quality of life is worse than previous generations is in property ownership - particularly in bigger cities and suburbs. But that's reflected across many industrialised nations from UK, Canada, NZ, Australia, so it's not a problem just limited to EU countries.

Otherwise the net price of "stuff" from electronics, cars, food, clothes, shoes and household accessories have fallen a lot in real terms and people have lots more than ever before - maybe too much ?

another2another··on A Collection of Free Public APIs That Is Tested Daily
Putting the 'micro' into microservices one bit of logic at-a-time :)
another2another··on New 0-Day Attacks Linked to China's 'Volt Typhoon'
Kinda like Crowdstrike ?

(a low blow I know)

another2another··on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing
Lack of a common language must be a factor in scaling - the amount of effort printing required information in different languages is already an overhead (e..g instructions on medications).

Also in the US, somebody in California can give telephone support to somebody in Rhode Island; not so easy to get somebody in Sweden to give telephone support to somebody in Italy though.

another2another··on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing
Well, Scotland voted to remain in the EU, but they've had to put up with the rest thinking they "know better than them what is good for them."

I'm sure they enjoy it as much as you do.

another2another··on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing
Reminds me of a lot of the initiatives coming out of big companies. The grander the vision, the more vague they are, the more money and time they hoover up as people try to rephrase the initial vague aims in different ways.

And, bless they even have an architecture document which does nothing to bring this blurry vision into focus.

https://gaia-x.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Gaia-x-Architec...

another2another··on The Google Fit APIs will no longer be available after June 30, 2025
Really? I hear people complaining about the death of OpenCL (which Apple championed early on) a lot here, so I don't think that's universally true.
another2another··on Don't panic It's only 60 Linux CVE security bulletins a week
>Finally, Windows nowadays with Secure Kernel, Device Guard, and Virtualization-based Security already cages lots of stuff that shouldn't be freely having fun on ring 0.

Alas, Crowdstrike Falcon.

another2another··on Parsing protobuf at 2+GB/s: how I learned to love tail calls in C (2021)
I think it kind of depends on your platform. On linux apt-get (or RPM) for *-dev packages usually gets you what you need, and using something like pkg-config makes them a breeze to use in whatever build tools you have.

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/

another2another··on Employers used return-to-office to make workers quit
>My supervisor strongly encourages working from home during crunch periods in particular because he has found that most employees are more productive if we take several exercise breaks throughout the day, and our office is not a great environment for that compared to our homes (for most of us).

This x 100 ! We even have a gym in our office, and I was a member but hardly ever went, it was just too inconvenient and had no spontaneity. But WFH you can run off whenever you get the chance and sit smelly at your desk if you want afterwards, or cleanup and get a change of clothes, then return to your work.

another2another··on Please do not attempt to simplify this code
.. save yourself an else :

int value1 = 128;

int value2 = 256;

if (condition) {

    value1 = 8;

    value2 = 16;

  }
another2another··on WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released
The only version I ever remember using was WordStar 1512, wonder why the weird version numbering though ?

edit: It even had a keyboard overlay if I remember right, with the shortcuts printed on them (maybe just on the Function keys..?)

another2another··on France high-speed rail traffic disrupted by 'malicious acts' on Olympic ceremony
Ukraine is demonstrating an inhuman amount of self-restraint at the moment.

Everybody would love to see the aggressor get what's coming to them (quite deservedly), but I think they're wisely choosing to remain on the right side of history to refrain from becoming just as bad as the Russians, and so maintain their essential humanity, which the brutal Russians have clearly lost, or never had.

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