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current_callon Practical Emacs Lisp

why should we, spend the time to educate each other about formatting, and spend the thousands hours semi-manually do so perhaps with help of paredit, when we could have it to automatically and transparently?

This is sort of funny coming from a guy who isn't using the shift key properly. Language conventions make communication easy. It's why $_ should be used. It's why "ain't" isn't a word and the subject comes before the verb.

current_callon One Major Difference Between Clojure and Common Lisp

Either way, if you get the terminal condition of a recursive function wrong, you will blow the stack.

Not in Common Lisp. The last time I tried to show someone how well recursion worked in a typical Common Lisp implementation, I crashed Firefox trying to paste the result of a naive factorial function into a text buffer. Stack depth limits in other languages are often arbitrary.

current_callon FCC slaps Lyft with citation for calling and texting customers

You mean startups, a type of company that exists to rapidly grow in a niche unregulated industry, should wait for the government to regulate their new business before it ever exists? I could be wrong, but I like to think politicians have better things to do than make laws about things that don't exist.

Edit: This is relevant.

He envisioned his storefront as a beachhead for Bitcoin in the heart of the Financial District, but it has been losing money as he waits for government agencies, such as New York’s Department of Financial Services, to decide how to regulate virtual currencies.

“Oh please Mr. Government man, please let me run a business so I can feed my children myself, so y’know, I don’t have to go on food stamps to leech off of the people who already have your approval to eat.”

http://www.contravex.com/2015/03/08/bitcoin-is-unfair-thats-...

current_callon Proposal for a Go Interpreter

2) Golang depends on code generation for a lot of it's features. Executing generated code immediately could be helpful.

That's horrifying.

current_callon Proposal for a Go Interpreter

Compiler-as-a-service is the future.

Lisp. You want Lisp.

current_callon Don't Use These Lame Acronyms If You Don't Want to Get Nabbed by the Feds

“Taking a conversation offline provides evidence of intent because if you’re trying to cover your tracks, you probably know what you’re doing is wrong,”

I can't tell if this is big business trying to make investigating white collar crimes harder or the federal government trying to drum up support for mass surveillance. I'm leaning towards the former based on where the article is.

current_callon Entrepreneurs don’t have a gene for risk – they come from families with money

Apparently not.

I moved to Peru for 4 years to save some money and then came back to start a business, the entrepreneurial spirit was way strong stronger there even though the social safety net is inexistent.

current_callon Scratch is probably the answer

I guess Scratch as a social network tries very hard to de-emphasize numbers: there isn't a "karma" and "likes" don't bring you much (interestingly, the number of "remixes", or derivative works of your project, is emphasized much more).

That doesn't really sound like "social media".

I can point you to some of the LLK's published papers on this if you're interested.

I'd appreciate that.

current_callon Scratch is probably the answer

And if you have a look at the site you will see that not only are they learning coding and development skills, but they are also learning the ins and outs of social media.

Why did you have to ruin this for me? I know you didn't mean to, but still.

current_callon “Unix and Windows are very, very similar and they should be bashed in unison”

I think I agree with you. The c2 website could be less painful to read. However, the diatribe is near perfect. It fits the content very well.

current_callon “Unix and Windows are very, very similar and they should be bashed in unison”

The assumption in your question is that anyone who has done any research can only possibly agree with you.

I'm not assuming that. Any amount of research could be no research or close to none. People who have done very little research shouldn't opine. People who have done lots of research are more likely to be correct.

News flash: it is possible for informed people to disagree.

Well of course. Someone who's barely informed can disagree with someone who is far more informed. That would be two informed people disagreeing.

If someone has done adequate research and I'm correct, they must agree with me, otherwise the amount of research wouldn't be adequate or I must be wrong. I can avoid being wrong by avoiding having strong opinions on things I don't understand or know much about it.

current_callon “Unix and Windows are very, very similar and they should be bashed in unison”

What would you call someone who has strong opinions about something they refuse to research?

current_callon “Unix and Windows are very, very similar and they should be bashed in unison”

c2.com lacks any sense of design or taste.

It has the very best design! http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

current_callon Christopher Poole Reveals Why He Walked Away from 4Chan

Darn, I can't read.

current_callon Christopher Poole Reveals Why He Walked Away from 4Chan

And I never said it did. I was refuting the illogical leap from "First Amendment" to "I can say or do whatever I want and not suffer any consequences, period".

You were the first person to mention the "First Amendment".

current_callon Google rejects EU's search abuse complaint

Since when do corporations have rights?

Google will do what the EU tells them to do or the EU will use violence to make them do it.

current_callon What does it mean for an algorithm to be fair?

Under that argument, using machine learning to make decisions on things like advertising campaigns or mortgage rates is still bad even if race and sex do not correlate. That's a much different argument than what the author is making. It's a decent argument too.

That said, I believe unfair discrimination is unavoidable in life because we can't always wait around to see what an individual's behavior will be before we discriminate fairly. We couldn't function without stereotypes and assumptions. And so, while still unfair because of the potential for unjustified penalties, it's much better to look at many variables than it is to look at one or two.

Then you think machine learning is the best solution that exists?

current_callon What does it mean for an algorithm to be fair?

If I charge a man extra for car insurance because men on average get in more wrecks, then I am discriminating based on sex.

If I charge someone extra for car insurance because he shares dozens of innocuous traits with other people who get in wrecks, I am not discriminating based on sex. If some algorithm can accurately predict the sex of that person by the same data, I am still not discriminating based on sex.

If I target blacks with predatory loan advertisements because that demographic is on average more susceptible to those ads, then I am discriminating based on race.

If I target an individual because they share dozens of innocuous traits with other people who fall for predatory loan advertisements, I am not discriminating based on race. If some algorithm can accurately predict the race of the individual based on the same data, I am still not discriminating based on race.

The software is less biased than a human because it has no concept of race. Even if the data can be used to accurately predict the race of an individual, it does not matter. The program will not spontaneously recognize the concept of race and then discriminate based off of it. If some trait correlates with race, that's because reality is biased, not the math, algorithm, company, or implementer.

It is not the responsibility of programmers to make their algorithms less accurate so ideologues can live in a fantasy world.

current_callon ‘Flash Boys’ Programmer in Goldman Case Prevails Second Time

Doesn't the code get distributed to the employees? How are they prevented from redistributing it?

current_callon Write code every day

I've seen the speech. He isn't nice, but he's still right. "Do a good job or be replaced by someone who can."

I guess I need to add the movie to my backlog now.

current_callon Hacking Team hacked, attackers claim 400GB in dumped data

Not everyone in our society will or can work, and those who don't are lucky enough to be supported privately or publically or they're eventually homeless. This is the reality of a conservative value system.

That's not the reality of a conservative value system. That's just reality.

current_callon Write code every day

That's vague. I'm not entitled to a thorough explanation, but I was hoping for a better one.

I have not read the play, seen the play, or seen the movie.

current_callon Why Many CS Degrees Are Stagnating

They compares twenty random faculty members of Carnegie Mellon University with twenty random faculty members of University of Houston. Assuming they didn't cherry pick the two schools, pick random sets of twenty faculty members until they got the numbers they wanted, or include faculty outside of CS (They don't specify.), it's still only two schools. And then they come to the following conclusion.

While this is by no means an exhaustive account, it’s a good anecdotal indication of the elite advantage.

In the next sentence they assert the following.

The majority of computer science programs have a substantially large gap between university and industry demands, trends and technologies.

Then after giving some examples of organizations that attempt to guide the curriculum.

All of these findings beg the larger question: Without an effective feedback loop between industry and brick-and-mortar universities, how well are we preparing our CS undergrads for the industry world with our current syllabus?

What they're really saying is "Without an effective feedback loop between industry and brick-and-mortar universities we can't prepare CS undergrads for the industry world with out current syllabus.", but they phrased it as a question so it wouldn't sound like a drastic claim requiring strong evidence. Rhetorical questions provide an easy way to say something without having to defend it.

I'm too tired to do anymore. If anyone cares, you can look at how they only mention two effected individuals throughout the entire article and how they use data from the University of Washington to make predictions about all schools.

current_callon Write code every day

How do you know it's satire?

current_callon Man shoots downs neighbor’s hexacopter

Depending on where it is, rural police may be less willing to follow up on complaints if the suspect is armed (lack of manpower compared to urban counterparts, and greater distance to fire station, hospital etc. in case something happens).

This is ridiculous. Just because the crime involves firearms doesn't mean the person being arrested is a cold blooded murderer. Being afraid of arresting someone who has a gun but shows no intention to kill or hurt anyone is like refusing to drive because there are other cars coming in the opposite direction. Oh sure, they might switch into the wrong lane and kill me, but there's nothing to gain from that. It's stupid.

current_callon Metaprogramming in ES6: Symbols and why they're awesome

It's a recursive tail call. It should run forever, like the following Scheme code.

(define (foo) (foo))

(foo)

current_callon Metaprogramming in ES6: Symbols and why they're awesome

I tried to create an infinite loop in Firefox and got a "InternalError: too much recursion". Then when I tried it in Chrome I got "Uncaught RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded".

function x() { return x(); }

current_callon Running Lisp in Production

Have you seen any recursive macros?

https://github.com/lispgames/cl-sdl2/blob/ec64831109a17b0dda...

current_callon Metaprogramming in ES6: Symbols and why they're awesome

If programming can be described as "making programs", metaprogramming could be described as "making programs making programs" - or something. You probably use metaprogramming every day perhaps without even noticing it.

Compared to other languages like Ruby or Python, JavaScript's metaprogramming features are not yet as advanced - especially when it comes to nifty tools like Operator Overloading, but ES6 is starting to level the playing field.

What isn't metaprogramming now?

This feels very relevant. http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/07/18/javascript-isnt...

current_callon Can Stack Overflow's logo be temporarily changed to the “#LoveOverflows” logo?

Come about is fair play.

The pendulum swings both ways.