dataflow

Usually, when I travel, it helps me to better understand and respect that other people may have different perspectives or experiences than me. This is probably the first time I'm seeing someone so cultured achieve the exact opposite, so thanks for familiarizing me with that.

P.S. When I search "what is a beef patty" on Google it quotes and links me to Wikipedia [1] which says absolutely nothing about Jamaica. Perhaps consider enlightening Wikipedia if you'd like to make the world a more cultured place.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty

That was terrible, I used to always turn it off. It's like speaking one word and the person interrupting you based on the prefix you had uttered so far... every single darn word. Imagine writing "how do I kill" and having it assume you meant a living being rather than a program.

Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about this. Indentation never got in the way of Python's success. There are plenty other things to worry about besides this.

Or in other words, they agreed the Windows approach was better, and tried to retrofit it (;

FYI, Windows's approach is better in some respects, like letting you avoid syscall overhead in some cases.

What do you like about halogen bulbs?

> because we now know the exact precision requirement for those functions over all 64-bit doubles

Do you have a link or something on this?

> let me try arguing it this way: it is impossible for a non-tail-call-optimized recursion to use constant space. [...]

What you're really saying here is that if you have a non-tail-call-optimizing compiler (i.e. if your compiler and/or language suck at optimizing recursion), and your algorithm uses enough stack space that the resulting cache pollution affects the performance (absolutely not every algorithm falls in this bucket!), then recursion is likely (not certain!) to be slower than recursion.

I'm sure you know that even your first assumption immediately fails for all the (many) tools that handle tail-recursion just fine. Isn't it then a gross overgeneralization to just claim "iterative algorithms are faster than recursive ones", as if your situation is universally representative of everyone's?

> i suppose one thing i should mention, i am thinking of extreme optimization use cases where the entire data structure fits in cache (or close to it). think like in-cache tries or similar. if you're hitting main memory with each iteration anyway, it doesn't really matter.

FWIW, the scenario you're imagining is even more niche than that. You're assuming a case where, for example, the hardware prefetcher isn't able to predict (or doesn't have enough bandwidth to) fetch the next cache line before you need it. You're also assuming the data structure is large enough (or your access pattern unlucky enough) that cache misses are actually affecting you -- i.e. not just "fits in cache", but takes up most of the room, too. You're also assuming that compilers are equally good at optimizing recursion and iteration (aside from tail-recursion), which is also not true -- for example, large functions tend to get optimized more poorly than smaller ones (including more stack accesses!), and your iteration is much more likely result in large functions being generated.

Are there situations in which your assumptions hold? Definitely. Are you way, way overgeneralizing? Sure looks like that too.

> maybe the wrong terminology, but non-tail-call-optimized recursions spray their state across space with each iteration consuming a new stack frame, where iterative algorithms live in one stack frame and can re-use temporaries

If that's what you mean then I'm afraid it sounds like you're mixing a few things up. For example, imagine depth-first search: you're going to need a stack somewhere, whether it's the CPU stack which you use via recursion, or an explicit stack you use via iteration. Iterating doesn't magically remove your need for that space and somehow collapse everything down to one stack frame. And you can reuse temporaries from the heap too, etc.

Fundamentally, there is the question of how much space you need for given algorithm, the question of what algorithm you should use in the first place, the question of whether that particular algorithm should be implemented recursively or iteratively, and the question of what is more maintainable and easier to evolve in practice.

These are all separate questions, but you're conflating them. If your iteration uses constant space but your recursion doesn't, that's because you're not implementing the same algorithm. You're implementing a different algorithm that achieves the same original goal you had. Of course one algorithm might beat the other, that's no surprise.

This feels like a strawman and doesn't really attempt to answer my question. These kinds of broad generalizations really need good evidence/citation.

Re: your first paragraph, I don't get it, what does spatial locality have to do with recursion vs. iteration? And the blanket speed claim doesn't make sense either. I feel like you're thinking of a specific algorithm or access pattern or technology and overgeneralizing to the idea that it's somehow impossible for recursion to ever match the performance or be faster?

IIUC that particular case has details that don't fit into the general scenario I mentioned, and they affected its outcome.

> I think it's a rather grey line to say that Google search results are just facts, but eg maps are copyrightable.

I don't think a map is a good example. A picture is probably a better one. A map, by its very definition, is not a replica of any part of the original artifact. Not merely because a map is not the territory, but also because it's not even a direct, unaltered view of the thing. There is clearly some creativity required in putting together a map, since it requires you to decide what to include, what to leave out, what to exaggerate, what to distort, etc... as evidenced by maps of the same area looking vastly different.

By contrast, search engine results are stitchings of various pieces of the text on the page, verbatim. How much creativity that embidies is probably akin to that within a photo.

> This has nothing to do with copyright status or copyrighted works.

It's literally the first rationale of choice 1 of proposal A. How does this have "nothing to do" with it?

> This set of proposals, are (sorry) just stupid. It's like saying to someone, you are not allowed to saw wood using an electric saw, you must do it by hand.

Stupid? Since when has there been a lack of clarity in copyright status with electric vs. hand saws?

You're saying every population everything on earth could solve their freshwater problem with desalination if only they had cheap energy? No other issues here besides lack of energy?

Er... for starters, hasn't one of the biggest arguments against desalination been the ecological impact? Or are we assuming spherical cows here?

> What this article shows is that nearly all of the potential "shortages" in materials on earth are really just energy shortages (with some small number of notable exceptions like helium)

You're saying freshwater shortage is really just an energy shortage?

> I have no idea why HN still treats them like ~their~ they are the ethical good guy.

s/good/least bad/

Which company would you put higher?

Related: polymorphic_value https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2019/p02...

Do they have more accidents in any sorts of scenarios where humans are less likely to?

> nor do I care if the entire nation state fails

You should care because of the nukes, if nothing else.

Latency isn't performance? Maybe you mean "not throughput-critical"?

Presumably some of the ones that applied to Aaron Swartz. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Arrest_and_prosec...

> Anthropic, through this settlement, has been forced to pay back, at least something… Kim would likely not have had enough money to compensate the victims and probably caused some more direct dammage by sharing pirated content.

You're thinking civil. They're talking criminal. Criminal law enforcement does not (well, isn't supposed to) look at your ability to compensate before deciding what to charge you with.

Related: https://flaminghydra.com/sam-altman-and-aaron-swartz-saw-the...

He learned Java to understand the Oracle v. Google case better.

His middle name is Haskell.

Are you saying any photos I take with phone that had digital zoom is automatically I admissible? Or if not, isn't that consistent with what they said?

> I find it easy to envision a world, maybe 50 years from now, in which the very concept of "truth in advertising" is viewed as a lost, idyllic fantasy.

From what I hear (fact-check, etc. needed) that's already the case right now with much more consequential transactions, like renting real estate in NYC. Square footages that are blatant lies, etc.