HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

kspiteri

22 karma · joined April 7, 2011

submissionscomments
kspiteri··on Oxford Comma Dispute Is Settled as Maine Drivers Get $5M
"To my mother, Ayn Rand and my daughter" is not ambiguous without the Oxford comma, but would be with it.
kspiteri··on Two problems I had to solve in my Oxford interview (2013)
> Not if N=1 ;)

> (A constant amount is of course independent of N anyway!)

When using O notation, we're doing asymptotic analysis and n can be arbitrarily large. If you have an arbitrarily large pointer, you cannot store the pointer in a constant number of bits. If your pointer is 64-bits long, you're cannot handle n > 2^64. That is why I said you need O(log n) rather than O(1).

kspiteri··on Two problems I had to solve in my Oxford interview (2013)
You just need a constant number of pointers. This requires O(log n) scratch space because a pointer can be stored in O(log n) space.
kspiteri··on The cost of dynamic vs. static dispatch in C++ (2013)
If you can use templates, the decision of which function to call can be done at compile time and you don't need virtual calls. Virtual calls are useful when the decision must be done at runtime.
kspiteri··on Canned Emails – a minimal site with prewritten emails
I think this is the first site I came across that is easier to read as source.
kspiteri··on Betas (TV Series 2013– )
I usually watch soap operas to learn how different people live. It's a pity they messed up the one about start ups.