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petersjt014

46 karma · joined June 16, 2017

SE student, currently learning Elixir in my spare time.

my public key: https://keybase.io/petersjt014; my proof: https://keybase.io/petersjt014/sigs/sw6t4Q2eJulSqhxUcjV4lwBOpps1YZEEbqDBtgMkfwc

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petersjt014··on What can you use instead of Google and Facebook?
I just found one for events that actually looks good: https://joinmobilizon.org/en
petersjt014··on Ask HN: Which programming languages to learn in 2020 for an experienced dev?
Yep.

The Financial Times: https://github.com/Financial-Times/tapper

Discord: https://blog.discordapp.com/using-rust-to-scale-elixir-for-1...

Pintrest, who seems to really like it (note the highlighted comment): https://medium.com/pinterest-engineering/introducing-new-ope...

And looking on https://elixir-companies.com/en I see two in the UK, two in Brazil, Amsterdam, Ukraine, Canada...Plenty there.

petersjt014··on Dark Horse Discord
If you want a _really_ lightweight matrix client, I'd say <300 lines of Go would be pretty light. Go is quite portable too:

https://gitlab.com/meutraa/mm/tree/master

petersjt014··on Dark Horse Discord
My guess--based on my singular experience--would be obscurity. I've never heard of it.

Looks really nice though, A StackOverflow/Discord hybrid is a fascinating idea--could easily be groundbreaking.

petersjt014··on Dark Horse Discord
I should also say that Matrix has a lot of other really nice aspects to it that give Discord and friends a run for their money:

- Open source. Self-explanatory.

- Federated. Sure, you can probably redundant-ify your IRC server with Apache Something and Amazon AWS/ Cloudflare whatever if you really wanted to, but I regularly see Matrix rooms with 10+ addresses because the protocol's designed around that redundancy, not the other way around. And of course with Discord none of this even applies...good luck if Intern Greg elbows the Big Red Button, or they pull a yahoo groups/google+/etc.

- The protocol leaves a lot of room for experimentation that Discord isn't nearly open enough for. [1][2][3]

- There's bridges to other discord, irc, and dozens of other platforms, sidestepping the adoption problem (note that there's been even more added since this graphic was made). [4]

They aren't exactly languishing in obscurity either: the government of France is one of their userbases [5]. Yeah, I'd say Discord-style VC would be nice, but the lack if it isn't exactly holding them back.

[1]: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/other/matrix-live/ [2]: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/other/freebird/ [3]: https://matrix.org/docs/projects/other/lightrix/ [4]: https://matrix.org/blog/2017/03/11/how-do-i-bridge-thee-let-... [5]: https://vector.im/#case-studies

petersjt014··on Dark Horse Discord
A closer equivalent would be riot.im's servers, which are free in the same way as Discord/IRC's public rooms are. If you wanted custom integrations or the like you'd have to pay out for it, but the free option's still there. You can find a decent number of communities there--#GnuLinuxLovers comes to mind.
petersjt014··on Dark Horse Discord
Voice chat is apparently harder to implement, but it's still possible to do right now with Jitsi [1]. And even without it, Matrix supports an 'opt-in' style of voice channel that should work fine with smaller groups.

[1]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/6471

petersjt014··on Is Keybase Safe?
I've personally had no problems with them (save for one near heart-attack where I lost multiple keys), but I'd suggest looking at their documentation too [1].

It's also worth noting that you don't need to store any keys in their cloud storage, encrypted or otherwise--but you can for convenience.

[1]: https://keybase.io/docs/server_security

petersjt014··on Ask HN: Recommended Open Source Projects for a CS Junior?
Probably not the answer you were looking for, but one of the best ways is to simply just _make_ something of your own. At the very least it's good practice, and you just might make something people find useful if you've found an 'unscratched itch'.

Even failing that, your codebase can be an educational tool for others. rosettacode.org is a pretty solid example of this--any addition to the wiki is going to save someone's bacon at some point.

But to be more specific for a moment: I see you have a functional-ish language listed (Ocaml) and you've also mentioned compilers--If you're looking for low level stuff with a hint of FP, diving into Rust might be interest you. I'd suggest looking at Redox OS--it's a monster, but plenty of the big scary parts are modularized away. Might be interesting.

petersjt014··on A Brutal Intelligence: AI, Chess and the Human Mind
Nice to see him finally at terms after that one 1997 game--he seems to have been touchy about it even as recently as 2014:

"I think we'll never know unless Kasparov says himself, but you probably won't get to talk to him because he doesn't like to talk about the subject...Kasparov spent years suggesting that IBM cheated, and he hasn't really talked about the game for many years - until now."

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/08/338850323/kasparov-vs-deep-blu...

petersjt014··on Qudits: The Real Future of Quantum Computing?
I know these guys understand quantum anything more than I ever will, but is having a larger radix specifically a practical way for increasing performance?

If a binary device has a hardware fault, bits that are in error still have a 50% chance of being correct. It seems like a single component failing here would make this worse (five times worse if it wasn't quantum).

I don't know whether or not the pros outweigh the cons here, or at what radix they do (there's probably some statistical analysis that can answer that), but ten just _seems_ like too much.

petersjt014··on A Brutal Intelligence: AI, Chess and the Human Mind
> All it does is mechanically keep on steering the game towards positions that are evaluted as best by the function.

I wouldn't say so entirely--It's possible to predict multiple moves ahead (before the number of possibilities explodes), and a heuristic is a sort of plan too.

What you're describing sounds like a greedy algorithim more than anything else.

petersjt014··on How Do You Conserve Art Made of Bologna, or Bubble Gum, or Soap?
Well...

http://theconversation.com/preservationists-race-to-capture-...

petersjt014··on Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
I certainly understand where you're coming from and what you're probably thinking of (Eternal September is the name I know it by)--but I did try to make my comment both relevant and funny. I personally think I did okay there, but I'm fine with disagreement on that part.
petersjt014··on Polynesian people used a kind of binary number system 600 years ago (2013)
Of course, we all know what they would have used if they were real pros:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial_number_system