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user8501

148 karma · joined September 20, 2022

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user8501··on Deep Aphantasia: a visual brain with minimal influence from priors?
I personally believe that people just answer the question “do you visualize?” differently. I used to think I had “aphantasia” but like you said, you see it without seeing it. If your eyes and brain are functioning at all, your brain is perfectly capable of creating colorful images. Just look around. Those colors you see? That’s your brain.
user8501··on Show HN: 3 years and 1M users later, I just open-sourced my "Internet OS"
It is absolutely not bait. Declarative programming for the web is certainly more pleasant, but direct DOM manipulation will always and forever have a performance upper hand over rendering frameworks that sit atop the DOM. Now this performance difference is usually negligible, but for projects like VSCode or this, there’s a very good reason they aren’t written using frameworks.
user8501··on Interview with Andreas Kling of Serenity OS (2022)
SQLite essentially achieves this as well by keeping the entire database in one file. It’s even faster than the filesystem in some cases: https://www.sqlite.org/fasterthanfs.html
user8501··on Pluto, a Modern Lua Dialect
Thank you for informing me. I feel dumb for having chuckled.
user8501··on Pluto, a Modern Lua Dialect
Testes? Do you mean tests?
user8501··on Constraints on physical computers in holographic spacetimes
Aw crap! What are we gonna do now?
user8501··on The Grug Brained Developer (2022)
That’s a very good point. I feel, however, that the main idea is that bad philosophy is what ultimately fuels complexity.

The grug brain philosophy is simplicity at all costs, unless absolutely unavoidable.

The big brain philosophy as grug sees it is reusability at all costs, unless absolutely unavoidable.

The issue with this philosophy is that it tends to lock in first generation design choices and makes iteration more difficult.

It’s true that simplicity is difficult to find, but iteration is the key to finding simplicity.

user8501··on Ask HN: Good practices for my first C project?
1. initialize all your variables - you will trip over this one, and it's always nasty

2. I typically throw a _ptr at then end for global pointers

3. use a unity build - create a build.c file and directly #include all .c files, and then just compile your build.c file. This will speed up compilation by many orders of magnitude, as well as allow the compiler to make better optimizations. Don't think too hard about how to separate your C files. I typically start in one file and I begin separating as themes or modules start to emerge. And even then, I wait a while, because I may change my mind. This allows my designs to become quite refined.

4. Make as few allocations as possible.

5. no comment

6. I get a personal kick out of sticking to C89, to my own detriment probably.

7. Errors are handled differently on a per function basis. But when an error requires a lot of cleanup, don't be afraid to use a GOTO.

8. Throw -fsanitize=undefined in there as well.

user8501··on Nature: Programming language to experience the joy of programming
I think for many people, there’s an increasing feeling of dread that comes from using “modern” tools. There’s a heaviness to them that is difficult to put into words. And I think anyone who shares this sentiment feels joy when a tool feels light and airy and totally under their control.
user8501··on Nature: Programming language to experience the joy of programming
If we didn’t reinvent the wheel we would all be riding on stone wheels.

Do people think we’re going to run out of space or something for these languages?

I’ll never understand how a persons personal triumph can be perceived negatively by another person.

Are you equally as upset when somebody paints a picture of a mountain, simply because other people have done that before?

user8501··on Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
Cool name
user8501··on I paid for Sublime Text
I can't tell if this is sarcasm. I think it's pretty groovy to pay a one time fee for software.
user8501··on [dead]
You need millions right off the bat unfortunately.
user8501··on The elite's war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
Yeah my manager is the busiest human being in North America.
user8501··on The past is not true
This is quite profound. Consider a sentence. Every additional word has the ability to completely change the meaning of the whole sentence. In the same way, every passing moment is an opportunity to completely change the preceding moments. Sure facts are “real” in the sense that atoms are real. Atoms might be the building blocks of “reality” but it is up to the individual how clusters of atoms are interpreted, used, etc. Facts in the same way are surely the building blocks for the universe of emotion and dynamic interaction, but when you zoom in on them, as with atoms, they vanish. Even if this woman had answered the door in a wheelchair, an interaction filled with love and forgiveness would’ve left the author with the same feeling.
user8501··on Ask HN: Rust or C or C++ in 2023?
C is an abstract computer as much as any virtual machine. Now this computer is quite simple compared to the abstract machines of Rust and C++ but is doesn’t have much to do with how a computer actually works.
user8501··on Ask HN: Rust or C or C++ in 2023?
C is forever. It’s the only language where the community aspires to target as early a specification as they can. This keeps C in the hands of the programmers and not the compiler creators.
user8501··on Quantum physics falls apart without imaginary numbers
I had this thought years ago:

Real number 1 is 1 OR -1 Imaginary number 1 is 1 AND -1

In other words, when you “break apart” i, you get 1 and -1

user8501··on Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs
That may be true. But if that we’re the case, then a fourth spatial must exist for the entire 3rd dimension to wrap in on itself. And then we find ourselves in the same infinite regression, wondering about the boundaries of the parent dimension.
user8501··on Roger Penrose claims our Universe has been through multiple Big Bangs
But it can’t NOT be infinite! If space were three dimensionally finite, then there must be a boundary. But if there were a boundary, then there must be something beyond that boundary. And now we have a paradox that infinitely regresses. Same goes for time. Same goes for distance. How can there be both a finite distance, as well as an infinite number of points between two distinct points? To me, infinity seems to be everywhere I look
user8501··on The Anti-Productivity Manifesto
Not OP, but I’ll tell you how my wife and I were able to take a year long sabbatical. I had some stock options for the company I worked for, which had gone public during my employment, and buying and selling it all provided enough to live very comfortably off of for about a year for the two of us.
user8501··on Researchers develop blood test for anxiety
Researchers are becoming as useless as programmers
user8501··on Researchers develop blood test for anxiety
Seriously. This could be replaced with a one question questionnaire. Are you anxious?
user8501··on Nokia launches DIY repairable budget Android phone
“Partnership with iFixit” just sounds… weird.

You were supposed to destroy the Sith not join them!

user8501··on The haunting brain science of long Covid
I agree that name calling is always unhelpful, but I’m not seeing any hypocrisy in the comment. It seems to be a comment about how there are a plethora of reasons that the population may be experiencing cognitive issues.
user8501··on Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
I think a lot about consciousness. It’s a very rewarding activity I must say. Highly recommended.
user8501··on The haunting brain science of long Covid
Where did they demand empathy?
user8501··on As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
All of them? Lol, okay. Honestly it’s pretty disrespectful to these pilots, who clearly witnessed something that defies mainstream explanation. Not saying it’s aliens, but secret military projects that use highly classified propulsion technology is just as interesting, and far more concerning.
user8501··on Ask HN: Does the HN commentariat have a reductive view of what a human being is?
With AI, we can only ever emulate the intellectual aspect of human understanding, completely forgoing the intuitive aspect, which is equally important. A computer might be able to describe the difference between red and orange using its knowledge of wavelengths, but it won’t understand the difference in that indescribable way, that there simply aren’t words for.
user8501··on Ask HN: Does the HN commentariat have a reductive view of what a human being is?
I love this comment.
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