CogitoCogito

8 months agodiscuss

I don't understand why this is being downvoted. I would love if metric were used universally, but I don't really see any difference between that and wanting a single language to be used universally. In fact, the cost of different languages is certainly much higher than different systems of units. Converting between systems of units is just trivial arithmetic after all.

CogitoCogito

8 months agodiscuss

Sweden has no inheritance or wealth tax.

CogitoCogito

8 months agodiscuss

I have always been very careful with git histories and often rewrite/squash them before final review/merge. Often my rewritten histories have nothing to do with the original history and commits are logically/intuitively separated and individually testable.

That said, very few people seem to be like me. Most people have no concept of what a clear commit history is. I think it's kind of similar to how most people are terrible written communicators. Few people have any clue how to express themselves clearly. The easiest way to deal with people like this is to just have them squash their PRs. This way you can at least enforce some sanity at review and then the final commit should enforce some standards.

I agree on rebasing instead of straight merging, but even that's too complicated for most people.

CogitoCogito

8 months agodiscuss

Identification often isn't ever checked when flying within Europe _today_. They just check your ticket.

That said you're certainly not getting near any gates without a ticket in Europe these days either.

CogitoCogito

9 months agodiscuss

The fact that it's still used in many places obviously means it's not unbearable. Besides if you're bothered by the dust you can use the water cleaning methods described in this very thread. It's not perfect, but I would take a chalkboard over a whiteboard anytime.

CogitoCogito

9 months agodiscuss

I enjoy using chalkboards so much more than whiteboards. Other than the chalk dust, I just can't understand how anyone would prefer whiteboards over chalkboards.

CogitoCogito

10 months agodiscuss

The irony is that if Tylenol use in pregnancy actually does increase the risk of autism, RFK's destruction of trust in the government's scientific process will probably just push that sort result back. He's a charlatan and totally unscientific regardless.

Luckily for those of us who care, there are private and foreign government organizations who still take healthcare and science seriously. Unfortunately the only sane solution seems to be to ignore the US authorities on this for the time being.

CogitoCogito

11 months agodiscuss

> But having a persistent notification to turn on iCloud is good for the user so they don’t lose irreplaceable pictures.

Are you saying it's not okay for a user to decide they just plain don't want it? Why shouldn't be they be allowed to dismiss it permanently?

CogitoCogito

11 months agodiscuss

Then I think you just don't have much imagination. I have recovered files in /tmp after turning off a machine by booting it back up in single-user mode and accessing the data before it would be cleared in during bootup. Given that "turning off a machine" can also mean "the machine lost power", I can definitely see why people would be surprised by this change.

CogitoCogito

11 months agodiscuss

I can't speak for the other poster, but I like the idea a lot. Having tools with specific purposes means I can avoid using my phone for everything. No matter what games I play to remove notifications/interruptions/etc. it's always a distraction and easy to be distracted from whatever I originally intended to use the phone for.

CogitoCogito

2 years agodiscuss

SBF’s actions caused more damage than many violent muggings. If /u/kbos87 would support letting dozens of muggers to go free to (say) halve SBF’s sentence, then I take the argument seriously and will rescind my positions here so far.

CogitoCogito

2 years agodiscuss

I think treating petty criminals so badly and going easy on white collar criminals is barbaric. A third of his life is nothing compared to the damage he caused. I find it incredible that you would feel sorry for him.

CogitoCogito

5 years agodiscuss

Yeah the attitude doesn’t really make any sense. How does the license preclude them looking at the code? They can even download it, compile it, and even run it _without_ accepting the license. They only need to care about the license if they decide for distribute it.

CogitoCogito

5 years agodiscuss

Why talk in such generalities? Look at the github repo. There are only three committers to Casey's repo. I'm sure Microsoft could manage to contact them. I'm also quite sure that Microsoft has the money to entice a commercial license if they so wish.

CogitoCogito

5 years agodiscuss

Are we actually in disagreement? I could just as well describe math as "deciding where and at what level to allocate partial structure..." in the same way. Mathematical researchers also build intuition over time allowing them to see certain big picture ideas more easily.

If I really take a step back and re-think this whole thread, I'd say the main different between mathematical researchers and programmers is just incentives. Funding and output are just fundamentally measured differently and the work is done very differently with respect to cooperation with others.

Still I'd say that the thing holding back mathematicians from being good developers is simply that research mathematics does not provide development experience.

CogitoCogito

5 years agodiscuss

> Being good at math requires being able to solve problems whose solutions often do not have any practical uses or whose practical uses may not be clear to you. This is very different from how software problems should be approached.

I don't really agree. Being good at mathematical research requires recognizing the "core organization structure of a system" and solving the "core problem at hand". I'd argue that it's essentially the same in programming (and business) as well. The main difference is that a mathematical researcher is able to ignore non-pertinent information, while in practice those issues (usually) need to be dealt with.

That said I wouldn't say that PhDs (math or otherwise) make great developers. Their skill in development is a result of experience in developing software within the software industry and not something they gain simply due to "being intelligent" or by working on their on on their POC research implementations. But I'd point out that it's basically the same for professional software developers as well.

CogitoCogito

6 years agodiscuss

> The big problem with the 2->3 transition was that the cost exceeded the perceived benefit.

I believe it's generally agreed that the cost of the transition was surprisingly high. Hindsight is 20/20.

> Removing the GIL would have increased the cost, but also the benefit.

The only attempts I'm aware of resulted in a significant (~50%) slowdown in single-threaded code execution due to the requirement of adding in so many more locks elsewhere (removing the GIL doesn't remove the need for the locks around the various critical sections). Sure maybe it would result in better performance for some programs, but I'm not even sure it would result in something better than a cleaner design. In my experience, the portions of code that could make use of the threading could just be moved to a C/C++-extension and make use of it there (though in 99% of cases I wouldn't go that far and just stick to e.g. numpy). The examples of the code that really should stay in python, but also should make use of concurrency seem to usually sit quite nicely in the pypy framework.

That's not to say that removing the GIL wouldn't be nice, but I think the need for it is often overstated.

CogitoCogito

7 years agodiscuss

I’ve never heard this either, but I guess it’s related to “Are you trying to get a rise of me?”

CogitoCogito

7 years agodiscuss

Fair enough. I mean I guess I wouldn't go so far as to claim that time-tracking is an obviously bad metric. However, I would definitely claim it can be poorly utilized. This metric is just a tool. Employed effectively it can increase performance. Employed ineffectively it can increase...time.

But generally I think my main point stands. We need to be humble enough to sometimes accept lack of control (i.e. not using certain metrics/processes) rather than deluding ourselves by through certain metrics that really aren't very good.

CogitoCogito

7 years agodiscuss

> I think having lousy metrics is better than not having metrics at all.

I fundamentally disagree. Metrics don't live in their own world. They affect the world around them and incentivize certain actions. Bad metrics can produce bad incentives. There are certainly many cases where simply not knowing something is better than knowing something that's only partially right. However, that requires a level of humility and acceptance of one's limitations that can be hard to defend to others looking for straight answers to all questions.

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