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bitwalker

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bitwalker
·14 gün önce·discuss
They seem to be much less active on hot days compared to cooler days in my experience - though I can't say why. I've definitely observed a difference over the years though.

That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
bitwalker
·geçen ay·discuss
The benefit is that floats are allowed to be unboxed values - without NaN-boxing, you must heap-allocate them. The tradeoff is that immediate/unboxed integer values end up being smaller than the full machine word range (i.e. you have either a 24-bit or 48-bit mantissa you can use to hold data), but that's usually worthwhile because most integers are small anyway, so you box larger ones. Similarly, pointer values can't use the full address space, but that's also usually worth it since rarely do you actually need to do so in VMs where this technique is used.

Using unsigned integers is only a better choice if your VM doesn't need efficient floating-point operations.
bitwalker
·4 ay önce·discuss
AIUI, that is what the MIR formalization work is about, and it seems to be moving along fine. My impression is that covers essentially all the interesting parts of Rust worth specifying formally.
bitwalker
·8 ay önce·discuss
Nobody is out here arguing that privacy is important because they want to make it easier to get away with things that are immoral or criminal. The importance of privacy is in retaining as much control over what information you share with others as possible, especially with the public at large, corporations, and the government. The information you wish to control is typically the kind that is sensitive in nature: PII; browser history, authentication secrets; what banking institution(s) you use; what accounts you have and their identifiers; financial information (what assets do you have, what are they, and how much are they worth, likewise with debts); spending patterns (where you shop, how often, how much do you spend); political affiliation and activities; religious beliefs and activities; how often do you travel, where do you go, and how do you get there; what is your daily routine/schedule, and how frequently do you deviate from it, etc. The list goes on and on.

Some of that information you might be totally fine with anyone knowing, such as your political leanings or religious beliefs. Others might be deeply uncomfortable with that being shared with just anyone. I assume you'd agree with me that at least some of the information I listed above is unambiguously of the variety that deserves privacy, i.e. you control who has access to it, and when.

Some things that should be generally private (e.g. financial activity), might need to be conditionally shared with certain parties (e.g. the government) - you might be fine with the IRS knowing details about your financial activity for purposes of taxation, but be understandably pissed if you found out that they were then making that information freely available to anyone that asked - because they have taken away your control over that information. I'm not saying that is actually the case, it is just an example.

Lastly, the more information about yourself that is effectively public information (either because you don't keep it private, or someone else has made it public without your consent), the easier it is to uncover other things that you do consider private. If someone can monitor everywhere you go, they can build a picture of you as an individual. Maybe you don't share your religious beliefs with others unless asked, but if someone knows that, e.g., you go to a specific church every Wednesday and Sunday, they now know your specific denomination and that you are more involved than the sort of person that only shows up on Sunday mornings, or only once a month, or only on holidays, etc. That information can be used to target you, either for innocuous purposes like advertising products to you that sell predominantly to that demographic - or for more malicious purposes, like running a scam against you that appeals to your specific beliefs, or in some cases, violence. That may seem unlikely to you, but you may also benefit from not being a minority that is prone to being targeted in such a way - the right to privacy ensures that we retain control over the information that can be used to target or hurt us according to our own risk tolerance.
bitwalker
·9 ay önce·discuss
> There is a separate concern around denied data environments in the software realm but that is not on many people's radar. Most software devs would not know where to even start to protect systems from this.

The concept of a denied environment is pretty clear to me when it comes to physical space, or radio communications - but could you clarify what you mean by a "denied data environment"? I have some notion of what you _might_ mean, but I can't find a clear definition of the idea anywhere.
bitwalker
·9 ay önce·discuss
That's surprising, I have a '23 X6, and the built-in navigation is actually really nice. The maps have more detailed information than both Google and Apple Maps in many areas. I also haven't observed any lag/stuttering, but perhaps the hardware is worse or something on newer models.

Anyway, for me at least, the benefit of the built-in nav is not about routing, which is basically always worse than Google/Apple at this point, but about having detailed, offline maps. In my experience, offline Google/Apple maps are less detailed, and you have to download them in advance.

I use all three, depending on my needs at the time - each of them have their strengths. I prefer Google/Apple maps for day to day routing and things like that, but if I'm somewhere with poor signal, I use the native maps to navigate, because they are just more reliable.

It's all subjective though, and probably highly specific to location.
bitwalker
·geçen yıl·discuss
At least to me, the difference is that one is ostensibly an explanation of how the AI arrived at the joke, the other is a post-hoc explanation of the joke.
bitwalker
·7 yıl önce·discuss
Neither Elixir or Erlang have real arrays, unless you want to count tuples. That said, I don’t see how that correlates to scripting, the data structures that are first class in Elixir are very ergonomic and certainly flexible enough to tackle pretty much any task you’d use a scripting language for.