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04091948

20 karma · joined March 21, 2020

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04091948··on Comparison of C++17, Go, and Java for a next-generation sequencing tool
in CppCon 2016: Chandler Carruth “High Performance Code 201: Hybrid Data Structures"[1] he says:

"but the standard deque data type is really quite bad. I wouldn't recommend anyone use it for anything. if you look at the implementation constraints, the constraints placed upon its iterators, and its invalidation constraints, it's painted into a very unpleasant corner and it has very few opportunities to be an efficient data structure."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vElZc6zSIXM

04091948··on Some artists are disappearing from society to let their work speak for itself
I think it's based on two factors:

- The emperors' new clothes: liking it makes you look sophisticated, disliking it exposes you to mockery (as someone inferior that doesn't get it). it also allows people to feel that they are better than the out-group ( and being evil while feeling good about is appealing to humans). These social dynamics need not be conscious decisions.

- These social dynamics can be exploited by third parties to suit their own ideology. Propaganda is powerful.and it was used as a CIA weapon: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

- financial incentives: if I pay a higher price for an art piece. my collection from the same artist will appreciate in value. In addition, it can be used as a mean for money laundering and for tunneling money for illegal purposes. therefore the value of a piece need not match it's artistic merit.

04091948··on How not to write shitty code: Intentional Conditions
I personally, would've overridden the equal function of record (or made an equality helper function).

so the code would become

if(!record.isBuiltIn() || !user.canChange(record) || !record.equals(oldRecord)){ // can't save / or no need too }

and if no one can change a builtin, then a user certainly can't change it.

so it becomes:

if( !user.canChange(record || !record.equals(oldRecord))){ // can't save / or no need too }

04091948··on Fix Boyer-Moore searcher with the Rytter correction
maybe it's because of Pascal. I remember even Cormen used to have pascal style pseudo-code.
04091948··on AutoDapp: a proposal to decentralize existing web apps
in that case, there should be a court order that prevents them from exercising such occupations.
04091948··on AutoDapp: a proposal to decentralize existing web apps
and why can't bob find a job even if he was a pedophile or a murderer or whatever?

why is extrajudicial punishment allowed?

04091948··on There's a mathematician in your compiler
> If we can start from an assumption and perform a series of logical deductions and reach True, then we know our original assumption is True, that it is provable

is this a difference between mathematical and natural language?

my understanding is if you deduce something true from an assumption it means nothing.

you need to deduce something false and thus the negation of your assumption is true.

04091948··on New Grad vs. Senior Dev
>As Tim explained to me, first off, the reason why VB does this seemingly bizarre “find the first character match, then check if query is a prefix of source” logic is because the skipto method is not written in the naive fashion that I showed here. The skipto method is a single x86 machine instruction.

oh my bad then, from this text it sounded like it was written in assembly.

04091948··on New Grad vs. Senior Dev
Imagine that the intern didn't dare to ask such questions.

a - he could've gone out thinking that performance doesn't matter. but it certainly does in a piece of code being used daily by thousands of devs.

b - he could've thought that the simple implementation is faster but missed the fact that skip is implemented in assembly.

c - he could've realized both but missed the why.

and these failure scenarios are likely to happen because this is an intern we're speaking about.

One or two tricks up your sleeve do not matter but repeat this a 100 times which one do you think would be a better programmer?

I think the willingness to challenge authority figures and to be (often) proven wrong and to learn from it is an essential part of becoming better.

Maybe Tim was understanding because he himself challenged people older than him and in-process learned form them.

Advice like "don't reinvent the wheel", "avoid premature optimization", "write boring code" promote exploitation. which is the optimal strategy for older agents.

but for newer agents, a higher level of exploration is needed otherwise they would converge into a suboptimal strategy

04091948··on '42 Knees in One Day': Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protesters
to clarify the asterisk near ethnic cleansing is because this is a highly debated topic and there is no consensus whether it happened. Expulsion, on the other hand, is undeniable.

for the first Ben-Gurion's quote check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion#Childhood_and...

for the second one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...

Deir Yassine was in 1948 much closer than the holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre

King David Hotel bombing (1946) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing

The UN negotiator I'm speaking of is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte

04091948··on '42 Knees in One Day': Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protesters
While the holocaust did give the Israeli project one last political boost, I think the creation of Israel was not because of it but despite it. The tragic loss of millions of potential citizens had a significant impact on the demographic feasibility of the country. Ben-Gurion himself says: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size."

I mean the Balfour declaration was in 1917. Herzl's "a land without a people for a people without a land" only makes sense if you read it through the eyes of a colonial European.

in reaction to the united nations partition plan ben-Gurion says: "The total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%"

a democratic and Jewish Israel was and still is impossible without the expulsion (ethnic cleansing*) of a major part of its Arab population. (regardless of the incompetence of the Arab leaders and their stupid war)

I would argue that this is not really unexpected from a country built on Deir Yassine, king David's bombing and the assassination of a UN negotiator. Acts committed by the Irgun, which was the political predecessor of Israel's right-wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud the current ruling party.