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Jtsummers

29,526 karma · joined October 6, 2009

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jtsummers; my proof: https://keybase.io/jtsummers/sigs/2v_NBwmgy9lrspxf8k7DN4UwIi-73h22Wxr_7kF01RM ]
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Jtsummers··on Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language
In fairness to the LLMs, many professionals do the same. And since it's trained on the source code of amateurs and professionals, it's not surprising when garbage in becomes garbage out.
Jtsummers··on Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language
Why wouldn't you have code backing the image? Sane people do. The main exception is when you are working on code you know is meant to be thrown away (testing out a library for instance, but not building your actual application).
Jtsummers··on Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language
In CL, this works with compiled code.
Jtsummers··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
She put it in her book on Area 51, apparently, and had one source for the claim, no other evidence.
Jtsummers··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
> Jacobsen is also the author who claimed that the Roswell event was a Soviet plot to sow panic with an actual Nazi flying saucer piloted by genetically-engineered midgets

And people take her seriously?

Jtsummers··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
And like I said in my comments, if this was a serious attempt by the CIA to disrupt midterms, they started too late. And COVID was a worse pandemic than this non-pandemic (presently) and we still held our national elections. It's an extremely absurd theory.
Jtsummers··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
I did read it. It was an idiotic hypothetical. Your hypothetical is hinged on something not based in reality.

2020 with COVID was far worse than something that's still literally thousands of miles from the US and we still held elections in the US. Midterm elections have already started, so even if this was some bizarre CIA plot, it'd be the least effective way to achieve their goals. They failed before they began because, again, the elections are already happening.

Jtsummers··on Senator Cotton is Blocking the Change to Permanent DST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2024/no-da...

Gift link: https://wapo.st/4yAZVXM

A useful map that lets you hover over each county to see the effect of the three policies (current, permanent DST, no DST).

Jtsummers··on US closely monitoring case of lab worker who possibly died of plague in Siberia
This disease is generally highly treatable. Your conspiracy theory hinges on a belief that a treatable disease in a foreign country will be used to do something with the ongoing (ballots are already going out) US midterm elections, when in 2020 the US still held regular elections despite the ongoing, and far less treatable at the time, COVID pandemic.

Your hypothetical is not based in reality.

Jtsummers··on RacketCon Is Saturday
A closure, specifically, because closures are a poor man's object.

https://wiki.c2.com/?ClosuresAndObjectsAreEquivalent

Jtsummers··on RacketCon Is Saturday
It's a common way to implement OO in Lisp-y languages, and it fits if you're taking Smalltalk as an inspiration. SICP has an example in chapter 3 (IIRC) of doing the same, but the selector had to be quoted as in:

  (my-account 'balance)
  (my-account 'withdraw 10)
Jtsummers··on RacketCon Is Saturday
> What to do?

Flag the twits that bring it up in every thread. They're trolling at this point, not actually trying to have a conversation.

Jtsummers··on The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)
It was accidentally revealed in 1973 (though known since 1971, just not acknowledged), and officially declassified in 1992. It's been around for 66 years now, so more than half its existence was declassified, and realistically it's been known for 55 of its 66 years.
Jtsummers··on The top secret URSALA, RAQUEL, and FARRAH satellites (2025)
Related submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914880 - "A Cold War Spy Satellite Named After Farrah Fawcett Just Blew Apart in Orbit"
Jtsummers··on Hegseth Announces AutoWarCom
https://media.defense.gov/2026/Sep/30/2004009304/-1/-1/1/PRO...

I'm curious how they came up with the name "Project Agincourt". Other than it being a fairly well-known battle, the purpose of the project doesn't really seem related to anything about that particular battle.

Jtsummers··on What TLA+ can and can't check
> What is the Typst of formal modeling?

I'm not sure there is one, but you can start exploring here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Formal_specification_...

For TLA+-styled model checking, though, there is Quint: https://quint.sh/docs/why

Jtsummers··on Senate Democrats block bill to limit lawmakers' stock trades, citing voter ID
Actual title: Senate Democrats block bill to limit lawmakers' stock trades, citing voter ID provision

Which makes a lot more sense than the submission title (in fairness, the original is too long) but it could have been made to fit without losing that key word at the end.

Jtsummers··on Needed 1+1, built a functional programming language
What's more barebones than a simple tree structure as used by essentially every compiler and interpreter, at least for one stage as an intermediate representation, out there today? (If they cover precedence, Forth implementations for instance don't care about it so don't need to use an AST even for an intermediate representation.)
Jtsummers··on NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart
USAF has a lot of TOs (technical orders) that include things like schematics for the aircraft and its components. I'd be surprised if that data has disappeared or was incomplete for the SR-71. IME, TOs have been getting worse and systems from the time of the SR-71's period of service were generally better documented, though not perfectly.
Jtsummers··on Formally Specifying UIs
(2018) with one discussion from the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19268734
Jtsummers··on What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI
Lots of would-be business influencer types post (or posted? I've never paid much attention to it) on there. There are a number of other sites that are also auto-killed by the system. Sometimes those submissions will come back to life, but it has to be found by a mod or vouched for by enough users.
Jtsummers··on Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery
> more challenging problem to stop something coming back in from Space as opposed to an ICBM

Well, the reason I point out LEO is that Starfish Prime was detonated at 250 miles, that's within the range of a low Earth orbit. You don't need to return anything to Earth to have the desired effect, or even have it on an Earthward trajectory (such as deorbiting the satellite).

EDIT:

> would make this only likely form a truly rogue state

I do agree with this.

Jtsummers··on What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI
Everything to linkedin gets killed, apparently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=linkedin.com

They're all [dead] (you'll need "showdead" on in your profile).

Jtsummers··on Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery
If an enemy nation wanted to conduct an EMP attack, they wouldn't need to do it with an ICBM that we'd be able to identify as such. Getting an object into LEO would not, on its own, stand out, and would provide an avenue for attack (or the threat of an attack) that would not be detectable in the same way as an ICBM launch.

Of course, the harm to their own systems would be substantial as well given that it would have a huge impact on satellites in orbit, not just systems on the ground.

Jtsummers··on Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery
khat's comment is dead, but replying to it here:

> It's very odd they would assume a typo in the writing but not an error in their calculations or possibly no correlation whatsoever.

They didn't assume a typo, they concluded that a typo makes the most sense if the story is true.

The facts:

- The original story (as published) claims the event occurred on 18 October 1841 on a line that didn't exist at that time (not until 1846).

- The original story was specific about the train (a 10:05 express train) and the month and day (18 October)

- On 18 October 1848 there was an express train with that time and there was a recorded geomagnetic storm

Under the assumption the story is true, given the details that do line up and the one detail that can't line up with anything, a typographical error where one number was changed makes a lot of sense.

EDIT: @khat, if you read this, it seems you've somehow become shadowbanned. Both your comment here and your earlier comment from today are [dead]. This means admin moderation or auto-moderation was involved, these weren't [flagged][dead] which would have indicated users flagged it to death. Nothing in either looks like a reason to get shadowbanned so you may want to reach out to the mods (there's a contact link at the bottom of most pages).

Jtsummers··on What makes Lisp difficult to read?
I'll write a second reply, I don't normally do this but you completely edited your comment.

> Lisp, including the variants of Lisp that CL was largely derived from, did not always have lexical scoping.

Correct, but you specifically wrote about Common Lisp, thus my reply about Common Lisp, not Lisp (the historical category of languages or the older language definitions which used dynamic scoping rules).

>> No, Common Lisp was not Lexical from day one.

You were very explicit about the language version you were speaking about, as was I in my reply.

Jtsummers··on What makes Lisp difficult to read?
> You are ignoring the part where you don't actually know Common Lisp and write nonsense code.

Read the usernames, "Jtsummers" and "iLemming" don't even look alike.

Jtsummers··on Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery
> 1. If it were true, I expect it would be a national security concern, and quickly remedied

If only the world worked this way. Until something happens, a lot of potential problems remain potential problems rather than getting remedied. Especially when it'll be expensive to fix.

Jtsummers··on What makes Lisp difficult to read?
> No, Common Lisp was not Lexical from day one.

The first edition of Common Lisp the Language defined the language as having lexical scope, with the option to create special variables with dynamic scope (so it had both). Unless you're referring to some earlier draft specification, it's hard to reconcile your assertion with the history of the language.

From page 39:

> - Variable bindings normally have lexical scope and indefinite extent.

> - Variable bindings that are declared to be special have dynamic scope (indefinite scope and dynamic extent).

Jtsummers··on What makes Lisp difficult to read?

  (split-sequence:split-sequence #\Space line)
Why would you do that? You could just use `uiop:split-string` and import the function symbol into your current namespace so you can call it as `split-string`.

  (split-string "a b c")
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