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Misdicorl

1,308 karma · joined January 10, 2018

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Misdicorl··on South Korea to build world’s largest chip center in Seoul with $230B investment
Thanks!
Misdicorl··on South Korea to build world’s largest chip center in Seoul with $230B investment
Isn't all that investment outside of China? My understanding was ghost towns weren't investment based but planning failure based
Misdicorl··on South Korea to build world’s largest chip center in Seoul with $230B investment
Are housing prices in Seoul seeing the same inflation we see in many western cities? I'd be mildly surprised. (Anecdotally) It seems like Asian cultures are much less likely to treat housing as an investment and/or allow the few to dictate to the many (specifically in the housing arena).
Misdicorl··on A senior engineer's guide to the system design interview
I started typing no, but then....

I honestly can't decide which would be worse: a developer who literally doesn't know what a cache is or one who installs caches with bad invalidation policies.

Misdicorl··on OpenStreetMap is in trouble – a critical take on Bing Map Builder
But that's not a problem at all! That's exactly the desired/required operation. OSM wants a very clear demarcation: this may be a Microsoft application, but you are an OSM community member (if you want to contribute).

That's perfectly encapsulated by a signup/login barrier. Any slick-ness on top of that fundamental requirement is sugar

Misdicorl··on OpenStreetMap is in trouble – a critical take on Bing Map Builder
Not really. Microsoft has inserted their own identity system into an OSM application they built. There's no problem if there's a login modal to use your OSM identity to make edits. They can even have a "let Microsoft manage my OSM account" checkbox with the relevant legalese if they want that to be slick.
Misdicorl··on The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
IME explanations of the Fourier transform focus far too much on the specific mechanics of it without motivating the reason. I find people often don't even realize the time space and frequency space functions are the same function! I dive in like so

"There are many different ways to write down the number 5. Tally marks, the sigil 5, 4+1, 2.5 times 2, 10/2. Each of them is more or less useful in different circumstances. The same is true of functions! There are many different ways to write the same function. The mechanics of taking a function in one form and writing it in a new form is called a transformation."

Above needs to be said a hundred times. Then you talk about why a frequency space function can be useful. Then you talk about how to transform a time space function to the frequency space representation.

Misdicorl··on To build truly intelligent machines, teach them cause and effect (2018)
You aren't back to square one. Even indifference will result in selection so long as the indifference is demonstrated in different ways by different AI. The ones which have behavior which accidentally maps slightly better to good outcomes will so better. So long as that gets propagated more strongly to the next generation of AIs than average, you get selection for good outcomes without any explicit 'want' function
Misdicorl··on To build truly intelligent machines, teach them cause and effect (2018)
I think you have this backwards. The missing magic is consequences. From there, AIs that avoid bad consequences (reduced compute budget?) and seek good consequences (??) may develop a 'want' heuristic that favors those things. Or rather, the ones that do will be more successful and the ones that don't will die out.
Misdicorl··on Code Design Decision – Always throw custom exceptions
When library 1 through 10 take this approach to wrapping a common exception you get the above behavior. Obviously a single library should have a coherent internal story
Misdicorl··on We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima Online
Yeah it worked like that. Saying "guards" would instantly summon the guards if any criminal was present and subsequently murder the criminal(s). Nothing about incorrect summoning though.

Most people had a macro invoking "guards" "bank" abd "vendor buy" all at the same time. The interface was mud like and the first (?) command in a statement that was valid would execute.

Misdicorl··on You will ask many, many questions
Domain expertise is absolutely not a given. For example: I'd wager very few devs working on healthcare apps have any experience working in healthcare. Very few ad tech devs have ever run an ad campaign.

In regards to staying up to date on php. Surely best practices aren't changing very often? For myself, I look forward to some niceties coming in my tech stack, but I honestly care very little if literally anyone at my org is aware of them. We won't be retrofitting old code and using it in new code will come with all the little gritty interfacing with old code issues that always surface.

So why should I judge them on something that will have little or no impact on their day to day and when it does come around the people who do keep up are more than happy to show it off and evangelize?

Misdicorl··on You will ask many, many questions
I'd push back pretty hard on #2 bring a strong signal, depending o on what you mean by successful I guess. Making it to a staff/whatever role where your making best practices decisions org wide? Yeah I can see it. Being a successful senior slinging mostly bug free code? Meh. Gimmie someone with domain expertise any day
Misdicorl··on Beyond Hyperanthropomorphism
This feels a bit too dismissive of human capability to me.

In the end all that "work something out" is emulating the counterparty in your own head given their actions and statements.

That emulation will certainly be very difficult when the counterparty is running on different hardware, but it's not impossible imo. And humans get to back propagate error into their emulation model too...

Find the pattern is still the paramount skill, something humans are good at, and will continue to be useful when the counterparty is an AI

Misdicorl··on How to get a PhD in mathematics in a timely fashion (2020) [pdf]
Citing a few highly damaging cases of fraud isn't enough to make your point. You have to show that it's more prevalent and damaging in the US system than in other systems.

That seems an extraordinarily unlikely bar to meet based on my cursory knowledge of where large scale fraud is happening. But perhaps you know more and would like to enlighten me.

Misdicorl··on Reddit’s database has two tables (2012)
> So there were no options.

Hbase was a pretty solid NoSQL option by 2010, no?

Misdicorl··on Chessguessr – Wordle for Chess Games
I'd suggest that the current yellow isn't very useful. Right piece wrong move=yellow seems much closer to the spirit for me
Misdicorl··on Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
You're obviously well convinced of your position; I haven't had to make one yet. I think a pure trust approach is laudable but scary.

A common refrain from parents in these situations is how strong they thought their relationship with their child was and how they never imagined it could happen to them. Thats scary. Weighing a very low probability extreme consequence vs. various questionably impactful interventions with certain downsides is hard (at least in my view).

Not to mention that there are risks the internet exposes you to that aren't sexual abuse related. Desensitization to violence, insane discourse (epithets dropped like candy), etc are also important aspects of a parent's moderation choices. Trust and conversations cannot address this since the desensitization takes place as a consequence of simple repeated exposure. In the extreme case, desensitization translates to usage, and I think thats clear if you listen to any 14 year old kid on an xbox stream.

Misdicorl··on Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
And the opposition is doing everything they can to

1) make that communication remain innocuous long enough to fall into background ignore status

2) escalate in a way that will either avoid communicatong with you or even better seem fine to the child but not to you and so invoke the "my parent isn't fair" response and stop consulting you wholesale

Misdicorl··on Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
I think you underestimate the problem space.

Think of it like security issues where the attackers/researchers are constantly evolving and generating novel ways to hack a system. Your solution is telling fresh out of school developers to be really careful about use after free bugs and spear phishing. Obviously a good start. But it's not enough in a lot of cases.

Misdicorl··on Us crosses the electric-car tipping point for mass adoption
It won't drain below X% and will charge when below Y%
Misdicorl··on Us crosses the electric-car tipping point for mass adoption
Yes. Because it means fewer peaker power stations need to be built. And I care a hell of a lot more about that than whether my battery is at 86% or 94% when I wake up or get out of work.
Misdicorl··on US moves closer to recalling Tesla’s self-driving software
The math makes this quite implausible for a random scenario. Perhaps a toll collector could introduce the right systematics to make the scenario not ridiculous on it's face.

Imagine pointing a laser at something more than five feet distant the size of an eyeball and then getting another laser to point at the same spot at the same time. And then another five. And those lasers are all attached to cars moving and the eyeball is moving too...

Misdicorl··on Tell HN: The loneliness of a pretty good developer
A lot of comments saying you should find new opportunities. Another path in case thats not what you want:

Consider taking a step back. It seems like your worry about becoming complacent is what might prevent you from doing that. If you stay in your current role, try to anyways. Channel your drive into a hobby or personal project or ... Take a month off in order to reset baseline expectations with your org.

Misdicorl··on Riot Games: Artificial Latency for Remote Competitors
Perhaps apocryphal/silly, but amusing nonetheless. Story goes that this means you want to be in the computer furthest from the interconnect because light travels slightly faster in straight fiber than in coiled fiber.
Misdicorl··on Netflix loses subscribers for the first time in 10+ years
Imagine a car slamming on anti lock brakes versus one coasting to a stop.
Misdicorl··on The Colorado Safety Stop is the law of the land
How small can you make a roundabout? Where I live stop signs are common at very small intersections.

Alternating two way stops (n/s at intersection one, e/w at intersection two) seems like maybe an ok way to reduce the problem by half at little to no cost?

Misdicorl··on I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it
Wow, that really is surprising to me. This is the best non-personal news I've heard in probably a decade, so thanks for sharing!
Misdicorl··on I liked the idea of carbon offsets until I tried to explain it
I believe you can safely assume "it is not enough". We are recirculating literally millions of years worth of trees into the air. No amount of living carbon will be able to offset it, even if the entire earth were covered in trees (citation needed).
Misdicorl··on Parking kills businesses, not bikes or buses
You wear gloves and use less of the motor when it's cold. You bring a change of clothes when it's raining and learn to enjoy the rain
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