alentist

Huh?

> Lol we didn't agree mate

Your comment says otherwise.

Not at all. That's nonsense. Now, can you please answer the question you keep dodging?

If the USSR had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder ordinary people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

On the contrary: It was Western technology and capital that propped up the USSR despite its repeated failures and inefficiencies.

https://capx.co/soviet-communism-was-dependent-on-western-te...

GP: They did not have a wonderful society. It was very deficient in many ways. I didn't argue that point because we agree.

You: Exactly!

Glad you also agree with my comments, then.

You again keep trying to dodge the question and change the subject, so I'll ask it yet again: If the USSR had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder ordinary people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

If you're saying that slavery is also abhorrent and evil—like the slavery and mass murder that takes place under Communism—then we're in agreement. Now, can you please answer the question?

You completely dodged the question and tried to change the subject, so I'll ask it again: If they had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

Your question, on the other hand, is silly. Substitute the USSR with Nazi Germany.

You completely dodged the question and tried to change the subject, so I'll ask it again: If they had such a wonderful society, why did they have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

> You declare that one way is more "convenient" than the other (he calls it ugly), without defining what "convenient" means. This makes the argument subjective.

Nope.

1. Some things are objectively more convenient than others.

2. I've explained exactly what I mean. And so did Dijkstra.

Since you apparently don't want to use natural numbers for indices, what do you want to use?

> The USSR, had it not had to fight a cold war against the US, could very well have been a much better system not just for space flight, but for a way to structure and run society in general.

What makes you think that? If they had such a wonderful "way to structure and run society in general", why did the USSR and its satellite states have to systematically mass murder people who wanted to leave this wonderful society?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_Eastern_Bl...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schie%C3%9Fbefehl

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_e...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_prisoner_massacres

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

> Today, we know that markets are likely not efficient, thanks to P likely being smaller than NP, along lines sketched by Nash and Gödel over half a century ago.

You seem to be confused with your history/terminology.

To address your larger point: That markets are not perfectly efficient does not buttress socialism and central planning. Far from it. The latter are much worse.

> The "Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" (SPD) literally has "socialist" in its name.

It literally does not.

> Most people in Europe associate socialism with things like healthcare, paid vacations, &c.

Absolutely false. Are you American yourself?

As the Danish PM put it,

"I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

Yep, the regulation applies to all websites that use cookies.

> There is no regulation mandating cookie consent overlays

Yes there is. A mugging is still a mugging even if the victim is "free" to give their wallet.

> websites are free to not abuse cookies to track their users.

You're free to not use such websites.

I dislike tracking and avoid being tracked myself. But this absolutely is a regulation and it's immensely disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Yes yes yes. Luckily for us, these problems are technically solvable, no handling (?) "evil ways" (?) needed. The latter proposal is both ill-defined and a waste of time and resources. Better to spend those resources on designing more secure systems.

You are propagating a false narrative yourself. This narrative has itself been roundly refuted, which you decided to omit. See [0][1].

[0] https://cafehayek.com/2013/09/ritholtz-and-the-big-lie.html

[1] https://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/RUSS-fi...

That you don't know what natural numbers are does not exactly inspire confidence in your commentary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_number

Dijkstra is saying the following.

Part 1:

Natural numbers have a least element X. (In fact, any subset of them does. This is called the well-ordering principle.)

Part 2:

Suppose lower bounds are exclusive. Then the lower bound L of any interval containing X must be less than X. Since X is the smallest natural number, L must be an unnatural (non-natural) number.

It is more convenient to stay in the naturals.

Therefore, it is more convenient to use inclusive lower bounds.

Part 3:

Suppose upper bounds are inclusive. Then, to represent an empty interval, the upper bound must be less than the lower bound. (If it were equal to the lower bound, we would get a singleton interval, not an empty interval).

It is already strange that we need an upper bound that is less than the lower bound. But there's more: When the lower bound is X, this would again take us out of naturals.

Therefore, it is more convenient to use exclusive upper bounds.

Conclusion:

It is more convenient to use inclusive lower bounds and exclusive upper bounds, i.e. convention (a).

This argument is basically airtight.

It is. Just like 0 is a natural number, the empty string is a string, the empty set is a set, etc.

If you've worked with mathematical proofs before, you'll have experience with how they make proofs shorter and more elegant.

That's why they're natural base cases.

> Although Bitcoin mining strains the power grid, experts say it’s not the real reason behind Iran’s electricity outages and dangerous air pollution. The telecommunications ministry estimates that Bitcoin consumes less than 2% of Iran’s total energy production.

> That comment doesn't enumerate or even alludes to any tangible benefits of crypto currencies.

Either:

1. You didn't actually read the comment.

2. You have no idea what ZeroNet or Blockstream are.

It is no crime to be ignorant of the topic, but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on it while remaining in this state of ignorance.

In its discussion of physical and financial censorship (note the 2nd sentence), the comment also did (and I have to wonder how you "missed" this) refer to one of the best real-world illustrations of the value of cryptocurrencies: circumventing Venezuela's tyrannical regime and its destructive fiscal and monetary policies. That's my home country, and those are real lives. I'd love to hear you lecture me about how those people don't exist.

> and the supposed resiliency

Why "supposed"?

> I'm pretty sure GP has heard of those.

"Heard of"? Maybe. Understand? Clearly not.

> Whether HFT provides any benefit in terms of liquidity and smaller spreads is by no means clear.

It is. Bid-ask spreads are down to about 3 basis points from about 90 basis points 2 decades ago. Curbing HFT in the past—surprise, surprise—increased the spread. See also [0].

> HFT is certainly neither necessary nor even contributing to price discovery.

Well, you are certainly wrong [1], despite prefacing your false claim with "certainly". What does that tell us? Why are you prefacing false claims with "certainly"?

> I submit that the economy would work just fine with a price auction every minute (maybe with stochastic cut-off) for, say, 3 hours a day

Indeed the economy would "work just fine" with horse-drawn carriages and pigeon post. I commend you for your brilliant proposal. I recommend we implement this novel idea as soon as possible and see how it goes.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/01/hft-real...

[1] https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/research/cfa-digest/2015/04/...

Income inequality isn’t the problem. Poverty is. [0]

I’m not automatically worse off because someone else is better off. That’s fallacious nonsense (the zero-sum fallacy). And it definitely does not meaningfully translate across countries, if what you’re interested in is human welfare.

[0] https://www.hoover.org/research/income-inequality-isnt-probl...

> Because they distract from the fact that Bitcoin or any other crypto currency doesn't provide any tangible benefit to our societies.

I recommend expanding your understanding of the world beyond your coddled first-world perspective.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25797143

> I still don't understand why HFT is not illegal

Then I suggest you learn something about what liquidity, bid-ask spreads, arbitrage, and price discovery are, and how financial systems work in general.

There are smarter ways to deal with data structures in the functional setting than copying the entire structure over and over again.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purely_functional_data_structu... and Okasaki’s book Purely Functional Data Structures.

It’s more than that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841660

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841283

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25839697

The GP specifically said the headline.

See also

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841660

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25841283

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25839697

A range doesn’t have to start at 1.

> Then 1-based can be described as the interval [1,N] where N is both the last element and the length of the vector/array/list.

Doesn't work when the start position isn't 1.

> But that first case doesn't matter in a 1-based array because the range size is just `b`

Only if a = 1.

2. How is (c) better for calculating range size if you're using 1-based?

3. "But how do you have two adjacent ranges when they both have the same starting position?" What do you mean?

Consider the length n prefix of a sequence. With 1-indexing, for n = 0, we have sequence[1:0], which means

a. The end position is before the start position (?!).

b. We have to use 0 anyway.