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alexanderdmitri

1,688 karma · joined January 10, 2017

    // Alexander Dmitri is property of Gala Corp.

    (function (self) {
      console.time("lifetime");
      try {
        while self.alive {
          self.wakeUp();
          self.doStuff();
          self.sleep();
        }
      }
      catch (fatalError) {
        console.error(`Whoops! ${fatalError}`);
      }
      finally {
        self = null;
        console.timeEnd("lifetime");
      }
    }(self));
submissionscomments
alexanderdmitri··on Thoughts on Using Deno
sorry for this superficial question, but does anyone know if it is pronounced dee-no, den-oh or day-no (or something else)?
alexanderdmitri··on Will Linux phones stay around this time?
If there's an OSS funded by developers cooking up crappy unwanted MVPs, I want in.

Right now I have ten crappy MVPs to donate and can put down $20 to sponsor others. I could probably have another 5 MVPs out within the next week if work is slow.

alexanderdmitri··on Let's get Right to Repair passed
i feel like the market would keep the repair cost sane if the component availability and pricing were guaranteed in certain ways.

for example, i think it's be a good rule that component parts must be sold at a price where the sum of the part prices cannot exceed the retail value of the assembled product. something like this could have other benefits outside of just this issue.

alexanderdmitri··on A practical guide to reducing loneliness
I've found the opposite by working in a sales position.

I'm introverted, so it sometimes felt like torture getting through some days. I felt dizzy and drained after 10+ hours of talking, pitching and trying to close sometimes hundreds of strangers over one day.

People do buy based on emotion, you'll see the progression from feature to benefit to emotional benefit in most structured sales cycles. The best sales people make customers feel great and tie it to the product. You need to learn about what they're looking for and why, it's rarely 'one size fits all.'

You learn tricks and learn to have fun. I realized mental fortitude and positive socialization is really hard work, not just disposition as I wrote it off before. You can set goals for yourself and learn from having an actual point of success. And you don't eat without achievement, in my case at least. Just pick a product that you actually believe in and makes lives and the world better (and has a good commission model).

alexanderdmitri··on Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab
Here are some numbers from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm#T9_down

Stats don't say what the abortions were in the name of though (that I see on first review at least).

alexanderdmitri··on Show HN: sheet2dict – simple Python XLSX/CSV reader/to dictionary converter
Not OP nor well-versed with any of this, but the standard csv module doesn't parse xlsx files. Since the majority of people who work with spreadsheets use excel [citation needed], this probably greatly increases the application potential of the library.
alexanderdmitri··on A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors (2018-20)
In a weaker gravity field with a low sample frequency the algorithm does indeed appear 1:1. The complexity arises once a peripheral second gravity field can no longer be ignored or a certain noise threshold is passed.

The equation ends up looking something like this: https://slack-files.com/TEGQB8GNS-F01UU5FMKRR-820b186081

Once you start thinking about it in terms of the definite integrals of a piecewise function you'll see where the weights would be applied in more extreme situations.

alexanderdmitri··on The brain ‘rotates’ memories to save them from new sensations
You are technically readable words of a mostly abstract person.
alexanderdmitri··on Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress
It could work the other way around, ie if your close relations have stock that may affect your governing decisions and they refuse to commit to re-investing more generally in the event of your election, then you are prohibited from running for office.

Obviously there would be complications, but are you advocating society shouldn't strive to clearly separate governance of the public from private, conflicting pecuniary interests? I can't tell if you're dismissing the problem or saying there's a better solution ...

alexanderdmitri··on 'Rent-a-person who does nothing' in Tokyo receives endless requests, gratitude
once you've started on Idris you've crossed the line over from kinky to deviancy

source: there are several people in my weekly support group for exactly this reason, it gets out of control

alexanderdmitri··on Lifting Self-Imposed Restrictions on the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship
Thank you, that clarifies quite a bit for me. I've heard this happens in parts of India from quite a few people I know too.

I'd hazard a traveler's experience can highlight a culture's stereotypes more easily than it can the experience of a naturalized member of the community.

I used to love watching Bourdain's travel series for exactly this reason; he seemed to always want to get the deeper context and insight from the people he'd meet and his narration showed a firm understanding of how who he was and where he came from influenced his experience of a place/culture and the conclusions he'd draw (if any).

alexanderdmitri··on Lifting Self-Imposed Restrictions on the U.S.-Taiwan Relationship
Interesting, can you elaborate on this?
alexanderdmitri··on A half-hour to learn Rust
What the issue?
alexanderdmitri··on Man accused of dangerous driving for sleeping in self-driving, speeding Tesla
This is what gets me. A big part driving safety is defensive, ie monitoring the other drivers around you. It's relatively easy to pick out distracted, erratic or risk-taking drivers from a handful of simple queues. Very much not the case with software driven autopilot routines from an increasing number of vendors. So accidents may go down where humans are at fault, but I find it more unsettling overall, as I have less control to take acceptable safety precautions.
alexanderdmitri··on Why Doctors Hate Their Computers (2018)
I don't know, I think we are all smart. Every single one of us. There are a few exceptions, but nearly all human beings on this planet are truly "smart" compared to all other known, non-human beings.

Unless this is one of those "everything's weird and 'normal' is particularly weird" arguments.

If so I agree that "everything's stupid and therefore it's especially stupid to think anything could be 'smart'"

alexanderdmitri··on Dell Unveils Subscription Model to Counter Amazon, Microsoft
It's definitely a security issue in the sense they've explicitly reserved the right to change and redefine the data they collect from Windows 10 machines with each update while reserving the right to not state what data they're syphoning at any one point.
alexanderdmitri··on Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
sailor: captain! there's a hole in the ship, if we don't do something quick we'll sink!

captain: there's only one solution ... make the hole so big we can no longer call it a hole.

sailor: aye aye captain, i'll go get the explosives.

alexanderdmitri··on Ask HN: What's a promising area to work on?
I feel like the language choice isn't going to be what bites people here, the danger is more architecting to a specific platform, relying on its SDKs and optimizing to a provider's specific resource idiosyncrasies.
alexanderdmitri··on Gitlab Makes a U-Turn
For a desperate attempt, a period of over 6 centuries seems frighteningly effective (1184 to 1808 AD).
alexanderdmitri··on I’m Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s
Basically Pascal's wager:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

alexanderdmitri··on Amazon Workers May Be Watching Your Cloud Cam Home Footage
Maybe a service that on event would proxy a stream from the camera and push a notification to your phone (or whatever you're using as a client).

On notification you could choose whether or not to record the stream and save it as a file on the client.

Said service could provide a guarantee that all data passing through its servers will not be recorded, persisted or even decrypted.

alexanderdmitri··on Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning
Not bad advice from GP when you get to the "see also" section in your linked wikipedia article (pretty much immediately there with one scroll on mobile).
alexanderdmitri··on Ask HN: How to effectively deal with recruiters?
His point here is if they're MPC they won't be able to tell you their compensation from the client for filling the role.
alexanderdmitri··on The U.S. economy is growing and using less and less stuff to do so
Maybe there's some misunderstanding here. I'm not saying cost is a good, or even viable, way of quantifying energy consumption.

Since energy suppliers meter their output to apply a price, I'm wondering how hidden costs could exist (unless the software is somehow circumventing or undermining the meters?).

I would think it'd be pretty straight-forward experiment to use software from the late 80s / early 90s for a couple weeks, measure machine energy consumption, then compare with the consumption from a machine running the latest version of everything for two weeks. Next month repeat but also use a processor from the 90s for the first two weeks. Rinse, repeat, extrapolate, apply statistics, &c. Maybe try adjusting for or comparing differences in appliances common then and now.

If software energy costs are somehow hidden, I can only think they're hidden because we're deliberately not choosing to look at them.

alexanderdmitri··on V8 adds support for top-level await
You're right[0], which is weird because they got most of the way there. I guess I just assumed since they were leveraging IIFEs this would be a natural use case. I'd be interested in knowing why they didn't actually.

According to this[1] exchange on Stack Overflow, the IIFE is used by TypeScript because of other scoping issues (specifically protecting class properties before instantiation and defining interfaces).

[0] https://yakovfain.com/2015/06/30/the-private-in-typescript-i...

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56086411/why-does-typesc...

alexanderdmitri··on A patent lawsuit against GNOME
> If they describe a bulb full of dichloromethane with a tube leading up to a beak, then it's not patentable.

That seems pretty specific ... what would be an analogous software scenario?

alexanderdmitri··on V8 adds support for top-level await
Also, I believe TypeScript uses these to transpile classes with public and private properties/methods (can't verify that's still case atm).

It's a really neat pattern imo, I remember it fondly from my JS heavy days :)

alexanderdmitri··on The U.S. economy is growing and using less and less stuff to do so
Could you explain this more? I would think energy use is quantifiable when payed for by metered consumption.
alexanderdmitri··on Cosmoteer: A starship design, simulation, and battle game
Great write up, now I'm inspired!
alexanderdmitri··on Hong Kong tries and fails to hire PR firms to rebuild image
Basically it's politics and where there's politics there's going to be a need for PR.
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