bakhy

Is it possible that Zimbardo is now legally responsible? He influenced policy in this way, with what seems to be obvious malicious intent, and he also apparently testified in many court cases. Can he be prosecuted for this?

Yes. And the fact that, being taken as serious science, it actually affected penal policy, makes it particularly ugly.

The outcome was not entirely unexpected. The article mentions that this is what Zimbardo originally intended. But I think even more important in this story is the great story-like quality of the result. It's a great story, and it "makes you think", as they say. One professor in this text is quoted actually saying that the story is bigger, meaning presumably more important, than the science. I remember similar reactions when some of Gladwell's shenanigans was uncovered. It just doesn't matter if it's true, if it makes a nice story. In fact, it's probably even better if it's not true.

For C#, and all .NET languages, there are Code Contracts. I've never used them, but they seem to be maintained and relatively easy to use. The docs, with a good example at the end, are here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/debug-trac...

Edit: Actually it seems abandoned, with no support for .NET Core right now. Shame.

I think in C# nowadays I'd implement Select and SelectMany for the data type I want to visit, and then use LINQ. This is one pattern which is easier in a functional approach. I presume it would be easy to do something similar in Scala?

is this something like this XKCD? :)

https://xkcd.com/1588/

Yes and no.

It's a little funny to me to talk about infinity in the context of physical systems. Where do you keep all those balls? :)

Ctrl+Shift+Del

This is why I use Firefox on Android - with the uBlock Origin add-on installed, it's really fast. There's no optimization like avoiding the needless work in the first place :)

Why is parsing "1.23.4" more difficult than "(1, 23, 4)"? :)

I'd also recommend getting a pull-up bar. Great excercise for keeping the back healthy!

your ability to pay is better determined by looking at pay slips, which a bank can (and probably will) demand from you. the fact that you paid X dollars monthly for Y years is not sufficient to determine the upper limit of your paying ability. so, i think a combination of nice pay slips + lack of defaults in the past is quite sufficient.

the negative reviews are funny :D and this one sounds almost like its conscious:

"I couldn’t figure out how to stop this drivel. At worst, it was going absolutely nowhere, no matter what I did.Needles to say, I skim-read the entire book. Don’t waste your time."

is there a sarcasm neuron in there too?

The old kernels should be purged automatically on desktops. That really is an annoying issue.

people trust Google, which IMO makes them responsible here. IANAL, but if they would for example be caught giving Holocaust-denying answers in Germany, where that's illegal, could they not be sued?

i fully agree! though technically, there is a pretty big dependency there - the .NET Framework...

however, Mono supports WinForms on all platforms, and is able to compile everything into one standalone EXE. to be honest, i have not tried either, so i cannot say much about how that works in practice. from my experience with Mono, it can be dangerous. every now and then a new version breaks threading, causing mysterious pauses or crashes, and i've read (i think a text by Ayende) that the GC can also be buggy. but for the stuff that Delphi was good at, for smaller RAD apps, it might be worth a try.

didn't know that. now, what does that say about (some corners of) our industry? :)

i must admit, i was unaware that this is used so commonly. that changes things, of course. and i don't really know what to suggest as an alternative... review is ok. or, "a look back"? "lessons learned"? "experiences from building..."? or perhaps drop it altogether, "My Voice Controlled Smart Mirror" sounds sexy enough ;)

naming is hard.

anyway, just to be clear, this is irrelevant :) nice work!

i understand i'm nitpicking, but maybe someone should tell the author what "mortem" means? i was expecting something dead, a failure story. pick another worn out phrase ;)

> If you push a hash table which handles collisions by linear probing that hard, and any non-randomness appears, you can get long runs and are in trouble. I knew about Robin Hood hashing, but didn't know it was being used to justify 90% table density. Usually, above 50% full and it's time to double the size of the table.

wouldn't non-randomness be an issue for any hash table, regardless of how full it is? doubling it will not make the input more random, theoretically we could have the same slowness whether it's a smaller 90% full table, or a bigger one "just" 45% full - if N things hash to the same loc, we'll have to dig through O(N) spots till we find what we need.

i wrote a small hash set for my side project (https://github.com/jbakic/Shielded/blob/master/Shielded/Simp..., does not need to support removal so it's the dumbest linear probing hash table one could probably imagine), and there i set the limit at 75%, even though i don't use Robin Hood (perhaps i should?), because the lib has to iterate through the whole set at the end of a transaction, at least twice. i know this is not very relevant, a very special use case, but i'm giving it as an example of how a bigger load factor can actually be advantageous. the Shielded lib is overall slower if the load factor limit is set lower.

i hope someone more versed in the theory behind all this can add something to this, i'm curious if my thinking really makes sense...

if you'll forgive a bit of cynicism, it turns out, in hindsight, that the correct maxim should be: "information wants to be false" ;)

little meta - HN is not the best place to have these discussions. the way voting works here, everything is too conformist, too sugarcoated, and most importantly, downvotes are regularly handed out (at least in such emotional discussions as political discussions are wont to be) according to the political views of the high-karma elites, and more particularly according to their lack of moral self-control (i.e. many will not "abuse" downvotes like that, but that then just gives more power to those doing it).

is it OK to assume that, among the people with high enough karma to cast downvotes, the distribution of political views equals that of the general commenting population? or, better question - does that even matter? i don't know, is it even possible to achieve some kind of crowd-sourced moderation without exposing the system to the risk of gangs of idealists attacking dissenters with downvotes?

"reminds me of" != "is".

good read. and kudos for coming out and opening the subject.

i personally think this is not just a developer issue, but affects every person living in a society. the quality of the society we live in depends on all of us doing as much as we can to achieve it. unfortunately, the living today is too precarious, and too many people cannot afford to be too ethical.

the sad thing about our industry to me is that sometimes it seems we give up before putting up any fight. we know how hard it is to control complex systems, how impossible it is to create a perfect system. so a lot of us decide, like that fox in Aesop's fable, that it's actually wrong to even try to do anything. if she can't reach the grapes, then the grapes must be sour. this happens everywhere, but it strikes me in IT particularly if you look at a simple example - most IT people find it obvious, and live with it, that everything we do online is recorded and that it's not that hard to spy on anyone. most regular people don't fully grasp this, and get occasionally outraged. how many of us (i count myself in here) will then just wave their concerns away, and explain that they simply have no choice but to accept this future?

this is a very good point. these e-mail leaks are really just lowering this election even further into the mud. and nothing is really gained. it's not hard to see how shitty both candidates are. this reeks of spite and frustration, like a kind of revenge-porn motivated by the frustrating situation with these candidates. while the frustration is totally legitimate, this is just mudslinging.

> into the actual thoughts and motivations

why do you think you should have the right to this? it is quite extreme. anyone's "actual" thoughts are their own business. judge them by their actions. godknows, there's proof enough out there about how shitty the US government is.

interesting research. i wasn't really that surprised by what they say about suggestions - i always thought the problem with giving suggestions is not in suggestions per se, but rather in the way they are given. people often suggest solutions in a condescending way that sounds like they're saying "your problems are so easy, here's the solution". or, the phrase "why don't you just...". it's of course really easy to be objective about things that have nothing to do with you personally. but when someone really listens well, i think they will empathize more, respect the other person's feelings, and this will be felt in their suggestions.

this is all extremely speculative, of course! but i would say that anything that affects your thinking can pose an evolutionary advantage or disadvantage. (to also answer a peer comment here:) including when you are past your reproductive age, since human beings are social beings, and our evolution cannot be regarded purely individualistically. to give an extremely stupid, but i hope illustrative example, a society where the old people go extremely stupid and start killing people around them is going to have a hard time ;)

isn't that just saying the same thing, but in different words? :) better reproduction is the ultimate evolutionary advantage. edit - ok, not "the ultimate", but i guess you know what i mean.. ;)

edit again - i'm a little slow today.. you're right, it might just be an accidental side-effect, sure.