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gakada

269 karma · joined June 7, 2016

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gakada··on Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker
It's a Hindu model of marriage, a Chinese model of marriage, …

Hell, even the Ancient Greeks didn't practice gay marriage (as far as I know!)

gakada··on Trial by Jury, a Hallowed American Right, Is Vanishing
Brevik committed unthinkable acts in an attempt to change Norwegian society. Applying anything other than the established law to him, let alone ending the European moratorium on capital punishment, would gift him success.
gakada··on Your battery status may be used to track you online
I agree. The correct way to discriminate between low- and high-resource requiring functionality is "on battery" vs "plugged in". The specific battery level is completely useless.
gakada··on Britain’s scientists are freaking out over Brexit
What's your definition of racism? Under the Equalities Act 2010 'Race includes "colour", "nationality" and "ethnic or national origins"'[1]. I feel like this will only lead to a boring semantic discussion, though.

[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/9

gakada··on Britain’s scientists are freaking out over Brexit
> I know from the way they make up stories about why people voted out and then insult them - its quite unpleasant

You dismiss the possibility that they are right. Many people do support Brexit for wholly racist reasons (e.g. my father who wants to 'get the poles out').

gakada··on Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
Isn't what you're describing called biodiesel? Palm oil, rapeseed oil, etc.

The problem is that however much humans need electrical energy, they need food a hell of a lot more. Electrical energy has to come from the land we're not feeding ourselves from, i.e. deserts, grasslands, rooftops.

gakada··on China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’
It seems that marriages in capitalist societies are inherently unstable. If rights are equal, then women are incentivised to divorce to "cash in" the value of their husband. If the rights are unequal, then men are incentivised to divorce to "trade up" to a more attractive wife.

It's only agrarian societies that manage to make husband and wife dependent enough on each other that divorce is a bad option for everybody.

gakada··on China’s Cheating Husbands Fuel an Industry of ‘Mistress Dispellers’
It's amusing that these statistics are on the CDC website.
gakada··on The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
> fillet. Origin: Middle English (denoting a band worn round the head): from Old French filet ‘thread’, based on Latin filum ‘thread’.

If this is correct then it's not a French word, it's an English word that was long ago inspired by a different French word. So the US pronunciation is a hypercorrection.

I mean, even Americans don't pronounce gullet as "gullay".

gakada··on Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
Today must be a golden age for writers. Many local libraries are struggling. With the historical source of free books in peril, writers can once again prosper!

Most fiction writers don't face a piracy problem, they face a marketing problem (nobody knows their book exists) and an economic problem (there is an abundance of supply of novels).

Every new novel has to compete not just with novels released that year, but with all novels still in print. In that way it is unlike most other markets. If you make soap, you only have to compete with the soap manufacturers of today.

gakada··on Book Piracy as Peer Preservation
That would be a breach of the contract between designer and the company. If you quote someone a rate, they agree, you do the work, but they don't pay you, then you can sue them regardless of whether a copyrightable work was created.

Copyright infringement without breach of contract is more like people stealing the Transmit logo https://panic.com/extras/ripoff/

gakada··on Dutch men confirmed as world's tallest
It's all relative. As the paper shows, 164cm is average male height in some countries. The average person is only a plane ride away from being either a short or tall person. Unless they are Dutch.

Women certainly don't want to date men who are shorter than they are. So it is a definite inconvenience to be shorter than the average woman in your own country.

gakada··on UK surveillance bill includes powers to limit end-to-end encryption
In what way are EU states 'allowing this stream of immigrants'? The refugees are entering through illegal crossings. By definition, their entry is not allowed, but happens regardless.
gakada··on UK surveillance bill includes powers to limit end-to-end encryption
Policy in the UK is dictated by the newspapers. If it makes the Sun and the Mail happy, then it's a good policy. No doubt this fits the bill.
gakada··on Why we're Post-Fact
The other one was Turkey joining the EU. They claimed that Turkey was imminently going to join and the only way to prevent Turks coming to Britain was to vote to leave.

In fact, UK has a veto, and Turkey won't be able to join until it gives back half of Cyprus (which is never).

gakada··on LLVM Programmer’s Manual
I'm sorry, I can't capture such a complicated issue with a pithy example. You will have to settle for my illustrative one.

The most general definition of the restriction is that C++ code cannot throw exceptions through exception unsafe code. How do you know if your C++ function was called from exception unsafe code? You can't!

So it's only ever safe to throw an exception when you are expecting it to be caught immediately i.e. you can use exceptions as glorified error codes, but not much else.

In Django I can throw a Http404 exception from deep inside a view and the server will come up with a 404 response. I can assert and the client will get a 500 error but the server won't go down. This is the real power of exceptions, and God help anybody who tries to do it in C++.

gakada··on LLVM Programmer’s Manual
Exceptions in C++ are rotten.

    void read_file_by_lines(const char* path, void (*callback)(const char* line)) {
        FILE* file = fopen(path, "r");
        
        size_t length = 0;
        char* line = NULL;
        
        while (-1 != getline(&line, &length, file)) {
            callback(line);
        }
        
        free(line);
        fclose(file);
    }
This C function should be compatible with C++. If exceptions are off, it is. If exceptions are on then it's dangerous because if an exception is thrown through callback, then the file handle and line buffer will leak.

C++ exceptions are predicated on the assumption that all resources are managed using RAII. In the real world, this isn't true, especially considering that C doesn't even have RAII.

Python programmers (including me) love their exceptions, because Python is a dynamic language, and exposes system resources as reference counted objects.

gakada··on Twitter now lets anyone request a verified account
Twitter, as a platform, is not geared towards discussions. It's impossible to have any sort of debate in 140 characters, it forces all arguments to be reductive.

So I think they did you a favour.

gakada··on Coup attempt underway in Turkey
Headscarves not tolerated either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_c...
gakada··on I tried to fly to London on a fake passport [video]
In the documentary they said that ~70% of Syrians who made it to the UK were granted asylum. So evidently the UK is doing its own background checks.
gakada··on UK PM candidate Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated, like movies
Leadsom is the most dangerous politician I've ever seen.

There's an infamous video with her and Krugman. Whatever you might think of Krugman, you can least be sure that he understands basic economic theory.

Yet she talks to him in a patronising tone, clearly 100% sincere in the belief that she understands economics, and he does not. All she has to do is explain it to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJaayhQtBZU

gakada··on Apple Open-Sources its Compression Algorithm LZFSE
It's more DRY.
gakada··on Over one million people sign UK petition for second EU referendum
That's the last thing they will do because then it would encourage every EU country to hold a referendum and do the same thing, which would kill the EU easily.

[What I see as more likely is that the UK invokes Article 50, goes through a financial crisis, and then the EU offer to cancel our Article 50 invocation and let us stay in the EU if we join the Euro and Schengen.]

gakada··on Doom, Gloom and Unease: London's Tech Scene Reacts to Brexit
But the prediction was that the status quo would continue.
gakada··on UK votes to leave EU
> Without considering the result of the referendum, do you know of any other country that would allow visiting citizens from another country to vote on something so serious?

Yes, UK European Union Referendum, 2016. Resident Irish and Commonwealth citizens were allowed to vote.

Scotland Independence Referendum 2014. Resident EU citizens also were allowed to vote.

gakada··on UK votes to leave EU
Single market. Despite some bigots who don't want Polish people existing near them, having free movement of people, goods, capital and all the rest of it is really good for the participant economies.

Can you imagine if US citizens had to get a visa to move from New York to California?

gakada··on China issues demolition order on world’s largest religious town in Tibet
The standard you are applying is pacifism: do not use violence even if violence is being used on you.
gakada··on Home Depot Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Visa, MasterCard
The London underground ticket barriers support both Apple Pay and contactless cards. Using Apple Pay is a guaranteed way to enrage everybody standing behind you in the queue. It's not fast enough. The fingerprint reader isn't perfectly reliable. And I am terrified of dropping my phone and it being trampled.
gakada··on Apple File System
Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were best buddies. The dream died the year after.
gakada··on Wireless charging startup uBeam accused of being the next Theranos
uBeam isn't like Theranos because uBeam isn't defrauding anybody. They have honestly described how the product works. The product just happens to be a horrifying deafness ray. Some VCs will fund that.
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