im-a-baby

People who hate on projects are those that have never attempted to create something on their own. It's kind of like how the easiest person to sell something to is a salesman. Most people's default reaction to anything is scepticism. People who have tried to create something on their own, and undoubtedly encountered other's scepticism, can skip the apprehensive stage and get to the meat of a project with an open mind.

Europeans use 220V for everything.

Yea, the issue is that nil's in Go are typed. So `err == nil` is checking err against error's nil value, but the value stored in err is *MyError's nil value.

    package main
    
    import "fmt"
    
    type MyError struct{}
    
    func (m *MyError) Error() string {
        return ""
    }
    
    func main() {
        var err error = nil
        var myErr *MyError = nil

        fmt.Println(err == myErr) // this is false
    }

I do eat grape seeds. Apples, the core is too tough. With watermelon, I greatly prefer seedless. Like it’s not even close in terms of taste or texture. I probably eat about 2 whole watermelon a week in the summer time. It’s always a sad day if I accidentally buy a melon with seeds.

Why do countries exist? To protect the interests of the citizens. Water is an important issue

No not using pointers would not solve the issue. The issue is that the specific error implementation type is part of the method signature. If you returned type MyError instead of *MyError, then it would be impossible to return nil from the method because only pointers can be nil.

Yes you could do that, but then you’d lose type info on the error.

Your distinction between user and programmer doesn’t make sense to me. I typed the regex and I typed the config file. Why is a regex syntax error different than a YAML syntax error? Both are irrecoverable errors for my programs.

Generally, returning a typed error in the function signature in Go is very annoying and dangerous. An example why:

    import "fmt"
    
    type MyError struct{}
    
    func (m *MyError) Error() string {
     return ""
    }

    func myFunc() *MyError {
     return nil
    }
    
    func main() {
     var err error
     err = myFunc()
     if err == nil {
      fmt.Println("No Error")
     } else {
      fmt.Println("Error") // This prints
     }
    }

That's very different than your initial statement of: "Many schools of thought believe that it is impossible to prove the absence of something.". Many (all?) schools of thought believe in the law of excluded middle, which makes it possible to prove the absence of many things.

It's pretty trivial to construct negatives that can be proven. E.g. take a solid colored object and prove it's not a specific color. You can prove the negative statement by proving a positive statement about the true color of the object, e.g. by direct observation, measuring the wavelength of emitted light, etc.

Similarly, you could prove a speaker doesn't eavesdrop by proving it performs a finite set of operations, none of which are eavesdropping.

I'm confused. As the article states, the speakers do wake spuriously and record conversations. So the speakers do eavesdrop, even if it's unintentional. The article goes on to say that, even those the speakers do eavesdrop, they don't use the conversation for ad targeting. I find that hard to believe. The speaker doesn't know it's listening erroneously. If I say "Alexa, order sponges," it's totally within the realm of possibility that Amazon shows me advertisements for Dawn dish soap, and I posit this is true for any prompt I give the speaker. This article doesn't add up.

I think it's fine to add syntactic sugar for panic. The standard library already has similar functionality, like regexp.MustCompile. And personally, I've implemented a Must function in many services. E.g. you try to parse a config file during service startup and parsing fails. There is no recourse from such an error. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has implemented such functionality, so why not add it to the language?

Regarding the guard keyword, the author's proposal doesn't make sense. The guard call comes after the function call that produces the error, so it's not clear what is being guarded. I guess it's the error being wrapped in the guard message, but explaining that clearly in plain English is quite hard. I agree that context is important however. But maybe the Go team is finally ready to admit that stack traces are more useful than error messages. I'd be fine to know that, for example, an error occurred opening a file and having the language provide a full stack trace of where the error happened. I can do without the custom crafted error messages.

I believe the point is that quantum computers allow you to manipulate a linear combination of bits, whereas simulating the weather would require non-linear combinations. It's unclear how a QC would help simulate something like that better than a classical computer.

Most of the “paper” products that replaced plastic for stuff like straws and take out containers are coated with PFAS.

What do interest rates offered by the banks have to do with liquidity in the bond market?

The Fed speculates that the reason for the lack of liquidity is due to uncertainty about the economic outlook and uncertainty about the interest rates. The evidence they point to is that liquidity (defined by the bid/ask spread and the amount of available bonds at the best price) is lower for short-term bonds compared to long-term bonds. Short-term bonds are more affected by interest rate changes, so market participants are much more cautious about transacting in a large number of bonds at once. Rather, they split large purchases into many small purchases to ensure they're not losing money due to sudden changes in the price.

Paper might be a good replacement for dry things that are guaranteed to stay dry, but a poor replacement for everything else.

The web was more decentralized prior to the rise of Google and Amazon. But web3 specifically refers to a future version of the internet, not the past.

The full report has a lot of interesting information in it: https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/financial-...

Scroll to any point in the document and you will see an interesting facet of the economy.

Exactly. Why would you want a single app that has other apps? You could easily go download a standalone app from the app store that delivers a superior experience. There would need to be some competitive advantage or economy of scale of the single app. But what that advantage is remains to be seen.

Just as an example: both Facebook and Snapchat (and I'm sure others) have tried adding games to their platform. Both efforts have failed because you can get a better gaming experience by playing a standalone game. If you want to play with a friend, you can message them and say "hey, let's play X." There is limited upside to playing in Facebook or Snapchat, and a lot of downsides (limited catalog, performance restrictions, etc.)

One exception to this is any feature that requires exposure to an audience. Social media is very good at exposing people to content. Something like Facebook marketplace can be successful because sellers want their listings to be seen by people and buyers want to go to places that have the most sellers.

The timestamp of each vote in the machine could be useful during the audit. Imagine you found a discrepancy, you'd then want to determine when the discrepancy started.

How do VPN ad blockers work? Like do you need to add a trusted CA to your device and the VPN MITMs all of your traffic? I’m not sure I’d have that level of trust in my VPN provider…

You could print a receipt that contains the voter's selection. The voter would then verify the selection and deposit the receipt into a receptacle. The voting machine results could then by audited by comparing the receipts to the voting machine's history.

A few thoughts:

1) Everyone agrees that spam should be "censored" because (nearly) everyone agrees on what spam is. I'm sure (nearly) everyone would also like to censor "fake news", but not everyone agrees on the definition of fake news, which is why the topic is more contentious than spam.

2) Having a "1A mode", where you view an unmoderated feed, would be interesting, if only to shut up people who claim that social media companies are supposed to be an idealistic bastion of "free speech." I'm sure most would realize the utility is diminished without some form of moderation.

Look, I agree that theoretically it’s possible to lower inflation while keeping unemployment low. But the Fed is looking for a causal effect. They want higher unemployment because that will balance the labor supply and reduce wage growth. That’s what the Fed has said. The fact that they’re looking for a causal effect in raising unemployment means the engine analogy is not valid. There is no causal relationship between engine temperature and speed.

I think you’re falling for the no true Scotsman fallacy. We started this conversation talking about whether or not the Fed’s goal is higher unemployment. I presented an argument, in the Fed’s own words, that they plan on lowering inflation by weakening the labor pool. And your response is “that’s not really a goal.” I disagree and, and I don’t see a productive way forward for this conversation. At the very least, you should accept that this is a valid interpretation of the Fed’s own words, and not just some conspiracy theory being peddled.

Using analogies is always dangerous because they're never going to be a perfect fit. But the difference between your engine analogy and the federal reserve's actions is that anemic economic growth and high unemployment is not a side effect. In your engine analogy, adding more gas and air into the engine increases the amount combustion. It's the combustion that increases speed, so in a sense increase combustion is a goal. Released heat is just a by product of the reaction. In the economy, the amount of economic activity and the amount of available labor are what drive prices, so these things are the combustion in the piston, not a byproduct.

I think we're arguing over the definition of goal and side-effect.

Let's say I have a goal of running a marathon, so I decide to start jogging every day. Is my daily jogging a side-effect of my goal to run a marathon? I wouldn't say so. Rather, jogging every day is an explicit course I've set out on with the hopes of achieving my main goal. Daily jogging is a sub-goal of the main goal, if you will. This logic can be applied to the Fed. The main goal is to lower inflation, and the chosen course of action (i.e. the sub goals) are to lower economic growth and to increase unemployment.

A side-effect would be something akin to knee pain. I can't jog without hurting my knees, but having pain in my knees isn't something I explicitly set out to do.

A side-effect of Fed policy would be something like the gilt crises in the UK. Higher US rates increase yields on UK bonds indirectly. But that isn't something the Fed is actively setting out to do.

This seems unnecessarily pedantic. Powell has said he believes the tight labor market is driving inflation. It's a totally fair characterization to say "Powell believes the labor market is too tight" given his statements. In this case, "too tight" means "tight to the point of causing inflation"

No, that's not what Powell is saying. Read this quote again:

> So I will answer—I will answer your question directly, but I want to start here today by saying that my main message has not changed at all since Jackson Hole. The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2 percent, and we will keep at it until the job is done. So the way we’re thinking about this is, the overarching focus of the Committee is getting inflation back down to 2 percent. To accomplish that, we think we’ll need to do two things, in particular: to achieve a period of growth below trend; and also some softening in labor market conditions to foster a better balance between demand and supply in the labor market.

Powell says (paraphrasing slightly): "In order to get inflation under 2%, we need to do two things. 1. achieve a period of low growth, and 2. soften the labor market." Low growth and higher unemployment aren't simply side-effects of Powell's policy. These two things are explicitly stated goals.

This quote says it:

> The labor market continues to be out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. The labor force participation rate showed a welcome uptick in August but is little changed since the beginning of the year. FOMC participants expect supply and demand conditions in the labor market to come into better balance over time, easing the upward pressure on wages and prices. The median projection in the SEP for the unemployment rate rises to 4.4 percent at the end of next year, ½ percentage point higher than in the June projections

He's expecting the act of raising interest rates to increase unemployment to 4.4%. He's doing this to bring balance to supply and demand for labor, to ease upward pressure on prices.

He is also asked directly when he will know when to stop:

> So I will answer—I will answer your question directly, but I want to start here today by saying that my main message has not changed at all since Jackson Hole. The FOMC is strongly resolved to bring inflation down to 2 percent, and we will keep at it until the job is done. So the way we’re thinking about this is, the overarching focus of the Committee is getting inflation back down to 2 percent. To accomplish that, we think we’ll need to do two things, in particular: to achieve a period of growth below trend; and also some softening in labor market conditions to foster a better balance between demand and supply in the labor market.

He directly says he's waiting to see softening of the labor market before stopping the rate hikes.