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jamincan

979 karma · joined May 6, 2021

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jamincan··on The Nobel Prize and the Laureate Are Inseparable
You mean like the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to the person who developed lobotomy surgery?
jamincan··on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Says People Should Be Prepared to Prove US Citizenship
It's not socialism, it's a kleptocracy. There's a pretty big difference.
jamincan··on C Is Best (2025)
Human behaviour can be a confounding thing. There was some debate a while ago [1] about whether bike helmet use may actually lead more head injuries due to factors like drivers passing closer to helmeted riders vs. unhelmeted ones or riders riding more recklessly, among a tonne of other factors. I still prefer to wear a helmet, but its an interesting example of how difficult it can be to engineer human behaviour.

Another good example of this is how civil engineers adding safety factors into design of roads - lane widths, straighter curves, and so on - leading drivers to speed more and decreasing road safety overall.

1. https://bigthink.com/articles/the-bike-helmet-paradox/

jamincan··on Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
Did the US allow all the other nuclear countries to develop nuclear weapons? There are quite a few states that could easily and quickly develop their own nuclear deterrent and the US is in a much worse position now to deter them from that.
jamincan··on Oliver Sacks put himself into his case studies – what was the cost?
To me, it's when narrative has priority over accuracy. There are a number of popular edutainment figures who fit this mold, but Gladwell is probably the most prominent example.
jamincan··on Canada's Carney called out for 'utilizing' British spelling
Apparently it was acceptable to use s or z in words like catalyse or analyze in British English until Microsoft Word came out with a British English spellchecker that picked the s spelling as its standard. Whether this is just myth or fact seems to be a point of controversy.
jamincan··on The AI Backlash Is Here: Why Public Patience with Tech Giants Is Running Out
It's not just that they are adding AI to every single product, it's being pushed on customers in incredibly intrusive and irritating ways that makes it seem as though they're desperate for their AI investments to pan out. If your AI productivity enhancement stuff is so amazing, shouldn't you be turning away customers at the door due to demand instead of brow beating me into finally signing up for it in submission?
jamincan··on Bring bathroom doors back to hotels
The master bath in my parents' old place had a massive bathroom and gigantic shower that seems to be all the rage now in more "luxurious" bathroom designs - often with a bathtub in the shower as well. I had to use their shower once while I was there, and it was terrible - it was cold and drafty in the shower, even with the shower on its highest setting. Luxury shouldn't be uncomfortable.
jamincan··on Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 post mortem
I have definitely noticed this when I've tried doing Advent of Code in Rust - by the time my code compiles it typically send out the right answer. It doesn't help me once I don't know whatever algorithm I need to reach for in order to solve it before the heat death of the universe, but it is a somewhat magical feeling when it lasts.
jamincan··on Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 post mortem
As a hypothetical example, when making a regex, I call `Regex::new(r"/d+")` which returns a result because my regex could be malformed and it could miscompile. It is entirely reasonable to unwrap this, though, as I will find out pretty quickly that it works or fails once I test the program.
jamincan··on Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders
People form parasocial relationships with AI already with content restrictions in place. It seems to me that that is a separate issue entirely.
jamincan··on Why don't people return their shopping carts?
I avoid the automated checkouts in part because it takes jobs away from robots. Am I a bad person for creating jobs for humans?

I confess I am a hypocrite though, as I'm one of those job-stealing people that return the cart to the corral.

jamincan··on Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
All of the memory safety stuff is independent of the trait system, to the best of my knowledge, but the data race protection is implemented through the Send and Sync traits. I'm unsure if there is an obvious alternative approach to this same feature, but I think it may be one innovation that is still novel to Rust and would not have existed in earlier decades.
jamincan··on The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia
I would contend that 5 bills are more bulky than 5 coins. The only upside of dealing with US bills when travelling in the US is that you feel like a millionaire when you pull out the massive wad of bills from your pocket.
jamincan··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
I wonder if it's simply the fact that there really isn't anything driving them to get their kids vaccinated rather than a particular religious conviction. In Ontario, the old-order Mennonite and Amish groups have separate schooling for their kids and aren't integrated into the medical system here (not even being a part of our public health insurance system). Your family doctor and public health agency (through the schools) are the avenues the vast majority have to vaccination and so being apart from that, the old-order families would need to make a special effort to get vaccinated above and beyond what most people need to do.
jamincan··on A Note on Fil-C
Graydon's post was about as full-throated an endorsement of Fil-C as you can get, including noting where it's innovations could be used to improve Rust safety. The fact that you see undertones of some sort of deepset Rust agenda to unseat C and C++ is, I think, more a reflection on just how deep down the rabbit hole some Rust critics have gone, seeing so-called Rust zealots hiding in every shadow of the internet.
jamincan··on A Note on Fil-C
Likely just that the fastest implementations in the benchmarks game are using those features and so aren't really a good reflection of the language as it is normally used. This is a problem for any language on the list, really; the fastest implementations are probably not going to reflect idiomatic coding practices.
jamincan··on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking
For what it's worth, when I ask ChatGPT 5, it gets the correct answer every time. The response varies, but the answer is always three.
jamincan··on Futurelock: A subtle risk in async Rust
Rust can't assume you're running on a real OS though.
jamincan··on Hard Rust requirements from May onward
Who is insulting others and where?
jamincan··on What if tariffs?
It was a common argument that ultimately all of the constitutional protections, balance of powers and all that were protected by the Second Amendment - that in the face of losing their liberty, Americans would rise up against an authoritarian government.

Within this administration, a lot of people feel that there has been an assault on constitutional protections, but the people who trumpeted the Second Amendment as being fundamental to protecting American liberty and democracy have largely been silent in the face of it.

jamincan··on What if tariffs?
What options do Canadians have? Deal with the wildly capricious economic policies of the US president, or go seeking other, more stable opportunities elsewhere? Almost all countertariffs we have in place are targeted as opposed to the sweeping tariffs Trump is implementing.
jamincan··on US tariff negotiations with Canada terminated over advertisement
Stuff that casts the current US administration in a less than favourable light tends to get flagged pretty quickly on here. It doesn't seem quite as bad as a earlier in the year, so I wonder if they've taken measures to counteract it. You can visit '/active' instead to make all posts, including flagged ones, visible.
jamincan··on Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend
I do recall a story a number of years ago where one of the automatic updates changed the UI and hid the defrost behind a menu (or something along those lines). I don't know that anyone died as a consequence, but it was criticised as being quite reckless as it is a feature that when you need it, you need it right away.
jamincan··on Nobel Peace Prize 2025: María Corina Machado
It really would be better as a posthumous award.
jamincan··on Six surgeons general: It's our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr
People did speak up before the election and they were dismissed as overreacting.
jamincan··on Six surgeons general: It's our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr
If you were to write a film one year ago based on the current events in the US, I don't think people would accept the premise either. I feel I was pretty pessimistic compared to most and I have been shocked at how quickly things have changed.
jamincan··on Zig feels more practical than Rust for real-world CLI tools
To the extent that one of the most common things rust users wish for is Rust, but without the borrow checker.
jamincan··on Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes
My Beppe's (Frisian grandmother) boterkoek (butter cake) was a well-loved staple at church and school bake sales. She closely guarded her recipe, but shared it with my eldest sister who, after she died, told me that she actually used margarine instead of butter in her recipe. Everyone, not even just her family, loved her boterkoek, and yet it didn't even have butter in it.
jamincan··on Tesla said it didn't have key data in a fatal crash, then a hacker found it
I drive a VW with lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking. It won't change lanes for me, but aside from the requirements that I have my hands on the wheel, could otherwise drive itself on the highway.

I commute mainly on the highway about 45-1hr each way every day and it makes a big difference for driver fatigue. I was honestly a bit surprised. Even though, I'm steering, it requires less effort. I don't have my foot on the gas and I'm not having to adjust my speed constantly.

Critically, though, I do have to pay attention to my surroundings. It's not taking so much out of my driving that I can't stay engaged to what's happening around me.

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