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jn6118

173 karma · joined November 24, 2020

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jn6118··on Trying to Make a Loop Auto-Vectorize
Interesting, but would make for a much stronger article with a proper discussion of performance, backed by measurements.

This would allow the reader to better weigh the balance of code damage against any gains in performance.

Unless I missed it, it just seemed to be hinted at, but not presented.

jn6118··on The emergence of print-on-demand Amazon paperback books
This article really resonates with me and I'm somewhat relieved to see someone else feels the same way.

I love physical books for general reading and will often buy both physical and ebook format for technical books to get the best of both worlds.

I now cannot stand print-on-demand books and, like the author, I can spot them very quickly. The quality is abysmal, and I might as well be printing them myself at that point.

I too used to default to Amazon, as the price was often about 30% cheaper. However, I've come to realise that you get what you pay for. In the UK, I just buy from Waterstones or local bookshops, as then I can trust that it has likely come from the publisher or at least can inspect in advance.

I am never buying a book from Amazon again.

jn6118··on The Fifth Kind of Optimisation
I was surprised there was no mention of OpenMP in the discussion of shared-memory parallel programming in C.

OpenMP is a lot easier to work with (and is more concise) than pthreads. It is introduced using pragma directives (so you can maintain serial and parallel versions in the same code). It includes support for many common parallel patterns (e.g. distribution of array based and task-based calculations) and makes the synchronisation easier (or automatic). It also gives you powerful control over work sharing to reduce load imbalance, etc.

It's available in most common C and C++ compilers and many other accelerated programming solutions wrap the API (e.g. you can use OpenMP within a Cython module, called from a Python script).

jn6118··on F1 Wing Trick That Helped Oscar Piastri Win the Azerbaijan GP
Another freak accident where the halo undoubtedly saved a life is Zhou's crash off the start at Silverstone 2022: https://youtu.be/B2XHq9d4OWI?feature=shared
jn6118··on Banana Equivalent Dose
I quite like the XKCD visualisation of this - eating one banana == 2 small blue squares.

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

jn6118··on Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?
Looks like a dot means "most recent post for user".

For those with only a single post, these users will have dots.

For those with multiple posts, only the latest ones retain the dot.