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judemelancon

175 karma · joined March 2, 2015

Full-Stack .NET Software Developer https://www.judemelancon.net/
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judemelancon··on DHS 'Predictive Policing' Unit Is Analyzing Americans' Financial Habits
Such a scheme absolutely explodes in complexity as it comes to each level of additional detail.

This requires a magically flexible definition of "market" at very best.

The smallest number of competitors that can split market share such that none exceed 15% is 7, and that cuts it absurdly close for an existential risk.

Do non-profit organizations count for this rule? If not, how would corporate structures that intentionally obfuscate these distinctions, e.g. IKEA, be handled?

If there's not some extremely tricky qualifiers, these markets seem likely to be a problem, just for starters: medicines†, operating systems, utilities to a specific house or even city, spy satellites, chemicals that are difficult or dangerous to synthesize, combat aircraft, crewed spacecraft, EUV lithography, armored fighting vehicles, cellular telecommunications services, samples of organisms restricted to high biosafety level labs, and literally any new product category. † Imagine a serious condition getting its first drug treatment approved and the company saying "Only every seventh patient is eligible." Also, no one could offer a specific specialized surgical procedure until seven or more independent organizations in the same geographic area have qualified staff and equipment, which would be especially hard for any novel techniques; if the problem it addressed was rare, they'd also effectively be forced into a cartel to allocate the patients evenly.

There's also separately and unavoidably the massive problem of transitioning from the current situation to one compliant with these restrictions.

Edit: Switch to using a dagger for the footnote to avoid a formatting issue.

judemelancon··on Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers
I don't think they have an interest in forgiveness. I'm not sure it's a concept in their worldview.
judemelancon··on Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
This is not true anywhere I've lived, and I'm curious where it is true.
judemelancon··on For Linux kernel vulnerabilities, there is no heads-up to distributions
Oh, I thought you meant "everyone" in a sense including actual human persons and the devices on their home network.
judemelancon··on For Linux kernel vulnerabilities, there is no heads-up to distributions
I think I must misunderstand. Are you saying that you upgrade and reboot every production system that you administer to apply each commit to the kernel (branch it's using) essentially immediately? That doesn't make sense to me for a few reasons, but I struggle to find a different reading that applies "upgrade and reboot on a moment's notice" to the "slipped into mainline linux" scenario. Kindly help me to do so.
judemelancon··on Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 zero-day flaws in open-source code
To preemptively clarify, I'm not saying anything about these particular researchers.

Having established that, are you saying that you can't even conceptualize a conflict of interest potentially clouding someone's judgement any more if the amount of money and the person's perceived status and skill level all get increased?

Disagreeing about the significance of the conflict of interest is one thing, but claiming not to understand how it could make sense is a drastically stronger claim.

judemelancon··on Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 zero-day flaws in open-source code
The first three authors, who are asterisked for "equal contribution", appear to work for Anthropic. That would imply an interest in making Anthropic's LLM products valuable.

What is the confusion here?

judemelancon··on Duty to Document (2023)
Documentation absolutely has a cost, but that last sentence is a substantial overgeneralization. Counterexamples include a search engine, a quilt, an impact driver, and a box of a basic LEGO bricks.
judemelancon··on Why American construction costs are so high (2019)
I'm glad you admit everyone deserves breaks; it seems to have been remarkably easy to convince you. I'm also glad to see your position on paying for the rest shift from outright opposition to unspecified contracts being excessive.

None of the rest of your reply is actually a response to what I said, though some of it is interesting. You also notably didn't respond to what I said about politicians.

Regarding Fortran programmers' contracts being honored, I would certainly hope any business would meet its contractual obligations (when they are moral and legal). Surely you aren't actually suggesting they shouldn't? Whether signing such a contract was a good idea or not, the very concept of a contract is founded on actually executing the terms of the agreement afterward.

I have never encountered a business that consistently swiftly dropped the underperforming parts of the team. I know that stack ranking firms supposedly exist, but they are far from typical. Even if your employment history is atypical, surely you've encountered less than efficient employees at clients, at vendors, and just out in the world in retail or restaurants; have you never happened to observe some of them staying in those positions at length? If you have seen private enterprise up close, it's hard to fathom the idea that it runs lean operations without waste.

Furthermore, many businesses have employees, sometimes many of them, who don't have the kind of clear work products that would make "the underperforming 25% of the team" potentially conceptually coherent. Plenty have employees with as little to do as a TBM oiler or an elevator operator. The market isn't just taking its time in pushing them to be more efficient, either. Actual markets and actual managers don't work like in an entry-level economics class.

judemelancon··on Why American construction costs are so high (2019)
Why exactly should construction workers clean up, change, and get briefed for free? How are those not work? Do you attend work meetings for free? Why don't construction workers deserve breaks? Do you ever take breaks at work? If so, why do you deserve to be paid for these things when construction workers don't? Be explicit.

The idea that US politicians never cross the public sector unions isn't compatible with the facts. The Taft-Hartley Act is law, and PATCO was destroyed.

judemelancon··on GitHub is now free for teams
Is the image, purportedly of a search of the codebase, in this post falsified? https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=26318#p554...
judemelancon··on The culture war at the heart of open source
#f4f4f4 on #ffffff is a contrast ratio of 1.1 via WCAG's formula. Svbtle should be ashamed.
judemelancon··on Evidence points to another leaker at the NSA
Governments aren't (supposed to be) private entities.
judemelancon··on Long Names are Long
Why would I ever want to find every reference to a loop or lambda variable with a given name in a file? Such variables repeat frequently with distinct meanings, and each has a narrow scope.

In any case, I wouldn't use an IDE that was so glitchy unless I was forced by necessity; I certainly wouldn't adopt a coping mechanism for it into other languages. Also, for a typical compiled language, deleting the declaration gives you all usages as long as you can (attempt to) build.

Are there any other reasons? Edit: Is this advice perhaps intended to be specific to a particular context?

judemelancon··on Long Names are Long
How is it better? (This is a literal, non-rhetorical question, not a joke about even discussing it.)
judemelancon··on Namecheap live chat social engineering leads to loss of 2 VPS
One of the most frustrating things for support or customer service personnel to do is respond to something other than what was said.
judemelancon··on Wikipedia Turns 15
The internet's supply of masters is much larger and more accessible. Is there a reason to think the video or other sources he found are from someone inferior in expertise to a local? Does that reason apply even for people who live outside major urban centers?

Also, that line of thinking is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remember the most likely outcome before was recognizing the cost of acquiring the knowledge exceeded the benefit of having it; there would have been no learning at all.

judemelancon··on What are a hospital's costs?
Do you have a source for US outcomes being better? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/06... http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/the-state-of-us-...
judemelancon··on ‘Pharmacy of the developing world’ under attack from the US, EU, Japan
I am aware of no such regulation in the USA. Are you?
judemelancon··on Yes I Saw Your Text, but Don’t Expect Me to Respond Instantly
I always thought the asynchronicity was the main positive of SMS.
judemelancon··on Telegram bot that will get answers from real doctors
The licensing boards are going to burn you to the ground. Even if you're based somewhere out of reach, they'll block payment processing or freeze your accounts.

Your doctor directory makes no reference at all to where they are licensed to practice medicine more specifically than a country. There's no way you're going to get a pass on this.

judemelancon··on Hackers Remotely Attack a Jeep on the Highway
Ethics are part of competence in my opinion.

Even if you disagree, preventing corporate liability is a component of competence in the law's opinion. That is, if the company is found liable, that's saying the employees responsible did something wrong, even if it's not holding them individually accountable.

judemelancon··on Restartable sequences
This is a brilliant idea and an astonishingly bad function signature.
judemelancon··on OpenSSL Security Advisory
I have trouble understanding what they're meant to signify, yes. I am a regular human with finite intellect; I admit it.

To actually comprehend this function requires storing those 14 names in short-term memory, reading through the over 300 lines of remaining code, filling in bits of the meaning of those names as they become clear, and only then reading the code again with that mental map. That's the case where none of the 14 have slipped my mind by the time I get back around. That just seems like an awful lot of overhead to net something that could be as easy as reading names if they were better chosen.

Just as a demonstration, why don't you time how long it takes you to figure out what j actually is and then report back?

judemelancon··on OpenSSL Security Advisory
I am hardly astonished that a 319-line function that opens by declaring x, xtmp, xtmp2, chain_ss, bad_chain, param, depth, i, ok, num, j, retry, cb, and sktmp variables had a bug.

Before someone provides the standard "submit a patch" retort, I'll note that the variable naming is in full compliance with https://www.openssl.org/about/codingstyle.txt even if the function length isn't. A quick sample of other files suggests the function length matches actual practice elsewhere, too.

judemelancon··on Mapping the U.S. By Property Value Instead of Land Area
One of the references http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/04/daily-c... has both. There are some differences.
judemelancon··on Will your self-driving car be programmed to kill you?
I honestly think that apparent flip-flop comes down entirely to how terribly ineffective the large human sounds at stopping the train. Telling people to pretend it works is not an effective measure. People can't cancel their biases just from being told to do so, and a bias against such an awful plan is quite reasonable.
judemelancon··on Apple's new not-quite-favicon syntax causing problems in other browsers
Everyone who read this has now given more thought to this issue than Safari's developers seem to have.
judemelancon··on Flocking for Road Traffic Efficiency Improvement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gaps_in_Interstate_High...

In any case, typical interstate highways certainly have numerous interchanges, which are the other kind of junction.

judemelancon··on Computer scientists prove that a 40-year-old algorithm is optimal
Yes, the fact it's >O(n^k) for all k in [1,2) is why it's not strongly. It's still less than O(n^2).
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