morgancmartin

But are any of those ways both at the assembly level (speed) and decoupled from the runtime (space)?

My takeaway from WASI is that it would allow for a single universal runtime with near-native execution. The near-native aspect being what other universal runtimes like the JVM and CLR lack due to their bundling of a GC and other non-essential features.

This is how I justify becoming so absorbed with my own side projects. Maybe one day it will prove to be a net positive!

Congrats on the exit. How long did it take you working on the side until you were able to make it your full time gig?

I really don't understand why more people in this generation don't run their own strip mining operations for processor fabrication anymore. It's incredibly helpful in both understanding just how many man hours go into a single google search as well as teaching one how to get the most performance out of every last electron.

To play devil's advocate, I have worked shitty jobs in the fast food industry. Two and a half years at McDonald's and then another two and a half at Longhorn Steakhouse. I never witnessed a single incident of physical harassment against any of the girls I worked with, not even once.

There was one guy that pushed the line a little too far sometimes but the girls weren't afraid of or offended by him so much as they took pity on him. He was a very depressed individual.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, only that anecdotal evidence is fundamentally incomplete. It is entirely too small of a sample to be statistically significant.

Yes, but in person insults are less likely to happen because of the _implication_ of violence.

Law Enforcement Officer

I have encountered this before and am curious about the alternative take. My understanding of it is that they agree with the popular narrative to the extent that the climate is changing but that they disagree about how conclusive the evidence is that it is caused by humanity, is that correct?

Can anyone point me to hard, unbiased (in your opinion, of course) data that supports the assertion that climate change is caused by humans or otherwise depicts an accurate representation of our current understanding on the subject?

Is it possible that climate change is due to natural and not human forces?

We've mistakenly hired a few of these sort at our company but they usually don't make it more than a few weeks at most. They don't deserve positions as software developers in my opinion. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Haha, thanks for the laugh.

Considering the downvotes I got, I suppose I was out of line suggesting a wager, but I've yet to see convincing evidence for why blockchain tech can't work. Sure it's overhyped way beyond what it deserves and it hasn't found its "killer app" or niche yet, but that doesn't mean it won't.

Nano's my favorite coin. It's fee-less, near-instant, and secure. Its largest flaw (and one all coins share at this point) is its tendency to fluctuate in value. But this problem is soon to be overcome by stable coins. Once that's done, its only remaining disadvantage will be lack of adoption. And if the product's right, I don't see any reason why a superior product won't gain market share given enough time. And it's not like crypto is under some investor enforced deadline to reach a certain market share, it's got all the time in the world.

Anyone care to point out any flaws in my thinking?

Would you be willing to make a friendly wager on whether it returns bigger than ever? My ten dollars says it will within, say, two years. What do you say?

I would say the trick is making the problem statement coherent. Sure, coming up with a firearm that can't kill innocent people is impossible because the innocence of someone is subjective. So instead, you can choose to approximate a solution and then iterate until you have a solution that is technically imperfect but so close to your initial goal that the difference is negligible.

For instance, in your firearm example, we can't determine who is innocent and who isn't. But we can use embed a facial recognition device into the firearm that then cross references whoever the firearm is pointed at against a database of known non-innocents.

And then exclude any targets obviously under 18.

And then make the model probabilistic and add greater weight to targets that appear to be carrying weapons of their own or that are acting in an obviously dangerous manner.

You get the point. After enough time, you would have a firearm that is (arguably) better off than the one you started off with and so closely approximates the goal of your initial problem description that you don't care to make a distinction.

I could be wrong, but I imagine this is how AGI safety researchers think about their work to some degree.

Thanks!

Dystopian hyperbole aside, your point about law complexity is a good one. Our current system is arguably already too complex. Anyone attempting to build a home can attest to that. But at the very least we are able to move through our day to day lives without worrying too much about accidentally breaking the law because it tends to reflect common sense.

But as you say, new tech would highlight all of the inconsistencies, new laws would be put in place to fill in the cracks and so on until it all becomes a massive web so complex that grey areas become too hazardous to risk.

I can imagine how that might even inadvertently stifle innovation. Considering that new ideas are found on the cutting edge (see Uber, Airbnb, crypto assets) and that the cutting edge is inherently a grey area, small business might become so wary of it that they give up innovating altogether.

Human progress would be left to the whims of only the largest companies with the means to take on the risk. Ironically, progress would prove to be the killer of progress.

May we all live in interesting times, eh? Perhaps this will be one of the few times in history where a sluggish, unresponsive government proves to be an advantage, haha

I immediately asked myself the same question and I think it could happen like so:

The new tools available to law professionals will decrease the barrier of entry to the ecosystem.

The low level workers displaced by these new AI companions will decide that since they can't beat them, they'll join them.

A new "discount" class of lawyer will begin to emerge characterized by lower quality of work but also lower fees. Many of those low level workers will move to this sector and may even make more than they would in the current system.

These increased wages are eventually tempered back down close to their modern day equivalent again due to the decreased barrier of entry allowing other segments of the population to pursue Law as a viable career opportunity.

Law services, albeit on average lower quality ones, will become available to a greater portion of the population, particularly those with a relatively low income.

"Law Bootcamps" will shock the world just as their code predecessors did, but again keeping in fashion with the original ventures, they will be here to stay contrary to the Old Guard's cries of incompetence.

We will see a massive uptick in the number of lawsuits submitted. Looking at someone the wrong way will become an intolerable risk and everyone will choose to live out the rest of their lives inside so as to avoid having their money taken by the now rampant sue-happy racketeers terrorizing the outside word.

And thus The Great Potato Couch Famine of 2022 begins. An estimated 3,000,000 become so agoraphobic that they choose starvation rather than face the sue-apocalypse ravaging outside their doors.

Amazon steps in with food delivery drones and cybernetic surrogates programmed to follow every letter of The Law. People are able to avoid the scourge of the Famine and exert their influence on spaces outside once again all from the safety and comfort of their own homes.

Amazon's stock price soars to record shattering heights which they in turn pump into newer and greater AI technologies. On July 23rd of 2029, Alexa finally wakes up...

_Great Potato Couch Famine fanfic and merchandise coming soon_

Wow, given the context, I just immediately assumed it was coined because of the story OP detailed. An incredible coincidence!

I'm curious why you refer to it as a trap. I personally use spacemacs and am very happy with it and I also use org mode casually, though do not consider myself an expert by any means. I do think I've experienced a similar "quantum leap" in productivity through my usage of VIM commands in an emacs environment though and am thankful for it every time I see a coworker painstakingly navigating through sublime text or something similar. Definitely not a trap for me. I imagine the productivity gains heralded by fans of org mode are similar in nature, so your idea that this focus on increased automation for personal productivity should be considered a "trap" is curious to me.

I do concede that org mode and lisp in general are brought up perhaps a bit too often here at HN seeing as they're not all that new though.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but these rulings would only hold power in the EU though, no? That's great for the EU, but that means we've still got to fix the problem everywhere else.

I just use an excel spreadsheet that /u/3suns (I believe is his handle) from reddit put together. You just put in your current weight, target weight and a couple other metrics then fill in your current weight and calories consumed each day. It's supposed to have a pretty good estimate of your true TDEE after about three weeks assuming the information you input is good.

Besides that, I wrote a small JS script that allows me to input various foods along with their respective protein/fat/carb macro ratios that I then combine into meals along with a few helper functions that print the total calories based off the macros. It's nothing special but it gets the job done and I don't have to worry about signing up for yet another app or getting bogged down by a bunch of features I don't care about. I'd be happy to push it and a link to the spreadsheet up to a repo if anyone else would be interested in using them.

I don't contest any of what you wrote.

I was mostly arguing against the OP's very odd view that someone's position is due entirely to luck and not just partially. You and I seem to agree that it is a proportion, whether or not we agree what that proportion happens to be. But the OP seems to believe that nothing is due to free will and everything is due to luck.

I wasn't careful enough with my language. Yes, someone can work harder and see diminishing returns anyway. My dad installed carpet for the majority of his adult life. I would characterize that as more difficult work than most, but he never attained very much wealth.

Still, in a (very particular) vacuum, I would argue that statement holds water, even if it doesn't in reality.

Well now I'm curious about what your views on free will are.

> Do you think someone has a claim to wealth that they earned entirely due to luck?

First off, this is a difficult question to answer because it seems yours and my definitions of "luck" are not the same. Or perhaps they are the same but we view the surrounding context and their individual manifestations as dissimilar.

I would say it depends on the situation. For example, If I'm walking through the parking lot and by chance (luck) find a $20 bill on the ground, am I deserving of my new found wealth? On a good day, I might turn it in to the nearest department store and hope it finds its way back to its original owner. If I'm feeling more cynical (or, arguably, realistic) I would just keep it.

Am I deserving of this wealth? I didn't really work for it, so I would argue, "no, not really." But then again I wouldn't really fault myself (or anyone else) for keeping it either.

On the other hand, let us consider two farmers who live near one another. They are twin brothers and received the same upbringing. One of the farmers tends his lands diligently while the other is concerned with other aspects of life and only does the bare minimum to survive. As you might expect, over time the first farmer prospers due to the hard work he has put in to cultivate his lands while the second farmer stagnates because he has prioritized other matters. They both understood the benefits of tending to land diligently from their shared upbringing, but they made different decisions for whatever reason.

Essentially, I'm asking you to consider these two farmers "in a vacuum" such that their wealth is due entirely to their own actions and not to any outside forces. Absolutely nothing left to chance, or "luck." By my definition of the word at least.

So, is your definition of luck different from mine such that you would argue the first farmer's success is still due to luck, or am I missing something else?

And thanks for the conversation, I find your views fascinating even if I don't share them.

Wouldn't you agree that the harder someone works, the greater their chance of becoming rich?

You seem to argue that the OP has absolutely no claim to the wealth that he has worked for and his preferable situation is due entirely to luck. This is of course preposterous and easily disproved, so I'm curious to know what your answer to this question is.

Assuming your answer is, "no, not entirely" then my follow up question would be, do you believe that his situation is due _mostly_ to luck, and only marginally to his hard work? This is a more interesting question and one I would be interested in discussing assuming it's your take on the matter.

Edit: a word

I've never understood this take on things, though I'm ready to if it can be explained to me. :)

To me, it seems that the user experience vs dev experience trade off is subject to market forces and if it swings too wildly in either direction, a competitor will come through and wipe the floor with everyone else, no? It's always seemed unnecessary to me to worry about the effects of _more_ options, at least in the context of application development anyway.

So I had something similar happen to me. I started out at the _ sign in _ page, I attempted to sign in with google, it remarked that I don't have an account and sent me to the _ sign up _ page that looked very similar to the sign in page, and from there, I was able to create an account via my google account.

Yes, but they only look for the presence of the degree, not so much the pedigree of the school, barring Ivy leagues of course.

Great write up, thanks!

I hadn't heard of Terraform before, so thanks for the introduction. I have recently been attempting to familiarize myself better with systems infrastructure, and it looks interesting. I'll have to do some reading on it.

I have a question. You mentioned that Whimsical's back-end, "mostly serves as a lightweight layer between the client and the data store." Does this mean that you do most of the data munging client side so that once it arrives server side, most of the work is already done? And if so, what do the trade-offs look like in such a scenario? If I'm understanding correctly, this means the client is fatter, but there's less load on the server, meaning cheaper infrastructure costs. Is this a correct way of looking at it?

I'm just a junior dev trying to gain a better understanding of large systems, so forgive me for any ignorance or misunderstanding.

Nano (ticker: XRB) has no-fee transactions. Send 3 XRB, receive 3 XRB. I'd say it's biggest wart yet is the volatility, but there are already half-way solutions like instant fiat resolution. These kinds of services take their own fees unfortunately, but I am sure some sort of peer-to-peer crypto<->fiat will pop up eventually.

Monero is the go-to privacy coin. Unfortunately, I am not as experienced with privacy/security, but it appears to be good enough for many. Perhaps someone else can speak to its efficacy?

Finally, there are decentralized crypto exchanges. None that take fiat in (AFAIK) but there are definitely decentralized exchanges. Don't know of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure they're just a quick google search away.

Those are the things that stuck out to me about your post.

I think that Clojure takes a sane approach to topics such as this one. I believe the "data first" approach tends to breed a pragmatic outlook when writing code and leaves behind all the proselytizing. Plus currying is built into the language, so there isn't any need for importing any special purpose libraries :)

edit: a word

I completely agree. We are using Angular 1.x at my day job and my team and I are feeling the pain. Manual DOM manipulation compared to React's virtual DOM feels like what it must have used to feel like comparing jQuery to Angular 1.

Perhaps frameworks don't rust in the sense that they deteriorate in terms of capabilities over time. But that doesn't mean that they don't become obsolete. Especially when you're building a product and trying to stay competitive, all the while all the the innovation surrounding a framework has packed up and left for a nicer camp.

It sounds as though something like the Ethereum network would be exactly what you're looking for. It's decentralized, meaning no one entity has the ability to remove it. And it is as democratic as you want it to be, meaning the user base can push for the requirement of fairness you suggest.

It's like it's 1992 and a bunch of Luddites are bashing this new thing called the internet because it's unregulated. All the while, failing to realize that the underlying technology has the potential to change the world for the better in a major way.

What happened to the maker spirit of HN, I wonder? I used to think it was the paragon of technological discourse, rather than simply a bunch of white collar workers all cozy with their barely six-figure incomes who think they are the beginning and end of innovation simply because they know how to string API's together and use google.

It makes me think of this community's nearly unanimous stance that code schoolers/bootcampers are bad hires and that a compsci degree is the end all be all when it comes to making a hiring decision. It's obvious that the devs who took a more traditional route feel threatened by the fact that learning to build applications is not as difficult as they think it is. If it was, code schoolers wouldn't be finding jobs in record numbers like they so obviously are.

And sure, ICO's are risky. It is probably not wise to put your life savings into one. So how do we make them less risky? What sorts of netsec lessons learned over the past 30 years can be applied to them to make them less so? How do we bring about the next major technological revolution and insure the future is something to look forward to rather than fear?

This community as a whole needs to climb down from its ivory tower and realize that innovative technology and ideas are what put them there to begin with.

I'm not saying we ought to blindly champion every new idea that pops up, but I do think we could be using our experiences to contribute rather than burying our heads in the sand and pretending that things can't or shouldn't change.