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nardi

1,424 karma · joined March 13, 2012

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nardi··on The Grug Brained Developer (2022)
Having worked in many languages and debuggers across many kinds of backend and front end systems, I think what some folks miss here is that some debuggers are great and fast, and some suck and are extremely slow. For example, using LLDB with Swift is hot garbage. It lies to you and frequently takes 30 seconds or more to evaluate statements or show you local variable values. But e.g. JavaScript debuggers tend to be fantastic and very fast. In addition, some kinds of systems are very easy to exercise in a debugger, and some are very difficult. Some bugs resist debugging, and must be printf’d.

In short, which is better? It depends, and varies wildly by domain.

nardi··on Why DeepSeek is cheap at scale but expensive to run locally
Whats your prompt processing speed? That’s more important in this situation than output TPS. If you have to wait minutes to start getting an answer, that makes it much worse than a cloud-hosted version.
nardi··on Show HN: Real-time AI Voice Chat at ~500ms Latency
I don't know what I'm talking about, but could you use distillation techniques?
nardi··on "Frost crack" sounds may come from sky, not trees
I think you missed the last bit:

> scientists have found no evidence this phenomenon might make sounds that are audible to the human ear.

Which I take to mean they’ve measured ultrasounds but no audible sounds.

nardi··on No more boot loader: Please use the kernel instead
Meta: Can someone with Linux/bootloader knowledge tell me whether most of these comments are as clueless as they seem?
nardi··on Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
Many people in this thread are extremely cynical and also ignorant of the actual security guarantees. If you don’t think Apple is doing what they say they’re doing, you can go audit the code and prove it doesn’t work. Apple is open sourcing all of it to prove it’s secure and private. If you don’t believe them, the code is right there.
nardi··on Private Cloud Compute: A new frontier for AI privacy in the cloud
This is what the “attestation” bit is supposed to take care of—if it works, which I’m assuming it will, because they’re open sourcing it for security auditing.
nardi··on A forged Apple employee badge
I would agree, except the seller seems to have made a new forgery of their receipt on the fly in response to Cabel's inquiry, which leads me to believe they probably made the original forgery as well.
nardi··on Show HN: Million 3 – Optimizing compiler for React
It means you compile-in a direct reference to the node that needs to be updated when some property changes, so instead of searching the tree of n nodes to find it, you already have the reference.
nardi··on EU tells Apple to open everything up to its rivals
The fact that the data exists somewhere is small comfort if users cannot read the privacy implications in the app store itself when they're deciding whether to download an app.
nardi··on I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it
I do not like working with people like this, because I don't want to be anywhere near the maintenance burden of a pile of hacks that technically can run a single Excel spreadsheet. I don't even want to be within earshot of people complaining about this. If I even thought about it for too long I'm sure I'd have a giant headache.
nardi··on iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
My notes on the upgrade from 14 to 15 I took during the announcement:

  * Twice as bright screen
  * Dynamic Island
  * Smaller bezel
  * Contoured edge
  * New better plastic back
  * Big camera improvements
   - 48MP main camera vs. 24MP
   - Faster focus
   - Much better telephoto
   - Improved portrait mode
     * Better color
     * Better low-light performance
     * No shutter lag
     * Turn on portrait mode after the fact
   - Smart HDR for better lighting
  * Live voicemail transcription
  * Longer battery life?
  * Satellite emergency / roadside assistance
nardi··on Why is desalination so difficult?
The article talks about why it's maybe politically or economically difficult, but not why it's physically difficult.
nardi··on How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
> The voice is the only instrument where you can "play" (sing) what note you think.

This is not even close to being true.

nardi··on How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
Perfect pitch is actually kind of a curse in many, many contexts. I’d be very hesitant to experiment on my kids this way without their understanding of the consequences.
nardi··on Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
Do NOT read a CSV file by splitting on commas. Python has a perfect CSV library built right in: https://docs.python.org/3/library/csv.html.

If you split on commas, your code will fail for quoted fields with commas in them.

nardi··on Apple Mac Studio
There is no “serious competitor” in VR/AR, because there is no market yet. The number of devices sold is miniscule. When AR/VR actually takes off, it’s going to look very, very different from what we have today.
nardi··on New 16-inch MBP with M1 Max to feature High Power Mode for intensive workloads
FYI, you’re looking for “sticky wicket.”
nardi··on A potato battery can light up a room for over a month (2013)
It is a potato battery—that's what it's called when you use a potato as the electrolyte for a battery.
nardi··on A potato battery can light up a room for over a month (2013)
I'm not defending potato batteries, I'm just pointing out that the article already explains all of this.
nardi··on A potato battery can light up a room for over a month (2013)
If you’d read the article, you’d know that it explains that the potato is just acting as the electrolyte, and it does mention that replacing the zinc electrode is cheap.
nardi··on Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
These are not the same kind of stupid. One makes the assumption that costs will always be the same, and the other makes the assumption that cost decreases are linear, or predictable. The former is much stupider.
nardi··on South Korea's fusion device KSTAR runs for 20 seconds at 100M degrees Celsius
It seems like there are a dozen or more fusion startups that are pursuing concepts that are much smaller than ITER. I'm no nuclear physicist, but it seems like there might be room for innovation still.
nardi··on World of Warcraft 9.0.2 client runs natively on Apple Silicon
We're talking about a laptop, and it sounds like you're talking about desktop GPUs, unless you meant GTX 960M.
nardi··on Yahoo Groups is closing down
Just got the email:

Dear Yahoo Group Moderators and Members,

We launched Yahoo Groups 20 years ago to connect people around their shared interests. We helped our users navigate new towns, keep in touch with college friends, learn new skills, and most importantly, build connections they may have lost or never had in the first place. While we could not have been more proud of what we accomplished together, we are reaching out today with heavy hearts to let you know that we have decided to shut down Yahoo Groups on December 15, 2020.

Yahoo Groups has seen a steady decline in usage over the last several years. Over that same period we’ve witnessed unprecedented levels of engagement across our properties as customers seek out premium, trustworthy content. To that end, we must sometimes make difficult decisions regarding products that no longer fit our long-term strategy as we hone our focus on other areas of the business.

Beginning December 15, 2020 the Yahoo Groups website will shut down and members will no longer be able to send or receive emails from Yahoo Groups. We’ve compiled a comprehensive FAQ here that includes alternative providers and information on how this will impact your group content.

Thank you for helping us build one of the earliest digital communities — we’re proud and honored to have forged countless connections over the last 20 years and played a small part in helping build your communities.

Sincerely, The Yahoo Groups team

nardi··on Apple’s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 14
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd bet Metal is almost entirely C++ with a little Obj-C sprinkled on top for the API. And of course C++ is still a better systems language than Swift.

My point was that Swift is better than pure Obj-C for systems programming. Admittedly, that might be a poor comparison, since Obj-C was specifically built to be used alongside C as the systems language.

But yes, I think the ultimate goal is that Swift will be better than C/C++ for systems programming too. It still has a ways to go, and there are a lot of libraries that will need to be written, but I do think it's possible.

nardi··on Apple’s use of Swift and SwiftUI in iOS 14
If you mean Objective-C code with minimal usage of C functions/structs/etc., then IMO Swift is actually the better systems language. Cf. the just-announced System library.
nardi··on Applebot
You’re 2 for 4. Time Machine and Mail (separate from iCloud) are not cloud services.
nardi··on Inline CSS works better in a component world
But I explained why it led me to believe that. You're just...not gonna respond to any of my argument...are you?
nardi··on Inline CSS works better in a component world
This definitely leads me to believe that you don't have much experience with modern web frameworks. The meaning of "component" in modern web development is pretty consistent. You can think of a component as a custom HTML element (though they can be much more complex than built-in HTML elements). In fact, if you are using HTML Web Components, then your component literally is a custom HTML element. But the metaphor works even when generating HTML server-side: If you can reference a piece of UI by name, and pass it attributes, and it packages up some HTML/CSS/JavaScript in a reusable fashion, then it's a component.

Your question is slightly nonsensical, because components are not a design language, and it's not something you can see by looking at a rendered web page. To know whether Hacker News is using components, I would need to look at the source code, because components are a programming paradigm.

If you're asking me to comb through HN's JavaScript to see if they use that paradigm, well, no thank you.

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