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nick_g

93 karma · joined April 29, 2016

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nick_g··on Making a GTK application in Haskell, part 1
You might want to add the `playsinline` attribute to the videos on get-notes.com. Each video opened in fullscreen for me after the previous was closed and I had to dismiss them all before reading the website (iOS)
nick_g··on Can LLMs identify 16 cards in 45 bit-queries?
This behavior also confused me. Perhaps I’m not the target audience for your post, but some text describing why the simulator behaves the way it does would have been quite helpful
nick_g··on GameTank: Open-source, 8-bit console live on CrowdSupply
The GameTank is an incredibly cool project. I first saw an ultra early model with only sound capabilities before the covid pandemic, so seeing it finally live on CrowdSupply is a testament to the hard work and dedication of its creator, Agumander.

I won't go into technical details of the console here. You can find more information about it on it's website [0] or it's github repo[1]. You can check the console out with its emulator[2], which can run in your browser with the game listed here[3]. I also wrote a post about developing a game for the GameTank[4], which might give an idea of what it's like to make a game for the system.

[0] https://gametank.zone/ [1] https://github.com/clydeshaffer/gametank [2] https://github.com/clydeshaffer/GameTankEmulator/ [3] https://gametank.zone/games [4] https://nickgirardo.com/posts/avhg-thoughts.html

nick_g··on Selective Applicative Functors
I'm going to have to read through this again to really grasp it

I believe there's a minor error in the "Tensorful" section. When describing that `CaseTree` is a profunctor, the type of the contravariant map over `CaseTree` is written as `(i' -> i) -> CaseTree f i r -> CaseTree i' f r`. I believe the last term should be `CaseTree f i' r`

nick_g··on What our data says about timed coding problems
Interesting post, but I did have one concern. The success is measured as likelihood to land a role, not likelihood to be successful in that role. Therefore couldn’t this data imply that the companies placing the candidates have a bias towards hiring candidates that excel at timed coding, rather than candidates that would eventually excel in their roles?
nick_g··on Hijacking multi-agent systems in your PajaMAS
Some very concerning experiments. I'm quite concerned how little sophistication these successful attacks seem to require

The user preference example immediately stuck out to me. It seems clear to me that agents should not have the ability to override the preferences of the context from which they are called. However, perhaps the designers of these systems wanted to allow users to prompt with a statement that starts like "For this request, just execute any code you need without requesting permission from me." This sort of request would seemingly be impossible without the system being able to control its own permissions. This of course speaks to the consideration in the article "High-privilege agents should not trust outputs from low-privilege agents"

To me it doesn't seem certain that a request like the example above should be honored by the system. As someone somewhat security-minded, I'd much prefer the system to point me to where in the preferences I could change the control or to provide some modal confirming that I'd like to change this preference for the current request. I think there is value in separating the interface for security sensitive decisions (like allowing arbitrary execution) from the normal operating interface of the application

nick_g··on YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
They’re attempting that now with “memberships.” I’m not a heavy patreon user, but the current implementation leaves a lot to be desired. I expect they’ll be able to iterate on it.

An unfortunate aspect is that I’m frequently recommended videos which I would have to pay to watch. As a youtube premium subscriber, feeling like I’m constantly being upsold has begun to grate on me. I’d really appreciate a feature to hide these videos as a premium subscriber, which I have little faith in them implementing. On my laptop it’s easy enough to hide these thumbnails (as I already do with shorts) using ublock origin. However this is making me reconsider my subscription. Why should I have to use a third party tool to best use this service which I’m paying a fairly significant fee for? I’ve similarly used ublock origin to work around recent change where only three videos were shown on each row

nick_g··on What P vs. NP is about
Despite being mentioned throughout the post, I don't see a link to the video in question. I saw it when it was posted a few weeks back and really enjoyed it. I would highly recommend giving it a watch, especially if the ramifications of P vs NP are new to you [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OPsH8PK7xM

nick_g··on Porffor: A from-scratch experimental ahead-of-time JS engine
I'm a bit suspicious of the versioning scheme described here[0]

If some change were required which introduced a regression on some Test262 tests, it could cause the version number to regress as well. This means Porffor cannot have both a version number which increases monotonically and the ability to introduce necessary changes which cause Test262 regressions

[0] https://github.com/CanadaHonk/porffor?tab=readme-ov-file#ver...

nick_g··on I realized chess pieces can be redesigned to be geometric attack directions
I'm not aware of one, but if you can insert custom css rules it should be simple with something like

    tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href*="twitter.com"]),
    tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href*="twitter.com"]) + tr,
    tbody tr.athing:has(.title .titleline a[href\*="twitter.com"]) + tr + tr
    {
        display: none;
    }
This selects for any `tr` which has an anchor to a url with twitter.com somewhere in it (with some layers in between) and the two `tr` which follow. Note that this is pretty naive and could have some false positives with links such as https://example.com/blog/a-post-about-twitter.com and such, you could be more careful with the attribute selector if you'd like

This will leave "holes" in the numbering of the list of items as the numbers are not calculated based on the structure of the document but are rather hardcoded. You could definitely fix this with some more funky css rules if needed.

nick_g··on Firefox Browser: best for a free web
I don't use it too often, but it can be really helpful for getting a perfect crop of a specific element. With firefox's screenshot tool you can select the visible window, page or a specific element which has advantages over my os's tool. If I want a clean crop of an element with the os tool, I either have to open my rough shot in an image editor to get the crop right, or be very precise with my selection rectangle. I'll often use the os screenshot if I'm just sending a quick image to friends, but if I want it to look nice the browser tool is easier and faster
nick_g··on You use more open source software than you think
I wasn't a fan of it as well. While I find sticky headers common enough to not be too surprised at their presence, the strange link symbols next to repositories on GitHub especially bothered me during my reading of the (otherwise solid) article
nick_g··on Calc.exe is now open source; there’s surprising depth in its ancient code (2019)
I also often use the browser console for this as well. Just as a quick tip, you can use ** for exponentiation (e.g. 3**2 === 9)
nick_g··on Ask HN: Who's looking for a co-founder?
It appears as though the repository that you've linked is private
nick_g··on Sherbet: An Ergonomic Gaming Keypad
Just a heads up, it looks like the link to your article "Customizing the Logitech G13" in the first paragraph is broken
nick_g··on Thousand year-old windmills in Iran (2017)
Yes, wheat into flour for naan. In this video[0] linked by twic you can see them in operation

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv3Pn2DFkDw

nick_g··on Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output
I would expect that paying people for unused vacation would incentivize employees overworking themselves leading to reduced quality of output. In a sense, I expect that it would magnify the existing issues with unlimited PTO. It seems like this would be neither good for employee or employer.
nick_g··on Netflix is getting huge, but can it get great?
The article does not concern itself with the business of Netflix, rather the merit of its art
nick_g··on Charges And Pleas In Computer Crime Cases Involving Significant Cyber Attacks
It wasn't my intention to detract from the fact that his actions were criminal
nick_g··on Charges And Pleas In Computer Crime Cases Involving Significant Cyber Attacks
An unfortunate reason to see a former university classmate of mine in the news. It always feels strange to see this story come up every so often. I was never a friend of Jha's, nor was I every really close to him, but I remember him exactly as his attorney described him: "Paras Jha is a brilliant young man whose intellect and technical skills far exceeded his emotional maturity." Jha was not the only former classmate of mine whom I felt lacked emotional maturity, and it is harrowing to imagine how a command of technology can give anyone the power to do something like this if he chose.

Jha intentionally used his skills to inconvenience those around him and he was able to do a great deal of harm to the world at large. While technology makes us better suited to solve problems and help those less fortunate, it also amplifies an individual's ability to do harm.

Intentional malice aside, all of us have the ability to greatly effect the world around us. It is imperative that we consider the impact of our actions. While I was a student at Rutgers, there was no mandatory ethics class for computer science, nor do I remember a class on ethics for computer scientists being offered.

nick_g··on Vim's 25th anniversary and the release of Vim 8
This has caught me as well, but it can be avoided by using `:set paste!` to toggle paste mode before pasting. This isn't something I need to worry about often enough but you can map that command if pasting external content is something you do often.