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randomThoughts9

106 karma · joined October 28, 2015

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randomThoughts9··on Can genetics explain why some people thrive on less sleep?
There are Yogis that claim they can thrive on 2.5 hours of sleep, and that they've been doing that their entire life.

I don't think he addresses this subject in the book or in his talks, but it would be interesting to know his opinion on the subject.

randomThoughts9··on Study finds reducing carbs and replacing with fats leads to increased metabolism
Low carb is not (only) keto. And given the fact the ketosis changes completely the rules of the game, I would actually put keto in it's own category.

So 100g of carbs seems like a reasonable number if you want to be sure that your subjects do not enter ketosis.

randomThoughts9··on Show HN: Alan – a low-code application platform
The oldest project I know of that tried to do something similar was Naked Objects, which later became Apache Isis (the Java version at least).

What's the difference between Alan Platform and Apache Isis?

randomThoughts9··on The world is losing the war against climate change
Not even the people that pretend to care are putting in the minimum necessary effort to fight this. So where does the war in the title come from?

"War on/against x" is becoming a meaningless expression.

As far as I can see, our only real plan is: we'll invent something. The rest is just rhetoric.

randomThoughts9··on Ethereum Sharding FAQ
PoW is theoretically better in this regard.

I mean, in theory the market should push the profit down to a minimum, forcing the miners to spend their revenues in order to keep mining.

randomThoughts9··on Genetic Study Supports Carbohydrate-Insulin Model of Obesity
True is you manage to get into keto. But what happens if you get close, but not quite?
randomThoughts9··on A friend of mine died and I didn't know because of algorithms
There is this principle that I always bring up when it comes to our interaction with the government, but it fits perfectly here too.

You might be able to give up control over something, but never the responsibility that comes with it. So in this particular case, we are free to let the algorithm decide for us, but we should all be aware who will suffer when the algorithm goes haywire. It's that simple.

randomThoughts9··on Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut
Someone posted this link on reddit today.

https://think.ing.com/uploads/reports/171218_Why_Bitcoin_to_...

randomThoughts9··on Telegram Isn't for Sale
This is a very recent interpretation. It is legally true, but it goes against the true meaning of the word.

When you work for a charity, do you ask for a raise? Do you get a bonus if you collect more money? How much to you get to keep?

Not even mentioning that sometimes the money goes through a chain of charities, all making a living out of it, but leaving almost nothing for the final beneficiary.

randomThoughts9··on A Bitcoin booster got $2.3M after being bitshamed for being poor
Not trying to defend Roger Ver, but that is an awful interpretation. He wasn't shaming anybody for being poor.

He was just trying to emphasize, what in his view is a discrepancy between what some people preach and what they do.

randomThoughts9··on Kotlin: A Language with a Bright Future
> This is unprecedented.

Don't get me wrong, I like Kotlin, but Ceylon did the multi platform thing much better.

They have real platform modules, built into the language (not just a build tool trick), and a language specification that was written from the start with multiple platforms in mind.

But it never took off (yet), and Kotlin's support is good enough, so it will have to do I guess :).

randomThoughts9··on Fun facts about Rust's growing popularity
That's not entirely true. Only in the blockchain world there are two Rust projects I know of:

- the parity ethereum client: https://github.com/paritytech/parity

- the exonum framework: https://exonum.com/

randomThoughts9··on Fun facts about Rust's growing popularity
I agree and I appreciate what they are trying to do.

But just as a counter-argument, look how a simple lock looks like in Rust [1]:

  fn main() {
      let counter = Arc::new(Mutex::new(0));
      let mut handles = vec![];

      for _ in 0..10 {
          let counter = counter.clone();
          let handle = thread::spawn(move || {
              let mut num = counter.lock().unwrap();

              *num += 1;
          });
          handles.push(handle);
      }

      //...
  }
[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/second-edition/ch16-03-shared...

----- edit: Just to clarify my point. The ownership model is a beautiful solution to the resource management problem. And as the parent pointed out, some concepts can be cleanly borrowed/reused in other languages.

But now, in Rust, in practice, you realize that this model requires a lot of boilerplate code just to make the borrow checker happy, even for simple things like using a lock: create Arc(Mutex(data)); clone the arc reference; move the new Arc reference to the new thread.

randomThoughts9··on Fun facts about Rust's growing popularity
Well, a fun fact: there is nothing funny about that list :). It should have been called "Some facts about Rust's growing popularity".

Now, my predicament: I love Rust's type system and tooling, but it's really hard to justify to myself the pain of writing correct Rust code (borrowing, lifetimes, etc.) when I know I can get almost the same effect by using a GC language + immutable messages.

And I don't need that last drop of performance either.

So if you just want a native language with a good type system and a growing ecosystem, where do you go? Still Rust or something else?

randomThoughts9··on Global Demand for Bitcoin Shifts Wildly in Response to Regulation
> Inequity doesn't mean much wrt Bitcoin IMO.

I'm sorry, but you can't brush that subject off with a single sentence. It's a huge problem. If you want a real currency, that is.

You might hope that the free market will fix this problem, but I have my doubts. The current whales don't have a real incentive to sell.

And if Bitcoin would reach its goal, we would have some new, anonymous and untouchable overlords that would make the feudal ones look like amateurs. No thanks.

randomThoughts9··on Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer than any 2015 country
I wasn't claiming anything, just providing a different perspective (see the "might" in my sentence).

But could you please shed some light on this sentence:

> Yet, bonobos are indeed known for organizing attacks on neighboring primate groups

Are those primates other bonobos? That could be called going to war. If not, it's called hunting: those other primates are just food. It's not like we go to war against whatever other animals we are eating.

randomThoughts9··on Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer than any 2015 country
> Our forebears lived very violent lives.

I've been reading some books on the subject that claim the contrary, also based on archaeological proofs (and on identifying faults with the existing studies). So I wouldn't state that with such confidence.

See RoboTeddy's comment for some details on this POV.

And also, if we look at bonobos, another primate closely related to us, we might get a completely different perspective on life in the distant past. It's just that we discovered chimpanzees first.

randomThoughts9··on Environmental impacts of food consumption by dogs and cats
> meat fed to pets is (largely) not suitable for human consumption

30% unsuitable for human consumption? This choosiness is a just one more sign of affluence and one of the habits we have to get rid of if we want to improve our ecological footprint.

Go to a rural village in a developing country and you will see them using 95% easily.

This is just

randomThoughts9··on CoinDash’s ICO Website Has Been Hacked
1. I see the the current batch of crypto-currencies as an experiment and their valuation more like a bet on which currency will manage to adapt to the future.

2. Not all properties are relevant or even desirable: For example, I could live without POW or a fixed cap.

3. That being said, let me give you an example of a currency that could realistically be adopted by a government: a centrally controlled currency (the central bank is the only miner) but the blocks are validated by the citizens.

Here you could have the inflation rate specified through a smart contract (e.g. 3%). The only way to print more money would be to to ask the nodes to vote on an amount that will be included in the next block.

randomThoughts9··on The blockchain paradox: Why DLTs may do little to transform the economy
There are currencies with governance built in: PIVX and DASH are the two main exampled I know of.

Basically the nodes that have a stake in the system are allowed to vote on the direction the project is going.

My personal impression is that currently this model is still very rudimentary, but in the future I could still an almost autonomous system taking off.

randomThoughts9··on Kotlin/Native Tech Preview: Kotlin without a VM
Is there a spec?

They talk about modules and I am curious about their syntax (if any). If we are to support a new multi-platform ecosystem, we should make sure it is built on a stable foundation.

For example, I really like scala, but I can't convince myself to try scala-js due to the unsoundness of the platform. Some scala libraries work, some libraries compile but won't work as expected and some libraries need porting. And you don't really know which is which.

https://www.scala-js.org/doc/semantics.html

randomThoughts9··on Angular 4.0.0 Now Available
Some clarifications:

1. Angular 2 is not object oriented in the standard meaning of the term: it does not rely on inheritance or polymorphism that much.

But it does rely on classes as the backing structure of your UI components. In other words, they tried to create a platform for creating widgets that compose. And more or less succeeded.

This is a tried and true pattern that has been used to create complex user interfaces since forever. I would wait a while before claiming that this stile is obsolete.

2. Angular 2 is quite functional.

Decorators in Javascript are just higher order functions (like python I guess). They look like like Java's annotations, but work in a completely different way.

They made streams (RxJs) the standard way of working with data.

And pipes are also a functional construct.

3. There are some good things to say about their routing module too, but I have to go.

Anyway, my opinion is that Angular and React address different needs and there is definitely room for both of them.

randomThoughts9··on Thousands to receive basic income in Finland
I've been reading about these kind of experiments for years now and they all do the same mistake: it's not basic income if it has a deadline.

Almost nobody will leave his job / stop looking for one / risk a complete career change if that income is not guaranteed for life.

randomThoughts9··on The Relation of Toxoplasma Infection and Sexual Attraction to Fear, Danger, Pain
>the idea of a cat parasite controlling or influencing my behavior (and the behavior of others) is both fascinating and frightening

wait until we'll know everything our own gut bacteria is doing to us

randomThoughts9··on Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay
I'm replying here but I'm trying to reply to the entire thread.

- So you are talking about how much value we create and that we should receive more of it.

- Then someone else mentions a lot of other professions that do that too: create a lot of value.

- Now the discussion does a 180, forgetting completely the first topic: value. Now it's about supply and demand.

Pick your measuring stick people.

You either trust that markets work best and then you are paid exactly what you deserve, because you are free to change jobs and ask for more.

Or you don't and think that a better system should be in place, but then it should apply to everybody, not just software developers, right?

randomThoughts9··on Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo
At least in Eastern Europe, most developers in the 90's used yahoo (mail + messenger) and a lot of them still do, even though not exclusively anymore.
randomThoughts9··on When Yahoo Reigned Supreme
It worked for GMail though.
randomThoughts9··on Spotify raises $1B in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music
Well, in this particular case employees wanted to play the capital game. It's not a nice game it seems.
randomThoughts9··on Scala School
I find this schema, promoted if I'm not mistaken by Martin Odersky himself, as one of the biggest marketing blunders possible as far as programming languages are concerned.

You keep telling developers that they are not good enough but they should rest assured that some smarter people are working on the problem and they'll come back with the answers.

When in reality, I think that all developers, when using a library, would like to think that they could have written it themselves, it they would have had the time or the interest.

randomThoughts9··on Show HN: Let's encourage ad blocking
A less mentioned problem is the fact that, as far as our industry is concerned, ads corrupt.

They corrupt the developers, because the purpose is no longer to create a great product. You now have to think on how to:

* tweak your product to accommodate ads

* trick the user to comeback even when he shouldn't have to

* collect as much data about the user as you can

And they corrupt content creators, because it makes them focus on volume (views) instead of quality.

And yes, we painted ourselves into this corner, where is really tough to make it without using ads. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't explore other options. And without ad blockers, the industry will have no motivation to search for alternatives.

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