HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

wfunction

3,901 karma · joined October 15, 2012

submissionscomments
wfunction··on Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook
I just installed Brave. Then I realized it doesn't allow Chrome extensions? I have so many ranging from email notifiers to cookie opt-outs to my own custom extensions for security and usability (like one that colors usernames on HN, for example)... how should I give all those up just to use a different browser?
wfunction··on I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
eBay is only in the buyer's favor in terms of refunds. It doesn't actually go after fraudsters who refund you immediately to make you shut up after you call out their counterfeits and whatnot.
wfunction··on Does OO really match the way we think (1997) [pdf]
What?
wfunction··on Does OO really match the way we think (1997) [pdf]
> I took function pointers as an example of why "supporting dynamic dispatch" is irrelevant for categorizing programming languages as OOP / not OOP.

Again, like everywhere else in your comments, you're conflating and confusing the language with the model/paradigm and keep trying to shove a language into a programming paradigm. Firstly, you can do OOP in assembly and yet it's not an "OOP language". The language is quite independent of the paradigm. Secondly, who was even trying to categorize languages here? You keep thinking the argument is about categorizing languages and then refute a nonexistent discussion...

> I must admit my ignorance : which languages except prolog don't work like this ?

Again: the discussion is not about trying to shove languages into categories; it's about programming paradigms. You can use the same language to code in multiple paradigms.

Look up "actor-oriented programming". It's a different model meant for concurrent processes, i.e. it's not a subroutine model since you don't need to wait for the procedure to finish and produce a result before continuing.

There are lot of "models of computation" out there (probably a better search term than "programming paradigm", btw) and people go so far as to do PhDs on these. I suggest looking around and not assuming everything is some trivial variation of OOP or FP or DP (declarative programming) or whatever you saw in undergrad.

wfunction··on Does OO really match the way we think (1997) [pdf]
A lot of misunderstanding in what you wrote, but to comment on two parts:

> Every languages that have some kind of function pointer allow this.

It doesn't seem like you're reading the discussion. The claim the parent made was that "every time you do {X}, it is OOP". My reply was "yes, you can do OOP in C, but OOP implies far more than just {X} (it implies {Y}, etc.); merely {X} does not imply OOP".

You reply with "languages that have function pointers allow {Y}". Well yes, they do allow {Y}. Most/all of them in fact probably allow OOP in full. Nobody suggested such languages don't allow OOP (in fact I said the opposite about C). What does that have to do with the entire discussion and argument? Your argument isn't even wrong... it doesn't even compile.

> message-passing is only relevant if you adhere to Alan Kay's vision of objects. I personally don't (even if the guy coined the term).

This 100% completely misses the point of what I said. Replace it with "procedural call" if you're allergic to "message passing". The point I was making was we're talking about subroutine calls: you call a procedure and wait for it to produce a single value as the resulting output before proceeding. Again: if you're not used to other paradigms then that might be why you're missing my point here and adversely reacting to superficial things like the nomenclature. Whether you dress it as message passing or anything else has nothing to do with the issue.

wfunction··on Does OO really match the way we think (1997) [pdf]
No, it absolutely is not. OOP has lots of well-known unique characteristics such as inheritance, dynamic dispatch, polymorphism, encapsulation, etc... as well other less-frequently-noticed semantic differences like the fact that the message-passing follows a subroutine model (which may be more difficult to appreciate if that's the only thing you're used to). Yes, you can do OOP in C, but just making a struct and defining procedures to operate on it doesn't imply any OOP.
wfunction··on Does OO really match the way we think (1997) [pdf]
> Seriously guys, if you think OO has failed you are obnoxious to the amount of successful OO software that everyone uses every day.

Not sure what you mean. Do you mean oblivious?

wfunction··on A Theory of Jerks (2014)
Is not saying hello when you see someone that you would normally be expected to say hello to not considered "rude"? It is to me, but it's not obnoxious...
wfunction··on Confession of a so-called AI expert
> I mean, you could just never leave your house if you were concerned about safety.

I'd take a 1/1000000 chance. I wouldn't take a 1/1000 chance. Get the point?

wfunction··on I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
What I would be afraid of is if these folks work in groups and they hear about the one guy who dared to go after them. Then you might get one of them arrested but your life might be under threat from a dozen others. Is it really worth it?
wfunction··on I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
Would they pursue something like counterfeit software licenses or gift cards mailed via USPS, if the scale isn't as large (like <$100)? Asking since it's happened to me on smaller scales before, but the amount is smaller and I'm not sure how to prove I received whatever I received...
wfunction··on Confession of a so-called AI expert
It sounds like we're agreeing? I was also saying, just like you, that the choice is not based on the statistics. The parent one is the one that used the statistic to justify the choice of biking.
wfunction··on Confession of a so-called AI expert
I don't think people think in terms of life expectancy. Do you? Is a 1% chance of dying on your next ride and otherwise living 100 years equivalent to not riding your bike and living 99 years to you?

Edit regarding your comment: Oh, I see why you're confused. I didn't need to do the math because I was talking about a 1-time bike ride as an example to just get the point across -- it's already scary for 1 ride. But if you want the actual math for a lifetime, there's a ~1/5000 lifetime odds of dying in 1 year of biking. That's still pretty damn high. I don't know about you but I'd rather just give up on the 78th expected year of my life and lose the 0.1% chance of dying in the next 5 years.

wfunction··on Confession of a so-called AI expert
Safety concerns?
wfunction··on I Fell Victim to a $1,500 Used Camera Lens Scam on Amazon
Does it bother them enough to get other police departments involved? I imagine no one they can arrest is within their jurisdiction...
wfunction··on HTTP Error Code 418 I'm a Teapot is about to be removed from Node
I suspect you might also enjoy this, which was also posted a while back: https://github.com/karolmajta/git-xd-hook
wfunction··on Four Earth-sized planets detected orbiting the nearest sun-like star
"This required techniques sensitive enough to detect variations in the movement of the star as small as 30 centimeters per second."

This kind of precision sounds insane. It sounds like far more of an achievement than having found Earth-sized planets. Is there any layman explanation of how they do such a thing?

wfunction··on uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions
Sorry I meant I was looking for more like documentation on the product rather than implementation. Thanks though.
wfunction··on Eighth Circuit: Citizens do not have a right to film public officials in public
I'm wondering if this is more like "citizens do not have this right" rather than like "citizens do not, and should not, have this right".

There is obviously nothing in the Constitution about recording public officials, and I assume there isn't a statute against it, so that means it's relying entirely on case precedent, right? Which I understand is still law, so I'm as baffled by the ruling as anybody, but I also feel that if I were taking this case on for the first time, I would find myself ruling that citizens don't have this right -- even though I would desperately hope and agree they very much should. Does anyone feel that if there was no case precedent, they would still believe they had this right due to freedom of "speech" (or something else)? What would be your legal justification?

wfunction··on uBlock Origin Maintainer on Chrome vs. Firefox WebExtensions
Any more reading on the Instart Logic tech detecting dev tools and hiding itself? I can't find much online.
wfunction··on Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions
> the ones confusing technology with science, and insisting that GMOs must be perfectly safe

I don't know if I fall in that group (I don't think I confuse the two and I don't really talk about GMO much) but my prior belief would be that GMO products are probably safe, through some kind of hand-wavy mathematical argument: it's like modifying a program to do what you want; chances are if you mess up, it'll crash quickly and won't work rather than working almost-as-intended while injecting nefarious input into the next program.

Would LOVE to read evidence to the contrary though. So please share your citations.

wfunction··on .NET Standard 2.0 is final
What about the BCL, CLS, etc.?
wfunction··on DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment
Oh but how does that work? That's ~6 MB per game which sounds like just a list of actions rather than precomputed data per frame. Is it compressed somehow?
wfunction··on DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment
Oh I see, thanks, I didn't know. But man, 300 GB per game sounds completely nuts!
wfunction··on DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment
Is it that much computation to simulate an entire game? You obviously don't need to render the graphics or anything, it should just be a list of events that occur, which doesn't seem all that slow to process.
wfunction··on The Kolmogorov option
Links to support this claim?
wfunction··on Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams
I don't know about you but the last time I saw a class take on extra teaching load to help students "catch up" and not sacrifice on other teaching goals was... never. You seem unrealistically hopeful that things are going to work out the way they claim.
wfunction··on Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content
Are children into live-action Disney films? That seems to be the vast majority of their catalog, not animations.
wfunction··on Google Can't Seem to Tolerate Diversity
First of all, he had far better references than random WordPress blog posts, and second of all, that is completely irrelevant and doesn't excuse you from providing an accurate representation of the original.
wfunction··on Google Can't Seem to Tolerate Diversity
Whoever in Gizmodo redacted or allowed the reduction of the 25+ citations should be fired.

That was such irresponsible journalism that it honestly looks actively malicious, and it wasn't matter what side you're on. You can't remove all the support someone provides for their position and hide it behind a short and vague disclaimer while presenting it as though it's materially equivalent to the original. If their evidence is bad then you include it and let people be the judges. Or just don't report on the story. What you don't do is edit it in accordance with your own opinion and misrepresent it as the original.

People need to call this crap out and shame Gizmodo, and Gizmodo needs to come clean about the honest reasons for the redaction and respond harshly enough that it doesn't happen again. The last thing we need is biased journalism, or an impression of such.

Page 1 of 34Next →