DaveFlater | 9 months ago | on: College English majors can't read
There they go with Dickens again. Why always Dickens? Haven't we suffered enough?
DaveFlater's comments
DaveFlater | 1 year ago | on: Hurl, the Exceptional Language
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: The return of the frame pointers
GCC optimization causes the frame pointer push to move around, resulting in wrong call stacks. "Wontfix"
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Are app signup dark patterns getting worse?
Whether over months or years, they have certainly gotten worse. It is a race to the bottom or to 1 micrometer above the legal red line if one should ever be established.
CFPB and FTC talked about it: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/compliance/circulars/consume...
Summary of comparable talk in the EU: https://www.insideprivacy.com/eu-data-protection/the-eu-stan...
Down in the details, it looks like there has been enforcement in individual cases, but it obviously was not enough to stop the flood.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Porting to GCC 14: C language issues
In C++ this is simply legal code. But in C, the bogus warning has now escalated to a bogus error.
void fun110 (char const * const *a) {}
char **a;
fun110(a);DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Still no love for JPEG XL: Browser maker love-in snubs next-gen image format
What makes it seem probable that it is patent-encumbered? Is there something specific I can read about or is it just the track record of previous standards (starting with arithmetic encoding in the first JPEG)?
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: SI Units for Request Rate
Hertz, becquerel, et al. are algebraically defined as s^(-1) yet intended to be used for different kinds of quantities. The SI brochure also allows replacing radian by 1, which brings angular velocity into the fight. Further reading: https://doi.org/10.1088/0026-1394/52/1/40
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: SI Units for Request Rate
Being careful to distinguish 'fundamental laws' from just 'quantities that we defined', information theory and queueing theory have some good examples of proven laws.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: SI Units for Request Rate
ISO 80000 Part 13 gives some symbols within the scope of communication technology (its scope is more narrow than its title would suggest). The standard itself is copyrighted but the quantity symbols are listed on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_80000#Part_13:_Informa...
See also https://www.nist.gov/publications/quantities-and-units-softw...
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: SI Units for Request Rate
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: What does "vast majority" mean to you?
Vast majority: portion of a population that forms a consensus.
Consensus: agreement among a vast majority of a population.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: SI Units for Request Rate
The "two wrongs" hostname is apt. Hertz is for periodic phenomena; becquerel is for radioactive decay. The SI brochure discourages the use of counting units such as 'request'. The number of requests is regarded as just a number, or at best a quantity that is referred to the unit one. The applicable SI unit therefore is just the reciprocal second, s^(-1).
In practice, counting units are used everywhere (e.g., in MB/s, the byte is a counting unit), but I am relaying what the SI brochure actually says on this question.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Windows 10 users report app problems after Microsoft update
SSE 4.2 appeared in Nehalem, which was 2008.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Automakers Look to Neuter ME Right to Repair Bill Under Privacy Concern Pretense
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Man Who Sued 'Are We Dating the Same Guy?' Groups Files Class Action Lawsuit
Well, there are two pieces. The first piece is establishing that 'the groups' were doing something wrong. The second piece is the usual struggle about the responsibility of big tech to police and moderate what goes on in the fora that they own and generate their income from. Attention is skewed toward the second question because big tech has the deep pockets, but both questions involve nontrivial moral issues.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: It's Time the Word "Oligarch" Lost Its Russian Veneer
They wrote "the term has always referred to those empowered politically by massive wealth" but a more precise term for that is plutocrat. I always understood oligarchy as rule by any small group.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why is it even possible to downvote a comment on HN without elaborating?
If someone votes a personal prejudice or vested interest, any mandatory rationale provided would be pretextual. It would be great if downvotes were all well-motivated and accompanied by constructive critique, but it just ain't so. C.f. the Reviewer #2 problem in peer review.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: -O1 enables frame pointer push to move around on x86_64
Because everyone thinks frame pointers are cool again and as far as I know the problem was never fixed.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Maestro: A Linux-compatible kernel in Rust
Forks are not inherently good or bad but can seriously muck up an ecosystem if they are not well-justified. Mucking up the Linux ecosystem would be BAD.
DaveFlater | 2 years ago | on: Maestro: A Linux-compatible kernel in Rust
That's pure Rust evangelism. As devs we are responsible for what we send out into the world. A schism in the Linux kernel would be bad.
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