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randommodnar | 9 years ago | on: Moore’s Law Running Out of Room, Tech Looks for a Successor

Can we quit with the Moore's law bullshit? It's not a law! It's just an observation about the direction a graph seems to be moving.

Yeah, we hope processors keep getting more powerful. Calling this "Moore's law" is idiotic. And probably confuses poor journalists and undergrads.

randommodnar | 9 years ago | on: Rewrite Tor in Rust

Is there a solution yet in Rust to this problem of, monadic-ish constructs like Result and Option, but no nice way to chain them together without hideous nesting, like Haskell's "do" or Scala's "for"?

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: Judge Grants Search Warrant Forcing Woman to Unlock iPhone with Touch ID

So do you think it's reasonable that contempt of court can carry a life sentence without even being convicted by a jury of your peers? Is contempt of court a worse crime than assault or manslaughter?

You have the right to not divulge information from your mind that would incriminate yourself. In the US this is called the 5th amendment.

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: On the (Small) Number of Atoms in the Universe

While this comparison highlights that yes, there are very many possible Go games, it's really apples to oranges.

The real comparison would be the number of pieces on a Go board (19x19 = 361) compared to the number of atoms in the universe. And then to compare the number of possible board positions in Go, with the number of possible atom positions in the universe, and in this case I think the universe wins.....

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: SpaceX plans to debut Red Dragon with 2018 Mars mission

Anybody who knows anything about human behaviour will know that it was a failure from the beginning. If there is strong demand for the resources in the moon, powerful people will move in and take them. Watch what will happen with the Arctic as its oil becomes more accessible.

A law or treaty is only as good as its enforcement mechanism.

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: Ex-Reddit exec launches 'Imzy,' a warmer, fuzzier Reddit

My big question: how do you deal with community leadership and moderation? Is the first person to create a particular community that community's dictator for life? How can large communities, with populations larger than many nations, achieve practical, representative, and accountable self-governance?

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: Edward Snowden: The Internet Is Broken

Also, sibling is not a 20th century invention in gender neutrality. Sibling is an old English word meaning a kinsmen or relative. It simply saw a revival in the 20th century and had its meaning narrowed to mean only brother or sister.

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: Edward Snowden: The Internet Is Broken

What you have to realize is it's an arms race. When splitting and comparmentalizing is the norm, the government will be putting every effort into connecting the dots between your disparate personas.

It takes a special kind of persistent, all-encompassing paranoia and effort. And as we've seen in the past, it only takes a single fuck-up, logging into the wrong server with the wrong account once, mentioning the wrong anecdote with the wrong persona, and bam, you're fucked. Once two dots are connected, they cannot be unconnected.

randommodnar | 10 years ago | on: Edward Snowden: The Internet Is Broken

It's not crazy. English speakers tend to use "they" when they need a gender-neutral option. This just sounds like some edgy teenager... ooh look at me, I'm using some invented new pronouns because of the injustices I've never actually faced myself.
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