gbacon

That’s a fun design that brings back some old memories.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-...

https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go

For many people, just having the function signatures is documentation enough.

You make a fair point about a documentation gap. The first step is always defining the problem. Wanting to add lots of realistic examples sounds like a wish for more tutorial or beginner-friendly content. Do you see the problem differently?

On the other hand, a given pure function type only has only so many possible implementations — why tools such as djinn and MagicHaskeller exist or why Hoogle is actually useful, unlike the horror of searching for every `void (*)(const char *)` in C.

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/djinn

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/MagicHaskeller

https://hoogle.haskell.org/

From that perspective, Haskell docs tend to be more expert-friendly — perhaps a rationalization, granted — which seems ideally suited for an in-IDE model to help bridge between developer intent and typechecked code. However, this comes at the expense of putting in the reps to rewire the developer’s brain to think in functional terms and the resulting mind opening and horizon expansion to think new thoughts she wasn’t capable of even considering. In these days of LLMs, fretting over that particular opportunity cost may be thinking nostalgically about the loss of craftsmanship in fine, well-balanced buggy whips.

In the limit now, will all programming be strictly literate?

If that’s your mission and especially if you’re mechanically inclined, experimental is highly compelling.

I understand that imposing the restrictions may have involved great amounts of wishful thinking as to the outcome. Even this is not so certain because certain politicians were able claim a victory for having Done Something by writing words on pieces of paper. It may even be against their interest — and they are self-interested actors despite claims to being detached public servants — to solve an issue that is evidently so effective at getting people so worked up.

Vendors’ compliance is not disputed, and you have produced no credible evidence of cheating. If there were demand for the smaller, more efficient engines that you’re fantasizing about, someone would already be building them with no legislative restrictions necessary. Under capitalism, any valid complaint can be rephrased as a business plan. You may not like how they complied with the law, but that’s a you problem. If you can’t bear to see it that way, then take it up with the inept authors of the restrictions. The purpose of a system is what it does.

Stating a broader principle in order to apply it to this instance, we in the U.S. are not obligated to go out of our way to pay more in taxes: “The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted” (Gregory v. Helvering, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/293/465/). Similarly, the law requires manufacturers to meet the restrictions and does not require them to go out of their way to incur the enormous costs of design, certification, building and tooling up new factories, testing, hiring, training, etc., etc., etc. to produce entirely new engines. Anyone who seriously proposed such a rigamarole would have been accused of over-engineering or Rube Goldberging. Executives who put such a plan in place would have been sued and likely lost their jobs.

Intertemporal effects matter, but they are so frequently left out of what passes for economic analysis.

Are you able to read minds to know what someone else’s outlook is? Your interpretation cannot be the most charitable one. https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-the-principle-of-char...

Some means at least one.

GitHub is still the only option on their download page: https://ghostty.org/download

This is essentially the situation in the general aviation market for certificated aircraft, and it sucks. Costs are triple or more compared to the experimental market. Finding a decent mechanic is a serious chore. Repairs take forever.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

Is it your position that private pest control could not achieve the same or better result for at most the same cost?

Are you an economic calculation problem denier?

If they’re using Python, performance isn’t high on their list of requirements.

1a. They may have thought they knew what they were doing, but their work product shows otherwise.

1b. They may have thought they knew what they were doing and spoke confidently enough to convince whoever was doing the acquisition, likely non-technical, of the same, but the bad hire and the bad hire’s work product shows that neither was the case.

2. Ideas merely exist. To be constraints, they must be enforced.

This is a surprising result. With structured inputs like source code, I’d expect grep to outperform semantic search, but natural language’s errors and inconsistencies seem to leave so many cracks for information to fall through.

What about the wizard hat?

The distinction is subtle.

Someone learning to fly may be described as paying careful attention: to every little sound, vibration, and sensation. A common tactic by student pilots is overcontrolling the aircraft, e.g., large sudden changes rather than smooth pressures from flying with a light touch.

Automation requires active, intentional attention particularly when flying in clouds. What are my instruments telling me? Are they all telling the same story? Have any failed? Which ones?

A significant part of flight training and testing emphasizes the ability to divide attention between multiple competing needs, being able to correctly prioritize them, and responding promptly and safely in order of priority.

The circumstance doesn’t have to be that dramatic to be abnormal.

Landing after a merely unstable approach, too many significant changes too close to landing, increases risk.

Landing too fast may result in overrunning the end of the runway, pilot induced oscillation, or loss of control. Energy being proportional to the square of velocity means the margin doesn’t have to be huge to pose significant danger. Landing too slow risks an aerodynamic stall or worse a spin, which at low altitude is nearly certain to be fatal.

Landing safely with a crosswind requires technique changes. Too much crosswind or “running out of rudder” is extremely dangerous.

Landing after accumulating airframe icing is triply bad because the ice reduces the control surfaces’ aerodynamic effectiveness, makes the airplane heavier, and requires a faster landing.

The FAA describes taxi, takeoff, landing, and operations other than cruise flight below 10,000 MSL as critical phases of flight because of increased risk. The aircraft is closer to the ground, other aircraft, and hazards such that prompt, correct responses are essential to the safe outcome of the flight.

Any equipment on the aircraft can and will fail. Becoming dependent on autoland — not a worry on most general aviation aircraft — is terrible risk management. Every pilot must maintain hand flying skills. Automation is nice and reduces workload, but the pilot must actively manage it.

This is an example of risk compensation. When people perceive greater protections around themselves, they tend to become more aggressive at the margin, such as with the driving habits that you mentioned or hitting more violently in American football because of improvements in helmets and padding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

“It would not be an exaggeration to call these criminals capitalists,” he concludes, “even if their idea of making money was more literal-minded than the bankers whose notes they imitated.”

Counterfeiting is fraud, not capitalism. Even a so-called “lender of last resort” cannot exist under capitalism, but only under a system of dirigisme or worse.

A step-by-step patient playbook for paying what's fair — and not a dollar more.

Slowly lets you meet pen pals from your smartphone! Match with someone that shares your passions, write a letter, and collect stamps from around the world. Speak your mind—one letter at a time!

Letters take time to be delivered

The farther away your pen pal lives, the longer it will take to reach them. Why rush through replies? Make your letter be worth the wait!

https://slowly.app/

Interesting concept, and I’m glad the magic was there for the two of you.

Words and ideas are meaningful. Finding a physical artifact from a far off place in the mailbox; seeing the stamps, markings, smudges, and other evidence of its journey; opening the envelope; and reading the other’s handwritten words add another dimension. Similarly, holding a paper book is a different experience, so I suspect that more than nostalgia is at work.

The Dead or Canadian category on its own was surprisingly tricky. Remote Control was fun TV.

Unlike Jevons, [Carl] Menger [(1840–1921)] did not believe that goods provide “utils,” or units of utility. Rather, he wrote, goods are valuable because they serve various uses whose importance differs. For example, the first pails of water are used to satisfy the most important uses, and successive pails are used for less and less important purposes.

Menger used this insight to resolve the diamond-water paradox that had baffled Adam Smith (see marginalism). He also used it to refute the labor theory of value. Goods acquire their value, he showed, not because of the amount of labor used in producing them, but because of their ability to satisfy people’s wants. Indeed, Menger turned the labor theory of value on its head. If the value of goods is determined by the importance of the wants they satisfy, then the value of labor and other inputs of production (he called them “goods of a higher order”) derive from their ability to produce these goods. Mainstream economists still accept this theory, which they call the theory of “derived demand.”

Menger used his “subjective theory of value” to arrive at one of the most powerful insights in economics: both sides gain from exchange. People will exchange something they value less for something they value more. Because both trading partners do this, both gain. This insight led him to see that middlemen are highly productive: they facilitate transactions that benefit those they buy from and those they sell to. Without the middlemen, these transactions either would not have taken place or would have been more costly.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Menger.html

You know that Voight-Kampff test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself?

Also: https://github.com/joseluisq/technically-oriented-pdf-collec...

A fun follow is Scots Word of the Day by Len Pennie.

https://youtube.com/@misspunnypennie

Work to live, not the other way around. Work produces income and is a means to an end.

Drill down a couple of levels on what it means to you to be happy, productive, warm, and loving. What do an ideal day and week look and feel like? What kind of life would you like your kids to have? Not abstractly. What would their ideal school situation be? How far from school? Any special opportunities like certain clubs, interest in playing an instrument, sports teams? Do you just do weekend warrior stuff, or does being a responsible, fun, constructive parent mean you’re picking them up after school regularly to go make memories?

Let’s say it’s something like the last bit for a moment. “Begin with the end in mind” is one of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and in this case, the end is being a fun parent by going for ice cream or to the park or watch a movie or take guitar lessons together a couple of days a week after school. To make that happen, you’ll need to have flexible work hours and maybe a work location near their ideal school. Do the rare and valuable knowledge and skills that you’ve accumulated allow you do that? If so, great! You’re passionate about being a good parent; you don’t need that from your job. Your job is a means to an end. If the current conditions of your job get in the way of your goal of being a responsible, fun, constructive parent, how could you modify job parameters?

There’s no right answer. There’s your answer. What do you want for your kids? What do you want for you and your wife now and after they’ve left the nest? Walk around in a day, a week of that life in your head. There’s your end. Work backward from there.

That’s a nice driving tour of the effects of the economic calculation problem.

For those unfamiliar (not Mike based on his observations about Star Trek’s economy), absent a working price system, no rational method for economizing, i.e., choosing between alternatives, exists. When building a railroad, do you go around the mountain or tunnel through it? Who knows? Take away the profit-loss test, and the loudest, most aggressive thug in the room wins out, which Mike noted the history of communist countries as confirming.

Understanding the economic calculation problem reveals why communists had to copy or steal not just the technology but even its prices. Granting the extreme of an entire country full of perfectly obedient “new Soviet men” — which emphatically did not exist, as shown by the common saying “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us” — Maximum Leader is in the dark without prices; he doesn’t know what to command them to build! So he does the next best thing: crib off someone else’s paper.

Flight instructors say something similar, that we’re just here to keep you from breaking the airplane while you teach yourself to fly.

Your suitcase is black and therefore not seafoam green. A democracy, a republic, and a federal republic are all different forms of government.

A meme because the eye-rolling implication is that if our country is a republic and not a democracy, then naturally it's Republican and not Democrat(ic).

Who makes this argument?

“Bad terminology is the enemy of clear thinking,” per Charlie Munger. Yes, calling things what they are can be uncomfortable, and calling things what they are not is gaslighting. A republic is not a democracy. The mixed economy, dirigisme, and corporatism are not capitalism. Who benefits from the confusion that these introduce?