tempguy9999

I'm sorry to hear it :( That may be what's happened here, an innocuous comment mis-taken by myself.

But before I go finally, tell me please in your view what was a reasonable interpretation of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823201 I pretty well described how it came across to me, effectively that we're all in a surveillance society and if we aren't we soon will be like it or not. I can salvage nothing worthwhile from that poisonous nihilism.

I'm a londoner and we have here a system of public transport which is controlled by cards ('oyster' cards, RFID credit card sized things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oyster_card).

Not exactly to address your point but they're a good way of tracking individuals so I always try to pay anonymously (cash) and never register it. I should probably buy a new one every few months but usually forget.

FYI anyway. Privacy aside it's a pretty decent system.

Utterly dumb question but why is tail recursion necessary in the JVM given that the compiler is better placed simply to turn recursion into a loop. TR removal should be done best at the highest level I'd think.

If you've done game AI then you're the expert, not me. I threw it in as it seemed relevant.

I dunno. Granted evaluation is key but so is branching, surely, as that is what generates new positions, and their complexity in evaluation as there are more factors to consider.

How does one 'look at "the best" 10-15 [positions]' without culling all the others first, however cheaply? I thought evaluation really was just tree searching (hence branching factor is crucial) with various weights (obviously this is traditional chess evaluation, not fancy NN stuff). I honestly am clueless.

Thanks, will follow up.

Branching increases because a piece is not constrained by other pieces. A (say) 20% branch increase will increase exponentially through the tree. Branching is probably higher earlier in the game now because there are more otherwise blocking pieces in play.

Gaining positional advantage at cost of anything other than pawn is probably not worth it

This kind of post makes me want to give up on HN. I have actually played it (albeit a very long time ago) and you are wrong. Please try it.

But even if true, and only a pawn dies, it drastically changes the nature of the game as a white pawn is a barrier to white pieces. Make that barrier permeable and the entire game changes.

Taking your own pieces would be sub-optimal choice in every-case other then avoiding mate

Or inflicting mate, if you're blocked from that by your own piece. Or opening an attack that otherwise blocked. Or freeing pieces otherwise useless (bishops seem to get this badly, though maybe it's just me - I was never a great player). Any major piece otherwise trapped can now escape by taking any lesser piece of its own that's fenced it in.

It totally changes the game. Position is just as important as pieces, and maybe more at different times.

indemnified up the wazoo

Really? Are you sure boeing is, given the cost-savings that not being insured would make (I mean the mgmt is clearly penny-pinchingly stupid enough).

But even if boeing is insured, you can bet your butt the insurers will have an explicit or implicit clause that voids the insurance on 'reasonable grounds', and they will argue (correctly) that knowingly producing flawed products (when it became evident at least) matches that getout perfectly.

Even if they lose the insurers will basically move into a courtroom, sleeping bags and all, to tie things up forever. It's cheaper than paying out.

My opinion anyway.

Aside: I grew normal and F1 hybrid courgettes (american = zucchini) as a kid and can confirm the hybrids were proper little triffids compared to the pure-strain plants.

Regarding the camels, can you dig up a link, am curious. Thanks.

There is a variant that allows you to take your own pieces https://www.chessvariants.com/difftaking.dir/selfeliminator....

This always attracted me as a concept and seems well received, per link above.

It should increase the branching factor considerably, and complicate its evaluation - not saying good or bad, just is.

'garbage' because those claimed hoops were never listed, strangely enough. Even when I asked for them.

you stress that you have "a perfectly open mind" and yet when people disagree you seem to take it extremely personally

I do not take it personally. I asked for evidence. Very little was forthcoming. I've an open mind to opinions backed up by evidence. Opinion without some basis is useless or worse. QV. anti-vaxxers, chem-trailers etc. Or do you support these people's views just because they opine so? Please answer this point specifically.

It certainly is not functional. It cannot fly in air. Like penguins, it can only 'fly' using a liquid medium. Hence the nickname. Coming soon to a river near you.

Interesting response. OK.

1) by relating experiences and impressions, 2) and listening to those of others with an open mind

1) may not be correct (plus my own impression that SO isn't terrible doesn't count?) and 2) I've a perfectly open mind, that's why I asked the question. I asked for evidence. That's a reasonable request.

it can be very obnoxious to ... to keep things on track

I've experienced some of that, in a minor form. That people are having trouble showing much evidence is what I keep coming back to. It may be that you're asking higher level questions than I am.

What I've just said is true...

That's useless to me or to this argument. I want evidence.

few examples I have would link you to my SO account

well, OK, I can sympathise with that - to an extent.

people might be reluctant to jump through the precise hoops you've laid out for them.

Garbage. What 'precise hoops'? I asked that those hard done by post some personal evidence, which is easily found (if it exists).

How do we "reasonably discuss any issues" unless someone presents examples of the "issues"? I suspect most of these "issues" don't exist.

reasonable people do not keep lists of examples like this

Per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21796919 you don't have to.

The lack of such delinquent SO examples here is telling.

One of the irritating things about SO is people who don't read the question before answering it[0]. As you apparently haven't read mine.

Are these your questions, as I asked? Of course you can find such problems, that's not what I was asking. But let's go on.

As to your questions, the first has been closed, and quite correctly as it's too vague.

The 2nd is not closed, and has answers. Problem?

The 3rd is not closed, and has an answer (albeit downvoted unhelpfully as you note). But the answer's there.

Not your questions anyway, and 1 closed correctly and 2 still open and with answers.

I don't accept this as strong evidence of wrongdoing.

[0] edit: ahem, not that I'm in a position to accuse others of this at times.

You (claim to) delete useful answers, then complain about SO's behaviour? Wow.

Yes. You post a question of yours that's been unfairly shut down. If you have no such question you clearly don't have a problem with x.

I asked "if you say it's happened to you..." therefore you don't need a log. Just log in to SO and bingo all your Q's with their A's are available. It's not difficult.

True. If they can discern a newbie question from a idle do-my-homework for me question, people tend to be very good. I grant there are some exceptions, but few (though irritating).

I guess I'm the only one who doesn't seem to have any problems with wiki[1] or SO.

Every time this comes up people will shout about how unfairly they've been treated, and sure I've seen questions closed when they shouldn't have been, but often they're closed because they're dups or just homework which could have been found with a dab of googling.

Odd that these complainers never seem to link to a question of theirs to show us an example.

So I'll present my challenge again, to the parent @kstenerud and anyone else, if you say it's happened to you, post a link so we can judge.

[1] One exception, did meet a gatekeeper on a wiki article I questioned, in the end we sorted it out civilly.

But now I've just polluted my once-pristine grammar file

What's bollixed up your grammar file are the users who absolutely insist on not writing syntactically perfect programs every time.

Your 2nd example is still cleaner than writing a hand parser that does the same thing, surely? A slightly mucky DSL has got to be cleaner, clearer, shorter and so more maintainable than a handwritten equivalent, no?

What would you want the grammar language to look like that handled errors 'properly'?

Maxwell's demon, again?

Well maybe. There were a class of very birdlike creatures called enantiornithines which I suspect are a completely different line and quite possibly not dinosaurs, however I've dug around before and am unable to find any precise statement of their genetic relationship to extant birds (and therefore their relationship to true dinosaurs).

Enantiornithines had the wing joint inverted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiornithes

"Enantiornitheans are thought to have left no living descendants ... the articulation of the shoulder bones – which has a concave-convex socket joint that is the reverse of that of modern birds"

If anyone can elucidate, please do.

At the bottom of the article is a link to another article on these creatures https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36651471 "Ancient birds' wings preserved in amber"

The problem is to me that you're imprecise in your claims, which is OK (edit: changed my mind, it's not ok because it's too close to ex falso (sequitur) quodlibet), and won't admit you're wrong when you are, which is bothering people.

You say "Prolog isn't based on first-order logic or anything", I point out you're wrong via wikipedia, you start fudging. You could have said it's not proper in your view because of the resolution strategy (depth first, typically) and allowing (red) cuts and we'd be with you all the way.

You say "You seem to have had no trouble understanding what I wrote", ducking the point made, viz. "That is not a First Order Logic statement", and that's the crucial point (and I'd agree, quantification over predicates isn't 1st order any more).

You evidently know your stuff but equally so do others, why are you burning bridges instead of trying to work out why there's disagreement. You could say prolog just isn't that impressive and there's better stuff available now, so in your view you don't consider prolog worthy any more, but you start denying it's a logic language at all.

Appreciated. Knew ∀ was in there somewhere... Will check out SLD

With respect, at least some of that's badly wrong.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog "Prolog has its roots in first-order logic"

I'm pretty sure quantification exists implicitly, but I'm too rusty. I think someone may better answer that than me (oh, "without some finite domain for X", ok, but that does not preclude it from being logic, and as for infinite domains, I doubt any any system can work with that without undecidability - and very quickly undecidable. But I'm no expert).

TLDR: true logic languages let you talk about infinities; core Prolog does not.

I cannot accept the first part of that, therefore can't accept the implication that prolog isn't a true LL.

"The thing to keep in mind about Prolog is that it's not really a logic language [...]"

WWWut? Eh??? Come again? Plz esspalin.

What do you actually suggest we use instead of lists?

Which from my ancient memory of prolog, are just the equivalent of cons cells, so come naturally to prolog.

Edit: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolog_syntax_and_semantics#Da...

"Lists are defined inductively: The atom [] is a list. A compound term with functor . (dot) and arity 2, whose second argument is a list, is itself a list. There exists special syntax for denoting lists: .(A, B) is equivalent to [A|B]. For example, the list .(1, .(2, .(3, []))) can be written (edit: cut for clarity) as [1,2,3]."

I think that's different. I'd guess the cat was unknowningly getting near the bird's nest + kids so mother was panicking.

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

I realise now that I very badly misunderstood the article :)

Rabbits are prey animals. I don't think(?) crows are.

Prey animals are wary and startle easily to reduce their chance of becoming lunch.