traderjane

It's the smallest number bigger than 0.

That's a coincidence of the particular number system you use, and many programming languages have multiple number implementations.

Racket starts with arbitrary precision rationals.

You must go up to something like limits to make ... meaningful.

Professor N.J. Wildberger is probably among the most well known "ultrafinitist" on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WabHm1QWVCA

I mention him because I would think he sympathizes with those who have concern over the meaning of this kind of notation.

What are generators for you?

Summary: 2011 OO FizzBuzz joke...

A stateful function with effects. Your language just doesn’t have a primitive to express it.

I wonder what about generator functions?

I find it somewhat comical that the governor of Maryland had his wife pull South Korean connections to buy masks. So terribly ad hoc.

So should black people stop organizing along lines of race, because that doesn't seem like an effective way to fight racism? That just means less black representation.

Plenty of people are hurt or killed through clerical errors by medical professionals, but you're not going to get anyone admitting that. Even for something simple, if you have any accusation to make in a medical context, it's probably time to evaluate your options and consider a new doctor, and only then make your accusation.

I think tech moved too quickly and in some ways, due to power being left on the table by government, tech became responsible; much like how businesses have taken up the responsibility of American healthcare due to the issue being under-addressed by government.

Now that YouTube is used by people of all ages, Google has to make social and political decisions about what kind of content is appropriate for different ages.

Previous discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22931290

Supreme Court opinion:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/18/820953617/the-killer-at-home-...

I'm talking about whether anecdotes of safe dogs is an argument that we might need different levels of licensing. Yes it's an argument, especially in the face of empiricism on the community burden of cats.

Of course it’s an argument because we can simply license based on predictors of burden. Small dogs which are projected to fall below a risk tolerance threshold should have less licensing burden.

Similarly, different classes of vehicles get different licensing requirements; saying all cars are the same is just lazy, and a regulation meant for big risky entities being applied to small ones is what we call regulation moats. We have enough pet owners that we should be able to quantify risks and burdens for the purpose of licensing. Here we have an article which provides empiricism on the community burden from cats.

IMO what’s important isn’t merely whether something poses proximal danger to human life (which asks for immediate and more severe solutions), but whether something poses greater community burden on a level where it’s hard to trust an individual to self regulate.

Owning any equipment or process with bad waste or ecological burden should also require extra licensing under the same rationale.

That's a bit different. I can fake swipe-up on a GUI but I can't fake Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Many reals are constructible so they are accessible in the sense that it's a theory of phenomena I can act and build upon, and the theory discusses up to an infinite number of cases even if I won't build out that far.

That’s still saying talent is awesome. A metaphorical chess player who can beat you half asleep probably has both a high minimum and maximum.

Is there consensus on the most common and advisable tooling setup for newcomers in Common Lisp?

Now that these cases are part of court and academic attention, what interval of events makes you think that gerrymandering is balanced?

The federal government also hasn’t provided the confidence that aid won’t be given on a political basis.

Intelligence organizations and other institutions handling very sensitive data likely have way better information discipline than almost any org, but even there singular individuals leak and cause outsized embarrassment.

Trust is bigger than big.

Some of my worries about having kids were right, though. They definitely make you less productive. I know having kids makes some people get their act together, but if your act was already together, you're going to have less time to do it in. In particular, you're going to have to work to a schedule. Kids have schedules. I'm not sure if it's because that's how kids are, or because it's the only way to integrate their lives with adults', but once you have kids, you tend to have to work on their schedule.

You will have chunks of time to work. But you can't let work spill promiscuously through your whole life, like I used to before I had kids. You're going to have to work at the same time every day, whether inspiration is flowing or not, and there are going to be times when you have to stop, even if it is.

I hate to say this, because being ambitious has always been a part of my identity, but having kids may make one less ambitious. It hurts to see that sentence written down. I squirm to avoid it. But if there weren't something real there, why would I squirm? The fact is, once you have kids, you're probably going to care more about them than you do about yourself. And attention is a zero-sum game. Only one idea at a time can be the top idea in your mind. Once you have kids, it will often be your kids, and that means it will less often be some project you're working on.

People who are competitive at one game sometimes jump to another based on market trends, and although the transition can be rough, enough make it through that it becomes a visible thing.

This is a mild argument for generality of competence.

Csikszentmihalyi is not respected by professionals of his field (there is no enthusiasm to followup on Flow). Of course Flow was also cargo cult executive catnip back in the day -- I suppose Mr. Fox's day.

You are missing the point. If I say, "I support X" and you say, "I support not X," that's just a disagreement.

Why do you use the word "we"? I wasn't directing my comment to you.

Indeed this is a communication mystery.

I actually think that accepting contributions productively is almost a full-time position and will turn you from programmer to manager.

Apple Maps is way more than 60% there in terms of quality but I still don’t find it very compelling for the same reason I won’t switch to DuckDuckGo - a palpable difference in quality gets me paranoid and makes me double check a lot of stuff.

That instinct to double check makes me go “Oh well let’s just use Google.”