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Comment · 26 days ago
Not the grandparent you were replying to, but from the note added to the original linked issue (emphasis mine):

> Rust's type system is *intended to prevent memory unsafety. Upholding this promise is something we take very seriously*, .... It is a large priority of the Types Team to *fix all type system unsoundnesses* and to work towards there being a solid foundation to minimize the risk of unknown ones.

So, yes, if you have a group who "takes very seriously" the job to "fix all type system unsoundness", I would expect them to utilize some manner of formal proof verification that their type system is mathematically correct up to some defined limit.

Comment · 5 years ago
I wish I could take full credit for this, but I'm paraphrasing Andrew Plotkin (developer for the Inform text-adventure programming language):

Steam machines failed because they tried to replace Windows with a worse user experience. In 2015, there were fewer native games and worse compatibility; nobody is going to just rise up and displace Microsoft from their entrenched throne as THE Desktop PC Gaming platform. Alternately, the Steam Deck is essentially inventing a whole new market; if players want a mobile, AAA game platform the only contender right now is a Nintendo Switch (which has an entirely different games library, with limited overlap mostly in "indie" game titles). So now instead of fighting Microsoft where they're strongest, they're fighting a console manufacturer in one place they can expect to be weaker.

Then once the Steam Deck is a widespread commercial success -- and from pre-orders, it looks like that's guaranteed -- Valve will have the foothold to push SteamOS as an equal games development space as Windows desktop. Coupled with the reports that Proton currently runs over 90% of the popular games which don't have a native client, this very well could introduce Linux (albeit indirectly) to the wider market in a way that could eventually challenge Microsoft's comfortable monopoly position.

Comment · 6 years ago
or as seen on Twitter[1]: "Every January: One month hiatus from work, and I could finally publish my draft of the next bestselling novel

April 2020: Today I alphabetized the jelly beans"

1: not a reference to any specific tweet, just the general tendency of people to speak about grand plans and then never execute on them.

Comment · 6 years ago
No; if you look at an old rotary phone, you're counting the number of finger holes in order to determine pulses.

To dial a 0, pulse the line 10 times.

Comment · 6 years ago
> But I do not at all understand the enmity some nerds have for non-replaceable batteries.

Devices exist on a repairability spectrum, from the industrial appliance which is delivered with full electric schematics and every part stamped with a replacement order number, to the black-box NUSPI ["no user serviceable parts inside"]. The enmity is not really about batteries, but having that one question stand in as a measurement to ensure the device meets a minimal standard for allowing third-party repair.

Comment · 6 years ago
> There isn't one game, there are infinitely many, and different people will have success at different games. But there is also the meta-game: The game of being able to win the highest variety and largest amount of different games.

I am less certain the meta-game is inherently about broadening the variety of status measurements, and more about setting the terms by which status is measured. A person who can win a large variety of such measurements might trend toward a broadening strategy such as you describe (since this is likely to favor their odds of winning any given contest), but ultimately the problem of of a "split decision" between multiple comparisons means we should expect any given contest to only ever use one means of status measurement.

Therefore the meta-game is about winning the selection process for that measurement (with the broad strategy being just one among many possibilities)....

Comment · 6 years ago
No math proof, but I'd favor a cluster strategy as being faster to force a (partial) solution to existing clues.
Comment · 7 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
>> Apple : "The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings"

> ... If Location Service is enable, these services will have access to them ...

> The Author seems to miss the fact that the unknown service causing the icon to appear isn't in the list of individual settings.

OK, so how do we know what this mystery service does? The obvious candidates (E911/SOS, FindMyPhone, Location-based ads, etc) all appear in the list. I think this definitely raises questions about what remaining service is asking for location, and especially what that is being used for. Given that this article is coming from a security blog, there is a definite implication of questioning the intentionality / consent of a broad setting like "location services on/off" has unknown, unlisted users [and especially when most users of such a setting have individual toggles].

Comment · 7 years ago
Also not in this thread until now, but two thoughts:

First: A car can be "the means of production", if you're a driver for Uber/Lyft.

Second: the issue I understand is that this website isn't letting one person take fruit from a tree, but treating all such things as open invitations for all persons to take from the tree. To your analogy, that isn't taking a single Model T car, but seizing the factory and stating you're making cars for the entire city with it.

Comment · 7 years ago
I'd be even more specific than that: understanding the transformation to turn a looping function into a recursive one is the key gateway into being able to comprehend code which uses advanced call-stack manipulation patterns, such as continuations or coroutines. While I hesitate to call such methodologies _simpler_ code, such patterns still will certainly yield more maintainable, reliable code in a strict single-thread language such as Javascript.
Comment · 7 years ago
Well, that isn't the only bug in the code, just the one which is being requested for prompting the warning. It's been about a decade since I've written significant C/C++ code, but something far more dangerous stood out to me:

Upon first reading, I'd assume they are seeing the maximum unsigned values, but their variables aren't declared as unsigned -- and C/C++ default to signed values. Secondly, representing the nth power of two actually takes n+1 binary digits, so e.g. 28 is a one, followed by 8 zeros -- overflowing any 8-bit variable, signed or unsigned! This is undefined behavior as-declared (signed values), but would be entered as a zero for explicitly declared unsigned variables.

Personally, if I were to be implementing this, I'd use bitwise operations to generate the correct values, and explicitly acknowledge in a comment something like "the following code knowingly breaks the abstraction of numeric values. It is likely not portable to other hardware, nor should you assume easy extension to other variable types. Das Quellcode ist nicht fur der gefingerpoken!"

Comment · 7 years ago
A search on Google turns up this Common Lisp code, which appears to define a number of SI units (both base and derived) in the sort of manner described.

http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conve...

Given the way this appears to be defining some sort of class-based hierarchy, with the correct type requirements this code should perform exactly the sort of unit/type checking the grandparent post wanted, but I didn't go digging into the rest of the project files to confirm this code defined things in the correct manner for that to work.

Comment · 8 years ago
Well, for a SNES/NES/Atari/Genesis/etc. classic device, the issue might not be getting ROM images but doing so legally. Sure, I could find a torrent containing the entire NES+SNES library for making retro-Pi... but that doesn't make it any less piracy if I don't own original carts for all of those games. The fact that so many classic PC/DOS games either have been put online by the original owners for free (such as SimCity or the Zork trilogy) or can still be purchased on Steam or GOG.COM (like Sierra's Kings Quest/Space Quest collections) makes this sort of device far less valuable from that angle.

Furthermore, that leads into a question of "Why should young people care about the copyright of 20+ year old games?" ... which probably is actually a very good question deserving of serious examination instead of mere snark.

Comment · 8 years ago
It's not the form factor but the official FAQ page that really makes me think this is a RPi+UI, especially when the last question/answer pair is:

> Can’t I just buy a Raspberry Pi, an enclosure, gamepad, keyboard, and mouse, 3D print a faceplate, install Armbian, buy 30+ games, build the source for ARM or install/configure in DOSBox for each and every game, create a menu system with game art, and tell everyone about it at parties?

> No.

With no other explanation or expansion on that answer, it reads to me like "That was our idea, now go away". OTOH, if they manage to license a number of classic games which aren't legally available elsewhere (like the original Sid Meier Civilization, or Lemmings) this might be worth the surcharge.

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