mswtk

Technically, the actual statement in Galois theory is even more general. Roughly, it says that, for a given polynomial over a field, if there exists an algorithm that computes the roots of this polynomial, using only addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and radicals, then a particular algebraic structure associated with this polynomial, called its Galois group, has to have a very regular structure.

So it's a bit stronger than the term "closed formula" implies. You can then show explicit examples of degree 5 polynomials which don't fulfill this condition, prove a quantitative statement that "almost all" degree 5 polynomials are like this, explain the difference between degree 4 and 5 in terms of group theory, etc.

Sure, you can do that. The parent's point is that if you want this mapping to obey the rules that an actual definition in (say) first-order logic must obey, you run into trouble. In order to talk about definability without running into paradoxes, you need to do it "outside" your actual theory. And then statements about cardinalities - for example "There's more real numbers than there are definitions." - don't mean exactly what you'd intuitively expect. See the result about ZFC having countable models (as seen from the "outside") despite being able to prove uncountable sets exist (as seen from the "inside").

Yeah, that's more or less how I feel about it as well. I would even go further and say that the existence of the open world makes the Legacy Dungeons worse. It's quite unfortunate because in terms of visual design and architecture, they're some of From's best work; however, they tend to be full of the same enemies you've already fought multiple times in the open world, taking away from the feeling of venturing into the dangerous unknown that I personally find so compelling about these games.

It's also unfortunate that this looks like a game with a lot of build variety, that would really lend itself to multiple playthroughs, but actually playing through the content again sounds like a pain. Going through the wiki and making a list of places I actually need to go is not my idea of a good time.

This is just plainly false. While not quite as bad as the average Ubisoft game, Elden Ring's world design is very similar to Elder Scrolls, Skyrim in particular. Most of what the author brings up are aspects of the game not related to the open world. The open world itself is not nearly as trend-bucking as a lot of other game design decisions From Software make, which is honestly a bit disappointing. In general, Elden Ring is their closest game to a typical AAA title, a lot of the quirks and contrarian elements from their earlier games are absent in it.

You don't have to, and I personally also find small-talk with strangers rather tedious, but in the specific cases brought up by the author, it sounded like he would've saved himself time by just briefly explaining his reasoning. Which also would've had the nice side-effect of treating his interlocutors as rational human beings worthy of a measure of respect.

Fundamentally, a lot of knowledge we possess as individuals is socially constructed, in the sense that we trust the process and the institutions that created it. Even if this knowledge can, in principle, be verified, it is usually impractical for an individual to do so.

Putting science aside, how can I be confident that the basic facts presented in, say, a NYT article, are correct? I can trust the reputation of the NYT as an institution, and I can also trust that any inaccuracies in the article will be called out by other publications. But if I feel everyone's in on a conspiracy to push a particular viewpoint, then I need to anchor my knowledge in a different institutional framework - even if that might just be a random Facebook group of strangers, or my weird uncle, or a niche radio station.

This, incidentally, is why the censorious push against "disinformation" is misguided in principle. It's sweeping the underlying problems under the rug in the hope that they disappear spontaneously. In an open society, truth can only be established as a result of public discourse, anything else is just the representation of the perspective and interests of some authority. Whatever its source, the seemingly growing distrust in public institutions will not disappear simply because we make social media companies remove its most obvious symptoms.

> You think John Carmack was the only one trying to make 3d games when Doom came out? Thousands of programmers where trying to. Does that make him a 10x programmer in your opinion? Or more like a 1000x?

I think the idea of 10x programmers gets so much pushback because it's often bundled with this kind of toxic hero worship. There's a difference between acknowledging the impressive ability of outliers, and idolizing heroic one-man efforts as the pinnacle of what we should all aspire to as software developers.

Incidentally, Carmack was not the only programmer on early id Software games, and Doom was far from the first 3d first-person game made. Arguably, it wasn't even that ambitious compared to, say, Ultima Underworld, but the programmers working on that get much less immediate recognition.

As a matter of fact, these discussions often remind me of that famous IGN quote of Warren Spector. Except we really should know better on HN.

That honestly sounds like a failure to communicate with the researcher first and foremost. If it's difficult to prioritize the fix internally due to organizational politics, that's one thing, but that shouldn't stop the bounty team from communicating the status to the researcher. In fact, that should be the simplest part of the whole process, as it's completely within the purview of the bug bounty team. If they handle that right and build some trust, they might be able to successfully ask the researcher for an extension on disclosure.

Case in point, Apple likely could have come out of this looking much better if they didn't ignore and then actively lie to illusionofchaos. That really isn't a very high bar to clear.

My understanding of doing things "properly" as an engineer, is picking the solution with the right tradeoffs for my use case. If the cost to the business of having some amount of scheduled downtime occasionally is significantly less than the engineering cost of maintaining several 9s worth of availability over major migrations, then I consider the former to be "done right".

> I would suggest looking up what the Dutch did in relation to race equality in history and how we were involved in a lot of slave trade, sometimes even to the US.

I am aware of the history, but that's not enough to give the words themselves emotional charge and significance. The reason this is so for Americans is that the consequences of slavery and racial segregation are keenly felt right now - it's not just an abstract wrong committed on people long ago and far away. As a point of comparison, I'm from Eastern Europe, and the word "slave" is derived from "Slav" - but this is effectively ancient history with little bearing on the present, and so the word doesn't carry any emotional charge or special meaning.

To put things differently, is there a segment of the Dutch populace for whom the words "master" and "slave" signify that kind of viscerally felt injustice, as they do for black people in the US? This isn't a gotcha question, I genuinely don't know, and these kinds can be arbitrary and irrational. For Poles, "slavery" is abstract, but "forced labor" brings up some major traumas from around World War 2, for example.

> Kinda Karl Popper style of disprove your own theory?

I was hoping someone would do it for me in this thread. :) Might still happen, if not, I might have to do some digging.

I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for at least a couple actual examples of this change helping people feel better about participating in technology. In the absence of such, it all feels very performative and, dare I say, a cheap way to score good PR for participating organizations. I don't think it really hurts anyone to an extent that it should be opposed, but neither does it really help, until proven otherwise.

> However, I am Dutch and can say that these cultural sensibilities are far outside of just the "American" one.

Are they? Does the master/slave terminology also have very negative connotations in your culture? I thought it was almost exclusively an American thing due to their historical circumstances.

> I for one think it's great that people are willing to make things a little more accessible for more people. If people want to be part of our community of developers I think it's great that these organizations listen to people who might have a problem with certain terminology. Even though I don't have a problem with those terms, I think it's still worth evaluating if they're worth keeping if it makes it harder for someone to be part of our community.

Is it more accessible? As in, is this change driven by complaints from actual people who feel excluded by the terminology? As far as I'm aware, none of the projects making these changes even claims that, it's all speculation on behalf of hypothetical offended parties.

Not that it really makes it less annoying to have terminology used by people from all over the world be dictated by American cultural sensibilities, but it's easier to stomach if there's some material justification behind the change.

There is no way to separate dissent from disinformation a priori, other than by making assumptions about the other party's good faith. And so, you can paint anything you disagree with as disinformation if you think poorly enough of them, as you've demonstrated in this post. And it's very easy to think poorly about political opponents in particular.

The end result will be no dissent whatsoever, just two groups calling each other liars at every step.

The report linked mentions the ACLJ being involved in several ECHR cases, and submitting an amicus brief in favor of the recent Constitutional Court decision. That's it. You think that's enough to push the government and judiciary of a nation of 40 million into confrontation with a large social movement, with mass ongoing protests. And it's me who's naive?

Again, it takes a serious amount of arrogance to read two paragraphs of text in a report and believe yourself to be better informed than someone who spent all of their life immersed in the historical and social context of what's going on. So, with all due respect, I have the same advice for you as for the original post I replied to: Get over yourself. Not everything in the world is about Trump.

> managed to turn Poland against abortion

As a Pole, this comes off as incredibly arrogant and self-centered. People outside the US have agency as well, they're not all just puppets of US special interest groups. Not everything revolves around you.

Factually, the claim is also false. The ACLJ's brief was completely irrelevant to the decision in question.