Recent submissions

Comment · 12 years ago
In 1800-ies the typical American mother bore 7 children. So nothing amazing. Standard human biology.
Comment · 12 years ago
And they are also likely to be happier than you are ;) Primarily because of the same factors that you've mentioned.
Comment · 12 years ago
Well, pretty soon the U.S. military will consist of even more poorly-paid drones who care less about family and community than they do about abstract bits of information coming from the command center.
Comment · 12 years ago
How about using statistics/machine learning and showing these spam warnings only when people want them? Yes, it is hard, but this is not an excuse!

Besides, fixing spammy warnings shouldn't be more difficult than fixing actual spam! I mean, common, with spam you have intelligent adversaries and compilers haven't reached that level. Not yet, anyway...

Comment · 12 years ago
Following your logic: "You'd have to be crazy to give away stock as part of an investment round. Even it were possible I can't imagine many project creators making that choice. The numbers just don't make sense. Especially given how successful kickstarter has been without it."
Comment · 12 years ago
I dunno. Sometimes I'd be happy to drop 5-10k to a good project. Just to kickstart some good new tech or product. But not getting equity kinda sucks.
Comment · 12 years ago
Unknown Internet Source: "Despite the fact the light water and heavy water are chemically identical, heavy water is mildly toxic. How can this be? Since heavy water is heavier than normal water, the speed of chemical reactions involving it is altered somewhat, as is the strength of some types of bonds it forms. This affects certain cellular processes, notably mitosis, or cell division, due to the difference in binding energy in the hydrogen bonds needed to make certain proteins. Mouse studies have shown that drinking only heavy water along with normal feed eventually causes degeneration of tissues that need to replenish themselves frequently, and leads to cumulative damage from injuries that don't heal as quickly. One study likens the effects to those suffered by chemotherapy patients. Heavy water toxicity manifests itself when about 50% of the water in the body has been replaced by D2O. Prolonged heavy water consumption can cause death."
Comment · 12 years ago
Don't get me wrong. I like functional approach. I am developing in functional languages as well as in C/C++. I think these techniques actually do have a place in the production level code.

But, the mail point of the post was, that if you write an article like that, it should start from a warning to novices. This point of view is based on the experience of having to deal with fuckups from novice developers, who were trying to use and abuse the language to the full extends of their abilities. Including fuckups of my own.

PS. std::vector is a container.

Comment · 12 years ago
I very much agree. I should have stated more clearly that "20 years of coding" requirement in my post should include software (and hardware development) in a variety of languages, including functional languages. Or even domain specific languages like SQL, Matlab or VHDL/Verilog.
Comment · 12 years ago
Sorry about being an asshole here, but really. The problem with articles like that, is that a novice developer, with some 5-10 years of experience can pick up an article similar to that one and use such techniques without any need. With disastrous consequences. How do I know it? I've seen it happen. Again and again. Hell, it had happened to myself, years back.

An article like that should start with: "unless you really really know what you are doing and are an adult (20+ years of coding) you should probably avoid using techniques like that in the production code."

Comment · 12 years ago
Hey! This is great! I can fill my C++ code with statefull functors and lazy evaluation. The enemy shall not pass. No one will ever be able to debug it. Instant job security.

Seriously. I like experiments, but just keep this away from production code.

Comment · 12 years ago
Oh. Common. No need for any new inventions.

Just replace a person [that gets entangled with a particular outcome of a random event (have measured it)] with a simpler organism, say a dog. Or a hamster. Or with a roomba vacuum cleaner ;). Or even with a computer. And we definitely know that a state of a computer can be represented as a bit string encoded on any media. Including polarization of a bunch of photons.

Comment · 12 years ago
Can't I? What if the state of these poor remaining neurons and the body is scanned, encoded as polarization of a bunch of photons and sent to a receiver far far away? In that case good old environment would definitely end up behind the cosmic horizon.
Comment · 12 years ago
> So for my current body, the event never happened, although you might have written the number down and will always remember it. In other words, the past is relative.

So where this event would be for you? In the future? Again?

Yes. Past is definitely relative. Special relativity is very specific about that ;)

Comment · 12 years ago
And what if you would move away from that surrounding matter? Or, say launch it away with near light speed, so it would get behind the horizon at some point. How is that situation different from the one in which I've just generated the number and the light cone haven't reached you yet?

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