alcover

Ha! thank you. Doubted these crazy anecdotes. Often we're tempted to repeat them to impress our audience. I know I do..

TLDR:

The sample is still on Mars. It presents tiny dots that, on Earth, form in soils due to the presence of microbial activity.

> The Making of the Atomic Bomb

I read it this summer. I learned a lot but got lost remembering who is who..

Could you recommend titles about discovery of radio-activity and after ? I'm fascinated by this subject.

If those titles were also a gentle introduction to the physics involved, I'd be delighted.

    fun repeat(str :: String, n :: Nat) :: List:
        [body]

I may be over-sensitive to looks but... god why ?

    fun repeat(str: String, n: Nat): List = 

would be prettier. (I guess authors had to compromise in affecting symbols)

Fascinating broken-bot glitch, thank you. Reminds me of some sci-fi movies.

May the Gods be with him. The nostalgia is very strong. Opening Flash and start a new project was an immense source of joy to me in the 00's.

Thank you. This reading lowers my anxiety. I believe we'll rationally - and in a hurry - come down to this kind of solution. It makes solid sense.

> (1) If I read "io.print", is this "the print function in the module io" or "the print method for the variable io"

I don't see the issue. Just look up the id ? Moreover, if modules are seen as objects, the meaning is quite the same.

> checking is much easier if the namespace is clear from the grammar.

Again (this time by the checker) just look up the symbol table ?

That's it. Plus they would work neatly on old computers/phones.

I agree. Something componenty like Flash, yes. But it'd be easier to subset what already exists..

Oh they would care if one shows them much snappier versions of services they use. They just don't know better.

> that means being compatible with websites that normal people use

No, new adhering websites would emerge and word of mouth would do the rest : normal people would see this fast nerd-web and want rid of their bloated day-to-day monster of a web life.

One can still hope..

I wish for this new year we reboot the Web with a super light standard and accompanying ecosystem with

    - A small and efficient JS subset, HTML, CSS
    - A family of very simple browsers that do just that
    - A new Web that adheres to the above

That would make my year.

I am also doing this. Like you i guess I want a nicer C. I produce my own errors though because it's better for the user.

Naive question: would using such an OS bring some security by obscurity ?

You need two keywords. One for assignability and one for writability :

    const ptr;  // can't reassign, can't write-through (if r/o by default)
    const mut ptr;  // can write

> you don't need both a "const" keyword and a "mutable" keyword

What if the lang has pointers? How express read-only?

It's important because we seem to be the only (visible) thing that can scheme.

I agree so much. For all we know yet, there's nothing out there. Nothing conscious or even sentient. So our lives and the life on earth are infinitely important.

I never understood this `we're but a speck`. Do you know of many other specks with life ?

> tracking of this information down to that level would be pretty pointless

Maybe pretty pointfull tracking shadow economy. When Bob sells moonlight stuff his clients will more often than not simply go to the ATM, withdraw the sum and hand it to him. Bob will then buy at shop with big bill. Shop owner will deposit bill at bank..

> Beware that only tagged unions are considered the same type

I don't get it. Tagged union is just a design pattern.

> as Julia Ecklar sings, it's kind of like construction work with a toothpick for a tool.

    I was taught assembler
    in my second year of school.
    It's kinda like construction work —
    with a toothpick for a tool.
    So when I made my senior year,
    I threw my code away,
    And learned the way to program
    that I still prefer today.
    
    Now, some folks on the Internet
    put their faith in C++.
    They swear that it's so powerful,
    it's what God used for us.
    And maybe it lets mortals dredge
    their objects from the C.
    But I think that explains
    why only God can make a tree.
    
    For God wrote in Lisp code
    When he filled the leaves with green.
    The fractal flowers and recursive roots:
    The most lovely hack I've seen.
    And when I ponder snowflakes,
    never finding two the same,
    I know God likes a language
    with its own four-letter name.
    
    Now, I've used a SUN under Unix,
    so I've seen what C can hold.
    I've surfed for Perls, found what Fortran's for,
    Got that Java stuff down cold.
    Though the chance that I'd write COBOL code
    is a SNOBOL's chance in Hell.
    And I basically hate hieroglyphs,
    so I won't use APL.
    
    Now, God must know all these languages,
    and a few I haven't named.
    But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
    that its flesh will be reclaimed.
    And the Lord could not count grains of sand
    with a 32-bit word.
    Who knows where we would go to
    if Lisp weren't what he preferred?
    
    And God wrote in Lisp code
    Every creature great and small.
    Don't search the disk drive for man.c,
    When the listing's on the wall.
    And when I watch the lightning burn
    Unbelievers to a crisp,
    I know God had six days to work,
    So he wrote it all in Lisp.
    
    Yes, God had a deadline.
    So he wrote it all in Lisp.

> Leta is also useless if your browser blocks all cookies, tracking pixels and other tracking technologies.

Err.. it would still be useful to mask your IP ?

What if browsers supported a property like <script hash=64192876> ? They would store the hash on first connection then verify on subsequent ones.

I know this should be refined and hardened but you get the idea.

> "hardcode" semi-constants

You mean you somehow avoided a load. But what if the constant was already placed in a register ? Also how could you pinpoint the reference to your constant in the machine code ? I'm quite profane about all this.

OK but I meant in already native code, like in a C program - no bytecode.

I often think this could maybe allow fantastic runtime optimisations. I realise this would be hardly debuggable but still..

> You just don't have people like Albert Gonzalez/Stephen Watt in America now

I don't know what the state of big corps netsec is today but these guys had it somewhat easy. They got initial access through weak wifi then pivoted with SQL injects and such.

I wonder how procedural it is - and really what procedural is. Is it that, at some scale, say apartment in a building, there is a polygone'd model - the apartment - and an apartment is only generated and rendered (with some randomness) when you enter it ?