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backlava

Re:We Hired a Blind Coder on Sunday June 12, 2016 @05:07PM (#11890231)
Help me. I'm being oppressed.
Re:We Hired a Blind Coder on Sunday June 12, 2016 @01:46PM (#11889267)
Shhh. Poe's law is getting me upvotes.
Re:We Hired a Blind Coder on Saturday June 11, 2016 @08:41PM (#11886114)
I think most programmers don't realize how much vision holds them back. I've been coding blindfolded for over a month and I'm never going back. If you are a touch typist what do you need to see? Not looking at things helps me to focus.

I do take the blindfold off while checking my work an during some parts of debugging.

Re:Moving Forward on Basic Income on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @02:03PM (#11808595)
None of the things in that list were themselves decisions. They were causes of poor decisions. Do you dispute that mental illness can be a cause of poor decision making?
I wouldn't recommend hanging out on Facebook, but if it puts you in touch with lost acquaintances that can be valuable.
Re:School Is to Submit on Saturday April 09, 2016 @12:27AM (#11459909)
In theory the market should balance this. Workers should be willing to accept less money for more rewarding work.
It also ignores that the probability can change over time. Past frequency is not always a good predictor for future probability.
Re:'Zeno effect' verified: Atoms won't move while you watch on Friday October 23, 2015 @09:06AM (#10438296)
There's the related example of the segfault termination message that was changed in a hex editor to "thank you for playing!" Wing Commander, maybe.
Re:Mercury Spill on Thursday October 08, 2015 @09:50PM (#10357655)
Insurance rates usually go up after a claim even if it's obvious that the claim doesn't reflect a higher future risk, though.
I personally only take placebos.
Re:Shinichi Mochizuki and the impenetrable proof on Wednesday October 07, 2015 @10:16PM (#10350510)
If he could have proven the theorem in a week despite its having a counterexample, that is impressive.
Re:Lisp is still a secret weapon on Monday September 07, 2015 @08:21PM (#10183615)
But in some languages bloat is a best practice.
Re:Categories for Programmers: The Yoneda Lemma on Tuesday September 01, 2015 @09:34PM (#10156954)
Programmers, yo don't neda lemma.
Your rhetorical style here is off-putting. I don't think he's committed any logical fallacy. It's perfectly possible to do charitable work selfishly. For example, if you were offered a choice between saving two lives or, for the same money, saving only one life but getting a nice packet documenting the one life saved, it's selfish to choose the latter for the purpose of making yourself feel better. Even though you're still doing good.
It happened once out of how many "tries"? What if there are an infinity of parallel universes?
But 10^23 could be vanishingly small compared to what's in the denominator of that probability. How do you have any idea what the odds are on the formation of life?
Why do so many people on forums like this expect intelligent life in space?
Re:If a Caller Says, 'I Am with the IRS,' He's Not on Saturday April 04, 2015 @07:34PM (#9322588)
And Bridget, et al, with cardholder services.
Re:Too Much Calculus – Gilbert Strang (2001) [pdf] on Thursday March 12, 2015 @10:05AM (#9190837)
cliché.
Re:Did a Human or a Computer Write This? on Sunday March 08, 2015 @10:47PM (#9168688)
print "This sentence was written by a computer."
Re:If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers on Sunday February 08, 2015 @09:22AM (#9017288)
So do I understand correctly that in this metaphor the poor quality of software is mostly because the practitioners are morons? I need to revisit the creeping complexity in my own projects and try to understand where I used the wrong nailgun, because this seems like a super productive analogy.
Re:Meant to Keep Mosquitos Out, Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In on Saturday January 24, 2015 @03:40PM (#8940934)
Rain?
If the system you are building makes sense, there is probably a reasonable type system that shows it to be well typed.
How do you do that? Eat it?
Re:Is your connected car spying on you? on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @05:29PM (#8564658)
The innocent until proven guilty approach to traffic violations is already a farce. If you have a job, it costs more to dispute a ticket than to pay it. I'm in favor of changes to the legal system that would allow rapid turn around in low stakes cases. Start with something very informal and quick and have an appeals process where the loser pays.

Cracking the local monitoring device can be disincentived just like speeding. If an officer sees you speeding and you're not self reporting it, bam. Bigger offense.

The thing about more effective enforcement in any setting is that it can increase justice (lower the lottery effects) but it makes it that much more important that you got the laws right to begin with.

Re:Is your connected car spying on you? on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @02:36PM (#8563770)
I assume that you're a software guy so I would hope that you would naturally understand the benefit of simplicity. Let's assume that a speeding ticket currently costs $200. What percentage of speeding instances do you think are currently fined? I'm going to guess far less than 1%. That means you can lower the fine to $2 per instance or probably much less and still be meting out the same expected punishment for speeding.

The goal of this fine is not to partition drivers into good and bad drivers. It's to incentivize good driving. Yes, good drivers are going to get fined occasionally but it will be a very small fine. Why try to make a more complicated rule that never fines "good" drivers? That will sometimes lead to drivers who decide to speed this once because it's free.

Re:Is your connected car spying on you? on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @11:24AM (#8562535)
No, you should immediately punish bad driving but the punishments can be much lower.
Re:Is your connected car spying on you? on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @10:05AM (#8562042)
I notice the consumer isn't a choice.
Re:On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs on Wednesday November 05, 2014 @10:03AM (#8562025)
I agree. When he started talking about how capitalism shouldn't create these BS jobs, I assumed a reasoned economic argument was coming. Then this passage. It's a cabal of elites who have decided to spend their own money occupying the masses. What a joke. He could have just as convincingly claimed it was space aliens creating the jobs.
Re:A proposal for named arguments for C++ on Wednesday October 15, 2014 @10:26PM (#8462996)
I think they should use this syntax:

void foo(static int name) { ... }

I don't think they're 'static' for anything on parameters yet.

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