Posts by DCFusor

Re: Communist

China hasn't been communist by most definitions for a long time. Like all examples of things calling themselves communism before, they simply became totalitarian.

Re: OMFG

Sadly this is true. The learning curve of any new language can't be that bad anymore - it has to be able to do the Turing stuff, usually does some math, some typing, some scoping - it's just a question of how to pronounce that in this one.

The library/module ecosystem now, that's amazingly complex, different, variably maintained; which of the 10 things in this repository that claim to parse some markup is the best for my task, and imposes what other design constraints - callbacks vs blocking, how does it handle poorly formed input?.

That's where the real pain resides. Evidently someone wrote wrappers around some C/C++ junk for ML (no one writes math intensive stuff in an interpreted language if they're older than 10) - and they are popular. If they'd been written in some older language, or some other "Fad of the year" one, the same would be true in ML - that would be the hot thing. It has little to do with python itself.

Yet more...

The data they (and the banks, what was that all about? Try opting out out Equifax or Experian.) sell to 5 eyes circumvents the 4th amendment in the US. I hear Europe has an ever more comprehensive thingie called GPDR?

As someone who used to make a living as a sort of product developer/inventor, targeted ads are especially poisonous, because seeing things I never expected was often helpful - hmm, can I make a permanent magnet cyclotron for medical uses with these new magnets at a fraction of the current cost? An ad you never see can't inform you about some new interesting thing you might discover a new (profitable) use for.

The divisive shouting match that politics has become almost everywhere is at least partly the fault of this siloing - and in the case of the big G, since they are part of the noisy minority, they think they're winning the arguments - they've siloed themselves. The press losing money on everything other than outrage clickbait hasn't helped, but they're not the only actors here.

And will probably be surprised again when or if people's votes are more or less honestly counted.

That's the worst part in some ways - when they believe their own lies...

Re: Watching for it

Not just leadership, the system itself.

It's not quite all about the money - being able to control the narrative has even more influence on politicians, because, after all that's what they mostly used those campaign contributions (known as bribes in other systems) for - to get elected. Hollywood and big tech have always had outsized influence on things - and now big tech has both narrative control AND lobby money.

No, I don't know the best answer to this set of problems. We let people who want power fight for it, and no matter who wins, it's one of "those types"...

So it's probably a french guy trying to throw the plod off, right?

Yeah, but....

Cars don't have the equivalent of air traffic control that will at least attempt to alert an off-course airplane, and if they can't manage that, divert other traffic, as they do in any emergency. With cars...it's a wild world out there.

Re: It's deliberate

If you think cookies are the only way they know it's you, you have one heck of a lot to learn about big data's gathering techniques.

That's a bug, not a feature.

Re: doesn't matter who hates it...

I like the & for reasons perl programmers will know...Although some of the indirection syntax HAS improved with later versions.

To the poster one up - ask Larry - perl was written - and became the p in lamp stack for a long time - because it's the best duct tape there is out there. Using it for larger programs is tempting, and I've been tempted...and failed to resist, but that's getting outside the main intended use cases...it's a lot more useful than sed and awk as duct tape, and I even have it as fastcgis on raspberry pi servers around here.

As to javascript, it's (in my rarely humble opinion) mostly grown because what else got into all the browsers? It was like a weekend project, with design flaws to match. Uses beyond that I've seen seem terribly wasteful, and maybe we'll get some relief from JS in browsers...

There's a rather interesting interview out there with Guido and Larry that shows philosophy. Guido insists his way is best (maybe, for some things) and lays out the roads and rules and all that. Fine.

Larry's response was, well, we just built some of the buildings, and then built the roads after we watched everyone and saw where they walked anyway...

Here you go - this is a raw stream and I set this to skip nearly an hour of advertising and backpatting intro. Might be informative to those interested in language design philosphy and all the big guys (for scripting languages) are there. https://youtu.be/csL8DLXGNlU?t=3060

Guido van Rossum, James Gosling, Larry Wall & Anders Hejlsberg

Re: The Register has asked Google to comment...

That is the entire point here. All big tech has the business model of eliminating humans and doing it all with algorithms - their entire profit margin lies in that approach. Asking (or demanding) that they use human judgement for anything means they'd need humans - and profits go bye-bye.

This is really basic.

And we let them get away with it, because no one states it as clearly as I just did - we've become afraid to tell ourselves the truth about all too many things, or cover it up some way.

Like these supposedly socialist-leaning companies are actually destroying the working class by eliminating their jobs, and PC-washing it with their rhetoric....not that anyone I know wants some of

those jobs, but some people can't wish for much better - another truth we don't tell ourselves is that unlike those here - we can't all learn to code and make a living at it as I did.

Re: biased against right-wingers.

These lefties call people like Jordan Peterson (NDP!) and James Damore "right wing" even though what they say is simply well documented truth in psychology- accepted for decades and with good backing in real science of how things work.

But it tears their narrative to shreds. Therefore, it's right-wing wrong think. "If you're not with us..." - they borrowed that line from somewhere else.

Along with "always accuse your enemy of what you're actually doing".

Re: Interesting

Most modern scopes use an ascii protocol more or less swiped from tektronix. I have code talking to and controlling some GW Instek scopes here - and it seems to be the same protocol (it's fairly dumb...) used by other brands as well. It will easily run on a pi (I do so here).

You might get some good out of looking at the stuff at this link (my site) http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=989&start=0&hilit=scope+control+code

Or in general, downloading this and that programming manual for the various brands - most have them online, but it takes some fishing...in the GW Instek case it's done by series, so looking for your model doesn't find it...

If that's not enough, my email is also my handle here at gmail.com

Good luck! You're not going to find anything free out of the can, nor fully as you want and pre packaged. Some assembly required (unless you're simply wealthy enough to buy a Tek and their software).

Re: Spoiler Warning?

Petty partisanship has nothing to do with power at this level. And has little power at this level.

One might say that the partisans are in fact commanded by and jealous of the raw power of companies that control the narrative - which determines which if any of the partisans retain or gain power.

You mean there are people who didn't already know this or remember how that microsoft breakup (didn't) happen. Or how we now have AT&T back, now named Verizon? Puleese, this isn't how things work.

Zaphod was there to distract from the real power, remember?

Or a bug in the assumption that it's the star changing and not something that alters the propagation speed -

It's usually the assumptions that get you. Unstated ones doubly so.

Re: Keeping mum

Perhaps to avoid admitting they broke laws themselves, as with the whole Stingray business? Searches without warrants, illegal hacking, all that? They've been caught a few times already..

In this case, it's in a good cause. But we all know the line about power and corruption. and they've demonstrated the truth of that one plenty as well.

Re: IoT

Just waiting for Dan Tentler to hear about that one -

Start a building on fire over the internet? Challenge accepted!

People like me who refuse to own one? Don't need it on the farm...really don't need the bill. Far better computers in the house. Just another delicate and expensive thing to lose/break with a monthly bill.

Sorry, I learned better as a youth than to get addicted to worthless bloodsucking crap.

What's funny is the number of outfits right now that just can't believe I don't have one, and think I'm being some sort of resistance or liar when I won't give them my nonexistent mobe number...

I can just imagine what will happen if I get pulled over and a cop demands my phone...

Because you know, even the starving children in ${Ridiculed country of choice} all have them - largely true. But we don't get whatever free they somehow get.

Re: 10nm

Um, if there's little I and O, then you can compute Mandelbot sets, but not do much useful work.

You can't fix all that with cache - it slows down due to address computation the larger it becomes, which is why there are multiple (each one slower) layers already - for that very reason.

The glory of a general purpose computer is basically if() - it can do something different based on the input. That's why there's branch prediction and translation lookaside and all that - and nope, if we use a computer for a computer, and not just a glorified single purpose machine (where all the programming is hardware, like a totally pipelined FPGA perhaps) then that cache slowdown with size issue comes back, and as the original poster (Alan) said, it's all down to bandwidth outside the CPU being the limit - which has been true for quite a long time now. And trying to overcome that by keeping more inside the CPU with predictions and multiple choice pipelines to precompute just in case IS THE VERY REASON FOR THE SECURITY ISSUES. And would never have been bothered with if the latency to main ram and the other speed parameters weren't the limit.

Duh, as Drs mentioned, words do mean something.

What's the use of a computer that produces no output?

Go watch, or better yet, edit a video...it's nearly ALL IO other than encoding/decoding, which in all modern cpus or gpus have their own bit of logic, and in Intel - and NVidia - have embarrassingly not actually gotten faster in a long time. A gtx 1050 is as fast at that job as the newest shiny that costs many times as much...

Can I have some of what you're smoking? Reality increasingly bores me. Even the fantasy promoted by politics simply makes one cynical in the end.

Re: MySQL?

Oblig, sorry....kind of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

"Right now, I'm thinking of how much fun it will be to..."

Re: @iron

When they manage to get rid of cash, they can make rates negative - instead of earning nearly nothing on your savings, they can effectively dock you instead. One really wants to avoid becoming trapped in such a system. NIRP has been seriously discussed by those who'd do it if they could.

Re: What are you in for?

And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench.

Re: Jail Time?

The constitution doesn't contain corporate law. But the corporate "veil" can be pierced if there's demonstrable malfeasance and I believe sufficient negligence.

Somehow, even in utterly egregious cases like this, it never seems to happen, though.

Something about the big guys being able to afford the better legal help, or golf clubs for the judge.

So they're kind of hard to sue and win big.

Re: History has shown...

It's more accurate anyway, or at least HL Mencken would agree with it.

And this isn't something said yesterday.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_l_mencken_101109

Back in the day, before anywhere near as much PC baloney existed...(in a couple of senses) the saying

was "Fear, uncertainty, and deception" in regards to Microsoft, which entity it was originally coined for. After all, doubt ~- uncertainty. The change was kind of...one of those things like wikipedia edits or a stealthy re-write of history.

Re: Why am I not surprised?..blame the FCC, PUC and City..

They often don't even care about parties - that's just a distraction from the cronyism, with a slight tilt as to which parties favor which bit outfits more. Hey, look, a squirrel!

That's because the bankers were smart enough to buy law (or repeal of regs) to make their actions legal before the crash. The biggest ones get away.

Re: If you would just hire

One could wish you weren't so close to the truth, Charlie.

An attitude shift and where the money goes is required, and those are HARD.

Which is why all sorts of gimmicks are tried instead. Which is hard, but like the saying goes, "always time to do it over, never time to just do it right".

If there was a good way, other than earned reputation (too slow) to tell the good developers from the so-so, and reward them accordingly - this wouldn't be such an issue, people would strive to be in that good group, and things would take care of themselves.

I'm unaware that there is such a good way to tell. I only started getting the rewards due my own skill after a few gimmes and building a reputation. If there was a shortcut, I didn't find it.

Certainly no MBA or PHB is going to look past the next quarter's numbers in the current setup.

VC's are actually *more* patient than that crowd about that one - some will wait a year or more.

They have other flaws - money that needs returns and few obvious places and ways to achieve that in this economy.

Re: Here is a first

The entire idea of outsourcing is ignorant. If the military can't hire and retain their own inhouse expertise we've got a large batch of other - dangerous - problems. Setting up a single point of failure-leak is just dumb, no matter who gets the contract. The basic idea is flawed from the beginning. The cloud is in general NOT cheaper than doing it correctly yourself on prem, unless you have very elastic requirements and the cloud is capable of fulfilling those - even in a "military conflict" situation, which is laughable here.

You know there's trouble when it's so stupid even Trump sees that.

What else is the military going to want to shovel off to a vendor because they won't be competent?

Not talking about the pointy-end guys here, but desk pilots who need some water in their booze - and maybe even "learn to code" so they even understand the issues.