alexkcd

7 ms·

1.
by alexkcd 5y ago
The article literally cites a statement put out by a respected medical journal on Feb. 29, 2020, and signed by 27 scientists, "roundly rejecting the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change d
2.
by alexkcd 5y ago
The demographic for our app was primarily the US.
3.
by alexkcd 5y ago
iOS apps are more profitable on a per install basis. So the discrepancy cannot be explained by there being multiple Android stores. Your hypothesis in brackets is the more likely explanation. Source: I worked on an app with millions of paid
4.
by alexkcd 5y ago
> We don't know if Web would be nearly as successful if it started with WASM instead of JS. The ability to just open a text editor and make a web page has served well in the early days. And you would be able to do that just fine. Al
5.
by alexkcd 5y ago
From [1]: > When writing SPIR-V, you can’t have two integer types of the same width. Or two texture types that match. All non-composite types have to be unique for some reason. We don’t have this restriction in Naga IR, it just doesn’t s
6.
by alexkcd 6y ago
I remember reading that too. I think Ben Horowitz might have talked about this in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, though I might be misremembering the source.
7.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Don't know of a good single resource that is comprehensive. A high level overview of autodiff approaches can be found here: https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~tvg/publications/talks/autodiff... Some example im
8.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Agreed. Besides Geometric Algebra, dual numbers also play a huge role in automatic differentiation -- the core building block of modern machine learning frameworks. I really like the analogy in this talk about how Al-Khwarizmi's six qu
9.
by alexkcd 7y ago
No, because 10M generates a steady return in a growing economy. So the steady-state consumption of someone with a net worth of $10M is much greater than someone with $0, all other things (e.g., income) being equal.
10.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Ah, that's good to know. This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks will read up on this in the docs!
11.
by alexkcd 7y ago
I'm not sure, but I think it's different. Specifically, I think you would do macro evaluation first, then fully evaluate the resulting program on run-time independent values, and only then evaluate the resulting program on run-tim
12.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Yes, Julia has some of it. But you're still required to specify the template parameters of a type (unless I'm mistaken). Whereas what I'm talking about is that any value of a data type could be compile time known. For example
13.
by alexkcd 7y ago
I really like how type checking is implemented for parameter lists. I think there's a more generalized extension of this. Specifically, I think that there exists a lisp with a set of axioms that split program execution into "compi
14.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Scooters could be using NFC/RFID payments today (e.g., Apple pay) instead of QR codes. So you could just walk up, tap your phone, and go. UWB offers no real usability advantage here. Scooter companies don't use these methods becau
15.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Since they say their intent is to compete on price with S3 / CDNs, it seems possible to be able to download a file without having permissions to delete that file. If that were not the case, then Sia would be limited to personal backup
16.
by alexkcd 7y ago
Seems like this could be a common use case for pirates. Similar to how Megaupload or Fileshare worked a few years ago. Sia's encryption doesn't protect the file hosts, if the uploader posts a link + decryption keys for pirated con
17.
by alexkcd 8y ago
Similarly, there's probably a ~€2.5 bn line item in the EU budget that reads "misc. Google fines". ;)
18.
by alexkcd 8y ago
Agreed. Even if 2d graphics somehow made sense for standardization, it's not the place to start. How about first standardizing a linear algebra library that defines 2d/n-d vectors & matrixes? It's a prerequisite for an er
19.
by alexkcd 8y ago
My point is that neither PoW nor PoS are decentralized. Which was in response to the original comment. I’ll let other people prognosticate as to what, if anything, that means for their future.
20.
by alexkcd 8y ago
Energy production is heavily regulated and centralized to a few entities. Very much like financial institutions. It's highly unlikely that the free market somehow sorts this out in the future, considering that it's the free market
21.
by alexkcd 8y ago
PoW will centralize towards cheap energy access. PoS will centralize to majority stake holders. I would bet that such energy access or stake follows a power law distribution. So long as that is true, neither system will ever provide decentr
22.
by alexkcd 8y ago
No, I think you mean Russia the government, not "russians" the people. The latter have little say over the policymaking of the former.
23.
by alexkcd 8y ago
Different programming domains require different tools. Language wars stem from programmers incorrectly extrapolating the requirements of their domain to other domains that they're unfamiliar with. C is a good choice for kernel developm
24.
by alexkcd 8y ago
Yeah, we're using Shopify for our online store. Recently started using their PoS system because we were already set up on their platform. I suspect this is a driving force for other customers as well. Shopify, Square and Stripe are poi
25.
This tiny video camera makes everything you shoot look amazing(wired.com)
36 points by alexkcd 9y ago|21 comments
26.
by alexkcd 9y ago
So long as mining remains profitable, as it has to be in order for anyone to spend resources on mining, the energy race will continue. As mining profits decrease over time, so too will the pool of miners who are able to mine profitably. The
27.
by alexkcd 9y ago
I'm not advocating for decentralization. Just offering that up as a common argument that PoW advocates use. I think that in reality, PoW systems become more centralized over time. You can already see that with Bitcoin. Eventually the g
28.
by alexkcd 9y ago
Proof of work systems are, at the core, a race towards ever greater energy consumption. They're an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Surprised how little attention this gets. I would argue that the benefit of decentralization i
29.
by alexkcd 10y ago
That's true for software that cares about the location of celestial bodies. In those cases use UTC by all means as event markers. That allows you to count calendar days. However to calculate the duration between two dates down to the s
30.
by alexkcd 10y ago
Getting the mapping function wrong will only result in displaying a human readable time wrong. Databases, and in fact all systems, should use TAI-UT1 internally and across computers. And only convert to something else when displaying a huma

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