opinali

8 ms·

1.
by opinali 4y ago
ChatGPT is a pure conversational model, while Google can integrate this into a vast knowledge model to work with actual facts. (Just speculation; Googler, but no inside info on this.) Of course, as Microsoft adds ChatGPT into Bing they shou
2.
by opinali 4y ago
Maintained an in house Java ORM for years, instead of moving to Hibernate like everyone else. Good for me learning lots of cool techniques, bad for company but it was their idea/plan in 1999.
3.
by opinali 4y ago
I was a late Spectrum dev, as a Brazilian geek several years behind the international market due to draconian restrictions on computer imports at the time (also, dad not rich enough to get me an Amiga...). Got one of my programs survive for
4.
by opinali 5y ago
Thanks! Replying a bit here since that post is from 2015. One can write anecdotal examples that are biased both ways. But let's talk about a single issue, the IX/IY registers. The IX/IY registers are heavyweight but one needs
5.
by opinali 5y ago
I'm not sure about this simple comparison of 6502 vs. Z80. Sure the Z80 instructions had higher latencies in clocks, but it also had more registers so you could write the same code with fewer memory load/stores and it had a 16-bit
6.
by opinali 7y ago
MSX was a hit in Brazil largely because of our closed market at the time, where importing computers was always very expensive and often illegal. A computer had to be a "national" product, even if that meant just a clone of foreig
7.
by opinali 8y ago
The mental part is easy, if you can do that: close your eyes and focus on the background white noise that exists inside your head, until it becomes a clearly audible buzz that oscillates in sync with your pulse.
8.
by opinali 9y ago
Virtually all big science/tech projects from early 20th century were state sponsored, so it was difficult for SF writers to imagine a future where important innovation might come from the private sector or emerge from large scale decen
9.
by opinali 10y ago
What do you mean? No sellers got stiffed by this cancellation, if this happens it's Google that foots the bill (minus its own share).
10.
by opinali 10y ago
Support for Javascript? (53-bit mantissa limit)
11.
by opinali 11y ago
Old times of hardware designed both for safer Assembly coding, and support for simple OS & compilers thanks to low-level safety... like Obi-Wan would say, "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age".
12.
by opinali 11y ago
We also accidentally dropped two nukes in Japan, and accidentally made Napalm and Agent Orange rain into the Vietnamese, with enormously high and vastly-civilian casualties in both cases. And these are just easy cases where direct responsib
13.
by opinali 11y ago
And we used to think x86 was a bad design of native code.
14.
by opinali 11y ago
I wish we'd crack down on this kind of abuse, but it's an arms race, and at some point hard to distinguish objectively. There's no solution without some parental responsibility... many parents are just too lazy, the hand a d
15.
by opinali 11y ago
Freemium is almost always a scam, remarkably for games where it degenerates into "pay-to-win". As a parent of two young tablet users, I'll happily pay a decent price for any game they want, but I won't allow them to spen
16.
by opinali 11y ago
Mandatory link if you don't know this: https://www.youtube.com/user/smalin/
17.
by opinali 11y ago
You didn't understand what I meant by "discipline". I didn't mean best-practices -- i.e. programmers learning to not abuse openness without any help from the language. What I meant was adding the missing controls to lang
18.
by opinali 11y ago
I usually love James Hague's posts, but this one has his head buried deep in the sand. And he's enough of a veteran to remember early Lisp and Smalltalk systems, where excessive openness in all aspects looked awesome for prototypi
19.
by opinali 11y ago
The worst part will be when they force us to translate all search's source code and internal docs to French. :)
20.
by opinali 11y ago
Yep, cities may have regulations for that, and they usually do these days. And I don't necessarily agree with your preference. My family used to own a large, historical house that had a huge front wall because the terrain was very elev
21.
by opinali 11y ago
Banksy's quote is quite ironic, coming from a guy that's well known as a master of publicizing his own work... even more, doing that by creating/exposing his work in "public space", using the walls of private and pu
22.
by opinali 11y ago
Don't worry about that single time you've been (mis)contacted, recruiters are really a hit-and-miss even at Google. Your best shot is being referred by a Googler. You claim to have significant activity in the community and OSS p
23.
by opinali 12y ago
Yeah, like http://www.codehaus.org/ is living forever? ;-)
24.
by opinali 12y ago
YouTube never allowed porn. Notice that "adult content" here means explicit sex, not things like artistic nudity that will continue to be allowed with an interstitial.
25.
by opinali 12y ago
"the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others." Remember that inequ
26.
by opinali 12y ago
I hope tons of other computers, not just Lenovo's, that have Superfish will also be using the same certificate that's now compromised. Need more shit in the fan toward these guys.
27.
by opinali 12y ago
What about knowingly putting consumers at risk? Suppose you buy a new car from GM and you later find out they've installed worn-out second hand brakes (on purpose, knowingly, and for profit motivation). But you're an old lady that
28.
by opinali 12y ago
I would rewrite that as "_explicitness_ improves readability". When I read Java code, I rarely have trouble to know what the code is doing (at least at a local scale). Not all static-typed languages are readable because they'
29.
by opinali 12y ago
You speak of "free market" but we're not in the 18th century anymore; advertising is a foundation of modern capitalism, as much as (for example) banks and the whole financial system. The economy is full of "overheads&quo
30.
by opinali 12y ago
One problem with paying individual websites is that you don't really want to create an account, providing your credit card information, to dozens of sites do you? What you suggest works well for heavily used websites (e.g. my daily fe

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