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> Contrarily, library development is about abstractions. Spend time hunting for an algebra

This line piqued my interest - what does an algebra mean in this context? Does anyone know of any good resources for further exploration?


It comes from the FP world. It's one of those things like monads that seem obvious when explained but sound opaque if you're not in on it.

Basically it's saying to create a formal set of types and formal rules about how they interact. If you search for permutations of phrases like "functional programming" "algebra" "data types" you'll turn up some hits. For instance [1]

[1] https://www.turingtaco.com/algebraic-data-types-structuring-...


Sandy Maguire wrote a fantastic book on the topic: https://leanpub.com/algebra-driven-design

You can also checkout the work of Conal Elliott: http://conal.net/


Algebraic structure. It's a fancy way of saying that a system follows certain patterns or rules.

As an easy example, you're probably quite familiar with the algebra of addition over integers. It describes rules like associativity and commutativity that describe some general transformations that are guaranteed to always behave predictably. Contrast this with subtraction over integers, which is associative but not commutative. Programs in general are neither associative nor commutative, so sadly no swapping terms or adding parenthesis willy-nilly.

A slightly more advanced example that you're probably still familiar with is mapping over Functors. A functor is just a thing that contains other things, and it includes collections you're familiar with like lists and trees. Well, the action of taking stuff out of a container, modifying it, and returning the results in their original position turns out to be an incredibly common and useful pattern!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_structure


Only guessing but my first thought was about how you have addition and multiplication and they both work for different types of numbers. But not in the generics/C++ template sense, more like working on Sets and Rings and other algebraic structures in the mathematical sense.

I don't know about enzymes, but bacteriophages (viruses that target bacteria) are species specific, and have been used successfully as antibacterial treatments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

Abandoning Ukraine risks emboldening Russia to continue their conquest of Eastern Europe - which, ultimately, increases the risk of nuclear war anyway, only with a stronger Russia with even more leverage. Being nuclear armed should not give a country license to seize any territory they wish.


Why is it impossible to make an ICE for current processors? Just because they're too complex and/or data exfiltration at speed is too hard?


They run at GHz frequencies, and are orders of magnitude more complex than the 8-bit processors of yore. ICEs were big suckers, and they cost a great deal.

That was for linear-socket, Sub-MHz-clocked, 8-bit processors, like the 8085.


The umbilical cord for a 500-700 pad BGA would be...impressive.


Other tools made it irrelevant, like boundary scanning on the JTAG bus, the EJTAG interface of the MIPS CPUs, the ETM of ARM chips, and so on. The required adapters are still somewhat pricey, but there are cost-effective solutions for both HW and SW.


Those numbers are assuming someone who skips a day of eating doesn’t increase their calorie consumption on other days to compensate


A lot of people assume humans are mechanistic, unfeeling CICO convertors and exclude psychological and physiological realities of losing weight. I've grown used to it. It took several tries for me to drop 50lbs and most of it was psychological and good habit formation. it took about 3 years to complete that journey.


I think the point is rather to communicate that there is no trick to around cico.

Instead, they are reinforcing that the path is clear, and the the barriers Are entirely psychological. Effort to build habits, effort to exert self control, effort to find solutions when you stumble.

If people are looking and waiting for a strategy that makes weight loss easier than inaction, they are bound for disappointment.

Some rare people find a passion that makes the process of getting healthy and fit more fun and easy than getting fatter, but that is exceedingly rare.


Exactly; when I fast for 24 hours, I feel a compulsion to consume every single calorie within a 3 block radius afterwards.


People who do this regularly tell me it gets a lot easier after a while.


Yep. You can't eat your way to weight loss. There there isn't any easy trick to beat the laws of physics.

Just eat less and burn more calories.


"just" is doing a lot of work here.


And keep track of the calories in the meals they do eat to make sure they are not compensating is going to take nonzero time.


Every dead body you've ever seen is teeming with life. Now, it's probably impossible for a novel life form to arise in a dead body, because the existing life (bacteria) that takes over has been optimized by billions of years of evolution to consume the resources around it better than any novel self-replicator possibly could. But that's not really evidence that a self-replicator couldn't get going if there weren't much better ones already around.


Gorillas don't sit at a desk 8 hours a day


Gorillas aren't just "a bit strong" such that it could be explained by different exercise routines; they're stronger than world-class weightlifters. They're not strong because they don't sit at desks, they're strong because their bodies are tuned for strength and because they don't route as much energy to their brains.

Contrary to a lot of nature documentaries, homo sapiens has quite a lot of advantages; well above average vision, exquisite muscular control, quite excellent hearing, almost unmatched vocalization abilities, and of course, the supernal brain, among many other attributes of note. But we do quite literally punch well below our weight, by any metric; body size, muscle mass, etc. The sci-fi trope of human being weaker than orcs, weaker than Vulcans, weaker than Klingons, etc. actually has some basis in fact.


We're the toughest of the land animals, by far.

The only land animals that can match us for endurance are certain breeds of horses and dogs, because we bred them specifically to keep up with us. There are lots of tribes around the world whose hunting tactic is to walk at a particular deer until it falls over dead.

We also have really good immune systems, giving us the ability to live all over the world in various filthy conditions without immediately dying from infection.

And our digestive systems are very flexible. Some prehistoric people were completely vegeterian, some lived entirely off of fish, etc.

Show me an animal that can do all that.


I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me, or amplifying, but to be clear, I am specifically referring to strength. Not endurance or any other sort of "toughness".

Can't have it all. All in all it's a good trade when you have "tools", which includes "weapons".


So you haven't seen me WFH yet... phew


They lay under a tree for 12. They aren't that physically active unless they must.


What’s the difference?


He takes every Friday off


Movement without energy is possible due to diffusion. Imagine you had a room with cellophane separating one side from another. Each side has a different gas, but both gasses are at the same pressure and at room temperature. Then, the cellophane is removed. Without adding any energy to the system, these gasses will mix until the whole room is a perfect mixture of the two gasses, simply because they both diffuse through the entire room. Something similar happens to allow viruses to move through your body (and, if they can be aerosolized, through the air).


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