throwaway889900's comments

On: Ask HN: Where to get used hardware cheap?

[throwaway889900]

Liquidation auction sites, estate sales, the like. Govdeals or equivalent.

On: JSLinux

[throwaway889900]

Sounds like you need an Alex Horne.

On: Ask HN: Why is uptalk intonation so prevalent in ChatGPT voices?

[throwaway889900]

Just gotta pipe it through a granular synth afterwards

On: An Overwhelmingly Negative and Demoralizing Force

[throwaway889900]

Sometimes a lambda is more readable. "lambda x : x if x else 1" is pretty understandable and doesn't need to be it's own separately defined function.

I should also note that development style also depends on tools, so if your IDE makes inline functions more readable in it's display, it's fine to use concisely defined lambdas.

Readablity is a personal preference thing at some point after all.

[banannaise → throwaway889900]

> "lambda x : x if x else 1"

I think what you're looking for is "x or 1"

[gopher_space → throwaway889900]

My cleverest one-liners will block me when I come back to them unless I write a few paragraphs of explanation as well.

[ethbr1 → gopher_space]

>> Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian Kernighan

https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#kernighans-law

[johnnyanmac → throwaway889900]

Ymmv. Know your language and how it treats such functions on the low level. It's probably fine for Javascript, it might be a disaster in C++ (indirectly).

On: It’s not mold, it’s calcium lactate (2018)

[throwaway889900]

At that point just call it Redwall Abbey!

On: C++ proposal: There are exactly 8 bits in a byte

[throwaway889900]

But how many bytes are there in a word?

[o11c → throwaway889900]

If you're on x86, the answer can be simultaneously 16, 32, and 64.

[EasyMark → o11c]

Don’t you mean 2,4, and 8?

[o11c → EasyMark]

Bits, bytes, whatever.

[wvenable → throwaway889900]

"Word" is an outdated concept we should try to get rid of.

[anigbrowl → wvenable]

You're right. To be consistent with bytes we should call it a snack.

[SCUSKU → anigbrowl]

Henceforth, it follows that a doublesnack is called a lunch. And a quadruplesnack a fourthmeal.

[tetron → SCUSKU]

There's only one right answer:

Nybble - 4 bits

Byte - 8 bits

Snyack - 16 bits

Lyunch - 32 bits

Dynner - 64 bits

[kstrauser → tetron]

In the spirit of redefining the kilobyte, we should define byte as having a nice, metric 10 bits. An 8 bit thing is obviously a bibyte. Then power of 2 multiples of them can include kibibibytes, mebibibytes, gibibibytes, and so on for clarity.

[jaysonvantuyl → kstrauser]

ಠ_ಠ

[cozzyd → tetron]

And what about elevensies?

(Ok,. I guess there's a difference between bits and hob-bits)

[xigoi → tetron]

This is incompatible with cultures where lunch is bigger than dinner.

[iwaztomack → SCUSKU]

or an f-word

[pclmulqdq → wvenable]

It's very useful on hardware that is not an x86 CPU.

[wvenable → pclmulqdq]

As an abstraction on the size of a CPU register, it really turned out to be more confusing than useful.

[pclmulqdq → wvenable]

On RISC machines, it can be very useful to have the concept of "words," because that indicates things about how the computer loads and stores data, as well as the native instruction size. In DSPs and custom hardware, it can indicate the only available datatype.

The land of x86 goes to great pains to eliminate the concept of a word at a silicon cost.

[o11c → wvenable]

Fortunately we have `register_t` these days.

[bobmcnamara → wvenable]

Is it 32 or 64 bits on ARM64? Why not both?

[billti → bobmcnamara]

ARM64 has a 32-bit word, even though the native pointer size and general register size is 64 bits. To access just the lower 32 bits of a register Xn you refer to it as Wn.

[iwaztomack → pclmulqdq]

such as...?

[kevin_thibedeau → wvenable]

Appeasing that attitude is what prevented Microsoft from migrating to LP64. Would have been an easier task if their 32-bit LONG type never existed, they stuck with DWORD, and told the RISC platforms to live with it.

[BlueTemplar → wvenable]

How exactly ? How else do you suggest CPUs do addressing ?

Or are you suggesting to increase the size of a byte until it's the same size as a word, and merge both concepts ?

[wvenable → BlueTemplar]

I'm saying the term "Word" abstracting the number of bytes a CPU can process in a single operation is an outdated concept. We don't really talk about word-sized values anymore. Instead we mostly explicit on the size of value in bits. Even the idea of a CPU having just one relevant word size is a bit outdated.

[elteto → throwaway889900]

There are 4 bytes in word:

  const char word[] = {‘w’, ‘o’, ‘r’, ‘d’};
  assert(sizeof word == 4);

[Taniwha → throwaway889900]

I've seen 6 8-bit characters/word (Burroughs large systems, they also support 8 6-bit characters/word)

On: Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?

[throwaway889900]

The entire Redwall series! Man I'm hungry now... could go for a nice cordial and scone...

On: Ask HN: What vendor does a good job with new employee swag packs?

[throwaway889900]

Don't you usually have to assemble those yourself? Like get a bunch of vendors to brand some generic items and put them in a bag?

[synu → throwaway889900]

It seems there are a few companies that handle that for you now, not sure if any are really worth it though.

On: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

[throwaway889900]

Very simply, the income they generate from violating the law is more than the fines they will receive if those violations are brought up.

On: Ask HN: Did you buy anything during Prime Day?

[throwaway889900]

I got an amazon gift card because there was a promotion for $12.50 credit, and then with the prime card that's an extra $3 credit. So basically a free $15 for spending money on money I'll eventually spend anyways.