doctor_phil (u/doctor_phil)

doctor_phil commented on A 10x Faster TypeScript devblogs.microsoft.com/ty... · Posted by u/DanRosenwasser

tgv · 6 months ago

Not involved, but there's a faq in their repo, and this answers your question, perhaps, a bit: https://github.com/microsoft/typescript-go/discussions/411

doctor_phil · 6 months ago

Link to interview with Anders. (linked from the thread as well) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10qowKUW82U&t=1154s

doctor_phil commented on 3,200% CPU Utilization josephmate.github.io/2025... · Posted by u/atomlib

doctor_phil · 6 months ago

Why does the fix need to remember all the nodes we have visited? Can't we just keep track of what span we are in? That way we just need to keep track of 2 nodes.

In the graphic from the example we would keep track like this:

  low: - high -
  low: 11 high: -
  low: 23 high: -
  low: 23 high: 26
  Error: now we see item 13, but that is not inside our span!

doctor_phil commented on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting bbc.com/news/live/c625ex2... · Posted by u/yakkomajuri

doctor_phil · 6 months ago

Is this a serious question? From whose viewpoint are you asking?

doctor_phil commented on Gravitational Effects of Small Primordial Black Hole Passing Through Human Body arxiv.org/abs/2502.09734... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

holyhowitzer · 7 months ago

What's the actual point of this? So PBHs are hypothetical micro black holes that even if they do exist it's so unlikely to harm humans.

doctor_phil · 7 months ago

We have a hard time understanding what dark matter is. There are theories that some of the dark matter could be tiny black holes left over from the big bang, called primordial black holes (PHBs).

How can we detect PHBs if they exist? If they existed in large numbers, would we notice them? The paper says that you would notice a PHB if it went through you, since you would likely die. We are not noticing people dying by mysterious gunshot-like wounds without guns in any large amounts, so there can not be that many PHBs around.

The paper is (weak) evidence against a large amount of PHBs. The paper is also slightly funny.

doctor_phil commented on Brood War Korean Translations blog.sourcedive.net/brood... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

amatecha · 8 months ago

If the author sees this: with yt-dlp you can download lower quality versions of videos to save bandwidth, like so:

  yt-dlp -f "bv[height<=720]" <url>

(where <url> is your URL or video ID)

That will download up to 720p quality.

doctor_phil · 8 months ago

The author mentions just downloading the audio track. That's a lot less data than downloading any video at all. ;)

doctor_phil commented on Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager brioche.dev/blog/announci... · Posted by u/kylewlacy

doctor_phil · a year ago

I actually haven't tried Nix (or other nix-alternatives) yet. I've seen a lot of complaints about the language, but a lot of praise and love of the idea. I though Guix was the "main" competitor to nix, using a more mainstream language (Scheme). Is that still the case? How would Brioche compare against Guix if you are OK with both Scheme and Typescript as languages?

doctor_phil commented on 'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back to the public news.mongabay.com/2024/05... · Posted by u/Breadmaker

hanniabu · a year ago

How do you prevent people from getting to close to your house and invading your privacy? Someone can come on your property with the intention to rob you, stalk you, etc and if they get caught they can just they were passing through. And unless you have cameras it would make it pretty difficult to prove otherwise. When you're out in the woods all alone that makes you pretty vulnerable and this isn't a situation I would want to be in.

doctor_phil · a year ago

Preventing accidental privacy intrusion is easy. If you have a fence around your property (or even something as simple as a mowed lawn) then it is quite obvious where your plot starts and where the forest ends.

Someone malicious doesn't care about laws anyway. If they get caught today, couldn't they could just deny that they were there? I don't understand what would change in that case.

doctor_phil commented on What if null was an Object in Java? donraab.medium.com/what-i... · Posted by u/ingve

jjav · a year ago

> it's such a joy when you define a variable of type Foo and know it won't contain null

Why is that? I've never seen a good explanation of this point of view.

This all feels like just syntactic sugar to me. Sure you might not have null, you might have an empty object or any other variation. At the end of the day, if a value was expected to be available but is not available (for whatever reason), reliable code is going to have to deal with that absence. No matter how it is expressed.

doctor_phil · a year ago

The point is that every function is explicitly telling you if it can or can not return null. Your editor and typechecker will tell you if you need to handle null after calling that function.

If you have a non-null returning function that you need to change so it can return null, then your typechecker will tell you all the places where you now need to handle the new null return.

It doesn't need to be a very large codebase before this becomes a very useful tool to help when refactoring.

doctor_phil commented on The Performance Impact of C++'s `final` Keyword 16bpp.net/blog/post/the-p... · Posted by u/hasheddan

wvenable · a year ago

In my opinion, the only things that really matter are algorithmic complexity and readability. And even algorithmic complexity is usually only an issue a certain scales. Whether or not an 'if' is faster than a 'switch' is the micro of micro optimizations -- you better have a good reason to care. The question I would have for you is was your bunch of ifs more readable than a switch would be.

doctor_phil · a year ago

But a switch and an if-else *is* a matter of algorithmic complexity. (Well, at least could be for a naive compiler). A switch could be converted to a constant time jump, but the if-else would be trying each case linearly.

doctor_phil commented on After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/go... · Posted by u/iNic

dudinax · a year ago

Im not sure stalemate accounts for most draws at the highest level.

Getting rid of check does make for a better game at beginner levels.

It's both easier to teach and leads to exciting finishes ss noobs hang their king.

doctor_phil · a year ago

There are a lot of endgames that are drawn because of stalemate though. Many pawn endgames ( e.g. pawn and king against lone king) are drawn because of stalemate, but would be a win in most cases if stalemate didn't exist.