mattmein (u/mattmein)

mattmein commented on France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/sebastian_z

simion314 · 9 months ago

>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

Weird you still have no idea why.

So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervised.... the story continues with similar issues happening and they reluctantly adding one more tule, then one more rule until they get tot he same original rules from the original village.

mattmein · 9 months ago

There's a WKUK comedy sketch that fits this story pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs

mattmein commented on Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think usher.dev/posts/2025-03-0... · Posted by u/tom_usher

latexr · 9 months ago

How does HN fit into that? I’m not trying to be cheeky, I’m genuinely interested, HN is technically an infinite website (though you do have to click “More”) yet you’re here.

Do you use the noprocrast settings? Does HN just fit differently into your brain? Something else?

mattmein · 9 months ago

A few years ago I set up a ublock filter to hide the next/more buttons on hacker news and reddit. It works great because I can still get my news fix, but I can't scroll endlessly.

Ublock Origin: ! 2020-10-11 https://news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com##.morelink

mattmein commented on Why Clojure? gaiwan.co/blog/why-clojur... · Posted by u/jgrodziski

tombert · 10 months ago

There are things in the core language that are still kind of bullshit. The thing that gives me the most headaches is how annoying it is to use Java libraries that have the lambda syntax.

You can't just pass in a Clojure `fn` into a Java lambda function. You have to `reify` the interface and implement the single method. It's annoying and verbose and frustratingly the equivalent code is considerably cleaner in Java as a result.

I know that this is a product of how Java implemented lambdas by having interfaces with a single method, and I'm not saying that it would be trivial to add into Clojure, but I don't think it's impossible and I think people have been complaining about this for more than a decade now.

So while I love Clojure, it's probably my favorite language, I do get a little annoyed when people act like it's "stable" because there's nothing to fix.

mattmein · 10 months ago

I think that particular issue was addressed in the recent Clojure release [https://clojure.org/news/2024/09/05/clojure-1-12-0] ("Clojure developers can now invoke Java methods taking functional interfaces by passing functions with matching arity.")

mattmein commented on Show HN: Chonkie – A Fast, Lightweight Text Chunking Library for RAG github.com/bhavnicksm/cho... · Posted by u/bhavnicksm

mattmein · a year ago

Also check out https://github.com/D-Star-AI/dsRAG/ for a bit more involved chunking strategy.

mattmein commented on Age is a simple, modern and secure file encryption tool, format, and Go library github.com/FiloSottile/ag... · Posted by u/gjvc

sharperguy · a year ago

I have been using agenix and it is very helpful. I am also looking into writing a system module that makes it easy to generate secrets on the fly.

A lot of secrets are just things like, backend and frontend of some service need to be configured with matching keys, but are both running on the same device. In that case you could have a systemd service which just generates a new random key if it doesn't already exist, and then ensure that the dependent services wait for that service to complete. That way you don't have to store anything in git for those at least.

mattmein · a year ago

Check out agenix-rekey[https://github.com/oddlama/agenix-rekey], it has the ability to set up secret generators.

mattmein commented on The flip-flop on whether alcohol is good for you (2023) slate.com/technology/2023... · Posted by u/nickwritesit

dang · 2 years ago

These flips seem to happen on a cycle of 20 or 30 years. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is roughly the generational cycle. My theory is that each new generation of researchers establishes itself by overturning the findings of the previous generation—especially the shakiest ones.

mattmein · 2 years ago

Reminds me of Planck's principle: > A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...

mattmein commented on Ansible is a Lisp? astrid.tech/2024/05/01/0/... · Posted by u/soopurman

mattmein · 2 years ago

Related: https://yamlscript.org/

mattmein commented on Thousands of subreddits pledge to go dark after the Reddit CEO’s recent remarks theverge.com/2023/6/10/23... · Posted by u/ValentineC

p-e-w · 3 years ago

> Federated authentication and open protocols are a thing.

In theory, yes. In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds.

Lemmy is constantly mentioned in these discussions as an open source, federated Reddit alternative, yet the largest Lemmy instance has 1500 monthly active users. That's... nothing. There are tens of thousands of individual subreddits bigger than that. The "Fediverse" isn't going anywhere.

mattmein · 3 years ago

>> In practice, they are a niche endeavor used by a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds.

I don't know anything about federation, but what you said basically describes the Internet when it started, so I don't see how you can imagine it is not going anywhere based on that. Most tech starts as a "niche endeavor of a bunch of hackers and computer science nerds" (I'm also thinking of Apple starting at a computer club).

mattmein commented on ValueObject (2016) martinfowler.com/bliki/Va... · Posted by u/ksec

jcelerier · 3 years ago

Can you show one large-ish GUI software written in Clojure? Something like, idk, Blender, DaVinci Resolve, Unreal Engine...

mattmein · 3 years ago

My point is that there is nothing about functional programming, specifically the "Data structure + Algorithm" style, that makes it unsuitable for building complex applications like air traffic control system or bank lending system, and it has in fact been used successfully in domains like that.

If you are really interesting in this topic, check out the following pages: https://clojure.org/community/success_stories

https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_industry

mattmein commented on ValueObject (2016) martinfowler.com/bliki/Va... · Posted by u/ksec

aryehof · 3 years ago

> what you need is really just Data structure + Algorithm

Lets hope your not in charge of building that new complex air traffic control system, bank lending system, or large inventory management system.

Did you learn nothing of over a decade of large projects using data-flow modeling (structured analysis)?

mattmein · 3 years ago

Data structure + algorithm is a valid way of building large programs. That is basically how Clojure is designed, and it works pretty well for big applications.

Functional programming in aviation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0x3EIqBrZxw

Functional programming in banking: https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/36297/nubank-buys-firm-...