saosebastiao (u/saosebastiao)

saosebastiao commented on The New 30-Something nytimes.com/2019/03/02/st... · Posted by u/vinnyglennon

> On average, each millennial parent receives $11,011 per year in combined financial support and unpaid labor

That's the average?!?! What's the 90th percentile like, cause I've been sitting on a big fat zero since before I was a legal adult. And I know I'm not alone. These numbers are blowing my mind right now.

darksaints commented on Let’s Destroy Robocalls nytimes.com/2019/03/01/op... · Posted by u/howard941

aarongray · 7 years ago

Lots of feel good ideas in the post, but no actual good ideas. Back when Congress created the Do Not Call Registry, and then forced law abiding companies to pay $10,000 for it, they pretty much just compiled an amazing list of active phone numbers that non-law abiding companies could acquire for a pretty good price and then sell them in batches to smaller companies that couldn't afford the full thing.

Once virtual phone services were invented, companies didn't even have to worry about dodging the Feds, they just moved all their operations overseas. Feel good laws will not solve this problem, it's going to take actual technological solutions.

darksaints · 7 years ago

I have a really tough time comprehending why it is such a difficult problem to solve. The FCC could have solved it by now, independently of congressional legislation, considering the fact that they regulate the issuance of phone numbers. Those overseas companies still have to get their US phone numbers from an FCC regulated body.

What am I missing?

darksaints commented on Functional Programming in OCaml cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs... · Posted by u/lelf

jonahx · 7 years ago

What reasons are there for choosing OCaml over Haskell, either from a learning perspective or a practical one?

darksaints · 7 years ago

Ocaml has 100% less bikeshedding and no propensity for unending puritanical holy wars. It's a language for getting things done, as opposed to thinking about finding a way to do something that satisfies an obsessive compulsive desire to eliminate 100% of sides effects for no practical reason.

saosebastiao commented on Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using? · Posted by u/_7bva

_jcwu · 7 years ago

If you have 1GB, then forget anything OpenVPN. Use IPSec or Wireguard.

With OpenVPN you will bottleneck at ~300Mbit\s. With IPSec and Wireguard I have had no issues getting ~900Mbit\s to my own server.

saosebastiao · 7 years ago

Do you have any recommendations for wireguard providers? I'd love to try it out, but I don't want to host my own server.

saosebastiao commented on Ask HN: What VPN service are you currently using? · Posted by u/_7bva

sascha_sl · 7 years ago

PIA's offer and their policy on retention might be good, but they're still a US company and they still tried to smear several other VPN companies (including ProtonVPN).

Their clients are also messy memoryleaky electron apps with outdated chromium embedded.

saosebastiao · 7 years ago

I just about dumped PIA for the same reason. Downloaded their newest update, and it is soooo much better.

darksaints commented on Why Julia ucidatascienceinitiative.... · Posted by u/Tomte

zimablue · 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure that they just copied Fortan, which was written most of a century ago.

That's the second time you've ridiculously misrepresented my statements: "anyone disagreeing with you is an idiot" "deep faith will lead you to the conclusion" (and not deep faith + thinking about the actual problem, several convincing arguments and some ability)

darksaints · 7 years ago

One based indexing is used in tons of domains within mathematics.

Fortran chose 1-based indexing for a very obvious reason...it was the best translation from the mathematics literature that they were trying to implement. Because matrix notation uses 1-based indexing! MatLab, a language designed specifically as a high level language for matrix mathematics, chose it for the same reason. R, a language for statistics, chose 1-based indexing because it is a statistical language, and counting is one of the most fundamental operations in statistics, and 1-based indexing is the form used for counting.

Mathematicians obviously have no problem switching back and forth between 0-based and 1-based indexing for different domains, so it boggles my mind that computer scientists have turned it into such a huge holy war, and even more mind-boggling that 0-based zealots claim to have mathematics on their side.

saosebastiao commented on Why Julia ucidatascienceinitiative.... · Posted by u/Tomte

zimablue · 7 years ago

I guess, because often you're not arguing in order to convince your opponent, you're arguing to sway the crowd (and sometimes, decide yourself).

And I don't think they're idiots, I just think that they're wrong. Not many people have read Djikstra and (?) and have deep faith in mathematical beauty, or have even thought about this much, doesn't make them idiots.

saosebastiao · 7 years ago

The most prominent programming languages designed specifically for mathematical purposes (Mathematica, MatLab, Julia, R, Fortran), all have 1-based indexing. That should be a sign to you that 1-based indexing has a legitimate mathematical rationale. Djikstra wasn't speaking on behalf of the mathematics community. The idea that if you have deep faith in mathematical beauty that you'll come to the same conclusion is absurd.

saosebastiao commented on Why Julia ucidatascienceinitiative.... · Posted by u/Tomte

zimablue · 7 years ago

If you're going to give a counterexample, please give it.

I thought about my post after I read it and came to this- given Djikstra's (only system which can describe an empty interval and interval with first element without "unnaturals" ) and (?)'s argument that it creates a nice homomorphism between real-number intervals and integer slices then it's inarguable to me that 0-based is more mathematically elegant.

Where I guess there's space to disagree is this, I believe (to almost a point of faith I guess) that mathematical/logical elegance is important, and moving away from it is normally a mistake which leads to more pain in the long run.

saosebastiao · 7 years ago

Why? You've already come to the conclusion that anybody that disagrees with you is an idiot, and you think your argument is fully reasoned and covers all bases. Why should I believe that you would change your mind given new information?

saosebastiao commented on Why Julia ucidatascienceinitiative.... · Posted by u/Tomte

zimablue · 7 years ago

Much like turing completeness, you can build systems with any choice that "work", so an argument always has to be from aesthetics, which can include simplicity and "uglyness", but these aren't totally individual (you can get 99/100 people to agree on which of two schemes is "simpler"). Simplicity and beauty aren't something that even mathematicians dismiss as they can be trying to tell you something.

There's another argument, I can't remember if I originated it or read it but it's the one I find most convincing.

Consider that you have finite units of equal length 1 stretching away from you in a line. How would you specify to someone (using real-number measurements) to retrieve the first N=6, or describe the vector they occupy? You would say, take everything between [0.0, 6.0). If you use zero-based indexing, the numbering scheme specifying the interval is identical across both systems: [0.0, 6.0) => (python)[0: 6]== 0<=x<6. In real numbers the interval could be open or closed for this argument to work, because for there to be any elegant translation the integer upper bound has to be open. That's the only way you can keep the elegant transformation with 0 and 6. Caveat that thie works because you're numbering the real-number origin as 0 but try telling physicists that they're not to do that! O=(1,1,1) is an even more indefensible position.

So there's another mathematical argument that I either came up with or read elsewhere that feels deeply convincing to me. If there's 2 there's probably more, and here's the list of languages on wikipedia, you tell me which you'd rather work in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_lang...

Sorry for the irate tone but I really think that on reflection and fair consideration this is an obvious one.

saosebastiao · 7 years ago

It sounds like you haven't considered any of the multiple reasons or situations where 1-based indexing works out better.