timv (u/timv) - Readit News

timv commented on Why Is SQLite Coded In C sqlite.org/whyc.html... · Posted by u/plainOldText

nimih · 2 months ago

> If you’re convinced the code branch can’t ever be taken, you also should be confident that it doesn’t need to be tested.

I don't think I would (personally) ever be comfortable asserting that a code branch in the machine instructions emitted by a compiler can't ever be taken, no matter what, with 100% confidence, during a large fraction of situations in realistic application or library development, as to do so would require a type system powerful enough to express such an invariant, and in that case, surely the compiler would not emit the branch code in the first place.

One exception might be the presence of some external formal verification scheme which certifies that the branch code can't ever be executed, which is presumably what the article authors are gesturing towards in item D on their list of preconditions.

timv · 2 months ago

The argument here is that they're confident that the bounds check isn't needed, and would prefer the compiler not insert one.

The choices therefore are:

1. No bound check

2. Bounds check inserted, but that branch isn't covered by tests

3. Bounds check inserted, and that branch is covered by tests

I'm skeptical of the claim that if (3) is infeasible then the next best option is (1)

Because if it is indeed an impossible scenario, then the lack of coverage shouldn't matter. If it's not an impossible scenario then you have an untested case with option (1) - you've overrun the bounds of an array, which may not be a branch in the code but is definitely a different behaviour than the one you tested.

timv commented on Cockatoos have learned to operate drinking fountains in Australia science.org/content/artic... · Posted by u/pseudolus

fblp · 7 months ago

Given the article says this has spread amongst populations I'm suprised there's only one video on the internet of them doing this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2025/jun/04/su...

This is also an unconventional drinking fountain.

timv · 7 months ago

> This is also an unconventional drinking fountain.

Why do you say that?

At least in Australia, drinking fountains ("bubblers"!) are fairly non standardised. I don't recall seeing many with that rubber top, but the rotating release mechanism is pretty common. I'd say press buttons are more common but both are typical.

timv commented on BYD to offer Tesla-like self-driving tech in all models for free asiafinancial.com/byd-to-... · Posted by u/senti_sentient

haunter · a year ago

>At a $14k price point

In China maybe where it's 100k RMB (~roughly $14k). Everywhere else it's the double or at least $25k. It's £26k ($32k) in the UK. It's €32k ($33k) in Germany

Even in Mexico it's $26k (535k pesos) not $14k https://www.autocosmos.com.mx/catalogo/vigente/byd/dolphin

timv · a year ago

In Australia the entry level "Dolphin essential" is A$30k which is between US$18.5k and US$21k, depending on the (fairly volatile) exchange rates.

Still not US$14k, but not quite the $25k it is in other markets.

timv commented on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=itpcs... · Posted by u/HelloUsername

bigstrat2003 · a year ago

The switch isn't a handheld though. It's way too big to be a viable replacement for a 3DS in that regard, Nintendo just gave up on that market segment for whatever reason.

timv · a year ago

Phones have a lot of that market covered, and the Switch Lite gets close enough for a lot of people who want something other than a phone.

I guess Nintendo don't see enough left over space to bother trying.

timv commented on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=itpcs... · Posted by u/HelloUsername

VyseofArcadia · a year ago

> Microsoft of course couldn't compete with an "Xbox 2" vs a "PS3"

Part of me wants to think that consumers can't possibly that uninformed, but I know in my heart I am wrong.

They should have done what Nintendo (usually) does and left the numbers out of it. Call the next iteration of the Xbox the <something else>box.

timv · a year ago

Even Linux users in 1999 (when you had to be pretty well informed to know that Linux even existed) were truly that uninformed.

http://www.slackware.com/faq/do_faq.php?faq=general#0

timv commented on Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=itpcs... · Posted by u/HelloUsername

Neonlicht · a year ago

How is the Switch a competitor when it doesn't even play most games that you can find on Playstation or Steam?

I think Nintendo is- respectfully- in their own lane.

timv · a year ago

The market penetration of the switch makes it harder for Sony to expand into the family/casual gaming space. That forces Sony to stick to the AAA lane (which is where their focus is) limiting their growth opportunities.

If the switch had been a failure, then a lot of households that currently have a switch (only) would have bought a different console and that would likely have been a PS5 (even if they held on to their previous generation console, and waited a couple of years until the PS5 price dropped below $500)

I have a PS4 and a Switch at home. The kids play the switch and occasionally play on the PS4. I can't justify buying a PS5 because there's only so much gaming time available, and family gaming is covered by the switch and my personal gaming is good enough on my PC. Take the switch out of the equation and that changes.

PS5 is winning the AAA console lane, no doubt. But Sony could have been making more money if they could also own a significant portion of the family console lane.

timv commented on Australia's 3G Shutdown – Why your 4G/5G Phone is now Blocked medium.com/@jamesdwho/aus... · Posted by u/the_mitsuhiko

doctor_radium · a year ago

I live in the US and have never heard of a phone that uses a different technology for emergency calls vs. normal calls. Why is this? Is it worldwide?

As for the problem itself, I can understand government regulators not wanting to micro-manage the situation, but the carriers know what's on their networks, and a divide-and-conquer approach would seem capable of reducing the number of handsets to something manageable. For example, the Asus Rog phones are quite expensive, and official communication with Asus would seem enough to learn what they're capable of and what firmware upgrades may be coming. Done. In general, carriers shouldn't be blacklisting anything. If you're buying a non-carrier-branded phone, caveat emptor. But in Asus' case, at least, I expect they would try to make it right.

I actually applaud the Australian government for being involved at all, as there was nary a peep from the US government and lots of people were forced to buy new phones who really didn't need them. The sin here seems to be throwing a "plan" together at the last minute.

timv · a year ago

It's been more than a decade since I was involved with emergency services, but ~15 years ago there was a requirement (in Australia and elsewhere) that phones must be able to call emergency services from any available network even if the preferred carrier did not have service in that area. I assume that is still the case.

That requirement forces phones to have some degree of special handling for emergency calls. It may have required (or been interpreted to require) that a phone make emergency calls over 3G if VoLTE was unavailable. I can imagine someone deciding that means "lets just use 3G for all emergency calls" because who ever expected a case where 4G was available and 3G was not.

timv commented on An admittedly wandering defense of the SSO tax ssoready.com/blog/from-th... · Posted by u/noleary

AnthonyMouse · a year ago

> I did no such thing. I explicitly acknowledged market power several times.

Your premise is that if market power exists then market power is the problem rather than price discrimination. The issue is that price discrimination isn't possible without market power. Its presence implies that the company both is capable of and is overcharging the people coerced into the higher price tier.

> That I suppose "market power" implies monopoly

This is not an argument you make explicitly, but it's something readers commonly assume and my point is to highlight that companies successfully engaged in price discrimination can and do have market power even if they don't have a full monopoly.

> Of course it was. I acknowledged as much! I quite literally said the example doesn't generalize. The example serves to illustrate a 'there exists' claim. I felt a concrete example would be easier to follow than some kind of generalized model.

And I'm providing the 'there exists' claim for the alternative, to demonstrate that price discrimination can be (and often is) detrimental to customers without providing any countervailing benefit to any of them.

> The obvious observation we can make is that such competitive dynamics imply that no one would make any profit!

Profit doesn't really work that way. For example, if a company takes investment and uses it to buy a building to operate out of, the money not paid as rent to a landlord is added to the investor's profit, but if the company takes less investment and instead pays rent, the same money is counted as operating costs. Likewise, if you develop software needed before you can start operating and you take investment to pay for it, the net returns are called profit, but if you take a bank loan to pay for it then the interest on the loan is counted as operating costs again. The interest rate you'd pay the bank would even be proportional to the risk you'd fail, unless you post collateral, for which you'd need an investor.

So a company that didn't take any investment and operated entirely by renting everything, taking loans and using off-the-shelf software instead of developing anything in-house wouldn't be expected to make any profits in a perfectly competitive market -- and there would also be no investors to pay any profits to. Profit in companies that take investment would still be present and equal the cost (time value) of the assets bought with the money, but in a perfectly competitive market this would exactly equal the risk-adjusted market rate of return in the overall capital markets.

The distinction in uncompetitive markets is that profit exceeds that amount. (Or at least can; a market can be uncompetitive and then the companies become inefficient from lack of competitive pressure and waste the money they extract from customers instead of returning it to investors.)

It's true that "perfectly" competitive markets don't exist in the same sense that perfect anything doesn't exist, but this is splitting hairs. A gold coin might be .999 gold and you can say that it isn't perfect but you can still distinguish it from a wooden nickel.

timv · a year ago

Its presence implies that the company both is capable of and is overcharging the people coerced into the higher price tier.

"Overcharging" is a concept without a precise meaning. The SSO-capable version has a feature that cost money to build and support. That it is sold at a higher price (often alongside other enterprise features that cost money to build and support) is not proof that they are overcharging.

Any company that is tying to recoup the costs of building those features will charge the customers that use those features. The existence of a price differential between the 2 editions does not tell you whether they are overcharging.

timv commented on Pixel Watch 3 blog.google/products/pixe... · Posted by u/eamag

015a · a year ago

Garmin has contactless payment.

timv · a year ago

It's not as widely available. My bank doesn't support registering my card with GarminPay. Pretty much every bank supports Apple and Google.

timv commented on The juror who found herself guilty texasmonthly.com/news-pol... · Posted by u/Tomte

eru · 2 years ago

It would perhaps be useful to run some experiments to see whether having a jury of 12 discuss is more accurate than having 12 independent jurors that don't communicate. (Or only communicate in very formally prescribed ways, but never meet.)

You could run those experiments by constructing cases, or re-constructing known cases.

timv · 2 years ago

It would also be interesting to consider smaller groups for discussion. Break the jury into 2 groups of 6, or 3 groups of 4 people.

I wonder whether you could get the benefits of weighing the evidence collectively but reduce the influence that 1 or 2 dominant jurors might have.

If 2 or 3 independent groups reached the same conclusion, does that increase the chances of them being correct?