wfleming (u/wfleming)

wfleming commented on The state of SIMD in Rust in 2025 shnatsel.medium.com/the-s... · Posted by u/ashvardanian

vlovich123 · 2 months ago

Unless I’m having a brain fart it’s not commutative or you mean something by “relevant and appropriate” that I’m not understanding.

a+b+c != c+b+a

That’s why you need techniques like Kahan summation.

wfleming · 2 months ago

We’re in very nitpicky terminology weeds here (and I’m not the person you’re replying to), but my understanding is “commutative” is specifically about reordering operands of one binary op (4+3 == 3+4), while “associative” is about reordering a longer chain of the same operation (1+2+3 == 1+3+2).

Edit: Wikipedia actually says associativity is definitionally about changing parens[0]. Mostly amounts to the same thing for standard arithmetic operators, but it’s an interesting distinction.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_property

wfleming commented on OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly techcrunch.com/2025/10/27... · Posted by u/jnord

Al-Khwarizmi · 2 months ago

We would need the big picture, though... maybe it caused that death (which is awful) but it's also saving lives? If there are that many people confiding in it, I wouldn't be surprised if it actually prevents some suicides with encouraging comments, and that's not going to make the news.

Before declaring that it shouldn't be near anyone with psychological issues, someone in the relevant field should study whether the positive impact on suicides is greater than negative or vice versa (not a social scientist so I have no idea what the methodology would look like, but if should be doable... or if it currently isn't, we should find the way).

wfleming · 2 months ago

If a therapist helped 99/100 patients but tacitly encouraged the 100th to commit suicide* they would still lose their license.

* ignoring the case of ethical assisted suicide for reasons of terminal illness and such, which doesn’t seem relevant to the case discussed here.

wfleming commented on Pass: Unix Password Manager passwordstore.org/... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

nixpulvis · 3 months ago

I use pass a good amount, but I wish there were better OS/mobile integrations.

wfleming · 3 months ago

What kind of mobile functionality were you looking for? The (unofficial) iOS app is pretty good IMHO and integrates with iOS’s OS-level password filling, and also supports the pass-otp plugin’s format for 2fa codes if you use that plugin. There was a decent Android client I used a while back as well, though I don’t recall the name.

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pass-password-store/id12058205...

wfleming commented on Pig lung transplanted into a human sciencealert.com/pig-lung... · Posted by u/signa11

hallole · 4 months ago

That alone is insane, incredible. Hardly measures up to the ideal of leaving the hospital, good as new, but putting that aside: 18 days on a transplant, trans-species organ? I'm in awe!

wfleming · 4 months ago

18 days is how long the first human-to-human heart transplant recipient lived post-op. The more recent first pig heart recipient made it two months.

wfleming commented on The Useless UseCallback tkdodo.eu/blog/the-useles... · Posted by u/0xedb

wfleming · 5 months ago

> Adding non-primitive props you get passed into your component to internal dependency arrays is rarely right, because this component has no control over the referential stability of those props.

I think this is wrong? If you memoize a callback with useCallback and that callback uses something from props without putting it in the dependency array, and then the props change & the callback runs, the callback will use the original/stale value from the props and that's almost certainly a bug.

They might be trying to say you just shouldn't use useCallback in that situation, but at best it's very confusingly written there because it sure sounds like it's saying using useCallback but omitting a dependency is acceptable.

IMHO useCallback is still a good idea in those situations presuming you care about the potential needless re-renders (which for a lot of smaller apps probably aren't really a perf issue, so maybe you don't). If component A renders component B and does not memoize its own callback that it passes to B as a prop, that is A's problem, not B's. Memoization is easy to get wrong by forgetting to memoize one spot which cascades downwards like the screenshots example, but that doesn't mean memoization is never helpful or components shouldn't do their best to optimize for performance.

wfleming commented on Only on Nantucket: The Curious Case of the "Stolen" Mercedes nantucketcurrent.com/news... · Posted by u/brigham

kjellsbells · 5 months ago

Wait a minute. There were two G-wagens in the parking lot, one a 1985 model and one (based on the photo) much more recent. These are $100,000+ cars. The owner told the cops the keys were not left inside. Are we saying that a random ignition key from a 40 year old car can start a 21st century G-wagen?

The kids who jack Kias for Tiktok views may just have found a new hobby.

wfleming · 5 months ago

The “stolen” one is a 1991 model according to the article, so not that new (just kept in immaculate condition as the photos show, I was surprised when I saw it was a ‘91), and only 6 years between the two vehicles involved. Given those ages, it’s not shocking Mercedes was using the same key patterns.

wfleming commented on Jane Street barred from Indian markets as regulator freezes $566M cnbc.com/2025/07/04/india... · Posted by u/bwfan123

wfleming · 5 months ago

I look forward to the Matt Levine's section on this in tomorrow's Money Stuff.

wfleming commented on No One Is in Charge at the US Copyright Office wired.com/story/us-copyri... · Posted by u/rntn

wfleming · 6 months ago

https://archive.ph/MF378

wfleming commented on Amazon’s delivery drones are grounded in College Station, Texas wired.com/story/texas-ama... · Posted by u/impish9208

bluGill · 10 months ago

While I oppose restrictive zoning, that fixing that isn't going to change the situation. Where people live is a compromise and the single family house in the suburb has some great properties that mean many people will choose that set of compromises. The density of single family houses doesn't support a corner store. It did before the automobile/streetcar, but now that those are common people will prefer to travel to to the much cheaper big-box store (which also has more selection) for most purchases and that doesn't leave enough "I just ran out of one thing" to support a corner store.

Don't get me wrong, there will be more corner stores if they are allowed. However the economics of retail mean that most single family homes cannot not be in walking distance of a corner store. It gets worse when you account for single family houses being so car dependent people will out of habit drive to their neighbors even though the walk from where they park their car is longer than the door to door walk.

wfleming · 10 months ago

I can think of multiple “corner stores” that are the only business within a single-family home residential area within a few minutes drive of the house I grew up in in suburban NY. I’m pretty sure they all got grandfathered in and would not be permitted as new construction with the zoning, but they’ve all been in business since before I was born and are still going. These are mostly neighborhoods without sidewalks, and the stores have parking for only a handful of cars.

You’re right that “most” houses can’t be within walking distance of a corner store outside cities, but my anecdata experience is those residential communities can definitely support those businesses. They might require a short drive, but they’re still a lot closer than the shopping center, and a mix of “ran out of one thing”, deli/breakfast sandwiches, and beer keeps them in business.

wfleming commented on The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (2018) bloomberg.com/news/featur... · Posted by u/sebg

mrandish · a year ago

That's not what happened nor is it how he accomplished the "trick". There's no slight of hand or trickery. Everything is fully revealed near the end of the special on YouTube (which I linked). She won every bet, including the last. He never had any of her tickets nor did he even see her place her bets.

It's much simpler than that. Although the show appears in the beginning like it's a "magic trick" (though that is never actually claimed), in the end the audience is clearly shown how there's no trick at all. It's all simple probability and there really is no way to "beat the odds". Which IMHO is ultimately more entertaining and valuable than just some slight of hand or magic trickery.

wfleming · a year ago

Vlovich is describing the very last race only, where he did place the final bet. He takes her 4k and tells her he’s going to place the bet for her so how much she’ll win is a surprise. The horse he said he would bet on loses the race and then he reveals he actually bet on the winner. So for that race and that race only I do think he just bet on every horse and sleight-of-handed the right ticket to her. Timestamp 35:20 in the video you linked earlier. Right after that he explains how the “trick” worked for all the earlier races, which is what you’re referring to.