- I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Related and perhaps interesting: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/114730157688607856
- “By default, deleted values are overwritten with NULL bytes (0x00). This is a safety feature since not doing so would leave 'deleted' entries intact inside the datastructure until they are overwritten by other values. If the user wishes to maximize performance at the cost of leaking deleted data, LITE3_ZERO_MEM_DELETED should be disabled.”
- I was a bit disappointed that this didn't turn out to be analogous to the “bee space”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive#Bee_space
- “The number of pageviews on your website and the number of likes on your tweets are fun to look at and sound impressive, but optimizing for them completely misses the point if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit).”
Profit is fun to look at and sounds impressive, but optimizing for it completely misses the point if it doesn't lead to something more important (e.g. human flourishing, or net societal gain)
- I had an interesting conversation with someone many years ago, possibly Brent Yorgey. We were thinking of arrays in quite different ways. To me, it was a data structure, with a specific memory layout: a contiguous block of memory containing a sequence of objects of all of the same size, specifically to support constant-time indexing. To him, it was an API, a mapping from non-negative numbers to values, and the underlying implementation could have been a hash table or whatever.
I think we're seeing a similar disconnect here. Some people think a string is a contiguous block of bytes, perhaps with a sentinel value on the end (C string) or a fixed-size count on the front. Others think of it as an API for storing text. These used to overlap, but in recent decades they have diverged substantially. The argument here is about the meaning of the word, not the technical reality of the thing it refers to, so it has no objective resolution.
- You're right, 5111 is more pertinent here.
5111(a)(1) says “shall mint and issue coins” but qualifies it explicitly with “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”. This is a clear delegation of authority.
If you don't think zero pennies is a permissible amount, what about one penny? Two? What minimum number are you arguing for here, and what's your justification for it?
If Congress had wanted to set a minimum number, they could have done so.
Reading it as ”shall mint” is wrong, I think. “Shall” qualifies the whole clause “mint in amounts the Secretary decides (etc.)”.
Understood that way, 5111 makes it unlawful to mint any pennies if the Secretary decides that none are necessary.
- I think this is wrong.
As far as I can tell the relevant statute is 31 USC §5112, and it does not require the minting of all authorized coins:
“(a) The Secretary of the Treasury *may mint* and issue only the following coins: ... (6) ... a one-cent coin that is 0.75 inch in diameter and weighs 3.11 grams.”
(Emphasis mine)
There may be another clause somewhere that requires the Treasury to issue all coins, but that seems unlikely to me. The _number_ of coins to issue of each type is left to the discretion of the Treasury; why wouldn't that include the option to issue none?
- Dennis Ritchie (co-inventor of the C programming language) had a page on his personal web site called “My other lives” with a list of other Dennis Ritchies.
“Outside of my main professional career, I have accumulated other WWW-recorded accomplishments and have other interests. Generally I pursue these interests using separate mail addresses, SS#, and DNA.”
It's preserved here:
https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/other...
It didn't turn out well. I hope this one turns out better.