00:00:56 yeah I am somewhat conflicted about these strips 00:01:51 beating up strawmen is kind of annoying 00:02:01 that xkcd is so awful... 00:02:10 especially because it's usually in a contrived situation with unrealistic dialogue because xkcd 00:02:29 but I think some of the best xkcd strips are the ones that poke fun at the tropes of nerd culture 00:02:52 this is a crappy example yes 00:02:59 kmc 00:03:07 being ~random~ isn't even a nerd culture thing 00:03:30 yeah 00:03:31 well nerds don't exist so by implication any cultural thing is a nerd cultural thing 00:03:34 see also the alt text 00:03:37 the recent footnotes one was very "classic xkcd" imo, it was cute 00:03:38 where rm admits that he did this as a kid 00:03:46 but also misunderstands information theory i think 00:04:17 at least he takes bitcoin donations 00:04:19 he's used the same character (read: hairstyle) before, and it has generally been for contemptible stramwn 00:04:23 *strawmen 00:04:23 lol really 00:04:34 yeah, it's right on the front page 00:04:37 maybe this guy should just write what-if more and do comics less 00:05:13 kmc: well, 'interesting' is interestingly hard to define, in information theory 00:05:30 nooodl: yeah 00:05:39 there was a strip about pickup artists with this guy which would have been shit but relevant if it had come out a good few years before it did 00:05:40 since obviously he's right that random sequences have high (infinite) kolmogorov complexity, but such sequences are 'boring' 00:05:42 people have been suggesting that since before what-if existed 00:05:55 Bike: yeah. i have heard of quantifying "Bayesian surprise" 00:06:02 what ifn't 00:06:25 i think RM finds some personal satisfaction in releasing 3 comics a week, no matter how bad 00:06:32 even in the middle of personal crisis 00:06:38 i can't really begrudge him that 00:06:50 but that doesn't mean i'm not going to make fun of the result when it sucks 00:07:16 bayes and kolmogorov is interesting, you know that bayesion prior distribution that's in a sense "perfect"-ly bias-free, but uncomputable? 00:07:24 i've heard that 00:07:27 don't really understand that 00:07:44 i'm not sure anyone but solomonoff really does 00:07:52 i think xkcd has almost never missed an update and has been running for almost 8 years 00:07:56 there was that AIXI thing a while back related to it and AI, it seemed a bit dorky but oh well 00:08:01 i can see wanting to keep the streak alive 00:08:10 ALERT hazardous concentrations of the word 'Bayesian' detected 00:08:17 recommend purge of LWers from channel 00:08:30 #esoteric is not a phyg! 00:08:39 i'm actually more of a frequentist :D but that doesn't mean i don't like good probability research 00:08:43 what the fuck is a phyg 00:08:48 `rot13 phyg 00:08:48 i don't know what a phyg is and i never want to 00:08:50 cult 00:08:56 "how clever" 00:09:18 anyway i have a book on kolmogorov that goes into uses for bayesian inference and stuff 00:09:31 it's the word that the Singularity Institute^W^WMachine Intelligence Research Institute people use to talk about whether they're a cult without giving googlejuice to "singularity institute cult" 00:09:37 and I think LWers as well 00:09:46 there's some neat bits about reconstructing phylogenetic relationships based on approximations of kolmogorov complexity (that approximation being gzip) 00:09:48 (SingInst sold the name "Singularity" to someone else) 00:09:51 but i understand about 8% of the book 00:10:04 gzip: best esolang? 00:10:13 is it tc 00:10:29 * copumpkin yawns really loudly 00:10:31 it's cool that just whatever practical compression algorithm can be used like that, i think 00:10:41 hi copumpkin 00:10:45 Bike: when i was an undergrad I did some research into quantifying complexity in the cell lineage tree of C. elegans 00:10:48 hi 00:10:48 didn't really go anywhere 00:10:51 openttd 00:10:53 is a thing 00:11:02 c elegans is the best imo 00:11:14 basically trying to make a small automaton which will describe the cell division pattern 00:11:20 i remember way back when i read dmm's list of esoteric things i thought his tinyurl compression algorithm was amazing 00:11:28 c difficile is better 00:11:38 kmc: oh shit, developmental makes it like 90% craczier 00:11:41 copumpkin: do not want 00:11:57 c facile? 00:12:05 c medium rare 00:12:12 c. difficile is harmless with healthy immune systems isn't it 00:12:31 oh huh, c difficile actually exists 00:12:33 not that it's a nematode 00:12:52 also: i am saying that in my head as 'diffickilee' with all the i's short 00:13:00 "causes severe diarrhea and other intestinal disease when competing bacteria in the gut flora have been wiped out by antibiotics" 00:13:03 latin: not worth the risks 00:13:17 diff ee sill 00:13:20 i'll stick with my friends S. cerevisiae and L. sanfranciscensis 00:13:44 sanfrankeeskensis 00:13:49 I should read about gzip 00:13:51 And lenses 00:13:55 And machines and pipes 00:14:02 Sgeo: your rapper name can be G-Zip 00:14:06 kereweeseeaee 00:14:12 is 'machines' another haskell library 00:14:16 kmc, yes 00:14:48 what's it do 00:14:58 it edwardks 00:15:09 An edwardk library that I think has similar goals to the pipes/conduits/blah except... hmm 00:15:11 shachaf: oh, I should add Rust to my short list of languages where objects (rather than just references to objects) are first-class values 00:15:22 It defines a monad for creating a structure that gets compiled into something else 00:15:23 so i just found out my laptop has numlock, and spent ten seconds figuring out how to disable it 00:15:29 anyway http://www.bogleech.com/comics/comic7-barnacle.htm 00:15:39 why does edwardk give all his libraries dumb non-categorical names 00:15:46 imo stop it 00:17:27 -!- augur has joined. 00:17:38 TOMORROW 00:17:44 DOCTOR WHO SEASON FINALE 00:17:46 jslkasdfjl 00:17:47 tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow 00:17:56 hi 00:18:00 wibbly wobbly timey wimey 00:18:10 mnoqy: hi 00:18:13 stop fucking watching doctor who you piece of shi 00:18:15 t 00:18:44 I'll do that when I stop reading Homestuck. Voluntarily, I mean. 00:18:45 farscape season finale tomorrow!! or at least you can watch it then 00:18:59 the homestuck-doctor who link 00:19:02 he's not even CLOSE to the season finale 00:19:07 Phantom_Hoover, also, should I be watching Farscape or finishing DS9? 00:19:12 I know you want me to both 00:19:12 uuuurgh 00:19:16 alternate 00:19:20 just fucking alternate 00:19:27 the series finale of The Office (US) was yesterday 00:19:28 tv shows are important 00:19:29 i bet you stopped before in the pale moonlight 00:19:46 I don't remember where I stopped 00:19:58 do you remember sisko beating the shit out of garak 00:20:02 you're gonna give phantom an aneurysm! 00:20:26 I WILL STAUNCH THE BLOOD WITH BRICK 00:20:28 shachaf: Rust has several, exciting kinds of pointer 00:20:52 Phantom_Hoover, no, but I remember Garak *spoilers* and Sisko feeling guilty 00:20:56 kmc: I heard. 00:21:14 Just checked: In the Pale Moonlight is season 6. I'm partly into season 7 00:21:34 HOW COULD YOU STOP AFTER WATCHING IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT 00:22:36 Because attempting to watch TV for 32 hours straight isn't considered healthy? 00:23:15 NOTHING YOU DO IS HEALTHY 00:24:31 Staying up 36 hours is unhealthy but that doesn't stop my body from keeping me awake for that long! 00:26:03 owned boxes, managed boxes, and borrowed pointers 00:26:26 and maybe other stuff 00:27:38 "owned boxes" huh 00:27:55 Should I learn Rust? 00:28:03 kmc, something to do with concurrency? 00:28:11 As in, ownership 00:28:27 rented box 00:28:33 ownership is a much more general concept than concurrency 00:28:40 s/o/O/ s/$/./ 00:28:59 ownership is a much more general concept than currency 00:29:11 But I think Rust's concurrency mechanism may use a concept of 'ownership' for different ... actor things, I guess? I don't know, I only half-remember reading Rust docs a long time ago 00:29:19 Sgeo: they're sort of like std::unique_ptr I guess 00:29:42 an owned box is allocated in the heap and is owned by exactly one variable (or structure field) 00:29:49 you some kind of primitivist elliott!!! 00:29:58 and so it can be deleted deterministically when that thing goes out of scope 00:30:07 no gc 00:30:10 btw this website is the best ever 00:30:12 http://143.228.193.in-addr.arpa/ 00:30:26 and yeah, I think the concurrent message passing stuff involves transfering ownership of these 00:30:28 Well, the fact that that domain is pointing to a website 00:30:36 Sgeo: every IPv4 address has such a name 00:30:44 er, but you only have 3 octets there 00:30:46 so mebbe not 00:30:47 Bike: wow i'm offended 00:31:46 and managed boxes are garbage collected but can't be transferred between threads 00:31:47 * Sgeo wonders what other things in in-addr.arpa have records other than the reverse DNS one 00:31:49 -!- augur has quit (Remote host closed the connection). 00:31:54 which means threads can GC independently 00:32:01 this is my understanding after 5 min of reading 00:33:52 elliott: how modern! 00:34:01 wait rust has gc? huh 00:34:55 I think you need objects to be explicit about needing to be GCed 00:35:07 Before the sort of things that require GC are allowed 00:35:11 Or was that an older version 00:35:24 managed boxes are subject to GC 00:35:45 Rust does the nice Haskell thing where immutable values are distinguished from variables and boxes (which may be mutable or not) 00:35:55 -!- olsner has quit (Ping timeout: 264 seconds). 00:36:01 i don't understand all of the mutability rules yet 00:36:24 shachaf: the Servo dev I talked to today said that there are supposed to be fewer breaking changes in Rust going forward, and that yes there have been some nightmares recently 00:36:28 Clojure does it too. Or would except for the whole Java compatibility thing 00:36:30 Bike: Yes, but only a subset of Rust objects are GC'd. 00:36:33 so maybe it's a good time to learn Rust 00:36:47 figgers 00:37:17 kmc: I was going to use Rust for something once but all the breaking changes discouraged me. 00:37:20 analogously there are also managed closures 00:37:34 So maybe I should use it now! 00:37:37 the default kind of closure is allocated on the stack, and so is no good for returning functions 00:37:45 Rust's stdlib seems kind of unusable. 00:37:49 that's what's kept me from playing with it. 00:38:15 Does Rust work on Windows? 00:38:28 ..I'm not even running Windows right now, but I still want to know 00:38:49 a working browser in Rust would itself be cool, but it's also cool because it will push rust and its stdlib to become more polished 00:39:08 I thought the plan was just to build a rendering engine for now anyway 00:39:14 right 00:39:32 they're using Spidermonkey for JS, and a bunch of other external libraries 00:39:37 What does Rust do better than Haskell? 00:39:52 Sgeo: Act as a migration path for imperative coders? :P 00:39:56 Sgeo: precise control over how objects are allocated 00:40:08 Haskell programs heap-allocate everything and garbage collect all the time 00:40:27 when you compile and run a Haskell program with GHC default settings, it's not uncommon to see that 90% of your time is spent in the garbage collector 00:40:40 jesus @_@ 00:40:54 well that's a bit unfair :P 00:41:01 Rust is a systems language in the vein of C++, except with nice modern language features, and actually memory-safe rather than just sort of hinting towards a style which is memory safe 00:41:01 or rather just maybe misleading 00:41:08 "unrecoverable unwinding with task isolation" 00:41:15 so I think what pikhq said is unfair even though probably a joke 00:41:17 I want a statically-typed language with recovering 00:41:17 And designed rather than accumulated. 00:41:25 does it have.................. algebraic types 00:41:29 kmc: It was a joke. 00:41:32 Bike, iirc yes 00:41:48 oh 00:41:55 I may be wrong though 00:42:01 yes 00:42:02 http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/tutorial.html#control-structures 00:42:37 pikhq: I also disagree that C++ was "accumulated" 00:42:40 It's a fairly interesting language. 00:42:41 Does it have Scheme-style macros? (I know it has some sort of syntactic ... thingy) 00:42:44 the parts of C++ do fit together pretty well 00:42:47 oh, coo'. 00:43:00 many people do not understand this because they don't know enough C++ 00:43:07 kmc: Right, this is misleading. It's designed *wrong*, rather than being literally haphazard. 00:43:27 C++ has an extremely awkward set of design goals 00:43:33 I think what they produced is not so bad given these goals 00:43:41 certainly they made some mistakes 00:43:43 But it ends up looking like a sort of mishmash, mostly because it is intended to have a large common subset with C. 00:43:51 but I blame it on the goals more than the execution 00:44:00 and yes being a ~superset of C is one of those really awkward goals 00:44:06 they should have just made a C FFI like any other language 00:44:06 I consider the design goals 99% of what makes it "designed wrong". 00:44:09 ok 00:44:14 Is there a lens library for Rust? 00:44:21 i don't know 00:44:54 also screw scheme-style macros 00:44:59 i want real metaprograms damnit 00:45:04 Ultimately *most* of the awkward bits there you can find out that the reason for is 'we really wanted foo to work, and this is literally the only way to get it to work with bar and baz." 00:45:12 yeah 00:45:58 http://what-if.xkcd.com/44/ 00:46:09 kmc: what do you mean by "real metaprograms" 00:46:10 did he just miss the part where it never specifies 'on earth's surface' 00:46:23 I hope it is not "unsafe-by-default metaprograms" 00:46:29 scheme-style and fuck-you style are copowerful so shruuuuug 00:46:52 elliott: i meant I want to write Lisp programs that output Lisp programs 00:46:59 not programs in some turing tarpit that output Lisp programs 00:47:16 in my limited experience, it's pretty easy to do this safely if you have some kind of auto-gensym mechanism 00:47:19 "For type casting, Rust uses the binary as operator. It takes an expression on the left side and a type on the right side and will, if a meaningful conversion exists, convert the result of the expression to the given type." 00:47:21 i like that as far as i can tell oleg uses not-scheme macros 00:47:30 gensym doesn't even give hygiene, so 00:47:49 it gives one half of it but actually i've forgotten the other half since who cares about lisp 00:47:51 i still don't understand hygeine being a problem, does that seriously happen? 00:48:04 Q: do people make mistakes? A: yes 00:48:10 of course my preferred system for hygenic metaprogramming is operatives 00:48:16 -_- 00:48:29 -!- olsner has joined. 00:48:37 kmc, did you learn Tcl yet? 00:48:42 god no 00:48:58 tcl is easy to learn if you already know scheme 00:49:10 i really need to get to completing my gf-operative-partial-evaluation fantasy 00:49:12 but work 00:49:12 ....is that "god no" a reaction mostly due to having heard rumors about Tcl, or some property of Tcl itself 00:49:27 1. imagine everything is strings 2. imagine you can access and poke into the scope of your callers (recursively) 00:49:40 3. scream a lil 00:49:43 wow why 00:49:59 Tcl is a really bad language to try to learn by just trying to modify existing code 00:49:59 Bike: what is gf 00:50:03 generic function 00:50:06 boring 00:50:07 You need to learn the fundamentals of how it works 00:50:37 in my efforts to figure out how the fuck to make kernel fast i've found that the main problem may be being unable to assume that an arbitrary calling-position-thing doesn't replace your environment's $define! with monkeys-out-ass 00:50:56 i should just get rid of mutation, fuck mutation 00:51:01 letrec fo lyfe 00:51:15 can't we just throw a generic tracing JIT at it and handwave 00:51:18 Bike: well scheme has a similar problem right 00:51:21 someone already implemented Qoppa on PyPy 00:51:22 you can rebind the global + 00:51:33 kmc, I should do it on Racket eventually 00:51:35 and suddenly your inner loop calls some slow ass bullshit 00:51:59 kmc, and you should learn Tcl >.> 00:52:01 elliott: well in kernel you can't redefine things in some toplevel environment 00:52:04 (sort of think this kind of mutation which exposes "implementation details" should be banned, even by languages that allow mutation, though I'm not sure how to define exactly what makes it more objectionable or how you'd block it) 00:52:32 mostly i just don't see why you'd want to do that really, defining things in a not-toplevel environment seems pointless 00:52:54 as far as i can tell the kernel guy only does it because he's used to scheme's define-is-actually-letrec thing except that in kernel it's not 00:53:04 i sort of hate kernel's naming scheme 00:53:11 why does everything have a ! 00:53:12 so like every time you call map you redefine and reevaluate six auxillary functions 00:53:14 even if it isn't really mutating things 00:53:18 why the $s everywhere 00:53:19 like what? 00:53:26 like $define! :P 00:53:31 it mutates the environment... 00:53:31 operatives have a $ 00:53:45 Mostly my problem with the language boils down to lack of closures, lack of quasiquoting, and not the best stdlib for functionalness 00:53:51 Bike: sure but that's a kind of weak sense of mutation 00:53:54 how so 00:53:57 But it's still an interesting take on metaprogramming 00:53:57 or does kernel not separate define and set!, I forget 00:54:00 the environment is an object and you're changing it 00:54:10 kernel doesn't have scheme's define 00:54:22 buuuuut i honeslty have very little idea of what the fuck scheme's define is 00:54:44 even if kernel's $define! causes me headaches i at least know what it does, and it's not second-class or whatever you call it 00:55:29 anyway this is why i need to do my closures-as-partial-applications, fuck-mutation, recursively-define-eval-generically fantasy, so that i can show you all etc 00:55:46 call it @ 00:55:54 fuck you @ is way better than that 00:56:03 i bet Bike's language doesn't even have dependent types 00:56:06 maru! that was it 00:56:15 :3 00:56:23 kmc. no!!! 00:56:25 i've been thinking about types actually, mostly because writing a type system in kernel seems like it might be kind of a pain 00:56:37 static types? 00:56:41 of course i'm used to tres inferior CL types, aka do whatever the fuck you want types 00:56:43 that could be real difficult yeah 00:56:53 welllll i'm used to types being a compilation aid 00:57:02 Clearly, @ is the language such that it is greater than each other language. 00:57:15 i'm thinking in the partial evaluator you can bind x to a type of integers, rather than a specific integers, and then the optimizer can get to work bla bla bla 00:57:18 That is, there is a maximum language, and it is @. 00:57:21 well, lisp + type system is [siren][slide whistle][bark][alarm][falling down stairs][car crash][advertising jingle] 00:57:30 yeah yeah. 00:57:32 [white noise] 00:57:39 elliott: [face shoved in toilet] 00:57:50 elliott: it's gonna be great when you define the macro expansion of @ and get gregor to alter the logs 00:57:55 and all these lines are like super long 00:58:13 `quote in.toilet 00:58:13 what if @'s name is zero characters WHAT THEN 00:58:15 988) i'm not actually competent at hacking things ummmm kmc dont u mean `cracking' [tiny glider symbol with "hacker pride" written next to it in silkscreen] [head of a gnu] [tux penguin] [face shoved in toilet] 00:58:28 elliott: that's boring. you're better than that. 00:58:40 -1 characters 00:58:44 Now you're talking. 00:59:00 -!- nooodl has quit (Ping timeout: 256 seconds). 00:59:45 the only @ quote im remembering right now is 00:59:52 `quote vapour 00:59:54 451) sllide: @ is an OS made out of only the finest vapour 01:00:02 its a fave 01:00:10 `pastequotes @ 01:00:17 http://codu.org/projects/hackbot/fshg/index.cgi/raw-file/tip/paste/paste.24051 01:00:20 if I move to CA i'm going to buy a vaporizer 01:00:37 did somebody seriously /ignore fungot and then brag about it. 01:00:38 Bike: more and a larger rate increases of more if they please. received request on any of the ( i am to get an enron/ dynegy pricing. 01:00:58 wow 892 is uh 01:00:59 something 01:01:01 yeah.... 01:01:05 892 is great imo 01:01:10 Bike: that's V*rpal back from when he was even worse 01:01:11 `quote 892 01:01:12 892) * GreyKnight puts some cookies inside a forcefield ⌇⌇ o o o ⌇⌇ what now c00kiemon5ter?!? * c00kiemon5ter omnomnomnomnomnomnomnom but how did he get through the forcefield?!? @u@ I did not! the cookielicious force within me grew outside the forcefield absording the crumbles dar 01:01:13 (hi V*rpal) 01:01:23 mean!! 01:01:31 Bike: also I _think_ I may have been using fungot to evade his /ignore of me at the time. 01:01:31 elliott: average 1 to the their site did not do any days next two to the all the business that the corporate parent. 01:01:43 ok am I somehow hallucinating the idea that the Linux kernel used to have a driver for the Rez Trance Vibrator? 01:01:49 elliott: lol ol ol. 01:01:53 kmc: i've heard that too 01:01:54 -!- olsner has quit (Ping timeout: 264 seconds). 01:02:03 everything should have rez support 01:02:21 i can't find it in 2.6.12-rc2 /or/ 3.9 01:02:28 maybe it was removed in 2.6 01:02:45 what functions does the thing even have 01:02:50 you can change intensity? 01:03:04 "Rez TranceVibrator: OS X/Linux Drivers and fingerd Client" this has got to be intentional 01:03:13 haha 01:03:32 "This program is a rudimentary teledildonics application built around the finger daemon - hence bringing generations of CS undergrad innuendo full circle." 01:03:34 meanwhile, reminder that the phrase "teledildonics" exists 01:03:35 oh snap 01:03:36 good timing 01:03:39 high five 01:03:51 okay this program is actually great. 01:04:15 * kmc downloads http://archive.org/download/git-history-of-linux/full-history-linux.git.tar 01:04:32 "<< Today in Japanese Amputee Sex Doll news" 01:04:39 kmc: wouldn't it be faster to clone from actual git 01:04:40 how long is the full history of linux 01:04:47 or is linux's actual git truncated??? 01:04:47 over 50 feet 01:04:49 somehow 01:04:52 even though that's sort of impossible 01:05:00 http://www.monochrom.at/arse-elektronika/ nsfw i guess 01:05:04 -!- Koen_ has quit (Quit: Koen_). 01:05:07 -!- Nisstyre-laptop has joined. 01:05:09 what source control was linux originally on 01:05:15 confession i know actually shit about linux 01:05:15 tarballs and patches 01:05:18 sweet 01:05:18 elliott: Linus's git is truncated because it only goes back to the start of Linus version controlling. 01:05:26 i meant like, when it got version control, though 01:05:29 which is actually a better system than CVS it turns out 01:05:36 Bike: it was on bitkeeper for a while 01:05:38 or did it have nothing before git 01:05:40 maybe you knew that though 01:05:42 Bitkeeper. 01:05:43 i didn't 01:05:45 the live Git repo goes back to 2.6.12-rc2; people have reconstructed repos for older 01:05:46 what's bitkeeper 01:05:50 and then there was a shitstorm re: bitkeeper relating to its proprietariness 01:05:53 so linus wrote git 01:06:04 that was before hg and stuff really existed (hg was written as a candidate for linux I think) 01:06:12 the state of the art in DVCSes was like bitkeeper, darcs, monotone 01:06:14 hg is also too slow to handle Linux, i think 01:06:18 wow i googed "bitkeeper" and the very third link is somebody complaining about linux using it. 01:06:18 or at least would have been back in the day 01:06:30 linux*, but whatever. 01:06:34 Bike: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper 01:06:36 fuck 01:06:37 linus 01:06:41 i can't fucking type that name any more 01:06:46 in particular "Pricing change" 01:06:46 Git was designed to handle huge repos quickly, which may have been a dumb design goal for a VCS in general, but is something the Linux team legitimately needed 01:07:12 oh hey 01:07:14 "Even after this addition, flamewars[8]" 01:07:20 it was actually byran o'sullivan who had to stop working on hg 01:07:29 rather than some random person 01:07:32 *bryan 01:07:37 he wrote a hg book 01:07:50 i think i vaguely recall that yeah 01:07:54 man i'm so glad i'm too naïve to care about version control. 01:08:03 just use git because it's Good Enough and it's standard 01:08:08