Comments by "xybersurfer" (@xybersurfer) on "Computerphile" channel.

  1. +magicstix0r with other words, you think that the brain's connections can be drawn on a big sheet of paper without overlapping lines (a planar graph). that's quite an assumption. did you read that somewhere?
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  2.  @DeveloperOfGames  no it's not
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  3.  @DeusGladiorum  JavaScript isn't higher-level than existing desktop languages though
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  4. i think a "Quant" is a person that models the stock market using statistics
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  5. it's an interesting topic. but i honestly think the explanation can use some work. some more examples showing the correspondence between proofs and programs would be nice (where all the steps are shown). i also don't think everyone is familiar with functional programming types and proof trees (so a lot of inbetween steps or transformations seem to be missing)
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  6. it's the truth though. Lambda Calculus is normally used, to formally explain how a function applied to some arguments, is transformed into a function with fixed parameters. it's basically just a way of explaining partial function application in functional programming. partial application is used all over the place in most functional languages. Haskell's "map" function is one of the best examples. it takes 2 parameters: - a function - a list if you give it both parameters, then it takes your function (first parameter) and applies it to each value in your list (second parameter). it gives you a list of the results. but if you only give the first parameter (fix the first parameter), then you get a "new" function. this new function takes a list (the remaining parameter for "map") and gives you a list of the results. Lambda Calculus could help you figure out what the input and output of such a new function is. but it is normally used for more theoretical things. i think functional languages have a huge advantage over imperative languages. you can quickly create more specialized functions, by just applying already existing functions on parameters
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  7. i bet it can worked out in a loop with the use of some kind of list
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  8. can you do recursion with the wheeler jump?
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  9. +StraightJacketRED i don't think it's related to the Monty Hall problem
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  10. i think that you don't need a definition for X. that's probably the wrong approach. the real problem is a lack of consistency, in the answers of these models
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  11. interesting idea but lots of information is missing. like what about: - performance of the generated code - dealing with bugs in the code generator - it's also not clear whether the mini language is declarative or imperative or whatever - how would this compare to manually written code that has all the rules properly separated from the presentation?
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  12. John Hightower it depends on the meaning you give to "This statement". let's call "This statement" "f(x)". then "This statement is false" is the proposition: f(x) = ¬f(x) then you can give it 2 interpretations 1. if "f(x)" is just a meaningless symbol to you, then you get a simple contradiction as a proposition: P = ¬P which simply has the value false 2. but, if you you interpret "¬f(x)" as the definition of "f(x)", then you get an infinite recursion. which computers have problems with of course: f(x) = ¬f(x) = ¬(¬f(x)) = ¬(¬(¬f(x))) ... etc in this way, the sentence "This statement is true" has the same infinite recursion problem because of self reference. recursion is supposed to have a decision about whether to continue or end (or it's just an infinite loop). computers have problem with it. because it does not make sense. the program is trying to do something with no hope of an answer. you can see it as computers having difficulty but you could also see it as us having difficulty telling them what to do (it's a blurry line)
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  13. very interesting how privacy pushes for more independence by running your own services and in a usable way, which i've always found an ideal to strive for
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  14. ALL ONE because the right side results in a function and functions take inputs. when not all inputs are given, then the result is a function that expects the remaining inputs (so functions can output functions). passing around functions like any other value is one of the strengths of functional programming ("normal" values are simply functions that don't take any inputs) technically these functions actually only take 1 input at a time (every lambda is the start of a function). so when you see 2 inputs. it's actually a function that takes 1 input and produces a function that takes the other input. this is called "currying"
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  15. if you agree with the basic rules of the system being true. then you agree anything built using that system being true. it's really that simple
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  16. no. you would have to create a proof to have a program (proofs are programs). and proving in Coq is much harder than conventional programming
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  17. i like the structure of Hutton's explanation. especially how he first introduces general recursion with rec f. but, he could have brought some extra attention to the fact that the result of rec f is a function. i think that this makes it extra difficult for people to understand (lot's of people confused in the comment section). working out the examples would have helped. on the other hand people might not really understand unless they come to the solution themselves. difficult dilema
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  18.  @codycast  you're wrong. this video makes sense
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  19. clickbait! next time actually show formal correctness
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  20. you can't program something to be sentient? not that i think it's sentient
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  21. the problem is when things break. that's the nightmare that people are much more likely to deal with. so it seems like a sound calculation. i would be less hesitant to apply updates given the right tools to rollback them back. also endless fixes, security or otherwise is a symptom of a deeper problem in the way develop software
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  22. wait for it to finish :p
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  23. well there's your problem. there is no such thing as absolute certainty
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  24. great idea. i would love to see an explanation of that thing
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  25. he talks about a computer without memory but presents a machine with state
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  26. isn't it a bit silly to draw lines that are not straight?
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  27. Anders Jackson i stand corrected. i agree
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  28. joselotl i think the guy in the video means that, in reality, those ranges are overlapping. but in the program, choices are made as to which ranges belong to which set. so if something is half dirty and half clean, the program will still decide whether it is either dirty or clean (but not both).
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  29. joselotl lol and neither do i. he seems to be doing things i would normally do anyway and it leaves me confused too. i'm guessing that his explanation is flawed.
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  30. TRUE = λx. λy. x FALSE = λx. λy. y NOT = λb. b FALSE TRUE AND = λx. λy. x y FALSE OR = λx. λy. x TRUE y
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  31. c# deals with types. but it does not directly deal with type theory. c# is weakly typed because because it is possible to get type errors at runtime. languages like haskell are strongly typed but they don't deal completely with type theory. languages like Coq and Agda deal directly with type theory
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  32.  @frilansspion  all Artificial Neural Networks. LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) discussed in this video, is one of them
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  33. mrsuperguy2073 there are infinitely many whole numbers and we use integers to represent them. the number of bits is just a practical consideration. i think it's more about the length of the list than the numbers in it being infinitely large. not all lists have to containing growing numbers or numbers at all. similarly to the size of whole numbers, a list can be infinitely long but we use a data type to represent such a list. the amount of memory is also just a practical consideration. being able to directly represent an infinite list allows us to separate the definition of the list from the operations on it. in strict languages we would have to re-implement the same list along with different operations, everytime we would want to transform it. i think that being able to more directly express yourself and so not having to repeat yourself, makes it worth dealing with the practical considerations.
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  34. thanks. great video. i had to rewatch the previous one to get back up to speed, but it was worth it
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  35. and you are just existing in your lifetime. i'm not sure why you are so fixated on continuous processes
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  36. ​ @totalermist  it doesn't matter whether a function keeps running forever. a function can immediately return a new state on every call with which it can continue if called again with that state, all while that function is simulating another function that runs forever. in fact, do you know of any humans that run forever? do you think we stop being sentient if we were to become immortal? whether a function runs forever is a meaningless distinction
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  37.  @rosameltrozo5889  indeed. that sounds more like a bug
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  38. it still remains. the C compiler will describe how to create the binary file. the difference is that it's described in C instead of assembler
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  39. that almost sounds unfalsifiable
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  40. certee it never finishes sieving the infinite list because it is infinite. the result of sieve is a list with the first element calculated, and the rest of the elements are again a sieve result. the rest is a call to sieve waiting to be evaluated when you ask for the next element. you can stop sieving by not requesting more elements but this is different from finishing the sieving of the infinite list. it's more like "giving up" after you have the elements you want
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  41.  @YourTVUnplugged  that doesn't remove the need for pre-emption
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  42. Neil Roy no. in C, a string is just a pointer to a character. the characters are stored next to each other in memory (they are an array). to get a pointer to the next character you can increment the pointer to the character using: p++; or you could cast it into an array and use an index on this array, to get the character you want: c = arr[i] because arrays in C are basically pointers
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  43. debugging and stepping through code, is just one of the ways to maintain code. and already assumes a lot about the language. optimizing for maintenance is what's best. ideally debugging should be one of the last resorts
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  44.  @Wyvernnnn  i agree, but those rules should be broken to avoid diminishing returns. and i bet you are already breaking them for just that. for example: you probably wouldn't decrease code readability by 99%, to improve the user experience by 1%
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  45.  @Crazen2  but neural nets (like LaMDA) are not really programmed as a set of rules in the traditional sense, where the programmer has to think these up beforehand as you seem to be suggesting. the only rules such a program gets is a way of figuring things out and a set of data like conversation on the internet. whatever rules it figures out that makes the best predictions is what it's final rules are
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  46.  @davidwright7193  that's extremely low. but still whether a byte per record more would matter would depend, on the total size of a record. if 1000 records would fit then the size of each record would be at most 16 bytes. 1 byte would increase memory usage by at most 6.25%. i would be tempted to think that this percentage wouldn't make that much difference. it seems like you would always run into the memory limit anyway, with or without that extra byte. would these records be stored in a central system?
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  47.  @IceMetalPunk  it's not mandatory to call someone by their title. no work was invalidated here
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  48. cool. the game looks like V2000 for PS1
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  49. oh. haha. no wonder
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  50. Phaux and the lesson is: never use the equality operator to compare floating point values.
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  51. Cooper Gates now give an example where that code would be required.
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  52. Cooper Gates interesting case. but i can't help but think that you could have used a (possibly rewritten) if-statement where you use "<" instead of "==". it would be more descriptive
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  53. Cooper Gates to me the second if-statement would be more descriptive. it shows what could happen after the cast: if (k < 0) return -1 * (int(-1.0 * k)); else if (float(int(k)) < k) return int(k) + 1; else int(k); i assume that the values of the float k are not too big for an integer
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  54. Cooper Gates i consider "!=" just as dangerous as "==" for comparing floats. i think "<" comparisons are usually the proper way of thinking here. in the real world you can't always expect numbers to have an exact value, or be able to catch the step at which a number has that value. the "<" comparison captures the thought that you are working with a range of possible values.
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  55. Cooper Gates to me that just shows that there is less margin for wrongly interpreting the comparison when reading the code.
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  56. even though i'm familiar with the stuff. i completely agree
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  57. ***** as a programmer i actually agree with you, on a philosophical level. binary is rather far removed from our intentions. but as you can see from the responses: people have a tendency to obsess over unnecessary details.
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  58. matsv201 that would be one way of looking at it. those components could be both binary and base 256 at the same time, depending on the level of abstraction you choose. just like a usbstick with 1GB could be seen as one big cluster having base 2^30.
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  59. matsv201 i don't disagree with you. if you choose to view things at the hardware level then that is what you see. my point is that it is not the only possible view. it's a bit unnecessary to argue about which view is better. i think it depends on the situation.
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  60. lulhoofd1 i don't deny that people can get used to binary. it holds no secrets to me either. but that doesn't mean it's the closest we can get to our intentions.
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  61. matsv201 you have shifted from addressibility to the inner workings of subsystems. yes when you go deep enough into IC's, you will likely, find only binary. the lines themselves are not binary though. a line can have more than 2 possible voltages. voltages exist on more of a continuous range. and those lines are made of atoms... i can shift the view too. but what's the point of all these details? what exactly is your philosophical point?
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  62. matsv201 you just don't seem to get the points i'm making. you have a hard time letting go of the details. you mentioned how systems are binary values. i mentioned that this is true but that this is just a single point of view. you changed your view to to a deeper lever where one only sees binary and i in turn showed you a deeper view where electric wires can be regarded as components, which are not limited to passing on only 2 voltage values but a continuous range to show you how pointless it is to senselessly pick a single view. you subtly introduce the assumption that the bit addressability equates to the "base". even though this is not necessarily the case.
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  63. yes, i also prefer the idea of accommodating the hardware to fit the conceptual ideas
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  64. i don't think the problem is whether it is persistent memory or not. because one could just leaving the machine running and it wouldn't make a difference. the problem is that memory could refer to state or RAM, combined with the fact that he refers to a computer with state as having no memory
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  65. people can make errors in thinking too. the proofs in Coq are readable to humans. but i do agree that they don't give much insight
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  66. virtual machines are not necessarily completely isolated from the host. there have been exploits
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  67. i disagree. statistical methods are not that interesting
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  68. Dylan Cannisi i like this video. maybe i wouldn't mind seeing 1 or 2 videos about statistical methods. but i consider what he is doing right here, more related to Theoretical Computer Science. of course depending on how it presented i could become more interested (i'm picky)
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  69. if there are multiple threads then there is thread switching, and if your thread was not the one running then it could have missed the signal. it's not so much about doing multiple things at the same time. it's more about the guarantee of not missing a signal. also by introducing multiple threads it becomes very hard to give guarantees about the time it takes the system to respond (a.k.a. real time). which is a lot of times important for embedded devices
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  70. Anders Jackson i know that. and the thought didn't escape me while i was typing it. but as ***** said. it would be silly to introduce a core at least every system that will be interacted with. it doesn't scale
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  71. cool. are these guys related to the Computer History Museum channel?
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  72. Lukas West oh i see. nice they, have a channel too. thanks
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  73. i don't think it would have helped. literally implementing the diagram would produce incomprehensible code, that would require this diagram to understand
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  74. i've learned in the past that it's better to not use "==" when floating point numbers are involved. it's better to use '<' and '<='... and also watch out for "-0.0" which is not the same as "0.0". MS Excel is also not free of floating point rounding errors
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  75. it's funny that you say that because London seems to have a lot of those openings compared to other parts of the world
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  76. +Strofi Kornego maybe it has changed, but up to about a year ago there were a lot of vacancies of functional programmers in London
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  77. Unpronouncable okay... let's assume that the definition of the problem didn't mention that there was only 1 barber and that you solved the problem for 2 barbers. i agree that we have to go with whatever the problem definition is. however, everything that is not in the definition makes the problem more broad (harder). you cannot pick a solvable case of a problem (and solve it), and then say that you solved the problem. you have to solve the whole problem definitively for all cases. (which here includes the case of 1 barber in town)
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  78. i don't see why the layout has to be repeated every time the book is read. it's not like the book is going to change
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  79. i think the professor picked an excellent example, but the explanation could have been better. he didn't have to mention the stack. he could have focussed on substituting the initial call into the resulting return statements.
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  80. i could not find anything about a killer door in germany
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  81. +Alexander Roderick nice try, but the problem as stated by +Noel Goetowski is not that they are competing
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  82. Nixitur i'm not sure i agree. the question is now: - did you prove that H is false? - or rather that the implication formula H → H+ you proposed is false? the statement ¬H+ → ¬H makes it very clear, that there will be disagreement if someone does not agree the original implication formula.
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  83. but H → H+ also holds when: H does not exist and H+ does not exist. according to the H → H+ = ¬H ∨ H+
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  84. but, i am saying that the implication is wrong. because your formula still holds when H does not exist and H+ does not. your formula holds as soon as H does not exist. there is not even any point in checking whether H+ exists
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  85. FernieCanto yes, as said. take: - H does not exist (H = false) - H+ exist (H+ = true) clearly this should not possible because H+ depends on H but when you fill them into the formula H → H+ = ¬H ∨ H+ = ¬false ∨ true = true ∨ true = true it says it's true
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  86. FernieCanto yeah it seems that there are some things i don't understand yet. i've struggled a bit with understanding the halting problem. as a student i have reproduced the proof but i never really felt like i understood it. i think i will re-watch the video a couple of times.
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  87. Nixitur i don't get how you can make such a strong claim
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  88. what is the chance of a cosmic ray flipping a memory bit?
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  89. poon5000 that's interesting. but it looks like they are using a more loose definition 2d sheet.
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  90. Haniff Din maybe this also depends on whether you think space is fundamentally analog or discrete. what's stopping you from suggesting it's 1d?
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  91. Richard Smith i also don't like theories that play semantic games. i'm undecided about whether digital computers can be sentient like a brain, i'm leaning more toward yes. and it seems like you are too if possibly a few changes are made. to me that sounds more like an optimization issue. it would seem that it is still a turing complete machine. i lean towards making things functionally equivalent. of course we may never know when they are functionally the same, and we might want to leave-out/improve some things
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  92. Haniff Din i also prefer the simplest representation. but i don't think we are talking about whether something is re-presentable as something else. there is a distinction between 2D and 3D before changing their representation. otherwise there would be no need to talk about changing representations at all. this seems like a completely different kind of discussion.
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  93. The Sapien then what is making current computers functionally identical to us, according to you?
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  94. Richard Smith to combine some of your ideas; i don't see a problem with clever programming if it is so clever that it can process the world in the same fundamental ways as humans
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  95. The Sapien i don't know any of course. i thought you had specific changes to current computer hardware in mind (not the software side).
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  96. what a dream job
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  97. great video by the way
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  98. ​ FichDich InDemArsch InvalidCastException comes to mind (you can write code that casts an object to anything). NullReferenceException also comes to mind, although that is more of a design flaw where strings and objects are always nullable, that i last heard they would be fixing. it's not as bad as dynamic languages like JavaScript though. i use .NET languages like C# regularly
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  99.  FichDich InDemArsch  JavaScript's aggressive type coercion is also well defined, but that doesn't make it type safe. i agree that an exception at runtime is better, than none at all (i absolutely hate dealing with silent errors. in fact i'm dealing with one right now!). but, i would prefer even more to be prevented from that mistake before runtime, if it's practical
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  100.  FichDich InDemArsch  language definition and type safety, are not the same concept
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  101. watcherFox why would an input need another input? we aren't confined to only using H or H+ as inputs.
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  102. nice video but you could have gone into a little more detail about the exploit
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  103. 1. he might have made 1 the base case not to confuse people 2. i strongly agree with this point. there was too much focus on the stack. in my opinion he should have left the stack out completely. 3. good point for imperative languages but in functional languages it's the only way 4. he should have used indentation better, but checks would clutter the essence of the examples. (usually you shouldn't be checking for overflows at runtime) 0. what i personally would have liked to see is that he explained the example by rewriting the original function call and every time on a new line, transforming it to the resulting return statement (as is usually taught in functional programming) it's nice to see there are other people that have a critical view, and don't just praise whatever is shown.
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  104. i'm curious. what don't you like about set theory?
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  105. you mean like when people try to shoe horn everything into it and try to explain everything in terms of sets? that would be something that has bothered me
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  106. i'm disgusted, by JavaScript being used everywhere. the only advantage JavaScript has is that it's supported in a lot of places. there are many languages that are more suitable to becoming a universal language. i can't wait for WebAssembly to give JavaScript a run for it's money
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  107. that's all the more reason, why better follow up questions should have been given to LaMDA
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  108.  @frilansspion  consciousness? no. acknowledge the context of the comment i replied to
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  109.  @frilansspion  i was not responding to sentience specifically. i was talking about getting the desired output from such a model. this is what i meant: "the real problem with getting the desired output, is the lack of consistency in the output of all neural networks. i don''t think the problem is the lack of an exact definition of the desired output" my reasoning being that having an exact definition, seems to defeat the purpose of using a neural network
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  110.  @frilansspion  it depends on what you mean with "a definition". i was not responding to the part of the original comment mentioning sentience. but when you put it all together and worded a little better than you did before, then in my opinion your conclusion about the problem with consciousness [in neural networks] being the lack of consistent outputs, makes some sense. of course i've considered this, but i won't come out and claim that. i think that's probably where the confusion is coming from. i'm trying to be careful not to make unwarranted claims
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  111.  @frilansspion  1) yes. it was my conclusion that the problem is a lack of consistency, but it was your wrongful conclusion that the problem i'm referring to is that of consciousness. 2) we are discussing whatever you meant with "a definition". 3) no. it's your conclusion that i responded to the whole comment. my reply was to part of the comment, like i already said. do you understand the difference between talking about X and talking about consciousness? 4) no. i'm not a bot.
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  112.  @frilansspion  why do you think that the original commenter used X, when they could have used sentience/consciousness? the original comment doesn't even contain the text you quoted. it looks like you are being intellectually dishonest. you want me to be exact, but your quote is not exact. i've already described the part i'm referring to, but you keep adding your own interpretation
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  113.  @GetawayFilms  what i said was not meant as a personal attack. but this indeed seems to be going nowhere
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  114.  @GetawayFilms  ah i see. hey no problem. i'm glad that i'm not the only one that noticed, the way he was replying. people don't often follow others arguing online, so i'm pleasantly surprised haha
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  115. i think it's lack of control is not important
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  116. i would say that Schönfinkel's contribution is the most important one to lambda calculus
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  117. ​ @Rockyzach88  this video seems to skip past a lot of the introductions, compared to other videos on this channel. making it harder to take an interest
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  118. @mrsuperguy2073 that's true, i agree that he should have at least mentioned the limits
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  119.  @Hedning1390  the number of pixels they are changing is quite small, so i would not call it robust at all
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  120.  @Hedning1390  oh. sorry. i was assuming you meant the artificial neural net. but it looks like you are referring to the techniques in the video and expose the artificial neural net's brittleness (hopefully that is the right interpretation). it seemed like a slightly more convoluted thing to be confident in the ineffectiveness of a neural net, so it looks like my imagination may have gotten the better of me
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  121. what makes the Chinese Room Argument interesting is the different perspectives, from which people respond to it. it is not some kind of absolute truth. i'll repeat what i wrote to you elsewhere under this video: you are aware that a function that takes as input a state and then stops and returns a state, can simulate a function that does the same but runs forever. right? whether a function runs forever is a meaningless distinction
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  122.  @mickh2023  does this mean that no one on the internet can convince you that they are sentient, because you are communicating with them through classical computation?
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  123.  @totalermist  so what if a function is a fixed point iteration? why would you care. with an input as complicated as reality, i suspect that you would be hard pressed in finding a fixed point. time can also be simulated. we could also dissect someone's brain and ask which part is sentient. the problem with deconstruction, is that every time someone points out something sentient you could pick that thing apart and claim you don't see any sentience inside. sentience seems like an emerging property. you seem to be confusing the implementation details, with the result
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  124.  @totalermist  what do you mean by the function not being unconstrained? yes it can get ridiculous to do calculations with pen and paper. can you explain how this is related to "the function not being unconstrained"? all i am getting from this is "doing your calculations by pen and paper is slow". i seem to be missing your point. if the information is complete, then why would you not be able to simulate something? with "cheating", are you referring to optimization and therefore the ability to prediction? and if so why are we talking about this? no. if the calculation output differs depending on the physical representation of the machine, then i would argue that it is not a physical representation. i disagree that consciousness emerging is not rational, just as i would disagree with opening up a computer and asking which component is the computer. also who decides into how many pieces we would divide a computer? this actually seems like an arbitrary decision thus not rational, so why bother? you seem to be unnecessarily specific.
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  125. i do agree that the video is a bit narrow minded
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  126. nice explanation
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  127. there is definitely some truth to that. but sometimes you can't bring your data into a format that the libraries can interact with. like if you have a huge file, then you may not be able to fit the relevant parts into memory so that you can hand it off to the library for example to do a search. i have encountered this myself. it's those kinds of situations where it's useful, but i admit is it's not something most people have to deal with
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  128. Ivar Kråbøl i can see where why you think that. but if you see the black part going from "beer" to chips as a value pointing chips, then it is correct that it now belongs to "burgers". because "burgers" is now pointing to "chips". the yellow part is a new pointer value. i think you would have been correct if he took the blue block from "beer" and used it as the blue block for the new "burgers" thing
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  129. very interesting code. i didn't understand how intuitive it was until i saw it. but it has some issues
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  130. how would those languages deal with partial functions like division (can't divide by 0)
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  131.  @vinny142  if everyone can verify the certificate, then it doesn't matter who signed it
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  132.  @SimonBuchanNz  i suspect that you are thinking about cryptography. but the certificate in the context of this video, is a correctness proof of what the program does. it doesn't matter who provides the proof
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  133. very interesting. i always wonder what implements the characters at bootup
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  134.  @laurendoe168  that certainly would be interesting. although i would doubt the trust worthiness of a system that can deceive without being told to do so (bad tool). maybe this is where the difference between it being intelligent and it being conscious makes a difference. i think that the messy way we are currently using Neural Nets, allows some of this weirdness
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  135. the explanation could have been a little better: - using '+' instead of '|' for OR was confusing. - the handwriting was also no easy to read 'e' looks like 'l'. - presenting everything as a proof rules was probably also not a great idea, considering the audience
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  136. i'm not that impressed by Eric Lippert honestly. it's probably his bad takes on the StackOverflow website, that gave me a bad impression
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  137. interesting idea. i wonder how that would work though in case of binary search
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  138. what incentives does it have to think way?
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  139. i didn't care that much for the python code, but what wasn't clear?
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  140.  @rumfordc  as expected. gaslighting. it's always the programmer's fault right?
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  141.  @rumfordc  i suppose you're right. performance in JavaScript has been pretty predictable to me. i guess i'm biased because i hate the weak typing and error supression (the design), paired with the thought of blaming any of that on the programmer. i'll try not to jump to conclusions
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  142. yeah scratch after C is weird :)
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  143. the explanation could be better
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  144. i think the arguments he chose as the result for TRUE and FALSE are intuitive. it's similar to the if statement in imperative languages in an imperative language you could write: if(1=1) {return 2;} else{return 4;}... in his examples you could use TRUE and FALSE as an if statement: (1=1) 2 4 the order of the possible results is the same it's easy to remember
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  145. WayToAesthetic yes and i think that would be a more efficient solution. i think he was going for the least amount of variables to make it intuitive
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  146. matsv201 in haskell a list is a recursive data structure. because: a list is defined as either empty, or the first element followed by a list of the remaining elements, it is a recursive data structure (its definition contains itself). an infinite list, is a list that always has remaining elements
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  147. what's the point of this? why the assumption that i would be surprised?
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  148.  @christopherg2347  you really don't have to be in real-time programming, to have to sacrifice readability for performance. it happens often when you encounter a performance issue, and you have to rewrite any code
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  149. yep
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  150. if you have "def holds(fun,arg)", then it looks the argument is missing for the second parameter in "holds(fun,fun)". it looks like a hidden type error. i would have preferred an explanation that avoided this confusion by simply using "def holds(fun)". as any function and its arguments can be turned into a function "without" arguments
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  151.  @ThorstenAltenkirch  hmm. isn't it still possible to apply holds to itself with "def holds(fun)"? similarly to the blank tape problem, where the program has internalized it's input and the first thing it does is write this input to the tape
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  152. why not put the Mars Rover programs on one line?
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  153. agreed but it's hard to pull off
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  154. Anshul Mittal a pointer is a memory address of data. in the previous video, the data was the "Thing" "object". this is called a pointer to a "Thing". in this video he also used a pointer to a pointer to a "Thing"
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  155. this is my first time hearing about "Duff's device". thanks for pointing that this interesting trick
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  156. it's a good thing that they thought of creating UDP, but it's probably not a coincidence
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  157. it took me a while to understand that she was saying "3D printer"
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  158. interesting. i wonder
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  159. why don't they simply send each other a public key?
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  160. Regular expressions are what?
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  161. interesting. i also didn't know that s-box, meant substitution box
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  162.  @thettguy  1 byte it's not that much relative to the rest of a record. i suspect that there was a lot of premature optimization back then, because of the way you think
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  163. one of the cool things about functional programming is that it's easier to capture in a flowchart than imperative programming
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  164. that's a pretty cool strategy. i've been interested in doing the same with my applications. i think there is a lot of deep stuff to be learned that way, depending on how far you go
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  165. "the numbers json"?
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  166.  @RocketLR  oh, i see. then it makes sense that i don't recognize it
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  167. how hard could it be? or is that a naive question?
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  168.  @madhatter-  oh i see. although it was secondary school, we had a subject (so a teacher) dedicated to it and computers. i think that's the right way to go about it, instead of trying to fit it all into an existing subject. basically to take it very seriously
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  169. it was a nice talk, from which i learned something. but it could use some more emphasis on practical details of: - how the concepts tie together - maybe just a tiny bit more about how public and private keys are normally used - could also mention that the sender chooses the transaction fee
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  170.  @AndersJackson  regex is rarely that useful with just the basics
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  171. another problem with regex is that they can look like they should work, when you missed some edge cases
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  172.  @InShadowsLinger  you assume that it is worth learning. you can't just assume your desired conclusion (begging the question). if we can't even agree on what is considered elegant, then what is the point in providing a solution? let's see your solution first. my main issue with Regex is that the operators come with too much baggage and that it looks unstructured, compared to an expression most languages it is used in
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  173. ​ @InShadowsLinger  useful and worth learning are not the same thing. there is a higher standard for the second. not only have we underspecified the problem you tried solving. more importantly how does your solution address the baggage and the unstructured look of regex that i called out?
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  174. ​ @InShadowsLinger  no. you're reply was irrelevant. i did not actually want you to post a solution. i told you to go first to make you realize that it doesn't make sense to do so. i pretty much spelled it out "then what is the point in providing a solution?". but you still failed realize that. it seems you just couldn't help yourself. now you are basically the only person between us 2 that knows the specifics of the problem you solved. i don't have the specs of the problem, and i don't intend to interpret the specs from your regex. you are free to give the specs. but right now your solution is meaningless to me
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  175. tabs for indentation and spaces for aligning is best. but it's hard to check if if you did it right (especially if the editor also formats automatically), so i uses spaces for both. my tab key inserts multiple spaces
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  176. the problem with cryptography, is actually probably the existence of quantum computers. but to me, a technique making use of it is probably the best option right now
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  177. the syntax is the structure of the language and what it looks like: - in English for example every sentence must end with a "." and you can only use words in the dictionary and made up names - in C for example every statement must end with a ";" and you can only use variable names that you declared i recommend the Comupterphile video "Parsing Explained - Computerphile" about syntax the semantics is what the syntax means or does: - in English for example you can lookup the meaning of words in a dictionary. words have a different meaning depending on the language - in C for example you could look up the meaning of a statement in a book like "The C Programming Language" i recommend Udacity video "Syntax Vs Semantics - Programming Language" about semantics i don't remember any video from Computerphile about both, but it would be cool to see such a video.
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  178.  @xurtis  i am aware that it falls short. i was never really a fan of the book to be honest. i'm not really expecting OP to go read that book. it was merely meant as an example, to give a rough idea. sorry for making it look like i was endorsing that book
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  179.  @xurtis  don't misunderstand. i'm not even a fan of C. i think it has a lot of problems. i just picked C as an example because i thought it is a reasonably popular language. to be honest i'm not really satisfied with the expressiveness of any of the languages i've tried. what do you mean with "I think the thing is like to see is something"?
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  180. Joshua Hillerup i think they are exactly the same. it's more convenient to insert something into the front of a singly-linked list than into the back, because inserting into the back would require going through the whole list. so people tend to keep these lists reversed as long as possible so they can insert things into the front efficiently. that's why you see a lot of reversed lists. usually people reverse the list when they are done, to give it the correct order again. the exact same problem exists with the singly-linked lists in this video
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  181. yeah. i don't think the problem is even the inability to debug. it's the lack of clarity. things can look correct but still be wrong
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