Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Tcepsa's commentslogin

In the reserved case you do still need to check if you have a reserved entity, but you can put it (along with the other allowed "pseudotypes") in a switch/case block and have it just break back out immediately (the no-op mentioned in the article) rather than having to use a separate if/else to check for Null, or clutter things up with a try/catch wrapper.

Does that address what you're asking about?


But that assumes I have some switch case somewhere right? If I passed an array of "orders" to a downstream function, it knows that what it has is orders, not something else, so it doesn't need to check for anything, and in the case I checked for errors upstream (when I try to allocate a new order) all downstream functions know that no invalid order can be passed, in which case you only have one check at creation time.

That's why I haven't fully understood yet how working like this is simpler.


Fair enough; in the example provided the "tag" was allowed to be "bid, ask, or reserved" so I assumed there would be a switch statement to control the handling of the bid and ask specifics, and that it could drop the reserved ones there. That's less helpful when it's just between "is this an actual instance or just a placeholder?"

Why is a try/catch wrapper clutter but a switch case is not?

I had assumed that there would already be a switch/case because I was going with the example in the code of there being three pseudotypes (bid, ask, and reserved). So it seemed natural to me to use a switch statement to have it execute the code specific to them, and that doing so would be less cluttered than not having the reserved option and instead doing a switch/case (or if/else-if) for bid/ask and a separate try/catch wrapper in case it was a null object.

Edit: to be clear, I agree that the distinction is not nearly as sharp if it's just a case of "is the object valid or not"


You can save/load the contents of a single buffer or all buffers. For a single buffer, select the buffer you want to save, then go to the Live menu and choose "Save Buffer As". To load a file into a buffer, choose the buffer you want to load it into and then go to the Live menu and select "Load into Buffer"

You can also save off all the buffers together (e.g. if you've put different parts of the same song into different buffers) by going to the Live menu and choosing "Save Set As" (or just "Save Set" if you want to overwrite what was previously in your last saved set e.g. you made changes to your song and you want to replace the previous version).

So to achieve a workflow similar to what you're describing, you construct your song (in up to ten buffers) and then save the set and clear the buffers or load a different set to work on another song. True, it doesn't give you infinite buffers, but it does give you a way to "manage all [your] songs as files".

You can then use e.g. Magit to version control the files just as you would if you were working in Emacs itself.

The sets are also saved as text files in a very human readable format; basically just all of the buffers dumped out one after another with some delimiters. You could even use Emacs to edit them and then load them into Sonic Pi to run them! (That said, I'm not sure there's a good sonic-pi-mode for things like indentation and autocomplete yet. Hopefully someday; I would love to have my custom evil-mode Emacs keybindings while working in Sonic Pi, but I get that it's not really a priority right now ;) )


Presumably it captures a screenshot and then uses CV on the resulting image to "see" the application and identify the various things that you might want to click.


I understand that this is kind of beside the point, but it seems like a bad thing to compare inventions to haunted artifacts that mind controlled their users into betraying their friends to a powerfully evil being. (Though since it is being powered by GenAI, which has also driven people to do bad things, perhaps it is an apt comparison.)


Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.


Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and it killing us all

Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics

Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all!

My take on this entire genre: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Story-Logic_Bias

And Eliezer Yudkowsky’s more eloquent precursor: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...


To be more accurate to what we've been seeing for a decade, it would have to be something like

     Sci-fi author: in my book I invented the idea of inserting human dna into a bacterium and this GeneKiller bacteria killing protesters to the regime

     Tech company: by inserting human DNA into a bacterium we can make very good insulin that will help diabetics. We call it GeneKiller and we offer it to the regime to start testing on protesters first

     Online Commenter: this is just like that book where the insulin kills us all!


The problem I have with this is not that I disagree with it, it's a good observation, it's that it ignores humans are very example biased and we really don't have many good positive examples, there's a dearth of positive / utopian perspective in fiction and it's absence sets the overton window handily

I mean the Jetson's is one of the examples that comes to mind when I'm reaching for a positive example of future robots, the Jetsons! A cartoon from the 1960s is in my top 10 examples of "Positive AI / Robot having futures"

Having a more positive takes on the future would go a long way to helping people understand what they're place in it might be, we did used to have periods of history where things were more positive, right now we're really lacking that perspective


Off the top of my mind right now:

- the kid from the AI movie

- the Sentient Intelligence from the Peter F Hamilton books

I think there are quite a few positive examples if you dig enough. It's just that (a) none of those examples are being used as the mold for what large tech companies are set to achieve, because (b) none of those examples imply the sort of capital or power-concentration incentive that a capitalist company would look for.

If it requires huge capital/power to bring the utopian story into reality and there is no capital/power incentive to do so, these stories will remain on paper.

Whereas, if the Torment Nexus story details how its inventors got to rule the world for a millenium, you can see how it's more interesting for a certain type of person to gather the resources to build it if they have/can acquire the relevant skillset.


That's a very interesting observation. Why do you suppose that is? Naively I suspect that humans can't envision that kind of utopia without some authority keeping it in order, and power is ultimately a corrupting force so the story always plays out the same.


You're missing the point of the meme, which is not "technology is bad", but "technologists theming their new poorly-tested invention after a popular story where the invention hurts people is gross".

If your tech company calls its product "The Genophage™" it's fair to ask if they're taking the safety/ethics implications very seriously.


> tech company

> taking the safety/ethics implications very seriously

In the era of move fast and break things that includes things like enabling genocide, is an oxymoron.


Tech company: "We will now lobby the government to allow us to keep astronomically high insulin prices through large scale collusion with insurance companies"

Look, the issue is two fold:

1) The Zuckerbergs class are insulated naive boys who've never spent time in the real world. So they do not understand that thier actions might have consequences.

2) every fucking tech giant starts out promising liberty, then gradually creates either a blood sucking money printer, or some hellish sock puppet system that props up their warped world view.


Insulin is $25 at Walmart for a vial that lasts a month. 2 vials if you’re fat. Find out where you read about “astronomically high insulin prices” and consider what else that author lied about


Yup, what drove that price drop, was it a technical breakthrough?

Given that in 2019 10ml of insulin outside of USA was what $20? in the USA it was ~250?


Not aware of any price drop. Walmart always sold dirt cheap insulin and it was never $250. You’re thinking of brand name insulin.


At least we're giving out free verification cans


Drink your Mountain Dew verification can to continue.


Wasn't that Kool-Aid?

(yeah, I know that's not sold in cans, and actually it was Flavor-Aid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid#Backgrou...)


Different meme, about adtech-driven dystopia. See original greentext [0]

[0] https://files.catbox.moe/eqg0b2.png


Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification!


That got me good. Hehehe


For more info, see my blog post titled "Get in the Torment Nexus or get left behind."


If we didn't invent the torment nexus, china would have and they'd make all the money.


"one of my favorite conceits is from the novel [redacted] where they spend the entire book talking about the threat of the space hun invader barbarian belters and how backwards but feral they are and then when you finally meet them they're sophisticated egalitarian transhumanists and all the characters you've been following have been living in space north korea, functionally enslaved and living out their lives blithely consuming copium state propaganda

the 'torment nexus' is what you'd call heaven if we built it and you weren't in it"


Where's that from?


A locked account on twitter. locked = only people who follow him can read his tweets and there's no way to follow until he unlocks. The book is Hyperion.


Ah, thank you.


At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel "Don't Create The Torment Nexus."

https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?lang=e...


Of course, that tweet was talking about the Metaverse. So really it should be classic sci-fi novel "Neal Stephenson Invents A Ton Of Cool Things, But The Torment Nexus May Be The Coolest."

Like, I love the Torment Nexus trope, but it's somehow gotten coined with the worst first example imaginable, and the only reason it works as a meme is that nobody realizes this.

(The problem with the Zuckerverse is exactly that it's not the Metaverse from Snow Crash. The whole point of the Metaverse is that it's built on open protocols! It's literally got a geometric representation of IPv4 in it!)


Yup. I absolutely want the metaverse. Just not a cartoon Facebook one.


Why would that comparison be bad if it's accurate?

Also, "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Both can be made good and evil.


Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you’re asking, but your parent comment isn’t saying the comparison is bad in the sense of being inaccurate, but bad in the sense of being ill-advised.


I hope people at least know that they should not create Skynet.


We are literally creating won’t right now.


It’s not accurate, it’s absurd hyperbole no different from the kind the people who peddle it have arrogantly ridiculed their entire lives.

A mentally unstable person being “made” to do something by a chatbot is no different from other mentally unstable people doing bad things because they saw them in a TV show.


You don't think there's a difference between passive entertainment and a conversation with a sycophantic enabler?


No, actually, an interactive textual conversation is a significantly different thing than a television show.


You think mental instability is a necessary prerequisite for covert persuasion?


No but those have less or no guards against it - so _we the society_ ;) stand and try guard them.

Rest of us have some chance to stand against persuasion.


I thought that was part of the appeal of this. There's something spooky and ironic about it.


Once/if we lose understanding of the tech it will become magic/haunted artifacts.


I had to do a double take. They’re framing this comparison as a positive thing?!?

(On second thought, the LLM probably made up this analogy on its own, which... in a way, is even worse.)


Definitely concerning when things are made up


There’s a long tradition in media of people completely missing the obvious and taking the opposite lesson from what was intended. One example is finance bros idolising Patrick Bateman (American Psycho).

https://nypost.com/2025/04/16/entertainment/american-psycho-...


That explains why the video was posted on X


> it seems like a bad thing to compare inventions to haunted artifacts that mind controlled their users into betraying their friends to a powerfully evil being.

It's worked pretty well for Palantir?


You hit on the point at the end… It’s not a bad comparison, it’s an apt one.


I was a huge skeptic of evil-mode/modal editing for about a decade and a half. Then I bit the bullet when I switched to Spacemacs in ~2017 and I am a full convert. The "change-in-<delimiters>" functionality alone is worth the price of admission/climbing the learning curve; the rest is a huge bonus!


NEVER take Hofstadter's law into account!!!!


Also FWIW I understand that the furry community has a strong culture of commissioning artists for their work, so that's likely to be a headwind against using genAI that isn't explicitly trained only on licensed materials. Sure, there are likely some who would use it regardless, but I expect the use of genAI to generate furry porn to be at least as toxic within that community as the use of genAI to generate furry porn outside of that community.


I am so happy that people make things like this <3


So this is a post from/for a group of livecoding music jammers, but I think there's value in considering it in broader contexts. In particular, the parts about "let code die" and not being afraid to remove/rewrite large blocks of code really resonated with me because--regardless of the author's intent--they suggest to me a level of competency and familiarity with one's tools and languages that many people have not reached, and may not even realize is possible.

To me, some of the most impactful parts are the ones that talk about how sometimes someone will delete their code, and they'll just. Rewrite it! By hand! From scratch! Because they wanted it to be that way!! How different that seems than the more typical world of issue trackers and code reviews and having just enough time to figure out how to do something once before it's on to the next feature. How tightly we cling to working code, lest it be lost and we have to do it again! Whomst among us has the time?!

But what if we did have the time? What if instead of figuring something out once and then moving on to the next ticket, we erased it and started over? Like an improv sketch ("do it differently!") or learning to paint ("scrape your canvas clean and begin again!") exploring alternatives and reinforcing in our minds what works and what doesn't.

"Do it again" is much less scary, more invitation when you're on the hundred-and-second rewrite rather than the second. You know where the pitfalls are, you've internalized which shortcuts will work and which offer false hope. You can practically do it with your eyes closed, in a matter of minutes rather than days

That's when you can start to get really creative--because the risk of exploration and experimentation is practically zero: if you try something new and it doesn't work, it's trivial to throw it away and replace it with something that does.


author here: yes this is exactly my intent, but i would have given some more signposting and context if i knew this was going to hit a larger audience :)

some of the concepts of this blog post are covered in this podcast episode too, such as "building close to the floor" https://www.pastagang.cc/podcast/runrecord.mp3


Few people understand this way of thinking, and even fewer are actually able to practice it.

I always thought that games and the people who made them were the real leaders of the mentality. I myself have been more or less hooked on competitive games since I first started playing them -- Counter Strike, TF2, Dota, Rocket League. I loved that what you built by playing these games was not digital wealth but physical skill, and I love/d that it was the players themselves who were always driving the other players to get better and better, which in turn often forced the game itself to adapt, which then kept things interesting and kept a community alive (and made it worth gaining skills)! My dream is to be able to create a piece of software that is imbued with this spark of life.


ah nice! i actually got started by modding TF2 :)

see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJzV0CX0q8o


I think some day we are likely to meet, and I am looking forward to it. Keep keeping software weird!


Thanks for this post! I have been looking for ways to make music in the last month and it helped me find strudel!


Net worth isn't equity - mortgage + 401k. Net worth is assets - liabilities. Equity is not an asset; the house is. So is the 401k. The mortgage is a liability. So Joe's net worth is 100k (IRA) + 300k (value of house) - 200k (mortgage) = 200k positive net worth.

(Another way of thinking about equity, specifically, is it is the real estate contribution to net worth, because it is what is left when you subtract the real estate liability (mortgage) from the real estate asset (value of house). That's why you shouldn't subtract the mortgage from the equity: equity is what's left after you've already subtracted the mortgage.)

(Edit: Adjusted sign in first equation to subtract mortgage. It's probably more technically accurate to keep it as addition and consider the mortgage to be a negative value, but I believe it's more straightforward and intuitive for most people as it is now represented.)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: