Re: Pagination

Situation: There are N results shown per page. There are N+1 results remaining.

Rigid/simple: The last result is put on a separate page.

Flexible/human: If the last results are within some reasonable threshold then include them on the last page.

The last page is a different context.

Counterpoint: the flexible approach makes things more surprising and difficult to reason about, both for technical people and laymen. The principle of least surprise is more important than marginal improvements in edge case handling.

Perspectives

[2015-09] Anne C. Reboul: "Why language really is not a communication system: a cognitive view of language evolution" - , Laboratory on Language, Brain and Cognition (L2C2), Institute for Cognitive Sciences-Marc Jeannerod, Bron, France [1]

> [2013-09] Noam Chomsky: One of the most striking cases of incompatibility, that I know, is the sharp conflict between computational efficiency, and communicative efficiency. Language is just badly designed for communication, but well-designed to be efficient, it seems. [2]

> [2013-09] Noam Chomsky adds: There's a kind of phrase that is sometimes used for this that drives people crazy; "Language is beautiful, but unusable." It's kind of true, you know. Even if people don't like it. [2]

[2022] Nick Enfield: "Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" [3]

> Language cannot create or change physical reality, but it can do the next best thing: reframe and invert our view of the world. In Language vs. Reality, Enfield explains why language is bad for scientists (who are bound by reality) but good for lawyers (who want to win their cases), ... [3]

> [2023-01] Ev Fedorenko: "Although language and thought often go together, they are robustly dissociable." [4]

> [2023-01] Ev Fedorenko: Fallacy 1: "Good at language = Good at thought". Fallacy 2: "Bad at thought = Bad at language". Fallacy 3: "Bad at language = Bad at thought" (emphasis in being judged on how smart you are based on how you say something). [4]

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-72JNZZBoVw&t=4493s

[3] https://direct.mit.edu/books/monograph/5472/Language-vs-Real...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9AiYuCwdE&t=250s

In a web context, I was thinking this when I checked out the web site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) [1]; why would they use a thin, small typeface with light gray color on a bright/white background which makes the text less appealing to read? It must be subtle sabotage from within!

(Some may counter this with Hanlon's razor [2]; Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.)

[1] https://www.eff.org/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I find the EFF site perfectly readable. Not sure what you’re experiencing but it looks fine to me.

Somewhat related: "The Egg" [2009*] is a fictional short story by American writer Andy Weir. [1]

> You, a 48-year-old man who dies in a car crash, meet God, the narrator, who says that you have been reincarnated many times before, and that you are next to be reincarnated as a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD. God then explains that you are, in fact, constantly reincarnated across time, and that all human beings who have ever lived and will ever live are incarnations of you. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Egg_(Weir_short_story)

Kurzgesagt adaptation of the story (31M views):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

Even more "somewhat" related:

There is a physical theory that claims that all electrons are the same electron, just travelling endless through time from the beginning to the end of the universe and back (becoming positrons on the reversed timeline).

That explains why all electrons have the same exact charge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe

Not sure it's a serious theory capable of proving something, but there you go.

Read it long time ago, but never new it was written by Andy Weir, same guy that wrote The Martian. Makes me want to look up his other stuff to see what range he has. I thought it was all purely space program stuff.

Underscore as a separator, YYYY_MM_DD:

  1970_01_01
  2024_06_09
  2024_12_31
  16383_12_31

Treated as base-10 number literal in some programming languages.

5 bits for DD [0, 31] + 4 bits for MM [0, 15] + 14 or more bits for year [0, 16_383] = 23 bits.

Windows should be broken up.

"Windows 11 Platform" for applications, drivers, security updates, and gaming. No (forced) Microsoft account. Only security updates.

"Windows 11 Plus" is a subscription model for enhanced features.

What their system requirements tell consumers:

> Windows 11 Pro for personal use and Windows 11 Home require internet connectivity and a Microsoft account during initial device setup. [1]

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...

EU: In the name of the EU government, you are all under arrest.

Democracy: It's treason, then.

See also: Bit Twiddling Hacks

https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html

Or the delightful Hacker's Delight by Henry S. Warren, Jr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker%27s_Delight

> Compute the sign of an integer

> On the other hand, if you prefer the result be either -1, 0, or +1, then use:

> sign = (v != 0) | -(int)((unsigned int)((int)v) >> (sizeof(int) * CHAR_BIT - 1));

> // Or, for more speed but less portability:

> sign = (v != 0) | (v >> (sizeof(int) * CHAR_BIT - 1)); // -1, 0, or +1

> // Or, for portability, brevity, and (perhaps) speed:

> sign = (v > 0) - (v < 0); // -1, 0, or +1

Or if you prefer portability, speed, and readability at the same time:

    int sign(int i) {
        if(i > 0)
            return 1;
        else if(i < 0)
            return -1;
        else
            return 0;
    }

gets compiled to

        mov     ecx, edi
        sar     ecx, 31
        test    edi, edi
        mov     eax, 1
        cmovle  eax, ecx
        ret

which is the bit shift hack.

(still useful as a reference for implementing an optimizer, to be read as pseudo code)

I think a bunch of compilers nowadays are smart enough to see these kinds of hacks and compile them to an equivalent on the target that runs best. Favourite example of this is writing a duff's device to unroll a loop, and then gcc completely ignores it and replaces it with a vectorised loop.

Similar but for general math and optimizations:

http://www.hakmem.org/

I was looking for this link. You made my morning!

Cloud 1: Cloud does all the compute, logic, storage, and transfer.

Cloud 2 = Cloud 1, but delegate more compute/logic to edge/local computers to reduce cost. [1]

Cloud 3 = Cloud 2, but edge/local computer has hardware specifically made to do the compute, store intermediate data, and send the results to someone else who might give you something in return for free, and possibly make you pay for it later.

Marketing can call it Cloud <3 (heart). Some might say </3 (broken heart). [2]

> [~10 years ago] Smartphones began incorporating AI accelerators starting with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 in 2015. [3]

> An AI accelerator, deep learning processor, or neural processing unit (NPU) is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning applications, including artificial neural networks and machine vision. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_computing

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emoticons#Western

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_accelerator