Viewing profile — MarcusBrutus

The integers are totally closed under multiplication. They lack an inverse under multiplication that's why they aren't a field.

For those who had the misfortune to suffer the consquences of his folly, he is not controversial at all. He is a conceited man-child with very bad manners. There's readily accessib…

I wrote a Javascript visualization of this (using React) some time ago: http://mperdikeas.github.io/stack-piling-and-tumbling/index.... (click "start dropping grain" to start) Gith…

The problem with chess is that what makes it so addictive is the effect of memorizing openings. Opening theory adds strategic depth, flavor, and a landscape to what would otherwise…

Economists started using mathematics purely out of Physics Envy. I am obviously not talking about financial products which require some statistics and complex probabilistic models …

Flow is not a transpiler, there is no concept of "emitting code", only of stripping away the annotations. In contrast, TypeScript is a transpiler. TypeScript being a transpiler mea…

I 've used both. Flow wins hands down: (1) It is less intrusive. Flow's type system is built on annotations which are simply stripped away at runtime (as opposed to writing in anot…

In your database always store time as seconds since the Epoch (or milliseconds since the Epoch if you need more precision). Forget about SQL date/time types, they are useless. Then…

It gives me a very warm feeling to know that those simpletons now have you to care for them and prevent other people from taking advantage of them. I do hope they show some appreci…

I know very well what these systems are and, more importantly, I also know what they have in common (with German National Socialism, Maoism and Arab Islamism too): contempt for the…

... asks the one who can't write 11 words without a syntactic error (in case you edit it: "Do you even know the meaning of the words to use ?"). Also be advised that it's not corre…

If a business is willing to offer me free soda refills and I freely choose to patronize thar business, then it takes a hardcore Stalinist to dare stand between us two and prevent b…

The depths of socialist / collectivist depravity that the French are willing to descend to are mind-staggering. And to think that, from time to time, one sees in HN some random jok…

The US did it by virtue of it being a lot more homogeneous when it was first created. Last time I checked they didn't need any translators when they were debating the constitution,…

It most definitely is and it takes a very starry eyed sort of person to expect otherwise. The idea that 20 or so different people with different languages, religions, mores, histor…

Yep, obviously.

For a man, a brothel operator, a private detective, or a drugs purveyor would make more sense for blackmail. How would a waiter in a nondescript location gain access to information…

The story doesn't explain how a spy working as a waiter, purchase manager or "artist" can gain access to military secrets.

Ubuntu LTS with i3 window manager. Community size matters and after having experienced i3wm I find it impossible to use any other window manager.

Scarcity, fungibility, divisibility, durability are not societal constructs. Plus all metals have some inherent value. On top of that you have desirability which you could perhaps …

Bitcoin fails to satisfactorily answer von Mises' regression theorem. It also has no scarcity since it can face competition by an infinite number of similar conceivable algorithms …

Even in OO languages (such as Java and C#) people are routinely advised to favor composition over inheritance whenever given half a chance. Classes definitely smell (or rather reek…

I've used Clojure in a few cases and I totally adore the simplicity of its Lisp syntax as opposed to the baroquesque abomination that is Scala. However, lack of strong typing is so…