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Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

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Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#21

Post by rcfox »

pjscott wrote: post #10
Alind wrote: post #7

why does this guy always behave himself like a god

Gods behave in many ways. Some are jealous and quick to anger, and others are inhumanly patient. Some forbid alcohol to their followers, and others get drunk and beat up giants. Some descent to earth in the form of a bull to conduct illicit sexual liaisons with mortals, and others lack reproductive organs altogether. However, without exception, one thing they all have in common is that they never conduct polite discu…

Nice illustration of the problems associated with naive Bayesian classifiers.

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#22

Post by gaving »

po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

meanwhile everybody awkwardly +1'ing each other

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#23

Post by henrikschroder »

gaving wrote: post #22
po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

meanwhile everybody awkwardly +1'ing each other

"Its things like this that make me realize how little I really know.." +8

The people who +1 stuff aren't the ones that understand the discussion, and the ones that do understand it don't +1, because why would they, it's obvious by reading the comments which ones are good and which ones are bad... It's a fantastic culture clash.

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#25

Post by Peaker »

po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

Linus knows exactly what kind of comments it will get.

So either he doesn't care about the comments at all, or he is fishing for these exact pats on the back.

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#26

Post by zzz90210 »

robryan wrote: post #16
zzz90210 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong question. Why does everyone else elevate the most mundane aspects of his daily musings into the words of God? I dont think he asked for this post to be put on the front page of HN, and he is probably laughing about it right now.

Why? I'd say we find optimisation tricks quiet interesting here. I barely saw any sucking up or worshipping in the thread, it was mostly on topic.

Yes and I wonder just how interesting this post would have seemed if it was just some schmuck on G+ instead of His Greatness, hmm?

The fact that so few comments on this post relate to the subject matter of optimization kind of disproves your point.

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#27

Post by diminish »

po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

An open discussion on a very low level technical implementation with a heterogeneous crowd on Google+ seems to be the dawn of a new era; open source programming becomes public in full sunlight the same way books or mathematics became public after the invention of the printing. Compare it to mailing lists or earlier forms of engineering discussions behind closed doors. Many outsiders all around the world are now working hard on sunday learning C or with their gcc compilers trying to solve Linus's bitwise calculation optimisation problem and they previously had nothing to do with kernel programming. Their results may go into the next Linux kernel release and that is exciting for a puzzle.

and as opposed to you I find this to be a nice thing for everyone++ to be invited to think Linus's question on Google+ (which is better than facebook or linked in or pinterest for this purpose)

'...so it's not a generic "count number of bits" (or even a generic "count number of bytes"). So I was hoping somebody would come up with something simple like (x & mask1) + (x&mask2)>>shift that just got the four possibilities right.'

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#28

Post by yeswecan »

Peaker wrote: post #25
po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

Linus knows exactly what kind of comments it will get. So either he doesn't care about the comments at all, or he is fishing for these exact pats on the back.

Or he naively thought the signal to noise ratio would be higher.

Re: Torvalds: More bitwise tricks

#30

Post by po »

diminish wrote: post #27
po wrote: post #20

Google Plus is still a very strange place. Here you have an exceedingly technical thread with some of OSS brightest minds working on a little puzzle and it's interspersed with litter. You have the sincere (yet misplaced) thank you for working on OSS , the clueless guy, and the isn't it cool we're talking about such hardcore topics guy. Every one of those comments makes me cringe a little. This is why geeks have yet t…

An open discussion on a very low level technical implementation with a heterogeneous crowd on Google+ seems to be the dawn of a new era; open source programming becomes public in full sunlight the same way books or mathematics became public after the invention of the printing. Compare it to mailing lists or earlier forms of engineering discussions behind closed doors. Many outsiders all around the world are now worki…

I love that Linus does his thinking out in the public, but that's nothing new. Google Plus isn't enabling anything that he didn't do before, it's just being exposed to a new audience. Frankly, I love that this new audience is seeing his writing. I love being able to watch smart people doing their thing and I hope they inspire others.

But, I'm afraid you you've totally missed my point. What I don't love is the commentary being mixed in with the game. This is why when you have a panel discussion, you don't hand a microphone to everyone in the auditorium. When you go to a concert, you don't hand everyone an instrument. People have varying levels of contextual awareness and/or self control: it's not really their fault for throwing in their $0.02. I'm just pointing out that Google Plus is a type of forum and I'm still not sure what kind of conversation is supposed to go on there. This kind of discussion feels unnatural to me.

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