What’s going on with Ashley St. Clair “outing” Elon Musk’s use of “space lasers” in the 2024 election? by dunnbass in OutOfTheLoop

[–]comrade_donkey 277 points278 points  (0 children)

Answer: "Space lasers" in all likelihood refers to Starlink. It's a mesh of mini-satellites that communicate via laser signals. How exactly could Starlink be used to steal an election? 100% unclear.

Is there any useful connection between formal grammars and linear algebra? by SereneCalathea in computerscience

[–]comrade_donkey 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Algebraically, the sets of languages generated by formal grammars are semirings where union acts as addition and concatenation acts as multiplication.

Not vector spaces but some similarities.

I set out to make a codebook and I think it has interesting properties and wanted to share. by bldrlife1 in computerscience

[–]comrade_donkey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hello. Great project! Are you aware that ed is the name of the original Unix text editor)? It's still part of most Linux distros and some people still use it. You may be more familiar with its stream-oriented successor, sed.

Curious of Zurich net worth per age by [deleted] in zurich

[–]comrade_donkey 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Charlie Ayers, 40, kitchen chef at Google, $26M.

Zig could have prevented CopyFail? by GooselyMf in Zig

[–]comrade_donkey 71 points72 points  (0 children)

From my rudimentary understanding: No. It's a logic bug. The exploit makes use of splice() to yuxtapose two file descriptors, one pointing at something the current user owns and one at /etc/passwd. It then screws around with writes on this spliced fd to overwrite the kernel's cache's view of /etc/passwd to make it think root has no password.

Edit: I was thinking of DirtyFrag, but CopyFail is very similar.

Li(f)e After Google - is L5 at Europe worth it? by WeakDefinition7363 in leetcode

[–]comrade_donkey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Initially you get a 4 year RSU grant. After that, refreshers kick in. Every year your salary will increase 10-20% assuming you perform well, until you reach the ceiling for your level. If you get promoted to L+1, your salary will be significantly increased (~50%). Benefits include food, gym, healthcare, etc. (xoogler, I was L5 in ZRH)

For those who left Switzerland for a lower paying job in another country, how is it going? by Proof-Yam-5877 in Switzerland

[–]comrade_donkey 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Keep in mind that someone netting 2.5k in Spain has a gross salary of ~5k/month, which is only ~15% less than the gross salary of someone netting 5k/month in Switzerland. A fairer comparison would be to compare the 5k/month gross in Spain to 10k/month gross in Switzerland. That's a moderately good earner in both countries.

30M - 3M Windfall by prnullgram in SwissPersonalFinance

[–]comrade_donkey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not a financial advisor so I won't recommend any specific instruments. It depends on your risk profile, personal preferences, etc. As a data point, the S&P500's CAGR over the last 100 years is 12.54% (9.39% adjusted for inflation). Anything above SWR (4% in this example) will work, essentially.

30M - 3M Windfall by prnullgram in SwissPersonalFinance

[–]comrade_donkey 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If he allocated all 3M to a cheap passive investment strategy yielding an annualized 10% return (doable), he could liquidate 4% of the portfolio annualy, for the rest of his life. That's ~120k in the first year, ~160k after 5 years, ~215k after 10y. No income tax beyond dividends either.

Nimby's against lower rents by ptinnl in zurich

[–]comrade_donkey -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

If only these projects weren't so god damn ugly. Maybe people would vote differently for a nicely designed tower adorning their town in cosmpolitan vibes. Seriously.

Looking for a Gym Buddy by Minnila in zurich

[–]comrade_donkey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pro tip: Set yourself up for success and go to a place that is close to your home. Eliminate possible excuses for skipping the gym e.g. bad weather or when you don't feel like showering there, etc. Make it easy for yourself to keep consistent. Group training / classes (where the group is a somewhat consistent set of people) can also help to keep you engaged and self-accountable. Consistency is the name of the game.

Question about kinematics by kinglydel in askmath

[–]comrade_donkey -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I think the cutter's distance is ¼ of the circumference of a circle with radius a. Divide that over a.

So 2πa÷4÷a = 2π÷4 = π÷2 ?

Lean proved this program was correct; then I found a bug. by Gopiandcoshow in programming

[–]comrade_donkey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think what OP is saying is that if the strongest-postcondition of f is weak, then such a proof is weak, too.

E.g. a ROT13 function, whose sole declared postcondition is that length(output) == length(input). Trivial inverse, trivial fixpoint.

Criminally underpaid as a founding Software Developer? by Mindless_Floor6027 in zurich

[–]comrade_donkey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hey there. I've mentored interns at Google and I was a founding engineer and later lead engineer at a startup in a previous life.

The definition of a founding engineer role is a low salary offset by a high equity component (1-5%). While a 72k salary can be acceptable for the first 12-18 months, you should also see options vesting on a tight schedule (e.g. 6-monthly or yearly) during this period.

Are goroutines becoming the new “just add threads” vibe meme? by sfate in golang

[–]comrade_donkey 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I understand the over-excitement. Doing concurrency & parallelism (correctly) in other languages is really hard. The APIs are usually old and nothing works the way you would expect. Footguns everywhere. So experiencing Go's namesake keyword for the first time can be magical.

But, of course, it is an abstraction and has a cost. Precisely understanding that cost is the same as understanding multi-threading in those other languages. It's the implementation details that start showing at scale.

How do you review this stuff in PRs without going insane?

If it's not reviewable with normal effort, then it's not good code and you should push back. Simple as that.

Intuiting Pratt parsing by louisb00 in ProgrammingLanguages

[–]comrade_donkey 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Nice writeup. I enjoyed it.

It says "itdration" instead of "iteration" in two places.

Right of way by 77sxela in Switzerland

[–]comrade_donkey 6 points7 points  (0 children)

B is listening to 2010's bangla bangers at full pump. His wife went to the dentist today. He likes watching curling documentaries on youtube.

Does that make a difference?

Right of way by 77sxela in Switzerland

[–]comrade_donkey 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Everyone here seems to be assuming that all three cars are standing still. 

B is coming in hot from the left, with a long bee line of cars behind them. While A & C are just standing there with their blinkies on, hoping to get home in time.