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Jörg W Mittag

 Discussion on answer by user182601: W…

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Jörg W Mittag
Mar 14 04:33
The Vatican City is somewhat weird in that its monarch is somewhat-democratically elected.
 

 Discussion on answer by Steve Jessop:…

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Jörg W Mittag
Feb 13 09:58
@SteveJessop: There's a Haskell company called Galois, which specialized in government and military contracting work. They have a document management system where they encoded the United States government "business" rules for classified documents into the Haskell type system. This makes it impossible to introduce a bug that leads to data leakage, since the code simply wouldn't compile otherwise.
 

 Discussion on answer by Ben I.: The R…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jan 22 14:42
Transpiling is just a different name for compiling. A compiler is a program that translates a program in language A into a semantically equivalent program in language B. A transpiler is a compiler that, for some reason, people don't like calling a compiler.
Jörg W Mittag
Jan 22 14:42
… compiled to C.
Jörg W Mittag
Jan 22 14:42
"no toolchain compiles from high-level languages like Python or Haskell to C" – This is wrong. The ShedSkin Python compiler (now abandoned) compiled from Python to C++. The Jhc Haskell compiler compiles from Haskell98 to ISO C. The MJIT Ruby JIT compiler which was part of the YARV Ruby VM compiled YARV byte code to C, compiled it using GCC, then linked it into the YARV VM, all dynamically at runtime. In fact, compiling to C used to be a quite popular implementation technique before the existence of the JVM, LLVM, ECMAScript, and WebAssembly. For example, Cfront, the very first C++ compiler, …
 

 Discussion on question by Steve: Why …

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 19, 2024 12:12
You might also be interested in some of the discussions on the Wiki, e.g., ObjectRelationalImpedanceMismatch and ObjectRelationalImpedanceMismatchDoesNotExist as well as the many discussions that branch off of those two.
Jörg W Mittag
Dec 19, 2024 12:12
Ruby has only a single type (it is dynamically typed, so from a type-theoretic standpoint, it is "uni-typed"), and it has a nil value which is a member of that type. Therefore, it fulfills your criteria of a general purpose language, often used on the client-side, which has a null value within the domain of every type. Is that what you are looking for?
 

 Discussion on question by roganjosh: …

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 10, 2024 19:54
Regardless of legality, this sounds sketchy on technical grounds. Microsoft Teams, for example, will automatically turn off the cameras and microphones of all participants in the meeting and display a warning banner as soon as you turn on any kind of recording. Only if you explicitly consent, will your camera or microphone be turned on again. Furthermore, the system administrator can completely prohibit any form of recording or AI transcription. But otter.ai just joins the meeting as a regular user, so it circumvents those protections around the built in recording and transcription features.
 

 Discussion on question by James Matha…

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Jörg W Mittag
Aug 8, 2024 02:25
@MichaelHarvey: In Germany, it is "Zebrastreifen", where "Zebra" is the German word for zebra (who would have guessed!) and "Streifen" can mean "stripes", but I believe in this case it is not referring to the stripes of the zebra but is rather used in the meaning of "strip", as in a strip of road that it is safe for pedestrians to cross. So, basically, the German word for zebra crossing is, in fact, more or less exactly the German words for zebra and crossing.
 

 Discussion on question by JonathanRee…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jul 8, 2024 21:52
Does this mean only China and Russia should get to vote on US foreign policy? They're the ones most affected by it!
 

 Discussion on answer by Jen: If Trump…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jun 4, 2024 22:57
Ironically, this could mean that a Presidential Pardon could actually strengthen the argument.
 

 Discussion on question by d-b: Can so…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jan 28, 2024 18:27
"Where I live, accusing someone for rape in public would most definitely be libel" – May I ask where do you live? Because that's certainly not the case in Germany, nor in any other jurisdiction I am familiar with. In Germany, it would only be libel if it were untrue.
 

 Discussion on question by John Hon: W…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jan 8, 2024 20:21
"They don't serve food on long haul buses and trains." – Citation needed. I have never been on a long-distance train without a restaurant, and in first class, food is served at the seat. The pasta on DB trains, for example, is quite good, better than what you can get at some train stations. And remember, what we Germans consider "long-distance" is just a cigarette run in the US.
 

 Discussion on answer by user182601: I…

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 11, 2023 11:15
This answer seems to be a very long-winded and roundabout way of saying "Yes, you should assume all rules are implemented at all times". After all, if rules are "selectively enforced", i.e., you have no way of knowing whether they will be enforced or not, the punishments are "draconian", and we have examples of draconian punishments applied to foreigners, then the only logical conclusion is to follow all rules.
 

 Discussion on question by Lecifer: Do…

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 10, 2023 02:47
A lot of the comments and answers seem to just argue over semantics. In order to make it possible to give an objectively verifiable correct answer, could you please give a precise, unambiguous, objectively verifiable definition of what, exactly, you mean by "amplification" and "acoustic amplification", when something is "TRULY amplification", and what, exactly, it means for something to "TRULY exist".
 

 Discussion on question by zomega: Why…

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Jörg W Mittag
Nov 18, 2023 22:08
@StephenKitt: Heck, clock frequencies not meaning much is the very reason the P4 line of ISAs went extinct after all. It is kind of funny, actually, to use a CPU architecture which is famous for sacrificing performance for being able to market it with higher clock frequencies, as a performance comparison.
 

 Discussion on question by Avery: Buyi…

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Jörg W Mittag
Sep 29, 2023 15:12
@terdon: wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legally_mononymous_people lists 25 people, currently living, whose legal name is a mononym. And remember, Wikipedia requires notability, so there's probably plenty of people with mononyms that aren't notable enough to be listed on Wikipedia. For example, Turkey only established surnames after WW1, so there might still be some (very old) people alive that don't have one. Parts of India and several Native American and First Nations tribes use only one name. Mononyms are not part of US tradition, but it is legal to change your name to one. And so on …
 

 Discussion on question by JonathanRee…

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Jörg W Mittag
May 23, 2023 06:48
Cars are the least safe mode of transport, airlines are the safest. This is at least partially due to the level of training we choose to require of someone operating a car vs. an airliner. So, a cynical answer would be: all that is needed to lower the level of training to operate an aircraft is to accept that aircraft accidents become as common as car accidents.
 

 Discussion on answer by Dale M: Can a…

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Jörg W Mittag
May 19, 2023 19:44
Turns out it's in the ToU (3d): "Accuracy. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly evolving fields of study. We are constantly working to improve our Services to make them more accurate, reliable, safe and beneficial. Given the probabilistic nature of machine learning, use of our Services may in some situations result in incorrect Output that does not accurately reflect real people, places, or facts. You should evaluate the accuracy of any Output as appropriate for your use case, including by using human review of the Output."
Jörg W Mittag
May 19, 2023 19:44
@KFK: "ChatGPT’s terms of use make no guarantee that the text produced is accurate" – I haven't checked the ToS, but the fact that ChatGPT sometimes makes up information is listed as a limitation on the introductory blog post, at least: "ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers", "Ideally, the model would ask clarifying questions when the user provided an ambiguous query. Instead, our current models usually guess what the user intended.", and "it will sometimes respond to harmful instructions or exhibit biased behavior"
 

 Discussion on answer by nvoigt: Is "I…

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Jörg W Mittag
May 4, 2023 10:35
@qdread: They didn't ignore a person in distress because they thought they were "just a homeless bum", they ignored a person in distress because they thought they weren't in distress but rather sleeping and thus in no need of help.
 

 Discussion on question by The Rocket …

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Jörg W Mittag
Apr 30, 2023 14:00
Note that (unlike for example Aviation where this is forbidden), asking about incidents that are still under investigation is allowed here. But, of course, the question might not be answerable until the incident report is finalized and published which can take from several weeks to several years.
 

 Discussion on question by Lorenzo Don…

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Jörg W Mittag
Apr 27, 2023 16:32
… control, isn't any one of those things much more likely to be a problem than a failed stage separation that, as far as anyone can tell, never actually happened?
Jörg W Mittag
Apr 27, 2023 16:32
I'm not sure where I should begin: 1) the investigation has just started, nobody, including SpaceX, knows what happened. 2) SpaceX uses autonomous flight termination systems, no-one in the control center was "forced" to "activate" it – the rocket does it on its own. 3) SpaceX never uses pyrotechnics, since they are not reusable. 4) the separation system is of a completely novel design that has never been attempted before. 5) Why would you think stage separation was the problem? I mean, 6 engines failed, the hydraulic power units exploded, without the hydraulic power, the vehicle spun out …
 

 Discussion on question by Schezuk: Di…

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Jörg W Mittag
Feb 12, 2023 18:03
Regarding the Pascal influence, two things I remember James Gosling mentioning in an interview many years ago are: 1) Preferring keywords as in Pascal over symbols as in C++ (Gosling mentioned extends instead of : as an example). 2) (Technically not Java The Language but Java The Platform) The JVM was influenced by Smalltalk VMs, the Burroughs B5000, and the UCSD Pascal p-Code system.
 

 Discussion on question by Neil Meyer:…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jan 21, 2023 09:01
Note that the two statements "X was invented a long time ago" and "X did not become feasible until recently" are not mutually exclusive. The numerical methods underlying Computational Fluid Dynamics were developed in the early 1800s, but computers only became powerful enough to significantly reduce time required for wind tunnel testing in the 21st century.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Who…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jan 21, 2023 08:59
@WalterMitty: Whow. I had never heard of Muddle, but holy cow does that language have an impressive array of "fathers" and "progenies". As someone who is aware of Carl Hewitt and Gerald R. Sussmann, and Planner, Scheme, Smalltalk, PLASMA, and the Actor Model, I can't believe I missed it.
 

 Discussion on question by zomega: Why…

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 12, 2022 08:44
@zomega: Sure, but the Ethernet chipset alone would have cost $50 in 1996. How many people are going to accept that a device that used to cost < $10 now costs > $50, just because of a new connector that doesn't add any new functionality?
Jörg W Mittag
Dec 12, 2022 08:44
How many mice, keyboards, and printers have you seen with Firewire or Fast Ethernet ports?
 

 Discussion between GlenPeterson and J…

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 5, 2022 00:22
@GlenPeterson: The four behavioral constraints come from the Liskov Substitution Principle. In Liskov's papers, they are of course phrased with lots of Greek letters and logical symbols, but that's what they are saying. See, e.g. Figure 1 and Figure 5 in A Behavioral Notion of Subtyping for two subtly different definitions of the subtyping constraints.
Jörg W Mittag
Dec 5, 2022 00:22
… but it was never possible to inherit methods without also creating a subtype (since every class is also a type in Java).
Jörg W Mittag
Dec 5, 2022 00:22
@GlenPeterson: "Or in what context (which languages), is this true?" – There are many languages where inheritance is not only used for differential code re-use. For example, in Java, the extends keyword creates both a subclass (i.e. a container for methods) and a subtype (i.e. a set of guarantees, IOW, a contract). There are only a very small number of mostly academic languages where implementation inheritance can be performed without subtyping. Before the addition of interface default methods, it was possible to create subtypes without inheriting methods by extending an interface, …
 

 Discussion on answer by Jontia: Do Ir…

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Jörg W Mittag
Nov 1, 2022 11:16
It's still shocking to me that neither the leaders of the Leave movement nor the voters who voted for it were able to make the connection between: "We are leaving the EU because EU members are not allowed to make their own deals" and "The Good Friday Agreement requires us to make special deals with Ireland, which is in the EU".
 

 Discussion on question by chrono_tach…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jul 14, 2022 10:27
"The company expects 8 billable hours per day." – That's a problem, because it means that even just going to the toilet will already incur overtime. If you have a talk with that person, that will be overtime. If they have to call IT to clear up some problem with their computer, that will be overtime. If they go to HR to sign some documents, that will be overtime. Depending on the kind of work you do, something as low as 5 billable hours per day is already ambitious.
 

 Discussion on answer by Raffzahn: Wha…

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Jörg W Mittag
Apr 2, 2022 17:09
Cook argues (only half-jokingly) that, since OOP is about behavioral abstraction, and functional (behavorial) abstraction is the only abstraction in λ-calculus, that means λ-calculus is both the purest and first OOP language. And the funny thing is, he is "the best kind of correct".
 

 Discussion on question by ZaellixA: T…

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Jörg W Mittag
Mar 28, 2022 17:35
I thought about this a little more. In most acoustic drum kits / percussion setups, most of the drums will be farther away from the drummer's head than 55cm, and they will also be farther away from each other than 55cm. So, if anything, your player will experience reduced and more consistent latency than playing acoustically. Heck, when a piano player plays a great run on a grand piano, the distance between the string where the run starts and ends can be up to a meter.
Jörg W Mittag
Mar 28, 2022 17:35
Note that at standard atmospheric conditions, sound travels less than 55cm through air in 1.6ms. In other words, if your percussionist uses a floor monitor instead of In-Ear-Monitors just leaning backwards will create more latency than your device does. In real percussion setup, different drums will be more than 55cm apart from each other.
 

 Discussion on answer by Dave: Did Dr.…

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Jörg W Mittag
Feb 11, 2022 15:05
Since I misread this myself when I skimmed the quote, I would like to point out that not recommending to do something and recommending not to do something are two very different things.
 

 Discussion on question by Aleks G: Un…

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Jörg W Mittag
Dec 30, 2021 01:57
Do you have any proof for your claim that Austria hasn't published the rules? I find that highly doubtful.
 

 Discussion on question by uhoh: Could…

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Jörg W Mittag
Nov 8, 2021 08:58
The big problem with batteries is their mass. The big advantage of a combustion engine is that as the energy content of the fuel is used up, so too is its mass. This would be equivalent to having lots of little batteries and dropping each of them as soon as they are empty. That's exactly what the Electron rocket does, for example: it drops its battery packs to burn up in the atmosphere.
 

 Discussion on answer by Evan Carroll:…

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Jörg W Mittag
Oct 26, 2021 19:54
@JimmyJames: It burns part of the methane outside of the atmosphere, for example for course corrections or for the landing burn and takeoff on the Moon.
Jörg W Mittag
Oct 26, 2021 19:54
@nick012000: "Clearly, Elon Musk needs to invest in a company to harness cow farts for rocket fuel!" – SpaceX plans to produce methane using the Sabatier reaction by extracting carbon dioxide from the air. It makes sense to do that, both economically (why pay for methane if you can produce it yourself?), ecologically (it would actually make Starship more or less carbon-neutral, even greenhouse-negative), and as a test run, since they will need to do that on Mars. They have already installed an air separation unit at Starbase to separate air into oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc.
 

 Discussion on answer by Schmuddi: Is …

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Jörg W Mittag
Oct 16, 2021 02:18
In case you are wondering what the relevance of abolishing mandatory military service is: it’s where a significant portion of young men would have gotten a truck driver’s license who would not otherwise either have thought of getting into that kind of job or would not have been able to afford one.
 

 Discussion on question by Moshe Katz:…

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Jörg W Mittag
Oct 15, 2021 09:26
@cup Graphics, sound, network, and RAID is already 4 without even getting into application-specific stuff like video capture cards, various kinds of accelerators, or something like IBM's S/390 "mainframe-on-a-PCI-card".
 

 Discussion on question by Heatconomic…

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Jörg W Mittag
Sep 15, 2021 22:00
Is it just me or are the title and the body really asking vastly different questions? Because the answer to the title is simply "Yes, of course, it is, why wouldn't it be?"
 

 Discussion on answer by Jörg W Mittag…

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Jörg W Mittag
Aug 10, 2021 09:24
@phoog: Thanks, that is a good point. I focused on distinguishing the two in those contexts where both apply, but there are indeed contexts where only one of them makes sense.
 

 Discussion on answer by David Siegel:…

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Jörg W Mittag
Aug 10, 2021 07:42
This is a good example of one of the many tensions a government must resolve: each person wants to maximize their individual freedom, but the government has the ungrateful job of maximizing the sum of every person's individual freedom's. So, for example, the government has to weigh person A's freedom to believe that the government is run by lizard people who want to inject tracking chips into their subjects against person B's freedom to not die of a completely preventable infection transmitted by person A.
 

 Discussion on answer by Dave: Did Don…

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Jörg W Mittag
Aug 4, 2021 20:07
Note that if we are getting really technical, this only proves that money was moved from the MAGA PAC to Trump Businesses. The claim in the question, however, has three additional conditions: that a) it was donated money that was moved, b) it was Donald Trump himself who did that, and c) the money went into his own private business accounts. So, if this was, for example a) repayment of a loan or b) the money was transferred by an aide, assistant, secretary, attorney, or accountant, or c) went into, say, a pension fund, the claim would be untrue.
 

 Discussion on answer by o.m.: Why doe…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jul 27, 2021 00:46
@unamourdeswann: "But, in this case, the problem was probably obvious when UK signed" – The problem was already obvious before the 2016 Referendum. That didn't stop Leavers to campaign and/or vote for it, though. What has only become obvious later, is that the Leavers had no plan for actually dealing with any of the problems that were already known from day 1.
 

 Discussion on question by Aadhavan: W…

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Jörg W Mittag
Jul 17, 2021 19:11
The "slow responsiveness" you talk about is a feature, not a bug. We had a very efficient government here in Germany for about 12 years, who managed to "streamline" education, police, military, industrial production, and pretty much all of society in a very short time. Needless to say, we don't want that to ever happen again, and all the "slowness" and "inefficiency" in our democratic process was deliberately designed as a direct response to the Third Reich.