The saying probably assumes that each chronometer has a certain small probability of malfunctioning, resulting in a significant error (basically a fat-tailed error distribution). With three chronometers, you can use a robust estimator of the true value (consensus value or median). With two, there's no robust estimator and if you use the mean, you have twice the probability of being significantly wrong (though only by half as much).

Thanks for the link, nice to see the informal conventions spelled out like this!

True, although better pruning can massively lower the effective branching ratio compared to pure alpha-beta, making the algorithm benefit more from longer search time again (which is why pruning is so important).

Users with enough karma can "flag" posts and comments, which a) calls for moderator attention and b) decreases ranking. It's meant for off-topic/inflammatory/low-quality submissions.

It is enforced automatically for most purposes: If you're writing a proof involving e.g. the sqrt function, you want to use theorems about it, e.g. that (sqrt(x))^2 = x. Almost all of those theorems have x>=0 as a precondition, so you do need to prove it when it matters.

Thanks, writing it as 1+2(*)3 made it click for me.

Reminds me of the '$' operator in Haskell - it lowers the precedence of function application, basically being an opening parenthesis that's implicitly closed at the end of the line.

No. There is a global allocator which is used by default, but all the stdlib functions that allocate memory have a version which allows you to pass in a custom allocator. These functions are still "unstable" though, so they can currently only be used with development builds of the compiler.

The article is a bit confusing, but I like the concept behind symbols: Basically a way to distinguish identifier names (chosen by the programmer) from user-facing strings.

The distinction between is one I've mentally adopted in other languages like Python as well. For personal projects I like to use single quotes for 'symbols' and double quotes for "strings", e.g.:

    add_label(text="Hello World!", align='center')

Does anyone else do something similar?

Single vs double quotes is also semantically significant in Ruby. Double quoted strings support interpolation whereas single quoted does not.

I almost never use single quotes unless I’m in someone else’s code that already used single quotes. And then I have to fight the urge to not change everything to double quotes just because.

I have been with you for a very long time,until I recently realized how tricky the edge cases are, I cannot figure out a good rule.

A json api, should it use symbols or strings?

Json has string keys, but the api keys are chosen by the programmer.

I can't remember which edgecase,but there are another bunch I found that are tricky.

> Does anyone else do something similar?

I do exactly the same thing. Did you also derive it from Erlang?

> 85,66% guaranteed uptime (we need some sleep, too)

Unfortunately there's an increasing number of home internet connections behind CGNat, as IPv4 adresses run out (and IPv6 doesn't gain momentum, heaven knows why)

I guess it's partially because ISPs are perfectly happy selling crippled internet connectivity as the base service and charging hefty premiums for "luxuries" like static IPs. It has also become common to only offer static IPs to business customers.

IPv4 addresses have run out, everything has been allocated, and they are now being traded.

IPv6 is slowly growing in popularity. Google stats are close to 50%. If your ISP has IPv6, you might be accessing Hacker News with IPv6 since they added support recently.