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I just don't know how to reconcile the fact that HN tore the C language a new arsehole over "goto fail", and is now back to praising macros.

Macros need to be tossed into the dustbin of history, right next to self-modifying code and other cute but dangerous hacks.


HN is not one person.

There are many people here, from many backgrounds, with many different perspectives. Almost all languages have proponents here (with COBOL the possible exception), and all languages have detractors here.


Look, I don't have time for your childish pedantry. There were entire articles on the front page of HN blaming C for having poor language design on the issue of "goto fail". Now there is an article promoting macros in C, no less.

HN may not be one person, but does have a front page as a result of aggregate behavior.


Why, I think he raised a very important point. HW is not one person. People have different backgrounds and different needs. Sometimes, C macros are the the best you have. Just because they're generally to be avoided doesn't mean they should never be used.


> Look, I don't have time for your childish pedantry

Please don't make personally aggressive comments on Hacker News.


You can delete the "aryastark" account and all comments.


C macros are a cute but dangerous hack. But this software implements Lisp macros for C. Lisp-style macros are safe and nonhacky. The main feature that allows this is `gensym`, which lets you store values in variables that are guaranteed to not name-clash.

Also, the “goto fail” issue had nothing to do with macros. So people might hate C’s block syntax while loving other features such as macros. People can hate parts of a language and like other parts. Like the author of the book JavaScript: The Good Parts, who likes JavaScript, but recommends against using certain features of it.


It's amazing how wrong companies can get marketing. Take Apple's AirDrop, for example. I spent 20 minutes one day wondering why my iPhone wasn't connecting to my Mac Mini. Turns out, "AirDrop" is two different things by the same company that are similar but completely incompatible.


Yeah, I hope they improve and fill the gaps in current AirDrop and AirPlay. It has come a long way, but there's still room for improvement.

Namely, AirPlay between OS X devices and iOS devices (including just audio and both audio+video), in either direction. Here's hoping for OS X 10.10.


Depends on whether people actually saw an automobile before they heard about the concept. And of course, people aren't visionaries. They usually do want what they have now--only better. The difference, at least with Google Glass, is that people have seen it and still don't want it. The burden is on Google to show people why they should want Glass. So far they haven't done it.


To be fair, even lots of tech geeks don't want Glass. Overall I'd say it's pretty unimpressive. I'd certainly be interested in a more powerful device of that nature, but Glass seems like a pretty niche product that most people have no use for.


Quicktun used to use C's rand() to generate keypairs (see keypair.c). They still include a blurb about /dev/urandom being insecure and apparently requiring the user to manually input random data. The nacl0 protocol is inherently insecure (null nonce, vulnerable to replay), not sure why they even include that. IIRC, you also pass the private key via environment variable. Lots of horrible flaws for such a small code base.


> “[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Admiral Matt Klunder

ah, yes. Because a railgun is the determining factor when considering attacking the US Navy. "Well darn, they now have railguns. Let's call off the nuclear Armageddon guys!" As cool as this may be, our military industrial complex is hopelessly delusional.


Be fair to the guy and use the whole quote:

“[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Admiral Matt Klunder told reporters. “Because you are going to lose. You could throw anything at us, frankly, and the fact that we now can shoot a number of these rounds at a very affordable cost, it’s my opinion that they don’t win.”

In a lot of domains a rail gun is a game changer.


If we had rail guns 30 years ago, how would history be different?


Naval gunfire would have played a greater role in the Iraq war, especially the last one; the previous, as well as Vietnam and Korea, had Iowa class battleships available for that role, although there's quite a bit of difference in what this rail gun can do, 23 pound kinetic shell out to 100 miles vs. 16 inch caliber AP and HE shells 100 times as heavy out 1/5 of the distance.

In a future serious war, imagine what one of these, with drone spotting, could do Communist China's PLA naval forces. Note that Taiwan is 110 miles from the mainland's coast, ships with these guns could be in the general vicinity of the island and as long as they had sufficient reconnaissance completely control the surface, reducing an invasion attempt to what's sometimes mocked as a "million-man swim".

They wouldn't have to move as much, which would help with the treat of slow, quiet submarines waiting for you to come into range.


I'm not sure that I've really read anything about the Iraqi Navy's grand defense slowing us down.

And I can't really see us going to war with China any more than we went to war with the USSR.


For the former, you're evidently not familiar with the role naval gunfire support played; if not those instances, e.g. I remember the Royal Australian Navy(RAN) Anzac using its 5 inch gun in support of the combined US and British Royal Marine push into the Al-Faw Peninsula right flank, read up on e.g. the WWII invasion of Sicily or D-Day, when Omaha beach had two old US battleships dedicated to it (would have hated to be a German on the other side when e.g. the Texas used it's 10 14 inch guns to "clear" a beach exit).

For the latter, the misattributed Trotsky quote "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." applies. As does the principle of deterrence.


> participated in a democratic process and he has an unpopular opinion

It may be unpopular in certain circles, but the majority of California first voted yes on Prop 22 and then again on Prop 8. Hard to get more mainstream than that.

But then again, Bush won a 2nd term as well. I guess we can only conclude that democracy doesn't work because the masses are stupid.


it's more accurate to discuss NaCl since that's what libsodium is. NaCl is the combination of crypto primitives and the "box" abstraction. libsodium is just the repackaging and clean-up of the original NaCl implementation. If you're discussing crypto, you're going to be looking at the papers on NaCl.


Mm that's roughly the impression I got, but I hadn't thought of the papers - thanks for the clarification!


I'm sorry, but Prop 8 passed. By 7 million people.

Boycotting Mozilla? Really? You need to talk about boycotting California. Making a scapegoat out of one single person for what an entire state did is fucking insane.


The number you're looking for is 599,602 people, not 7 million people.

Note that I've not said anything to support boycotting Mozilla or calling for Eich to get fired. I just don't like people laughing it off as just some good ole fun he was having.

Donating money--real money, $1,000--to a campaign of hate is bad, particularly considering the vile rhetoric it used those funds for directly. Bad bad bad. It's also bad to have voted for it, but just bad, not bad bad bad.

I don't think being a bigot means you're inherently a terrible person or that you should be fired from a position. That's situational. I say it was a bad move for the board to make him CEO in the first place--the rage and hurt that'd happen because of that was easily foreseeable--and I'm neutral/too lacking of information on Mozilla's organizational health on whether he should have been fired after he got the position.


> The number you're looking for is 599,602 people, not 7 million people.

What are you talking about?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008...

7,001,084 votes for yes.


> Eich found it easier to treat millions of people he's never met as second class citizens

You act as if Prop 8 didn't pass by 52.24% of the voting public, or by 7 million people. But no, Eich was dictator of California, enslaving millions of gays. Or whatever.


UDP has error checking in the form of a checksum. It's one of the few guarantees UDP has: your datagram either arrives complete, or not at all. TCP also has no real security to speak of, either.


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