If you are talking smaller arrays, linear search with a sentinel value at the end is already tough to beat. The thing that sucks about that claim, is that "smaller" is such a nebulous qualifier that it is really hard to internalize.

This is simply not true - if you look at this article’s excellent benchmarking, linear search falls behind somewhere around 200-400 elements.

In general I love this article, it took what I’ve often wondered about and did a perfect job exploring with useful ablation studies.

I don't really see how this implies the above commenter's statement is "simply not true".

I don't think std::find typically uses a sentinel, though?

For that machine and compiler version, yes.

Except on Apple, where binary search always wins. Does anyone know why?

Prior to the current generation Intel designs, Apple’s branch predictor tables were a good deal larger than Intel’s IIRC, so depending on benchmarking details it’s plausible that Apple Silicon was predicting every branch perfectly in the benchmark, while Intel had a more real-world mispredict rate. Perf counters would confirm.

That's not what the article is about.

Fair. I had meant my point to be an "in addition" and a pointer to more fun things to look up on it.

This is an odd topic. On the one hand, we do seem to have a problem where attention is hijacked by engagement farming. On the other, we also know of problems from draconian management.

I would actually like it if we had something that could say, only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me. At the least, mute things that are getting pumped from hostile regions.

I just don't know that I see how this can get us there, though? Seems far more likely that it would lead to more abuse.

Or like, have chronological feed of accounts user follows. Simple. Produces less outrage tho, so it is a no go.

This assumes that most people would choose that feed? Which, I'm less convinced.

That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.

Yes, you also have to document the downsides of candy. Such that I'm also all for having that feed. But I don't see it being enough to move the needle much, on its own.

> That is, this sounds like the idea that telling people if bad things happen when you eat too much candy, then people will eat less candy. Just flat not the case at large.

Seems like there's an effect but it just takes time. The younger generations are smoking and drinking less.

Maybe the trend will be to abstain from social media feeds and chronological feeds will be their Zima.

This feels wrong, too? Younger generations smoke less because we have made it very hard for them to smoke more. Literally where are they going to do it? And the proliferation of zyn and similar isn't exactly problem free.

Alcohol is a trend that is talked about a lot. I'm not entirely clear on what we know of that. So many hot takes that largely seem conflicting with each other.

> only promote things on my feeds that are "liked" by people within a geographic radius of me

Ugh, really? I live in a part of town where I speak a different language than the vast majority of the people in this "geographic radius of me" which means I'd see very little content that I could understand.

Where do people come up with these wild ideas of anything other than show me the content of people I want to see in the order it was posted? If you want a "Feeling Lucky" type of feed, make it available. Otherwise, you're sending people content they don't want and are only too lazy to stop using it.

$trillions of global brainpower is spent yearly trying to answer "How do we get people to consume things they didn't ask for?" whether those things are products, services, ads, or online content.

I find it funny that I found the "single C0" pretty much instantly.

I grant that the post largely has a point, mind you. But scanning for a needle in a haystack is something that you just don't often do?

I am, of course, now very curious how often folks are using hex editors. And itching for an excuse to open a file that way. :D

The first time I used one was in high school when I was playing some video game in an emulator and wanted to convert the game save to another emulator's format, cause halfway through I realized the first emu had issues with the game. There was no conversion software, but with the hex editor I figured out that you needed to remove some header and change the endianness.

I think the claim is more that if you provide financial support for X without solid record keeping to verify X, expect that you will get more self reported people in that description.

Put differently, relying on self reporting for any sort of status from people is just not a reliable methodology.

As stated, this feels wrong. Specifically, it does not account for traits being appropriate for environment. I like to say it as what was needed for one stage could be the problem for the next stage.

That is, traits that stop registering may no longer be something that helps survival. But that does not mean they were not necessary for survival at an earlier point.

How exactly does that contradict the concept of fitness?

Several examples from the paper are exactly that. E.g dark skin was better for survival in Africa, but as populations moved north light skin was strongly selected for. Given the levels of sunlight in Europe, lighter skin increased fitness.

It is against the idea that the beneficial traits will survive to the present. It could be that there was some trait/gene that was absolutely needed for survival in the past, that flat out became irrelevant and dropped off before the present.

That is, it is not an argument against any of the traits that are present. Is why I said the problem is with how it was stated. But you do not have everything with you to provide evidence for all of the things necessary for you to have gotten here. At best, you have evidence that nothing you have with you prevented you from getting here.

That make sense? I grant that pulling it back up, I see the comment I was responding to was hedged. My concern is largely against the idea that things that "were selected for" in the past can be determined by evidence. I'm not convinced it can't be. But I find this presentation of it to be somewhat weak.

More to the point, TFA is specifically addressing the issue (which is part of what makes it a big deal).

They aren't saying "we see these things now, so they must be good" but rather things like "we see these selected for from 9kya to 3kya, but from then to the present they were selected against"; they are specifically looking at how apparent selective pressures changed over time.

> the idea that things that "were selected for" in the past can be determined by evidence

When the evidence is a copious selection of ancient genomes, distributed over both space and time, they certainly can be.

Apologies, I only meant my gripe with the comment I was responding to. Is why I put "as stated." I meant that to be that I was not arguing what I think they were messaging towards.

The callout on "evidence" I have there is that I meant that to only be present evidence. And again, I am not convinced it can't be done. It takes a lot of work. Which, the article is doing. But just saying that traits that helped you survive are typically retained, so by definition increase fitness, does not.

Honestly, this looks far more like a stylistic choice that the company thought was fine? And... it is? It actually gave me a bit of a smile. :D

This is as useless as the circular view that releasing dependencies for others to test makes you a free-rider on them using your stuff.

Which, honestly, I think it is fair to say that a lot of supply chains are lulling people into a false sense of what they do. Your supply chain for groceries puts a lot of effort into making itself safe. Your supply chain for software dependencies is run more like a playground.

Agreed. You can also say that they are better engineered for most use, nowadays. With the adage that anyone can build a bridge that doesn't fall over, an engineering team is needed to build one that has the minimum resources to stay up.

In particular, how durable do people think backpacks need to be? If you are going through them particularly quickly, maybe you are over loading compared to what they were designed for?

Why would you expect that more critical thought would lead to more visible opinions? Would be like expecting everyone to have a different route they take out of their neighborhood. Nothing wrong if someone does want to try a different way, to a large extent, but often nothing is gained from it, either.

The counter hope, of course, is that more critical thought will result in more people discovering some abstract truth out there. I don't think that is realistic, either.

The mundane landing spot, I think, is the likely one. For most things, critical thought is just not much of a benefit. Knowledge and understanding are far more beneficial. Is why we don't constantly reinvent how to drive a car. We have largely agreed that we have some mechanisms that work, and it is better to educate folks on how those work, than it is to get people to think critically about the controls.

Going further in that regard, understanding is far more immediately useful than critical deconstruction. Learning about affordances and how they guide you to what you are wanting to do is far more useful to someone's daily life.

Which is not to say that critical thought in designing said affordances is not good. Just, for most of us, we are not in a position to really impact any of that.

So many things in life are better if you can get past that fear of not being good. Because very very few people can skip the stage where they are not good. (I'd be comfortable saying nobody. But there is always somebody, it seems.)