Detrus

44 ms·

361.
by Detrus 15y ago
Most of their science paper is in layman English http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803v1 and explains such questions. The black holes they would build are very very tiny, about the size of a proton. They are relatively light, about 600,000 tons.
362.
by Detrus 15y ago
How short do the posts have to be? Probably wouldn't, it often takes longer to write a short post than a long one. It is nicer to read though. Maybe it should just encourage the writer to summarize after the post is written, as a twist on d
363.
by Detrus 15y ago
Black holes spaceships are the ticket with our current understanding of physics. They can carry a large and heavy cargo in ship form or can push small planets slowly in a desired direction. The travel times for black hole ships are reasonab
364.
by Detrus 15y ago
Mine them for data after making them share as much about their life as possible. More seriously, those three-digit IQ jobs will turn to two-digit IQ jobs as technology makes them easier. There's a predictable cycle for technological progres
365.
by Detrus 15y ago
You'd do the study by finding out people's educational background and seeing what kind of projects they made. Popular vs large but unpopular projects for example. Popularity might not seem like a CS metric, but it's progress in another dire
366.
by Detrus 15y ago
How do you come to the conclusion that a coder's projects have nothing to do with previous experience? Docco comes straight from literate programming and the English major is a major influence at least in project choice. It's not about CS i
367.
by Detrus 15y ago
>More often than not, insights originate from relevant background. Not trying to prove you wrong or anything, but can you quote one or two specific examples of these insights which you think people coming from technical background don't
368.
by Detrus 15y ago
Yea it's a mess. Google is going in an interesting direction with Native Client, Pepper, Go-lang and ChromeOS. I remember them (might have been Brin) saying web and desktop will merge and looking at Native Client, the capabilities should me
369.
by Detrus 15y ago
I think a middle ground is probably best. Choose a tech stack that can scale but doesn't slow down programming productivity much. Something like node, python twisted/tornado or Go-lang. Same idea for databases. Using the right stack will us
370.
by Detrus 15y ago
The analysis of the results of risky blue sky vs. safe incremental approaches seems relevant to startup incubators.
371.
by Detrus 15y ago
It would be great to have a comparison of fluff to meaningful innovation today vs. decades ago. How many man hours were spent on silly military ventures? Manned surveillance satellites, nuclear artillery, boomer subs, ICBMs, MIRV, the Orion
372.
by Detrus 15y ago
Pretty interesting. What do you think of the quote from this article http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2518609 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_go/print.html "Google has people who administer apps and services, and they
373.
by Detrus 15y ago
13-14" is fine for programming but uncomfortable for Photoshop.
374.
by Detrus 15y ago
Oh yea Google's server farm has just about the guesstimated computational power of a human brain, 20 petaflops. Supercomputers can simulate a rat or bee brain with a few teraflops. I was talking about regular personal computers that individ
375.
by Detrus 15y ago
There was a similar theme two years ago http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/scientists-... I think the main problem is computers are still too slow, so it's difficult for individual researchers to experiment. Saw a paper a ye
376.
by Detrus 15y ago
Some key quotes "Previously, these operations people would write these in Python, but they're finding that Go is much faster in terms of performance and time to actually write the code." Go beating Python in time to code? "[Node.js is] a
377.
by Detrus 15y ago
Could Go switch between manual memory management and garbage collection after some modification? Or are some choices in the language preventing this?
378.
by Detrus 15y ago
Don't know. They haven't built a practical contraption yet, hopefully it's some piece of their experimental setup, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's math. After all, they do issue patents for what some describe as "8th grade algebra" in s
379.
by Detrus 15y ago
I don't assume that. Next sentence is If not, don't patent it. I meant to say if patenting software or math slows innovation, then don't issue those patents, even if lawyers could argue it's patentable. Innovation should be the goal, not
380.
by Detrus 15y ago
It was discovered that light has some weak magnetic properties, then an actual experiment was done that discovered these magnetic properties were strong enough to generate useful amounts of electricity. Patents were issued. This is just sem
381.
by Detrus 15y ago
These sound like silly distinctions. I'm sure lawyers have good rhetoric to back themselves up but maintaining the pace of innovation should be prioritized above their greatest arguments. If there was an opportunity to redesign the patent s
382.
by Detrus 15y ago
I don't see why it matters if software is math or not. If the goal of the patent system is to encourage innovation and patenting software or math accomplishes it, then patent it. If not, don't patent it. The real difference is in how it's u
383.
by Detrus 16y ago
But in practice, how many bad abstractions are there? From what I understand the Go team sees VMs as bad abstractions and they're ubiquitous. The Go compiler can be fast, essentially as fast as a VM. Go can already run ~3x slower than C and
384.
by Detrus 16y ago
The Dreamweaver and Maqetta approach seems dated. CMS templates (Wordpress, Tumblr, Weebly, Cargo) are the new dreamweaver and they're put together with lower level code. One middle ground for now would be taking a good CMS template and edi
385.
by Detrus 16y ago
I used to make pretty pictures. The work from years ago: http://detrus.nivr.net/ http://detrus.nivr.net/space/thumbfolio/AS2.html Back in 2003 I was inspired by the likes of http://www.flight404.com and gmunk (who recently worked on t
386.
by Detrus 16y ago
This is a crucial point. "More is better" is a naive notion, but it's easier to promote than "quantity over quality." When mathematicians get jobs in Wall Street by the thousands, there are either too many mathematicians churned out by the
387.
by Detrus 16y ago
Probably talking about conservatives in Sweden, where it's the other way around. Anyway, now we just have to determine whether the money earned by high IQ people adds more/less long term value to our civilization than money earned by medium
388.
by Detrus 16y ago
This talk summarizes a big chunk of what people submit to HN. The arguments about bootstrapped vs funded, lifestyle vs selling out, lean vs not, MVP vs GDP, internet celebrity worship - all covered pretty well in an hour.
389.
by Detrus 16y ago
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-03/does-geotherma... Just google "geothermal" and "earthquakes"
390.
by Detrus 16y ago
Geothermal increases earthquake risk/frequency, so it's not all roses either. There are plenty of problems for large scale power plants, like limited locations, custom fit for each spot, etc.. But there are some pretty large ones, I wouldn'

More ›