GavinB

32 ms·

301.
by GavinB 17y ago
Pi is Wrong: http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf It should be e^(pi i) = 1, but pi was unfortunately defined at half the appropriate value in the 17th century.
302.
by GavinB 17y ago
The beauty of twitter isn't that you send messages without specifying recipients. Any billboard does this. HTML webpages, blogs with RSS feeds, etc do this. Twitter allows you to: 1. Communicate on equal footing. You're living on someone el
303.
by GavinB 17y ago
This is great news. It's pretty impressive that Hulu was put together not just through a big company, but through a collaboration of four giant media conglomerates. Not the outcome that we might have expected. Kudos to the team that navigat
304.
by GavinB 17y ago
It would be good if they had more back catalog. With Hulu you can't start new series, just continue ones that you're already interested in.
305.
by GavinB 17y ago
Moneyball has been so successful that it is now invisible. Because it is widespread knowledge, the competitive advantage has disappeared, and the teams with the most money come out on top. Money helps teams compete every year, but a lesser
306.
by GavinB 17y ago
People don't get cell phones to keep things simple, but I love the simplicity of not having to plan my day ahead of time.
307.
by GavinB 17y ago
When we fake a smile, we smile with our lips but not our eyes. The Mona Lisa is doing the reverse: her eyes are smiling but her mouth is actually quite neutral. There are also lines in her cheeks that make it look like her mouth curving upw
308.
by GavinB 17y ago
In other news, women now find the solar system 10% more attractive.
309.
by GavinB 17y ago
There are a lot of different reasons for this, including the fan blades chopping the oxygen molecules in half. My cousin had a roommate in South Korea who believed that the fan would create a vortex that sucked the air from the room, creati
310.
by GavinB 17y ago
Fan death is a widely believed superstition in Korea. The idea is that"an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can cause the death of those inside (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia)." http://en.wikipedia.org/w
311.
New Calculations Suggest Universe May be Closer to Heat Death(usnews.com)
2 points by GavinB 17y ago|0 comments
312.
by GavinB 17y ago
There's a big difference between an idea failing and a team failing. To be more clear, maybe we should replace "fail early, fail often," with "test early, reject often." The point of the phrase is to get you to test your ideas as soon a
313.
by GavinB 17y ago
[Assuming you want to write books here, not magazines or technical writing] Most writers start writing and sell their first manuscripts or non-fiction projects while working at another job. Another large group are stay at home moms, which i
314.
by GavinB 17y ago
There are many different ways to deal with coordination problems, both public regulation and private arrangements. The overfishing problem isn't a hypothetical example, it's a real problem that has caused problems all over the world. http:
315.
by GavinB 17y ago
There are three basic use cases: 1) 123 main street wichita kansas -> should show me map or link that obviously takes me to a map 2) two addresses with the word "to" in between should offer me a link with directions 3) "restaurant" (or
316.
by GavinB 17y ago
The tragedy of the commons works like this: If everyone follows their self interest and goes fishing in the lake, pretty soon all of the fish will be gone and it will take decades for them to repopulate. If you somehow (how to do it is a co
317.
by GavinB 17y ago
I tried DuckDuckGo as my primary search provider. While I liked some of their features, I couldn't live without maps integration (called universal search in this post). Honestly, it would have been fine if they just forwarded me to google
318.
by GavinB 17y ago
There's a level of difficulty difference. When one has the proper tools, training, and support, these things are much easier. A kid in Texas doing a science fair project probably has supportive parents, a knowledgeable science teacher, and
319.
by GavinB 17y ago
Surprisingly, to my knowledge there is no layperson-accessible site that explains and offers downloads of the most popular open source offerings--firefox, open office, GIMP etc. Everything I have found is either hopelessly technical or stuf
320.
by GavinB 17y ago
Pretty much every other part of 1984 has come true somewhere or other, why not that?
321.
by GavinB 17y ago
What about sending them fake bank account info after that point? You could probably get them to try 3 or 4 different accounts etc if you kept saying that there were typos, wrong bank, etc.
322.
by GavinB 17y ago
I signed up for Grooveshark a while back, but I've really been trying it today and I'm loving it. Bonus points for having a song that my $15/mo subscription service doesn't!
323.
by GavinB 17y ago
People who think the labor movement was the creation of heroic union organizers have a problem to explain This is a standard formulation that implies that you disagree with the statement "the labor movement was the creation of heroic unio
324.
by GavinB 17y ago
For those trying to start a writing habit: here are some tips that have helped me over the last month, to the point that it's starting to feel automatic: 1. Set realistic goals. Mine is "500 words per day, no excuses." It takes 1-2 hrs. 2.
325.
by GavinB 17y ago
What sort of movie would only work in 3D? Current so-called "2D" movies actually provide an approximation of 3D--the eye perceives depth from parallax and other visual cues just fine. I'm not sure what sort of movie there is that would requ
326.
by GavinB 17y ago
This is complete hyperbole. Rents here are a little lower, but still higher than anywhere else. Shop windows aren't boarded up, and the ones that are empty will rent as soon as the price drops to a reasonable level. There was some worry ove
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by GavinB 17y ago
No, it's an audiophile thing. You need the hat to get that warm yet crisp yarn sound that no digital effect can replace.
328.
by GavinB 17y ago
It's odd that an economist wouldn't mention transaction costs in his model at all. If the cost of time travel is extremely high, it wouldn't be worth it to travel back in time for economic purposes. It's also possible that those with time
329.
by GavinB 17y ago
It's a good thing that part of Microsoft's shtick is giving their employees doors instead of cubicles. I feel awkward when my job calls for testing flash games at work, I don't want to imagine how testing out this feature would feel with co
330.
by GavinB 17y ago
In the case of cryonically freezing someone, the professional believes that they are giving the person a chance to be revived, not killing them. Even if the point is valid in the broader arena, in the case of cryonics it doesn't hold.

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