Sniffnoy

66 ms·

781.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Variants on the genetic code are known to exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code#Alternative_genet... I don't think there are any known to be radically different. Note that it's possible that life
782.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
I'm surprised this article doesn't optimize a little further. If you want to compute σ(n), and you can prime factor n, there's no need to go determining all the divisors of n and then adding them up. The σ function is multi
783.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Minor note, the phrase "sunlight is the best disinfectant" is due to Louis Brandeis. (Although, according to this webpage[0], it's paraphrasing an earlier statement by James Bryce.) [0] https://aroberts.us/20
784.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
The lesson I draw is a bit different. Sure, they might have failed to think of that -- but they didn't personally have to think of it, as long as someone else did and warned them. But, even though they got professionals to assess the
785.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
A model has to be precise enough that you can actually draw conclusions from it. Precise: As in, precise enough to be formulated in mathematics. Conslusions: Actual, externally-visible conclusions, not just "conclusions" about h
786.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
No, I mean... look, you've got four inputs: p, s, d, and f. p, s, and d are one-bit values. f is an 8-bit value that encodes the input->output mappings here. The output is 1-bit. The output is found simply as f&(1<<((p&
787.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
> Conditionals inside the loop would blow your performance But why do you need conditionals? It's just bit operations...
788.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
This just seems so crazy, that one would compute a three-input boolean function by first describing instructions for computing it in this peculiar format, and then executing those instructions, rather than just doing some simple bit operati
789.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
> So you're just drawing a line from start to end and calling that the velocity? That just averages the whole thing out, doesn't it? No. We're talking about instantaneous velocity. You know, the thing the speedometer di
790.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
It's using a naive, informal notion of those. If you were to define it formally, well, you'd have the derivative. Which is what he does quite soon after. This is how definitions frequently work in mathematics -- they're me
791.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
This isn't a specifically an Australian thing, I hear this all the time in America.
792.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
> Isn't a magnetic field a result of a moving charge, and not a thing that can exist on its own? No. Even in the absence of any charge at all, moving or otherwise, Maxwell's equations still have a nonzero solution. This is kn
793.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
I remember when <marquee> was considered something like IE's answer to the <blink> tag. I'd like to see an article about the origin of the <marquee> tag, much like that one about the origin of the <blink>t
794.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
It's also worth noting where the terms "UCS-2" and "UCS-4" come from. For a while there was the idea of the Universal Coded Character Set[0] as an alternative to Unicode. This would have been a natively 32-bit e
795.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
> This is what they're doing!! They're calling pre-orders "weak total orders". No. Giving one thing two names is not an incompatibility. Giving two things one name is an incompatibility. > "weak total order&
796.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
I mean, that's like saying "A ring by definition is always associative, so saying 'a ring without associativity' is contradictory". Neither ordinary language nor technical terminology work that way; not every phras
797.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Well, I disagree that the article is confusing on this point. They say quite explicitly what they mean. I agree that the terminology is annoying , because they should just match the existing math terminology, and it's also annoying
798.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Huh, this is... not the terminology I am used to, as a mathematician? My experience is that what C++ is calling a "weak order", and what you are calling a "weak order", is what in math is called a "pre-order" o
799.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
That's not disputed, that's just straight-up false. The earliest record of the word "crap" -- and that's counting just "crap", not the earlier words it's derived from -- is in 1846, when Thomas Cra
800.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Note that this is just one of the largest, not the actual largest. The actual known largest appears to be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringammina_fragilissima
801.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Oh, that's a good point. Heh, I have one of those, too, which even caused a problem once[0]. I wouldn't expect people to find it first, though, because I wouldn't expect people to go to a keyserver first; I'd expect th
802.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Why not? I mean, that's what publicly listing your public key is for, right?
803.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
Good question. Not sure. Although I don't see why I wouldn't, if they have a PGP key listed? (I guess there is some question over whether the listed key is actually them?) But my point is that, well, email is a good way to d
804.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
So what do I use for encrypted messaging that can, like, replace email, then? Nobody seems to have provided any sort of satisfactory answer to this question. To be clear, an answer this has to not just be a secure way of sending messages,
805.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
The thing is, there are two different things meant by the word "extremism", and the word itself serves to conflate the two. One is what you discuss -- object-level positions that are extreme in some way. This is, as you say, no v
806.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
So is two the most possible? Is it possible to activate three electrons with a single photon?
807.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
> Having a filter of you have to bother to register and bother playing a small a fee means you get to decide if it is worthwhile or not. Sure, but my point is that there a number of cases where having to make that decision doesn't r
808.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
I think there's a wide intermediate space there. What if you spent a few hours on something? Maybe on the sort of short story people post to, say, Reddit or Tumblr? That's actually a significant effort, that it would be bad if
809.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
I think implicit copyright does have some advantages -- it means if you put up, say, a T-shirt design on the internet, because you had an idea and thought it was neat, not expecting it might be worth registering, other people can't (le
810.
by Sniffnoy 7y ago
By "short-term" vs "long-term" here, I'm not talking about how long something has been going on so far. I'm talking about how far into the future this will affect things. Breaking process so completely like t

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