Steuard

66 ms·

511.
by Steuard 13y ago
Wow. Thank you!
512.
by Steuard 13y ago
Context matters. I take it from your comment that you're a man. If you were in a female-dominated profession like nursing or elementary school teaching then yes, I think things like that would wear on you pretty quickly after a while.
513.
by Steuard 13y ago
Ok, you've got me confused now. You just said, 'Women aren't being asked to "take the joke" here' . But in your previous comment that I was replying to, you said, 'My argument is that women have a sense
514.
by Steuard 13y ago
Brogrammer culture is hostile to women (at least in the sense that most women would feel less comfortable in a workplace dominated by that culture). It doesn't sound like you're arguing against that point. So to the extent that th
515.
by Steuard 13y ago
Well said.
516.
by Steuard 13y ago
Yes, women have a sense of humor, and in general they're really good at taking a joke from time to time. But if you keep your eyes open, you'll eventually notice that women (especially in tech) wind up having to "take a joke&
517.
by Steuard 13y ago
The term "bro" has been closely associated in the tech world lately with things like "brogrammer" culture. I don't know whether that was the intended reference in this case (though it seems pretty likely to me that
518.
by Steuard 13y ago
It's not about offending people. It's never about offending people. Plenty of people could have delightfully off-color senses of humor, love playing Cards Against Humanity, and still find this name highly problematic. It'
519.
by Steuard 13y ago
Technically speaking, in classical GR if you begin at any point inside the event horizon of a black hole, your entire future light cone is also contained within the event horizon. That means that a black hole event horizon truly is "un
520.
by Steuard 13y ago
For arXiv.org links, please link to the abstract page rather than directly to the PDF: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0827 Also, it's often good practice not to link to a specific version (the "v1" in the ori
521.
by Steuard 13y ago
First, an aside: the OP's comment "which has never been taken seriously" about this topic is also entirely mistaken. Heck, I've heard that issue come up in serious conversation within the past year. I've got to conc
522.
by Steuard 13y ago
I'm not sure that this captures the physics accurately from the perspective that you're describing here. The extreme time dilation that occurs as you approach a black hole's event horizon is really a "global" effect
523.
by Steuard 13y ago
Well, your feet aren't ever "missing": as far as classical GR is concerned (even with Hawking's semi-classical quantum corrections included), your experience would be perfectly comfortable and unexceptional as you drifte
524.
by Steuard 13y ago
This seems like a good way to read it to me. Hawking does put forth some meaningful arguments in there that deserve attention (or else it wouldn't be worth listening, even if this is Hawking), but he hasn't proven any new theorems
525.
by Steuard 13y ago
The "surface area" of a black hole is defined precisely as the area of the boundary beyond which light cannot escape, so I don't this angle will work the way you're thinking it might. (It's fairly straightforward to
526.
by Steuard 13y ago
This isn't really all that sensationalized, based on Hawking's suggestions in question. The presence of an event horizon is quite often used as the defining feature of a black hole. The event horizon is the "point of no r
527.
by Steuard 13y ago
The "firewalls" idea is rather different than Hawking radiation; it's a new notion that's been a subject of intense debate and interest in the relativity/high energy physics community for the past couple of years. Y
528.
by Steuard 13y ago
I'm sorry, but comments like this seriously irritate me. Your words here reflect some basic misunderstandings of the science involved, but rather than concluding "I don't understand this", you've instead suggested w
529.
by Steuard 13y ago
"Intended" isn't the same as "expected"! As a user, I would never have guessed that Calendar would do this. It frightens me in much the same ways that Buzz did. (And Buzz did leak some data that I considered very
530.
by Steuard 13y ago
Mind you, -ProfileManager actually opens to the full profile manager interface (where you select a profile to run, or create a new one, or whatever). You can load a specific profile (that already exists) directly by replacing "-Profile
531.
by Steuard 13y ago
This sort of change is a great idea on a fundamental level: define our units in terms of fundamental constants or processes that are absolutely reproducible. But as the article explains, any such definition has to be at least as precise
532.
by Steuard 13y ago
There are valid objections to that claim, no question. But students asserting this in their defense nevertheless has a great deal of power, because universities still want to be bastions of free speech. It is close to the core of the self
533.
by Steuard 13y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're white. (Or at least, you're not black or Hispanic.) How'd I do? [I strongly question whether "based on looks" is a simpler hypothesis than "based
534.
by Steuard 13y ago
Wow, I'm amazed by this. I was convinced that Google wouldn't have rolled out this new feature unless they had a way to avoid this sort of tracking. Isn't this exactly the privacy issue that led clients to adopt "Don
535.
by Steuard 13y ago
There is nothing else I've ever seen like Feynman's QED, not for any field of physics. It's spectacular: a "popular" level book for a general audience that doesn't tell a single fib (even by omission), and that
536.
by Steuard 13y ago
I think the calc course prerequisites have an even simpler explanation: mathematicians don't usually manage to mention the existence of vectors until the multivariable calculus class. If you're already familiar with that idea, you
537.
by Steuard 13y ago
> Solving the resulting equation is one way of computing eigenvalues. But it might not be the one you want to use in some practical situation. Related fun fact: Solving the eigenvalue equation is (in general) impossible in closed form
538.
by Steuard 13y ago
Well, I noticed! It stood out pretty clearly, I'd say. I really don't think that the intended audience of this sort of ground-up summary is going to be comfortable with \mathbb{R}^{m\times n} notation all over the place. Yes, you
539.
by Steuard 13y ago
It's a valid way to test whether a (square) matrix has an inverse, but computing big determinants is a lot of effort (both from a "student work" perspective and from a "computational cost" perspective). The point
540.
by Steuard 13y ago
Definitely pure theory, of a very abstract variety. But that being said, don't devalue gauge/gravity holography too quickly. Holographic arguments can be used to connect physical theories pretty similar to known, measurable partic

More ›