a_p

10 ms·

31.
by a_p 14y ago
ProPublica recently published an article (with an unseemly title) about the nightmare of scraping data from pdfs and putting it into tables. [1] They wrote some custom software to do the scraping. At the end of the article they mention some
32.
by a_p 14y ago
Perhaps you haven't heard about the doctor who rediscovered the trapezoid rule and had his article published in a respected, peer reviewed biology journal in 1994.[1] The paper is called "A mathematical model for the determination of total
33.
by a_p 14y ago
A quote from the article: “My first and greatest objection to the research is that they did not have any valid statistical test comparing the software directly to human graders,” said Mr. Perelman. That is a good enough reason not to use th
34.
by a_p 14y ago
My favorite resource about software innovation is David A. Wheeler's list of the most important software innovations.[1] Most of the items on the list are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and 90s; just one is from the past ten years (Wheeler was
35.
by a_p 14y ago
That's a nice quote, but it's not really true. Check out cloud seeding [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding
36.
by a_p 14y ago
Using Fussell's class breakdown [1], it is likely that you haven't worked for any people in the "upper class"; you have met the several varieties of the middle class. Fussell's definitions of the class is more about their tastes and behavio
37.
by a_p 14y ago
TI finally launched a color version of the TI-84. It's called the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition; it comes out in Spring 2013[1]. EDIT: This does seem to be off topic. I posted before I read the article (a cardinal sin, I admit) because I coul
38.
by a_p 14y ago
>I think President Obama has or will have appointed half of the court. "Will have appointed" has taken on a new meaning during this presidency. The Circuit Court currently has 16 vacancies, and 6 "Judicial Emergencies",[1] meaning that
39.
by a_p 14y ago
I haven't looked at the Supplementary Multilingual Plane: Miscellaneous Symbols And Pictographs [1F300...1F5FF] in a while. My favorite characters are 👹 (Japanese Ogre)👺(Japanese Goblin)👻(Ghost) and 👽(Extra Terrestrial). The symbol 💣 …
40.
by a_p 14y ago
Unions are useful because, among other things, they attract high quality candidates who do not want to worry about the security of their job. But having a strong union is only one of the factors that a teaching candidate considers. If the p
41.
by a_p 14y ago
I agree that MOOCs have many benefits but I don't think that they are a threat to higher education. A liberal arts education is not about rote memorization of facts, but rather about developing the ability to think, reason and write. One of
42.
by a_p 14y ago
In the past few years Virginia has passed laws raising the speed limit to 70 mph on some highways. [1] You would have to be traveling at least 11 m.p.h over the speed limit in order to be convicted of reckless driving. It might seem that it
43.
by a_p 14y ago
One of the unfair things about the U.S justice system is that not all felonies are created equal. In Virgina, if you are pulled over for driving over 80 miles per hour (even if you are on a steep hill with no one around you or if everyone e
44.
by a_p 14y ago
This has got to be one of the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) product names since the Windows phone named "Lumia". Lumia means prostitute in Spanish. I've always wondered how Nokia and MS missed that. EDIT: I've just learne
45.
by a_p 14y ago
I think "Neo-Luddism" is a very poor description of people who are against Google Glass. The original Luddites were against modern machinery because it destroyed their ability to make a living with the skills that they had. The opponents of
46.
by a_p 14y ago
Thanks for catching my mistake. My mistake is especially embarrassing because term "inverted order" refers to sentences that have the verb second and the object.
47.
by a_p 14y ago
Working for an "intelligence" agency, especially in a field like cryptography, allows you access to state-of-the-art technologies and cutting edge research, and an enormous amount of resources that you would not have access to in a civilian
48.
by a_p 14y ago
Modern English is not exclusively an SVO language. You probably aren't aware of how often you use VSO sentences. For example, it is very common for interrogative sentences (questions) to have an inverted order. For example: Where is the
49.
by a_p 14y ago
>The guy who invented the spreadsheet didn't have to absorb all available accounting literature first, and Elon Musk didn't spend 30 years in the Apollo program before being allowed to send his own rocket to space. Both of your examples
50.
by a_p 14y ago
I'm not sure if I understand your comment. Firefox does allow you to organize bookmarks by tag, and it even lets you use the tag collection as a bookmark folder (meaning that you can add the tag to the bookmark bar and it behaves like a nor
51.
by a_p 14y ago
David Wheeler has an interesting list of what he considers to be important software innovations. [1] Most of the innovations listed occurred in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. An interesting quote from an article[2] about an interview with Linus
52.
by a_p 14y ago
It's not fast enough for high frequency traders. That's why all the major HF traders pay large sums of money to rent space for their servers at the site of the exchanges.
53.
by a_p 14y ago
Loaves of bread were sold unsliced until 1928, when a guy named Otto Rohwedder figured out how to slice bread without crushing it. Rohwedder then wrapped the bread and inserted U-shaped pins on both sides of the loaf to make it look similar
54.
by a_p 14y ago
I thought that the quality of writing in the article was very poor. As a side note, I also found it funny that many are worried that the "prestige" of Harvard is besmirched, because the original meaning (now obsolete) of prestige was
55.
by a_p 14y ago
One thing that always surprises me is how little keyboards have changed in the past thirty years as computers became more mainstream. The majority of keyboards use cheap rubber dome keys in a horribly unergonomic setup. It's no wonder peopl
56.
by a_p 14y ago
As someone who uses a custom variant of the Dvorak layout, one thing about Vim that I find annoying is the that the navigation keys only make sense for a Qwerty keyboard. I know that it is easy to do a custom remap but nevertheless I find t
57.
by a_p 14y ago
I posted this comment about obscenities on another thread recently, but I think it is relevant to this thread as well. "According to Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, aversion to profanity is a middle class t
58.
by a_p 14y ago
According to Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide Through the American Status System , aversion to profanity is a middle class thing. The upper class[1] do not use euphemisms for profanity or obscenity. Fussell wrote that Jilly Cooper reported "I
59.
by a_p 14y ago
Bump firing the rifle would be inaccurate if the shooter went through the whole clip with one or two pulls. This stock attachment allows for reasonably accurate burst firing. A gunman with an automatic weapon will not necessarily waste all
60.
by a_p 14y ago
What I meant to ask is whether there is a type of ammunition that is specifically designed to damage a structure (the structure is what might be made out of a metal or metal alloy, or something else such as kevlar) rather than cause physi

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