adonovan

11 ms·

121.
by adonovan 2y ago
It's not littering, it's perfect composting!
122.
by adonovan 2y ago
Interesting! I found a picture of the glass floats here: https://schmidtocean.org/cruise-log-post/anatomy-of-a-lander... BTW I doubt the energy yield of an imploding sphere is anywhere close to a nuclear device, but im
123.
by adonovan 2y ago
Right; hence my question.
124.
by adonovan 2y ago
It says the "empty buffer cars ... maintain a safe distance from the spent nuclear fuel" for the workers on the train, presumably from neutrons and gamma. Wouldn't a thin piece of steel do this better? Isn't the SNF cont
125.
by adonovan 2y ago
Acquired immunity is a thing. If you always drink from the same river, you are more likely to become immune to its pathogens. That’s why travellers to places with poorer sanitation often get sick eating food that is fine for the locals.
126.
by adonovan 2y ago
I just finished G. H. Hardy's celebrated "A Mathematician's Apology". He describes "useful" math such as calculus as "on the whole, rather dull", and contrasts it with the "real" math of Eul
127.
by adonovan 2y ago
Nonetheless the coverage was enough for highly motivated law enforcement agencies to reconstruct almost every step of the paths taken by the Russian assassins, sorry, “sports nutritionists”, when they paid a visit to the UK to nourish a cer
128.
by adonovan 2y ago
In a museum in Canada I noticed a grammar book of the Eskimo language, which is agglutinative. The examples illustrating what this meant started with the word for "muskrat", and got progressively more complex, finally ending with
129.
by adonovan 2y ago
> This is argument from authority. No, it isn't. An argument from authority would be me claiming that X is true because Penrose says so. The parent poster had said "I guess there are people who still believe the mind is some my
130.
by adonovan 2y ago
This attitude is why private equity is destroying US companies. The hubris and ignorance of investors routinely gets translated into a cull of workers whose jobs they don't understand, leaving behind "lean" organizations that
131.
by adonovan 2y ago
No less a scientist than Roger Penrose is (arguably) in that camp: his excellent “The Emperor’s New Mind” is about the paradox of free will in a mechanistic universe, and the question of where among the laws of physics might consciousness
132.
by adonovan 2y ago
I don't know why you're sure of that opinion: it is well beyond current scientific evidentiary support. And sex in some species (e.g. ducks) appears deeply unpleasurable for at least one of the participants. But homosexual behavio
133.
by adonovan 2y ago
> I'd expected something more elegant. Common Lisp is sort of the union of all dialects of Lisp, and some might say of all possible programming language paradigms. Scheme is more like the intersection of dialects, and is thus closer
134.
by adonovan 2y ago
No, because you started from a false premise.
135.
by adonovan 2y ago
In a sense, it does: waiting is one of the main jobs of an OS kernel.
136.
by adonovan 2y ago
Or halting the layoffs.
137.
by adonovan 2y ago
Borges's short stories are almost perfect nuggets for computer scientists, seemingly covering such topics as recursion (Garden of Forking Paths), the consequences of infinite memory (Funes), complexity theory (Library of Babel), virtua
138.
by adonovan 2y ago
Yeah, I meant to say "photon" in my last sentence; but the point is equally true for electrons.
139.
by adonovan 2y ago
I once arrived in Paris on the overnight train from Milan, which had been delayed for a couple of hours en route (allowing us to sleep more!). On the platform in Paris, staff were busily and proactively handing out claim forms to disembarki
140.
by adonovan 2y ago
I too switched from biochem to CS: it was such a relief to work in a field where I felt that, as in math, you can get by remembering axioms and rules and derive the rest, without all the arcana of biology. (My mentor in biology bought me a
141.
by adonovan 2y ago
Feynmann is very clear that the photons bouncing off a mirror are not the same ones that hit it. They are absorbed by electric oscillators (free electrons in the material) and destroyed; then new ones are created and emitted. He's also
142.
by adonovan 2y ago
Despite generally good health, for decades I treated my body as little more than a vehicle for getting my brain to meetings (to quote Terry Eagleton), but now, after 18 months in physical therapy for a range of postural issues including 2 h
143.
by adonovan 3y ago
Exactly. Metal salts add bright color and also weight.
144.
by adonovan 3y ago
Unit tests are good when there are clear and durable units, but what many people seem to mean by a unit test is one that exercises the internal functions of a package, or the API of an internal package that evolves as fast as your product.
145.
by adonovan 3y ago
I thought at first you were referring to Charles Babbage!
146.
by adonovan 3y ago
> the culprit for increased drag was skin friction You raise the question of whether Teflon-coated rotors might have improved the efficiency... but isn't the skin friction also the source of propulsion? Would eliminating the tendenc
147.
by adonovan 3y ago
> The whole purpose is just to destroy cities. It has no legitimate military value. Well, destroying cities was also the military purpose of the first two atomic bombs.
148.
by adonovan 3y ago
I dread to think what the HN deathcuddle is doing to their poor doorbell.
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by adonovan 3y ago
A friend (whom I shall not name) with the British Antarctic Survey once told me that the mornings after a meteor shower, they would take a Twin Otter plane out low, looking for dark rocks against the snow, land, gather, repeat, and finally
150.
by adonovan 3y ago
It was especially terrible before 2006, which is when NASCAR's exemption to the lead ban finally expired, creating a perfect natural experiment to answer the question: how much did the health of people downwind of NASCAR arenas improve

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