alphaBetaGamma

11 ms·

61.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
I rather like this one. Though to be fair, it was probably correct to award it: it's definitely inventive, and I doubt there is prior art. http://www.google.com/patents/US3216423
62.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
Something seems wrong: 1e5 /(deaths per 1e5) should be about equal to the life expectancy. But the drop in deaths per 1e5 is much bigger than the increase in life expectancy. Am I missing something, or is the data SNAFU?
63.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
Conservation of momentum gets in your way: you need to "throw" something out of the back of the satellite to get some momentum in the forward direction. Though you may read on solar sails though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail
64.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
The ambiguity in digit representations only comes from numbers ending in 1's (in base 2, or ending in 9's in base 10). If you do the argument in a different base than 2 you can avoid the problem: you can construct a number whose base 10 rep
65.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
Chaotic macroscopic system + non-determinism at atomic scale = non-determinism at macroscopic scale. So, e.g., the temperature at the tip of the Eiffel tower on Jan 1, 2014 1pm is non-deterministic.
66.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
Your premises are wrong: you can believe in physics, but the laws of physics could not deterministic. To the best of our knowledge this is the case[1], and we have strong indications [2] that this is a fundamental feature of nature: the non
67.
by alphaBetaGamma 14y ago
As far as I understand your suggestion, it exactly describes the way current markets work.
68.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
While I am sure there are a number of reasons that lead to states success or failure, I am not sure we can determine them because we don't have much data. There are about 200 sovereign states so if you should use less than log_2(200) ~ 8 cr
69.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
Nuclear fusion needs high temperature (so that the hydrogen nuclei have enough energy to get close together). "High" means ~10 million kelvin, several orders of magnitude higher than the fusion/evaporation point of any material. So your gi
70.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
That does not seem plausible. But there is the possibility that this is a clever ploy to give erroneous technology to Russian and China...
71.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
I'm not sure this is correct. Low earth orbit [1] is ~200km in altitude, and ~7km/s. So to get in this orbit you must provide an energy of 2 MJ/Kg to get 200km high, and 25 MJ/Kg to get to orbital velocity. So the vast majority of the energ
72.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
Before a drug can be put on the market it has to be tested for it's efficiency and safety. It starts by giving the drug to volunteers to assess its safety. Would you rather we do not study the effects of the drug on animals before experimen
73.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
The gps receivers they are using are NOT $200 off the shelf components. I am pretty sure that when you buy such equipment you will have long discussions with the GPS engineers from the firm. The GPS receivers they used are form Septentrio,
74.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
You need four, not three. You would need three if you had an atomic clock: if you knew the precise time. But in practice you do not. You have a good clock that has an unknown shift with respect to the clocks in the satellites. So you can me
75.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
I may be old school, but I believe that technology can only very mildly help with mathematical understanding. Math is build of bricks, one on top of the others. And to understand advanced concepts, you need a deep and solid understanding of
76.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
Would it be possible to only run the STM code when the program is multi-threaded? This would require the program detecting that it is single or multi threaded (would that be difficult?) and might provide a good trade off: either be single t
77.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
The lack of pickup in employment numbers is not surprising when viewed in an historical context. There is very broad historical overview of sovereign crisis in “This Time Is Different”, by Reinhart and Rogoff, which also includes banking
78.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
I don’t understand this argument. Why would advertisers only bid if there is enough search volume? For each venue you advertize on you have a fixed cost that is the cost of setting up and maintaining your ad campaign on that platform. So th
79.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
By computing “learning rate” from the distribution of “vocabulary as a function of age” you are implicitly making a number of assumptions: the world is stationary, and your sampling is homogenous across age. A word of caution could be usefu
80.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
The way physicists understand this is that the curved space-time view of gravity is an approximation that is only valid when you have a lot of gravitons. In that situation you do not see individual gravitons but only the aggregate effect of
81.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
You can not do this. The Voyager probes where only able to escape the solar system because Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune where aligned, and they could use the slingshot effect to accelerate when passing by them. These planets will no
82.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
I don't have anything against recreational math; I rather like it myself. But, IMHO, the fact that something is tied to the representation of numbers removes it from the realm of "math".
83.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
I find Kaprekar's operation totally uninteresting because it is (or at least seems to me) totally linked to base ten representation of numbers. If at least you had a result like "in any base, the analogue of Kaprekar's operation in that bas
84.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
Many things that have already been mentioned, plus the free newsletter from STRATFOR. I'm thinking of subscribing. It offers a very cynical view of geopolitics, quite different of what you see in the mainstream media. I find it thought prov
85.
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
If you think that nuclear power has a fair amount of tail risk (very small probabilities of catastrophic accidents) then any safety considerations based on historical data is meaningless. In that case, most of the deaths & cost that occ
86.
by alphaBetaGamma 16y ago
If you are interested on the details of the measurements of galactic distances, Terry Tao has created an amazing pedagogical review: http://terrytao.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/cosmic-distance-...
87.
by alphaBetaGamma 16y ago
"Operate as if in a vacuum" is taking a big risk: if you revolutionise the industry you win big , if not you die quietly. Most hugely successful people/companies will have taken huge risks early on. Does that mean that taking risk is a goo
88.
by alphaBetaGamma 16y ago
I don't think developed countries should focuse on being competitive in raw materials and basic manufacturing. Countries that have a substantial percentage of their population that is not very educated have a comparative advantage (in the t
89.
by alphaBetaGamma 16y ago
I disagree, you can push quantum physics very hard, in weird corners where is is manifestly wrong. Then you do the experiments, surprise surprise, quantum mechanics turn out to be right. E.g. Single Photon Interference
90.
by alphaBetaGamma 16y ago
The world is flat. False, but true enough when you are building a bridge.

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