apathy

36 ms·

301.
by apathy 10y ago
Whatever. This is a corporate vanity project (easy to spot because the logo is better than the code) with 5-, 6-, and 11-month old PRs hanging around. Clearly this library is setting the world on fire. Meanwhile if you want slow pointy cli
302.
by apathy 10y ago
For which other diagnostics exist from companies that somehow managed to submit a proper protocol. Unlike Zika tests, it is extremely rare for patients in the trials I design to have any alternatives. Also unlike Zika, the standard of care
303.
by apathy 10y ago
Thalidomide was also banned in the US "because rules". Common sense in medicine prioritizes doing no harm. I can provide other notable examples if need be. The bottom line is that all parties need to be confident that the expected
304.
by apathy 10y ago
Think about that for a moment. If you can test for the virus with a finger prick, you can potentially transmit this and other viruses as well. That needs to be addressed in the protocol, along with any other relevant details. It should
305.
by apathy 10y ago
To reiterate -- it is a fantastic piece. I went back and re-read it just now, and there's more meat in that one webpage than in many entire engineering textbooks. Terrific piece.
306.
by apathy 10y ago
Wow, I just learned a lot about Muscle Shoals. Thanks. Didn't realize that the Black Keys recorded Brothers there, let alone the history of the place. I just had no idea!
307.
by apathy 10y ago
Ooh, I did not realize that! Thanks for the clarification.
308.
by apathy 10y ago
Right, but when your job is to pick winners, this is a problem. Netflix has been doing a spectacular job of this lately, essentially turning themselves into a must-have "channel". HBO, too, by going a la carte . Contrast with Bl
309.
by apathy 10y ago
Union Carbide is still around (as a subsidiary of Dow). It was a horrible, horrible thing they did, but man's inhumanity to man is on grand display when you realize that the stock market did not punish them, and legally, both of the g
310.
by apathy 10y ago
Alright, these are existential mistakes up there with Decca. I still chuckle when I think about Yahoo's total market cap being less than the value of their share in Alibaba. The market determined that Yahoo! had negative worth. Ouch!
311.
by apathy 10y ago
This one is easy: Decca recording turning down the Beatles. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_Decca_auditio... "We don't like their sound, and guitar groups are on the way out." Sort of like
312.
by apathy 10y ago
Exactly! VCs typically get (maybe) 1 breakout hit and 1 steady chugger out of every 10 companies they fund. It doesn't make sense to fund companies that can't even understand cyclical demand as it impacts cash flow.
313.
by apathy 10y ago
If your KPIs suck and another potential investment's KPIs rule, whether due to timing or due to a better business plan, it's irrational to fund the one with shitty KPIs. This is especially true when (as demonstrated here) it can b
314.
by apathy 10y ago
Good write up. It is very rare to outperform decades of numeric analysts (and also avoid nasty machine precision issues) by shooting from the hip, and Eigen is amazingly easy to use (plus it is a headers-only implementation: no DLL).
315.
by apathy 10y ago
Right, when a simple footnote in the piece would have clarified the matter rather than derailing the whole piece. If only there were some way to rectify such things on the Internet, where words are not physically committed to paper. We mig
316.
by apathy 10y ago
Where does he say this? I read the post again and did not see it. As far as why it deflates the thrust of the post, I like to think I was excruciatingly explicit.
317.
by apathy 10y ago
Great, take your own advice and point out that the "Pottery Barn rule" is misleading. They don't have such a rule and in most states it would be illegal to enforce if they did. You are promulgating misleading information wit
318.
by apathy 10y ago
This is a terrific piece with a lot of depth, but it would be nice if you defined what a DQN is (especially since it's an ad-hoc DeepMind term) before going further. I recognized everything but the specific meaning of the DQN acrony
319.
by apathy 10y ago
Speling erers in the README do not engender confidence in the project
320.
by apathy 10y ago
Indeed. If it made it through review without that happening... that would suggest that peer review is fallible. ;-)
321.
by apathy 10y ago
You could say this about athletes and steroids, too. But if you want to be the best, you need to beat the best, which is very difficult if you concede advantages. On the other hand, there is no reasonable doubt that steroids can enhance ath
322.
by apathy 10y ago
To hear Kary Mullis tell it (and yes, I've seen him do so in person), the change in perspective offered by LSD was worth a Nobel prize (which he was awarded in 1993 for devising the now-ubiquitous polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, use
323.
by apathy 10y ago
And we haven't even touched on the glory of Drosophila gene names.
324.
by apathy 10y ago
Oh this happens constantly. Apparently, in an ideal world, every gene will have multiple counterintuitive symbols that appear to give insight as to what the protein does, but are in fact misleading. HGNC seems to delight in nonsensical ren
325.
by apathy 10y ago
Not exactly -- 13,000 citations and counting, mostly due to a few papers in Nature, Cell, and NEJM. But that doesn't change the fact that JIF is a terrible metric. Frankly, papers like the above are why impact factors are so misleadi
326.
by apathy 10y ago
If only someone had warned them! Like, say, 12 years ago: https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186... Bonus: the number of errors is positively correlated with Impact Factor (a tool used by statist
327.
by apathy 10y ago
Who the hell rides on the sidewalk in a major city? It's faster to ride in traffic in major cities, and since the drivers are usually stuck in heavy traffic, they're less likely to suddenly do something idiotic. It's probab
328.
by apathy 10y ago
Good god. If I were the guy getting shot at in that case I'd be planting IEDs on their roads. What a travesty.
329.
by apathy 10y ago
Gah. I'm sorry. That sucks.
330.
by apathy 10y ago
Go Texas! (First time I've ever said THAT in my life...)

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