arethuza

16 ms·

361.
by arethuza 1y ago
My favourite inaccuracy being the bridge-less Battle of Stirling Bridge! Edit: And wasn't the "brave heart" Bruce's that was taken on crusade after its owner's death?
362.
by arethuza 1y ago
I wonder if that’s where the use of “quine” for “girl” comes from in North East Scotland?
363.
by arethuza 1y ago
Other "interesting" units include: shakes, barns and bans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
364.
by arethuza 1y ago
I think encountering C arrays and pointers rewrote my brain so that 0 based indexing made more sense even though up to that point (~40 years ago) I'd only used languages that used 1 based indexing (Basic and Pascal).
365.
by arethuza 1y ago
Why do you need the first 4 years undergrad - in places like the UK you can go straight to study medicine from secondary school at age ~18?
366.
by arethuza 1y ago
"but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it" That's a pretty chilling phrase.
367.
by arethuza 1y ago
I had to use a Burroughs mainframe for development during the first year of my CS course in 1983 - might have been interesting hardware but the user experience was ghastly - some awful thing called CANDE = although I did get a laugh out of
368.
by arethuza 1y ago
From what I can recall (it was a few years back) they said you should write that in your personal statement.
369.
by arethuza 1y ago
"the selection effect of every bright child in the UK having Oxford or Cambridge as their first university pick" When my son and I visited St. Andrews a few years back we were informally told that they really only select people wh
370.
by arethuza 1y ago
They aren't new - but they tend to be called things like "integrated retirement communities" or similar.
371.
by arethuza 1y ago
Just goes to show - I think that looks ghastly.
372.
by arethuza 1y ago
That had me puzzled because there is at least one church that was a cathedral in the "seat of a bishop" sense but hasn't been for hundreds of years but is still referred to as a cathedral: https://www.stgilescath
373.
by arethuza 1y ago
"extraordinarily small by typical software developer standards" That's the incredible thing about these TMs - they are amazingly small but still can exhibit very complex behaviours - it's like microscopy for programs.
374.
by arethuza 1y ago
The BB Challenge site is really well structured: https://bbchallenge.org/13650583
375.
by arethuza 1y ago
Isn't it rather that the Busy Beaver function is uncomputable, particular values can be calculated - although anything great than BB(5) is quite a challenge! https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8972
376.
by arethuza 1y ago
I think you have to exhaustively check each 5-state TM, but then for each one brute force will only help a bit - brute force can't tell you that a TM will run forever without stopping?
377.
by arethuza 1y ago
Well for my commute the trains are every 30 mins or so - pretty convenient times and a short walk from the office. The ticket is cheap, much cheaper than a days parking and during the trip I get to sit, look at the view and sip a coffee. Th
378.
by arethuza 1y ago
A few years back I got a call from a scammer selling a device that would help stop scam phone calls - that actually took me a while to realise it was a scam (this is like 15 years ago).
379.
by arethuza 1y ago
A lot of them phone me and ask for my wife by name "Can I speak to XYZ" - I usually reply "No" and end the call. Actually, for the last few calls I've not even been saying the "No". Maybe 3 or 4 of these a
380.
by arethuza 1y ago
I usually don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognise - but a couple of days back it was a scammer claiming to be from Amazon - said I had ordered an iPhone for £600 and was it a real order. I was pretty suspicious but thoug
381.
by arethuza 1y ago
Yes I know she is also in UoW and is in SC then, but I don't know if she is in SC in SoTA. From what I remember to get into Contact you have to apply, but to go from Contact to SC you have to be wait to be asked?
382.
by arethuza 1y ago
I actually really like Consider Phlebas - probably because I read it in one go in a day off I allowed myself between finishing my final year project and starting revision for my finals. This was in 1988 <sigh>
383.
by arethuza 1y ago
Pretty sure it was a regular "boring" Contact GCU - the Arbitrary .
384.
by arethuza 1y ago
The stories make it pretty clear that if you want to leave you can just leave (maybe slightly different if you are an SC operative)? Similarly the Culture is fairly open minded about immigration to the Culture - but they worry about that lo
385.
by arethuza 1y ago
The Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints from Surface Detail was described as "very slightly psychotic" - which in the case of advanced Culture warship is quite a thing...
386.
by arethuza 1y ago
The "Eaters" had nothing to do with the Culture - they were on Vavatch orbital which wasn't part of the Culture and which the Culture went on to blow up?
387.
by arethuza 1y ago
Pets can't leave though? A number of the Culture stories (e.g. "The State of the Art") describe Culture citizens who left the Culture - in that story for 1970s Earth.
388.
by arethuza 1y ago
Self improving superintelligences that have had thousands of years to self-improve so they are near god like: "I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than y
389.
by arethuza 1y ago
I really wish I had kept a note of what my parents called "neeps and tatties" soup - which was served with thick oatcakes from the local baker. I do see recipes for it online but they look very different (spices? cream?).
390.
by arethuza 1y ago
They don't really as once the spec gets detailed enough it becomes so large and unwieldy that nobody with any actual power reads the things. An executive at a large company once told me about something where a spec had been written and

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