austinz

36 ms·

301.
Is it OK to torture or murder a robot?(bbc.com)
1 points by austinz 13y ago|0 comments
302.
by austinz 13y ago
I have OCZ drives in a couple of my machines, all of which are at least a year old. I'd heard bad things about OCZ, but I didn't realize their reputation was that shot. I'm wondering if I should replace my drives, or if the b
303.
by austinz 13y ago
Right, because the popularity of a programming language is always directly correlated to the quality of its design, and because when people choose languages to build a project in they only ever take technical considerations into account.
304.
by austinz 13y ago
Coming from an EE background I remember lots of emphasis over the techniques for converting finite state machines into HDL code. For me, it's really cool to see the topic approached from the opposite direction, so to speak.
305.
Leidenfrost Maze(youtube.com)
2 points by austinz 13y ago|0 comments
306.
by austinz 13y ago
His logos are actually pretty decent - not so much 'horrible' as 'rough hand-drawn concept sketches'. His singing, though.... shudder .
307.
by austinz 13y ago
I did something similar for a batch log processing system I wrote in Python some time ago. All the log messages could be classified as representing one of a few dozen 'packet' types, each represented by an object instance (so I co
308.
by austinz 13y ago
The problem I have with this (and Gibson's article linked below) is that there is an incredibly patronizing undercurrent to the complaints that everything is clean and works right. Grinding poverty and picturesque slums might be a crea
309.
by austinz 13y ago
> My argument was that once we hit the economic plateau, our quality of living will decrease if the population continues to increase. This is totally irrelevant because (as I said) population growth is slowing down and the population is
310.
by austinz 13y ago
Xilinx actually has (had?) a visual designer tool for their FPGAs in their IDE, allowing you to connect signals between blocks and do other stuff. It didn't work well and made for unmanageable designs. I've heard similar things ab
311.
by austinz 13y ago
A 2.3% growth in population for 1400 years would lead to a population of around 4.6*10^23 people. This has nothing to do with reality - the rate of population growth is decreasing and will continue to decrease as countries get more prospero
312.
by austinz 13y ago
I think it's more humane to improve sustainability by lowering birth rates, rather than letting existing people starve to death/die of sickness en masse. You argue that improving people's lives is only postponing the inevitab
313.
by austinz 13y ago
I don't like Eclipse either. Are there any good general-purpose open-source IDEs like Eclipse, but without the cruft? And for those who've used both, is JetBrain's PyCharm significantly better than the PyDev plugin for Eclips
314.
by austinz 13y ago
This article's thesis is pretty much "both object-oriented and functional paradigms have limitations which become apparent when you push them to ridiculous extremes". Which is neither an interesting thesis nor one that is in
315.
by austinz 13y ago
I love FTL. I can beat it semi-reliably on Easy with a few of the ships, and occasionally on Normal. And that's part of the game's genius - there are quite a few practical ways you can build your ship and crew in preparation for t
316.
Lockheed SR-72(lockheedmartin.com)
2 points by austinz 13y ago|0 comments
317.
by austinz 13y ago
Looking forwards to the day Google includes electronic component datasheets in its search results and puts all those stupid unusable SEO-gaming datasheet repository websites out of business.
318.
by austinz 13y ago
You bring up a good point, though. There's a spectrum of financial industry activity, ranging from stuff necessary for the modern economy to function to stuff that many observers would consider dangerous, irresponsible, immoral, and re
319.
by austinz 13y ago
There are philosophical and bureaucratic similarities among almost all of the major/dominant dynasties after Qin that disappeared after the Qing fell and probably won't come back ever again. But I could have chosen a better exampl
320.
by austinz 13y ago
Sure, I think what you say is reasonable. I don't know how much I like the ideas in this article to be honest, and I'm not really qualified to judge them. I do like the fact that people are throwing out ideas and discussing them,
321.
by austinz 13y ago
The Chinese dynastic system lasted for thousands of years, until it stopped working because it turned out to be a shitty system that couldn't cope with the demands placed upon it by a rapidly changing and industrializing world. So I do
322.
by austinz 13y ago
I never said (or implied) that I prefer the academics give us a replacement. And neither I nor the article claim that the Constitution should be changed or discarded using extralegal means. Your response, in contrast, is exactly the sort of
323.
by austinz 13y ago
This will never happen until the significant part of the population that considers the Constitution de facto divine writ is disabused of that notion. It's the same notion that gives rise to some of the more odious forms of American exc
324.
Wozniak: I wish Apple & Google were partners(bbc.co.uk)
4 points by austinz 13y ago|0 comments
325.
by austinz 13y ago
Given the comparisons to other companies...I wonder if Huawei, ZTE, or any European or Japanese company in recent memory has been explicitly outed for this kind of behavior in the same fashion the American telecoms have. My (very limited) u
326.
by austinz 13y ago
I agree with you. I think the rule is asinine as well, I'm glad it's dead, and I think we should be pushing back against stupid things. And following rules for rules' sake is a stupid thing. But I don't think that meanin
327.
by austinz 13y ago
Thank you for proving the parent's point about entitlement. "So why should I give that ditz any respect?" Seriously? "There is no man like a free man"? As if reading your Kindle during takeoff is going to turn you i
328.
As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry(nytimes.com)
50 points by austinz 13y ago|55 comments
329.
by austinz 13y ago
If this is the smartest bracelet I'll ever wear, I weep for the future of the smart-bracelet industry. Or is there more to the product than the web site lets on?
330.
by austinz 13y ago
I had a Macintosh Plus when I was a kid. (My dad wrote his Ph.D dissertation on it, and he had a HD and some game disks before I somehow destroyed them.) I remember that computer fondly. When I was in first grade we got a new machine, and w

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