billforsternz

9 ms·

91.
by billforsternz 2y ago
I had the same thought too. I wonder if this his role at Microsoft now? Kind of a human institutional knowledge repository, plus a kind of brand ambassador to the developer community, plus mentor to younger engineers, plus chronicler. I hop
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Bravo. I am speechless at this point.
93.
by billforsternz 2y ago
One of those rare occasions where I can't possibly just salute an excellent comment with a mere upvote. Superbly balanced effort, each bullet point equally devastating and perfectly expressed.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Fair enough, I agree, simple arithmetic calculations shouldn't generate mysterious answers.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
> It's final calculation was reasonably accurate at 24,582,115 golf balls - even though 1000 ÷ 0.00004068 = 24,582,104. Maybe it was using more significant figures for the golf ball size than it showed in its answer? 1000 ÷ 0.000040
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I asked Google "how many golf balls can fit in a Boeing 737 cabin" last week. The "AI" answer helpfully broke the solution into 4 stages; 1) A Boeing 737 cabin is about 3000 cubic metres [wrong, about 4x2x40 ~ 300 cubic
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by billforsternz 2y ago
> "According to a posthumous memoir, Newman was tormented by self-doubt and insecurities and questioned his acting ability. His struggles with alcohol led to a brief separation from Joanne Woodward, though it had nothing to do with
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by billforsternz 2y ago
There's something rather cringeworthy about the heavy and painful animations etc. on this website trying to create a 1970s computer technology vibe but instead just giving me a headache. I'd much prefer the same information, and t
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I like this, and used the same approach myself (well C++ that's basically C plus a a few nice things from C++), including the same single md4c external dependency, for a little static website generator of my own that I use extensively
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I know next to nothing about AI, but I just experienced an extraordinary hallucination in a google AI search (presumably an older Gemini model right?) as I elaborated in detail in another HN thread. It might be a good test question. https:
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Just for fun I asked the question as a simple google search which these days of course triggers an AI answer. It made for rather sobering reading; Query: "how many golf balls fit in a boeing 737" Result: Estimating, you could fit
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Obviously it doesn't because it's more a test of reasoning ability and intelligence that specific domain skills. The theory is that smart programmers will be able to quickly pick up whatever specialised skills are needed for speci
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Using my fingers I'm guessing a golf ball is about 3cm in diameter. A 737 or an A320 cabin is, again my guess/estimate, 30m long, 4m wide 2m high. So approx 30cm^3 into 200m^3. One million cm^3 in a m^3. I'm going with 5 mill
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I see what you did there, well played sir.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Go on, you can tell us who that one was and why you detested them.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I enjoy thinking about this. Not only is a sequence of digits encoding the complete works of Shakespeare in there somewhere, it's in there again. And again, an infinite number of times.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
After using .NET and COM as names for important platform products I half expect Microsoft to announce a new platform called .ORG or maybe just ORG. Visual ORG for .NET with COM support.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Your last paragraph is the nicest capsule description of this very important and yet widely misunderstood computer chess concept I've seen. Thanks! I'm going to use this (probably poorly paraphrased due to my failing memory:).
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I knew a guy back in the day who grew up in the Netherlands and then South Africa. And somehow the Afrikaans messed up his Dutch, and he basically didn't have a native language. His English was rough as well, I felt sorry for him despi
110.
by billforsternz 2y ago
The implication that Stack Overflow was somehow the only way you'd ever find a solution to a gnarly problem (back in the day) seems weird to me. I mean before that (even during that) there was the alternative problem solving technique
111.
by billforsternz 2y ago
I think there's some kind of proper name for the fallacy that things now are how things are always how they're going to be. I mean kudos for thinking and planning about the future, but it's kind of ridiculous to assume that t
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Sorry, I owe the author an apology for saying that they "cast shade" on the idea of returning the value of the static variable. Actually they, quite correctly, cast shade on the idea of returning the address of the static variable
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by billforsternz 2y ago
From the article> "Static Function Variable: In C inside a function, you can declare a static variable. You could consider this as a local variable but I don't since it's on the heap, and can be returned and modified outsi
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by billforsternz 2y ago
It's really difficult to pick my least favourite part of this article. Could be this; "But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France, with layers of
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Thanks for this, excellent. Sorry I posted and forgot to check back for a reply.
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Do your dogs have favourite composers and/or cello soloists?
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Than you, a longstanding mystery (for me) solved!
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Sorry this is mostly way over my head, but perhaps you can explain something to me that puzzled me when I looked at go 50 odd years ago now. (Please note, I absolutely do understand life requires two eyes, and why that is so, but my knowled
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by billforsternz 2y ago
I think I'm starting to see after reading these replies and some of the linked material. Basically the things that confused me most about the rules of go when I first looked at it are playing a role in creating the attack surface: How
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by billforsternz 2y ago
Thank you. So the attack somehow sets up a situation where AlphaGo/KataGo is the dead man walking? It doesn't realise at move 30 it has a group that is dead, and continues not to realise that until (close to the time that?) the gr

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