chris_va

54 ms·

601.
by chris_va 10y ago
Arguably, wind is not very reliable, but point taken.
602.
by chris_va 10y ago
That's just stupid, no one is proposing criminal negligence.
603.
by chris_va 10y ago
Waste disposal is almost entirely political. That Germany is shutting down the objectively cleanest reliable source of energy is tragic. All of the nuclear waste Germany generates would fit in a single football stadium. Technically you&#x27
604.
by chris_va 10y ago
Actually burning the wood works just fine, provided you can sequester (see BECCS, along with recent developments in basalt based CCS).
605.
by chris_va 10y ago
First ping is always free.
606.
by chris_va 10y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417050
607.
by chris_va 10y ago
... Until we get driverless RVs, and hordes of retirees roaming the country reinvigorating those rest stops.
608.
by chris_va 10y ago
Highlights: 1) No GPUs necessary, gives similar/better results in similar time (see http://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.01783v1.pdf ) 2) 1-step Q (according to paper, maybe could do better with actor-critic + 1 LSTM layer) 3
609.
by chris_va 10y ago
I've been on the other side of this a few times. Doing a Skype call is far less effective in getting me to help place someone relative to in person coffee. Better than nothing, though.
610.
by chris_va 10y ago
> I suppose the investors could also appreciate that he didn't want to waste more of their money if he didn't believe in the product. Yes, very much so. Startup investments fail all the time, part of the business. Better a clea
611.
by chris_va 10y ago
Having seen both sides, I would argue that academia doesn't really have a subfield that fits distributed systems well (most industry systems span multiple academic fields, from networking to fault tolerance, databases, OS, etc). Not to
612.
by chris_va 10y ago
"The automatic encoding of features which previously had to be hand engineered." Yes, that is the main benefit. The drawback is that we are still hand tuning architectures, slowly inventing (or incorporating) things like LSTM and
613.
by chris_va 10y ago
I'll believe it when I see it. The original IRT network was built in 2 years (!). They've been working on the 2nd avenue line since 1972 and it still isn't open.
614.
by chris_va 10y ago
The really big, really difficult one will be enabling dynamic focal depth. The lack of focal planes makes it difficult to imagine VR providing a lifelike experience. Some volumetric/panoptic displays are getting closer, along with eye
615.
by chris_va 10y ago
I think you misunderstand my concern. Going from a system where everyone needs to generate $20k of economic value "to eat" (yes, oversimplification of benefits, but bear with me) to one in which no one needs to generate economic v
616.
by chris_va 10y ago
40% in favour of returning the marbles to Greece 15% in favour of keeping them at the British Museum 18% would not vote 27% had no opinion ... I feel like this is a good example of where they will eventually migrate home. It hasn't bee
617.
by chris_va 10y ago
I am worried that this study will just confirm the local benefits of BI (which have already been pretty well documented, e.g. Mincome) without addressing the unanswered questions regarding BI. The real unanswered questions mostly revolve ar
618.
by chris_va 10y ago
Apologies, but the "sigh" was for the "not supported by the study, and also nonsense" comment. I find it annoying when supported arguments are dismissed out of hand without compelling counter evidence. It sounds childish
619.
by chris_va 10y ago
Sigh. Yes, it is well supported by the research, did you actually read it? I actually had a nice phone call with the lab that produced this paper. You can explain a percentage of weight changes by calorie intake, but the factors that explai
620.
by chris_va 10y ago
Where do you draw the line? In the US we always side with personal freedom in the courts (e.g. if you want to own something, you can do so, pursuit of happiness and all that). Antiquities don't have a lot of intrinsic value beyond disp
621.
by chris_va 10y ago
That doesn't really work unless your antibiotic is going to be a short chain peptide, which might find something but would be extremely unlikely. Besides, fungi/bacteria have been waging this evolutionary war for a billion years,
622.
by chris_va 10y ago
Each customer would need to see a normal distribution (possible), and each would need the mean to match the "correct" value (not possible without the overall mean matching the correct value).
623.
by chris_va 10y ago
That is not entirely true (not entirely false either), the reality is more complicated. Your metabolism level, and the percentage of calories that are actually taken up by fat cells, depend on many factors besides total calorie count. A nic
624.
by chris_va 10y ago
Reliably? Short version is no, and it is even more complicated. Two individuals eating the same food will gain weight differently, depending on a large number of factors.
625.
by chris_va 10y ago
Kind of reminds me of this story: http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/donbyrd/Teach/Math//Gamow...
626.
by chris_va 10y ago
That makes very little sense. Why would the US be entitled to money earned in another country by a non US entity?
627.
by chris_va 10y ago
Except most of the money is sheltered using legal tax avoidance ala Dutch Sandwich (nice job EU), so maybe 30%? Either way, CFOs do not like to waste money.
628.
by chris_va 10y ago
(3) repatriating ... Very few other countries will tax foreign earnings the way the US does. If you were a company would you want to lose 35% of your money to spend it in the US, or just wait to find a project overseas? That tariff is a muc
629.
by chris_va 10y ago
Random fact... Orange juice loses its flavor when pasteurized, always has. If you want "real" orange juice, you need either fresh or cold (high pressure to sterilize) pressed, which you can now buy.
630.
by chris_va 10y ago
How do you value the ability to buy oranges at any time of the year? The ability to buy shirts of any color/size, within minutes? I don't know if I would agree that the quality has been going down, it really depends on how you def

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