comicjk

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211.
by comicjk 7y ago
There's a clear public interest in preventing standing vehicles from blocking midtown traffic. My friends have dealt with this by sheer numbers: when one friend is moving, a dozen show up to do the quick transfer from sidewalk to truck
212.
by comicjk 7y ago
Launching things from the Earth to the Sun is very difficult. We're talking a Saturn-V-sized rocket to move less than a lunar-lander-mass of waste. The fundamental problem is that the Earth moves fast in its orbit, and in order to drop
213.
by comicjk 7y ago
I agree with you, but with a couple of corrections. The cheaper algorithm called Density Functional Theory is probably the most popular kind of quantum calculation on molecules, and scales as ~N^2.5 in practice. On the other hand, the numbe
214.
by comicjk 7y ago
A lot of work has gone into looking for classical algorithms for these sampling problems since the mid-2000s, and we have found some speedups, but everything still suggests that they are truly exponential on classical hardware. The classica
215.
by comicjk 7y ago
It's not quite as bad as an analog water simulator made of water. They have built a programmable machine that can run any quantum problem it can load into its qubits. The problem is, it has so few qubits that it can only load tiny prob
216.
by comicjk 7y ago
For classical computers, one computer simulating another is only polynomially slower. The claim here is that any classical computer will be exponentially slower at simulating this problem. The experiment is just to show that the scaling is
217.
by comicjk 7y ago
Quantum supremacy is about scaling (big-O notation) - taking a classically O(2^N) problem and making it polynomial. The empirical experiments are just to show that the scaling works, and the uncertainty comes from the fact that we still can
218.
by comicjk 7y ago
Pet peeve of mine: solving practical problems often involves capitalism in our system, but that doesn't mean practicality is capitalism. If you're writing ad code, you're working on capitalism only. If you're writing rai
219.
by comicjk 7y ago
They're adjusting the integration method (used to calculate positions given forces) to take into account the properties of the thermostat (used to maintain a roughly-constant temperature in the simulation). This allows bigger timesteps
220.
by comicjk 7y ago
Molecular dynamics simulations are usually O(N log(N)), because that's the time complexity of the Fast Fourier Transform, which allows computation of the N^2 charge interactions in less than N^2 time (e.g. Ewald Summation https:/
221.
by comicjk 7y ago
> specialty of focus, and editing These two are perfectly legitimate ways of using the medium of video to avoid making mistakes.
222.
by comicjk 7y ago
I like the core description of programming, but the framing - that programming is tougher than manual labor - is childish. Life is not a competition for whose job is hardest, and if it were, no one on Hacker News would win it.
223.
by comicjk 7y ago
I found this title subtly wrong, and it took me a little while to realize why: my accent doesn't have the Mary–marry–merry merger, so "Be Wary" and "Be Merry" don't rhyme for me. https://en.wikipedia
224.
by comicjk 7y ago
"99% probability is nothing" is innumeracy. A demand for five sigma before taking action - treating probabilities between 0 and 99.9999% as equivalent - is defensible in a high-energy physics experiment, where adding another sigma
225.
by comicjk 7y ago
> Like all hypotheses, it cannot be proven true, only disproven by contradictory evidence. This is true, but not helpful, because it's a framework that treats all probabilities except 0 and 1 as equivalently vague. Anthropogenic cli
226.
by comicjk 7y ago
A 13-minute mile would be a very fast walk, or more likely a gentle jog.
227.
by comicjk 7y ago
Breaking a cryptosystem is not a good metric for whether quantum computers have become useful. Calculating energy levels of molecules, for example, is a much easier problem in the near term, and is of benefit to humanity. Breaking a cryptos
228.
by comicjk 7y ago
Peloton has almost a billion a year in revenue, and rising fast. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I don't see that a valuation of 8 billion is obviously wrong.
229.
by comicjk 7y ago
I would guess that the skill distribution of licensed pilots is asymmetrical, if only because the tail end of bad pilots are not allowed to fly.
230.
by comicjk 7y ago
Imagine a climate innovator that is selling stock worth $1 billion based on expected returns. That stock can be expected to sell for $1 billion, and no more, even if $0.5 billion of that comes from altruistic investors. The altruistic inves
231.
by comicjk 7y ago
You're speaking as if love and hate should cancel out, like weights balancing. But having a love/hate understanding of a person is extremely common. If I were teaching a person who could not understand both (such as a young child)
232.
by comicjk 7y ago
I said this to a blue-check journalist (Max Rosenthal) on Twitter, and he mocked me for it. But I still think it's true. The name BuzzFeed is just not helpful.
233.
by comicjk 7y ago
If they thought about the trade-off that way, sure, but people have a desire not to feel "taken advantage of", a feeling which might be triggered by road tolls.
234.
by comicjk 7y ago
To put numbers on this, a typical approximation for bond energy as a function of stretch would be E = 500x^2, where x is the stretch in Angstroms and E is the energy change in units of thermal noise at room temperature (about 0.6 kcal/
235.
by comicjk 7y ago
That is a fascinating story. It makes fictional countries based on hidden mines, like Wakanda, seem much more plausible.
236.
by comicjk 7y ago
My runner's fracture is in the forefoot, just where I was supposed to land. Take my word for it, it's not a complete protection. I agree that you don't want a whole lot of foam between you and the ground under any circumstanc
237.
by comicjk 7y ago
Barefoot squatting is safe and easy compared to barefoot running. Running imposes stresses of 3x body weight, which is a lot more than most people can squat. As a person who got a runner's fracture using barefoot-style footwear, I stil
238.
by comicjk 7y ago
Race performance measures talent + training. Inasmuch as optimal training for women is less understood than for men, they may have room to improve that doesn't show up in race times. Talent at race time is also socially dependent, beca
239.
by comicjk 7y ago
The book that led to the runner's fracture in my left foot. Note to future readers who tend to overdo things: we may be born to run, but not on concrete.
240.
by comicjk 7y ago
Submarines have always been an underdog's weapon to some extent, ever since they were used by the South in the US civil war. If you expect your navy to be outclassed, but still want to build one, stealth is one of the few options.

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