cygx

44 ms·

451.
by cygx 6y ago
It's also not really part of your job description: You're supposed to advance the state of the art of theoretical physics, not "waste time" trying to come up with better explanations for the layperson.
452.
by cygx 6y ago
If you argue this point, first explain to me why physics is done with Greek letters. Because there are not enough letters in the Latin alphabet? You could of course use words instead of single letters, but I think most people that do nume
453.
by cygx 6y ago
But it's not as if the programming community collectively just forgot about these languages (and, as mentioned, Delphi and PHP are in fact contemporaries). The question remains, why did new dynamic languages rise, but already existing
454.
by cygx 6y ago
As far as I'm aware, Pascal and Ada were still significant in the early 90s (ie when Python arrived). You're right that they where far less so when PHP entered the picture, but it's not as if they were dead (Borland Delphi an
455.
by cygx 6y ago
because the representatives of statically typed languages at the time were Java and C++ And Pascal, Ada, Haskell, Eiffel, Standard ML, ...
456.
by cygx 6y ago
Compared to all the others things humanity chooses to waste money on, fundamental science is a steal, in particular considering that our ability to understand nature is what sets us apart from all other animals competing in the rat race tha
457.
by cygx 6y ago
But it puts things into perspective. Humanity blows crazy amounts of money on war, entertainment, advertising and the financial industry, within a system where something like two dozen individuals can (collectively) amass trillions of dolla
458.
by cygx 6y ago
The big one was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a missing piece of the so-called 'standard model' of particle physics, plus a bunch of other stuff (lack of evidence for super-symmetry so far, discovery of some tetra- and pentaqu
459.
by cygx 6y ago
You investigate specific claims. For example, take the claim that Covid-19 is "no worse than the flu". You could report on people making this claim, and state that others disagree. That can be considered an example of unbiased rep
460.
by cygx 6y ago
It's not. You can reproduce information in an unbiased manner, but being factual involves fact-checking, which rarely yields a neutral result.
461.
by cygx 6y ago
Excepting the confusion between the relationship of mass and energy which you cleared up, that was a totally legit question: Energy gravitates, so we do in fact need to know where all (non-gravitational) energy - including contributions we
462.
by cygx 6y ago
Compare this with Germans under the Soviet sphere of influence. Puppets, maybe, but alive as long as they cooperated with the ruling ideology. There was no plan to ethnically cleanse them to make room for Soviet citizens in German land. T
463.
by cygx 6y ago
Potential energy is energy associated with a system's configuration. For example, arrangements of charges can be more or less energetic, as in, you need to perform or can extract work when you go from one configuration to another. This
464.
by cygx 6y ago
Additionally, there are expected operating costs of 2.5-3.5M€ per month. Most of that will go to the telephone hotlines.
465.
by cygx 6y ago
Only loaning simultaniously the number of copies you have in your possession is part of the CDL model, so no, they were not. Cf https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement Properly implemented, CDL enables a library to
466.
by cygx 6y ago
Not as far as I'm aware, but they're doing so now. Who knows why they have waited so long, though one can speculate (eg. CDL might not have had enough momentum to be a real threat before, the Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc.
467.
by cygx 6y ago
The issue that caused all the outrage was the National Emergency Library program Not really: Publishers oppose controlled digital lending as well. The Emergency Library just painted a bigger target on the Internet Archive's back due
468.
by cygx 6y ago
Hence the existence of Public Lending Right programs[1] in some countries. In Germany for example, libaries do need to pay a fee per loan (3-4 cent according to Wikipedia). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lendi
469.
by cygx 6y ago
It probably did, but note that the scope was limited: Books released too recently were excluded (if I remember correctly, the cut-off was 5 years?), and they are still DRM protected and have to be returned at the end of the 3 month period,
470.
by cygx 6y ago
If such a comparison gets added, Wren[1] might also be of interest. [1] https://wren.io/
471.
by cygx 6y ago
Security fixes, for one. It's more convenient to rebuild one shared library instead of having to rebuild all downstream consumers.
472.
by cygx 6y ago
Abstract: We use the synthetic control method to analyze the effect of face masks on the spread of Covid-19 in Germany. Our identification approach exploits regional variation in the point in time when face masks became compulsory.
473.
Face Masks Considerably Reduce Covid-19 Cases in Germany [pdf](ftp.iza.org)
5 points by cygx 6y ago|2 comments
474.
by cygx 6y ago
But looking back at our history, one should also keep in mind that it did take hundreds of years for Europe to recover from the fall of the Roman Empire. 'Innovation will fix things eventually' is cold comfort for the generations
475.
by cygx 6y ago
easier bootstrapping
476.
by cygx 6y ago
Sure they're shady and that needs to be blocked, but security implications? Pretty much nil. Fingerprinting. Vulnerability discovery. Messing up programs that don't know how to deal with unexpected HTTP requests.
477.
by cygx 6y ago
It's a step on the road to mass surveillance.
478.
by cygx 6y ago
Libertarianism might have been the best fit Fun fact: In Feynman's formative years, 'libertarian' still meant 'anarchist'.
479.
by cygx 6y ago
There's currently no national database storing pictures of all German citizen, and I for one would oppose its creation.
480.
by cygx 6y ago
That's not enough to power Germany, for example. To de-carbonize our electricity production completely, we need some yet to be determined additional energy storage mechanism. Power-to-gas would work very well if we can make it efficien

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