donquichotte

56 ms·

1. 541.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   This is a classic example of open-loop behaviour. People behave like assholes, but don't get the feedback they would be getting in real life. It's like the restaurant in tourist areas. Bad meals? Unfriendly staff? No problem - the
2. 542.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   I am working on quite a tedious project right now. It involves 10 years old, quite extensive, Visual Basic 6 programs. No source control was used. In our company it is practice to hire interns for 3-month periods to work on production softw
3. 543.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   This reminds me of a coworker who uses National Instruments' LabView's graphical programming capabilities to parse text files. Graphical programming is just not suitable for some tasks.
4. 544.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   This look quite promising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation#Selected_radi... We're speaking of radiant heat fluxes in the > 1kW/m^2 range for a sunny day.
5. 545.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   We would no longer be slaves to the Carnot cycle. Also, you don't need a temperature gradient anymore. Everything warmer than 0K emits thermal radiation. Think free energy for everyone.
6. 546.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   Great. Now we can finally convert heat radiation (300GHz-430THz) to DC using 1mm long antennas and graphene transistor rectifiers.
7. 547.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   Great idea! There seems to be a minor flaw in the data though, the Healdsburg District Hospital appears do be doing many procedures for 1$. http://pricemed.org/hospitals/healdsburg-district-hospital
8. 548.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   Linear regression can be a quite powerful tool, especially if (maybe counter-intuitively at first) it is used to fit exponentials [1] or polynomials to data. [1] http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LeastSquaresFittingExponential...
9. 549.▲
   by donquichotte 13y ago

   Neat idea. The debit card pin bit does not seem feasible though, at least in a brute force setting - finding out a 6 digit pin, showing each number for 1 second, takes > 11 days in the worst case.
10. 550.▲
    by donquichotte 13y ago

    But how much of the collected data do they show you? IMO services like this should be opt-in, rather than opt-out.
11. 551.▲
    by donquichotte 13y ago

    But may I use the G word? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh1RkRxnAOs
12. 552.▲
    by donquichotte 13y ago

    From TFA: > The model used was a rather naive linear model: y \sim \beta_0 + \beta_1 x ^{1/2} + \beta_2 x^{1/3} That is not a linear model. Also, note the dent at ~July 21, when it became possible again to buy phones in advanc