gjm11

27 ms·

301.
by gjm11 1y ago
That's a confusing paragraph. > The addition of the white smoke to announce the election of a new pope is more recent, however. Baumgartner traces it to 1914 [...] but also > In ancient times, the method to give the smoke these c
302.
by gjm11 2y ago
Who wants clock noon to be the midpoint of the workday? The canonical working hours are 9am to 5pm [Parton 1980] whose midpoint is at 1pm. Many people work earlier and/or later, but my impression is that it's pretty unusual to hav
303.
by gjm11 2y ago
> The root of the word celebrity is celebrate. Actually, that's not quite right. The root of both "celebrate" and "celebrity" is a Latin word whose original meaning is something to do with crowdedness. Celebrit
304.
by gjm11 2y ago
This could use a bit more explanation. For instance: How many points and how many bonus moves do you get for a capture? Does it depend on what you capture? (It looks like it's one bonus move whatever you capture, but more points for mo
305.
by gjm11 2y ago
She does when she writes books (e.g. https://rachelbythebay.gumroad.com/l/bozo-loop-epub ). She doesn't have her full name in the name of her blog because, well, whyever should she? (You are writing here under the
306.
by gjm11 2y ago
Then you might want to read Douglas Hofstadter's famous "Gödel, Escher, Bach" which draws analogies between mathematics and music and in one of its playful dialogues does in fact feature things called "Piano Postulates&q
307.
by gjm11 2y ago
It has an entirely different inappropriate association for me. Having spent years singing in choirs, when I see the name I get the words "Liberapay, Domine, de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda..." running in my head, to the tune
308.
by gjm11 2y ago
Unless I am badly misunderstanding the paper, this is about doing matrix multiplication on matrices whose entries are large integers. So far as I can tell, PAR2 doesn't do any large-number arithmetic at all, so I don't think this
309.
by gjm11 2y ago
Sure, but now you're making a different claim from the one you made before. Before, you were saying: anyone who says "muh anxiety" is just trying to cover for the fact that they're incompetent. I suggested that we'v
310.
by gjm11 2y ago
To buy one device that one can't figure out any use for may be regarded as a misfortune. To buy two looks like carelessness. -- Lady Bracknell
311.
by gjm11 2y ago
I completely agree that this is a very simple problem; I'm not at all arguing that it isn't. What I am arguing is that this doesn't make it super-unlikely that an otherwise competent person screws it up . If it's real
312.
by gjm11 2y ago
Elsewhere in this thread there is literally an example of someone who, by their own description, worked at a FAANG company for some years getting good performance reviews, has enough interview experience that even if they couldn't gen
313.
by gjm11 2y ago
Does anyone here understand the "The consistency of layoffs" graphic? The best guess I have is that the number of layoffs in each year is indicated by some sort of measure of the "overall height" of that slice of the ima
314.
by gjm11 2y ago
I have an Android phone. I could afford an iPhone, I don't care about folding screens, and my laptop is a MacBook Pro. I have an Android phone (1) because a substantial fraction of what I do on my phone is browsing the web, and Android
315.
by gjm11 2y ago
No, companies wanting to track everyone who uses their websites / sell user-behaviour data to advertisers made the Internet significantly worse. The EU just made it visible . [EDITED to add:] Actually, not even that. The companies doi
316.
by gjm11 2y ago
When I try to do this, it flatly doesn't work -- I get a popup message saying "This book has DRM". I have what I believe to be the latest version of the DeDRM plugin installed in Calibre. (I am currently attempting to follow
317.
by gjm11 2y ago
For me, although this option is still there on Amazon's webpages, it doesn't actually work. I get a popup saying "You do not have any compatible devices registered for this content. Buy a Kindle or get the free Kindle readi
318.
by gjm11 2y ago
OK, cool, you don't like Yudkowsky and want to be sure we all recognize that. But I hoped it was obvious that I wasn't just talking about Yudkowsky personally. Suppose someone is interested in what the consequences of AI systems m
319.
by gjm11 2y ago
I agree that Yudkowsky is neither a scientist nor an academic. (As for being a head of state, I think you're thinking of Elon Musk :-).) Do you think (1) we already know somehow that significantly-smarter-than-human AI is impossible, s
320.
by gjm11 2y ago
If for whatever reason you want to think about what might happen if AI systems get smarter than humans, then extrapolation and speculation are all you've got. If for whatever reason you suspect that there might be value in thinking abo
321.
by gjm11 2y ago
If we encountered space aliens, I think it would in fact be reasonable to worry that they might behave in ways catastrophic for the interests of humanity. (And also to hope that they might bring huge benefits.) So "Yudkowsky's arg
322.
by gjm11 2y ago
I think I'm confused by the box about "jj abandon", which (unlike all the other boxes) talks about "edits" rather than "files" -- which must be a deliberate choice because the legend at the bottom lists &q
323.
by gjm11 2y ago
For an earlyish (but fictional, rather simplistic, and satirically intended) version of this, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine .
324.
by gjm11 2y ago
That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after provide interesting context. "The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of Albertus Magnus ; who, as the mo
325.
by gjm11 2y ago
To save everyone else a click (though the video is short and fun): the video laments the way that "momentum" in physics refers to a wide variety of concepts: the simple p=mv in Newtonian physics, the generalized versions you get i
326.
by gjm11 2y ago
In case anyone is missing the snark here, all of tmtvl's code above is in fact perfectly valid Common Lisp.
327.
by gjm11 2y ago
Could you be a bit more explicit? (My understanding of how physicists use the term "momentum": they use it to describe a particular precisely defined physically meaningful quantity, which plays an important role in physics. This s
328.
by gjm11 2y ago
I too wish that the things I might spend money on were half the price.
329.
by gjm11 2y ago
An automated system that finds articles like this and posts "Pliny has already broken it" in the comments would probably end up being pretty accurate.
330.
by gjm11 2y ago
It's (at least in some cases) malice, not stupidity. By putting cookie banners everywhere and pretending that they are a requirement of the GDPR, the owners of the websites (or of the tracking systems attached to those websites) (1) pr

More ›