grondilu

81 ms·

751.
by grondilu 10y ago
Say what you want about SpaceX's plans for re-usability, nobody can deny they are making progress at an incredible pace. I've just checked on Wikipedia and apparently the first flight of the Falcon was in 2010. That's six y
752.
by grondilu 10y ago
That looks like an extremely elaborated way to make a claim that could normally be done in a few lines. And even if the claim would require a long explanation, for instance if Satoshi lost or destroyed the keys for the first few blocks, o
753.
by grondilu 11y ago
I was objecting to the comparison between mars and the american continent. The value of the American for the Europeans was certainly higher than if it were completely desert. Europeans brought countless species[1], and discovered large ar
754.
by grondilu 11y ago
> How much value has America created since it was a colony? The comparison to America is terrible, if you ask me. If the american continent was looking anything like Mars, people would have never settled there and the value you're
755.
by grondilu 11y ago
It's not so much about altruism or the moral validity of taxation. It's about equality and fairness. If some people can take advantage from the expropriation of others, then who gets to say who can be expropriated and who can&#x
756.
by grondilu 11y ago
> All tax payers on this planet (at least those living in a country with sizeable research spending) already contribute to the worldwide scientific knowledge. I believe this is a good thing. Then you still get a free-rider problem, regar
757.
by grondilu 11y ago
> Do you think if you mass drop all the important physics paper and maths paper on nuclear physics in syria - then somehow ISIS will be able to create a nuclear weapon ? I don't know about this particular example, but I do know that
758.
by grondilu 11y ago
You end up in a situation where a minority is coerced to pay for everyone. It's morally wrong.
759.
by grondilu 11y ago
But if scientific papers were free, how could nations avoid a free-rider issue regarding other nations? For instance, a major part of scientific research is done in US, isn't it? Does that mean that the US tax payer should be the majo
760.
by grondilu 11y ago
Since there will be many probes sent, they will probably be able to relay the signal all along the way. It would still be difficult, but maybe manageable.
761.
by grondilu 11y ago
Freeman's speech was interesting in that regard. He doesn't think Alpha Centauri is a reasonable target for this project and according to him it should not be advertised as such. But he does think that using this technology to s
762.
by grondilu 11y ago
I personally think we should not talk about Anthropocene, but rather of an "anthropic crisis" or "Holocene crisis", like other crises in paleontology (oxygen crisis, messinian crisis...) We just have too little visibilit
763.
by grondilu 11y ago
> The benefits will dwarf the cost of the program. There will be no benefit if nobody can pay the costs. > I truly believe the whole point of going to Mars is to challenge ourselves. SpaceX does not just want to go to mars, they want
764.
by grondilu 11y ago
> The thing being defended against isn't the sun blowing up. It was in the post I was replying to. > It's a species-ending impact or some other localized global catastrophe that would cause the loss of 100,000 years of cultu
765.
by grondilu 11y ago
I don't think the current tax system can allow anyone to become rich enough to afford living on mars, and I doubt settling on mars can exempt from taxation.
766.
by grondilu 11y ago
Earth will remain inhabitable for about 500 million years. Making any kind of a plan for such a time frame is just dumb.
767.
by grondilu 11y ago
I'm very conflicted about SpaceX. On one hand, I can appreciate the technical performance like everyone, and I do believe this may have a great impact for sending things to space, including humans. On the other hand, SpaceX's main
768.
by grondilu 11y ago
I don't think there is any clamping mechanism if that's what you're talking about. Apparently they rely on the sea being calm enough not to make the rocket tilt over. Also remember that the tanks are mostly empty so the cen
769.
by grondilu 11y ago
I'm French as well. When I saw the title of this post, I thought it was about how French you sound when you speak English, not how well you can speak French. The thing is, there are a lot of very educated French people who, when they
770.
by grondilu 11y ago
1. We don't have to understand how it works to make something that works as well. It can always be found by trial and error. 2. That's indeed not an argument. 3. Whatever the human body does, it does not require any of its parts
771.
by grondilu 11y ago
As anyone ever written an artistically worthy novel with only those 1,000 words? Sounds like an interesting lipogram. Also, is there a Vim plugin to do that?
772.
by grondilu 11y ago
Unless you have a way to ensure the code actually running on voting machines is the code that was published, there is no point.
773.
by grondilu 11y ago
[+] is not a function with a name, as it is the result of the metaoperator [] to the function &infix:[+]. Thus you really need a closure.
774.
by grondilu 11y ago
I would have written it sub prefix:<∑> { [+] @_ } would you have liked it more? (I personally find it more "perlish")
775.
by grondilu 11y ago
I'm too lazy to read this but not enough not to throw my two cents. Non-human mammals are amazing considering how many of them are incredibly capable very early. I'm thinking mostly of large prey for whom the ability to walk and
776.
by grondilu 11y ago
It's not so simple. Knowledge is power so you don't want to disseminate it blindly. Military weapons (including highly dangerous ones) for instance were designed with publicly funded research and yet everybody would agree that i
777.
by grondilu 11y ago
Another comforting article : http://gizmodo.com/after-years-of-deforestation-chinas-fores...
778.
by grondilu 11y ago
Nobody really cares about the long term-survival of the human species. Also : we're all going to die. We learn to live with this idea. Why the perspective of our end as individuals could not be extended to our end as a whole? Also
779.
by grondilu 11y ago
It's true that humans should be allowed a rematch. And all professionals Go players could be playing in concert. Hell, Google should organize a "AlphaGo against the world" on internet.
780.
by grondilu 11y ago
> I greatly dislike the term "artificial intelligence". It's as meaningless and distracting as that other horrible phrase, "big data". I have no idea whether deep learning algorithms could lead to "intellig

More ›