hugh3

94 ms·

931.
by hugh3 15y ago
Ah, this makes sense. If you've got energy and you want to turn it into thrust without losing too much mass then using it to fire alpha particles off at damn near the speed of light is a great way to do it.
932.
by hugh3 15y ago
As I understand it, HughesNet uses geostationary satellites parked above the US and Europe, so even that wouldn't be any use.
933.
by hugh3 15y ago
Zork really isn't the best example, just the first (and even then it was just an adaptation of Adventure ). The Infocom adventures got far more sophisticated in every way over the following few years, in terms of prose, setting, gameplay a
934.
by hugh3 15y ago
Ah yes, I remember that one. I seem to recall that I complained about the lack of a working prototype. Have they come up with a working prototype yet?
935.
by hugh3 15y ago
I tend to get about fifteen emails a day, and only two or three actually demand any kind of response, so these sorts of articles make me wonder whether I should feel grateful or lonely.
936.
by hugh3 15y ago
I think the problem is that you interpreted the headline as meaning it could convert all waste heat to work. This is, of course, impossible. Converting some of the waste heat to work is entirely possible. When there's two possible inter
937.
by hugh3 15y ago
After a court case this big, this long, one wonders how much of the ~$65 million winds up in the hands of the lawyers anyway.
938.
by hugh3 15y ago
* Please, please open a physics textbook. I beg of you.* Even better, I'll go ask a physicist. Ooh, I'm a physicist! Hey hugh3, does this violate the second law of thermodynamics? Uhh, nope, not at all! You can always extract some useful wo
939.
by hugh3 15y ago
Actually, getting to strong AI through math (rather than through mimicking humans) sounds more probable to me. We already have formalisms that can compute the most accurate possible prediction and the most efficient possible way to optimiz
940.
by hugh3 15y ago
OK, but you do realise you're destroying the site, right?
941.
by hugh3 15y ago
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one
942.
by hugh3 15y ago
Personally I think that universal health care is undesirable for ethical reasons. How are we supposed to evolve if we don't let our species' least capable members get weeded out by natural selection? There's nothing "ethical" about allowing
943.
by hugh3 15y ago
Not the point. The point is that if they allow "God squad" to pass without comment, then they'll have to allow "Hot Dog Squad" as well. And then "Pho Squad" and "Grog Squad" will show up, followed by "Mop Squad" and "Pizza Squad" and "Gutte
944.
by hugh3 15y ago
Oh, it depends where you're brought up. What you really find attractive is a mix of all the races in the community where you were brought up. If everyone you meet in childhood is of the same race then you'll probably find that race attrac
945.
by hugh3 15y ago
Note that it's only cool to call yourself a geek if you're not in any danger of being mistaken for an actual geek. Hot guy/girl wearing glasses: cool. Overweight unkempt dude in a sweaty t-shirt: still not cool regardless of whether wearing
946.
by hugh3 15y ago
Man, I'd hate to be one of the models for one of these pictures. "Ohhhh yeah," say thousands of internet users. "That computer-generated version really is a lot better-looking than the real one due to those horrible flaws on that person's
947.
by hugh3 15y ago
To print all users from /etc/password from the command-line would probably not be done by writing a C program, by most (sane) people. I used to work with a guy who would have done it that way. I do admit he was not entirely sane. Personal
948.
by hugh3 15y ago
Yeah, the top four are the four key papers of Density Functional Theory. After that it gets a little more diverse. I've met a couple of the people on that list. One of 'em is a nice guy. Another is a complete jerk. And that's all I'll say i
949.
by hugh3 15y ago
The most cited paper in physics (and/or chemistry) is, last I heard, by Walter Kohn. In fact, if I recall correctly he wrote the top two: Hohenberg & Kohn and Kohn & Sham. I hear that one of his favourite observations, though, is th
950.
by hugh3 15y ago
I'd be incredibly surprised if it weren't. The (slow) rate at which papers are produced in the humanities, and the (small) number of citations on each, means you're awfully unlikely to find one with 300,000 citations.
951.
by hugh3 15y ago
Meaning what?
952.
by hugh3 15y ago
It's a possibility. States do work to undermine things that threaten them. The Liberty Dollar project, for example, was recently shut down by the US government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar Sure, and they shut it down op
953.
by hugh3 15y ago
As computing resources continue to grow, efficiency falls further behind another concern when writing code, though. I've spent enough time diagonalizing 10,000 by 10,000 matrices to get frustrated with anyone who claims that efficiency in
954.
by hugh3 15y ago
For a currency invented by a bunch of cryptography geeks, it's astonishingly insecure.
955.
by hugh3 15y ago
Not to sound paranoid... (government agent?) Uh, sorry, that's pretty much textbook paranoia.
956.
by hugh3 15y ago
Anecdotally, it seems that practically every billionaire in the US comes from an upbringing in the comfortable middle class. This is basically what we'd expect, given that: a) Folks who become rich are generally pretty darn smart. b) People
957.
by hugh3 15y ago
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, it's fairly safe to say that the Japanese view of World War 2 is a little... well, foreign.
958.
by hugh3 15y ago
Personally, I think history is best taught when it has a narrative. Hence, textbooks are not good at teaching history I disagree. Teaching history as a narrative is the most dangerous thing you can do with history, because there's always
959.
by hugh3 15y ago
The hacker wasn't trying to get money. He was trying to undermine the system. What makes you think that? Heck, I've been undermining bitcoin for weeks just for fun, but I'd much rather have a thousand dollars.
960.
by hugh3 15y ago
I'm sure a gomboc would self-right when completely underwater, but what about a floating gomboc half-submerged? Different problem.

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