hugh

40 ms·

451.
by hugh 18y ago
When I am struggling with something, I sometimes think "Damn, this is hard. I wonder if I am stupid". And then I remember I have a PhD in solid-state theoretical physics, and I think "Man, I used to be smart -- how did I manage to become so
452.
by hugh 18y ago
I just checked and there is a "Quantum Physics for Dummies" on Amazon for preorder. It's due to come out early next year.
453.
by hugh 18y ago
I read the same book. It was compulsory for a management class I was doing. A lot of people rave about how great it is, but personally I couldn't quite overcome the niggling voice of shame in the back of my head that said "You're reading a
454.
by hugh 18y ago
Yes, that $25B eigenvector article was the one I read, and having read it, was why I didn't feel like I was getting much new from this paper. I may have been too harsh on the paper, though, because of the headline. It's still kinda neat, ju
455.
by hugh 18y ago
A friend was somehow tricked into allowing a hawker to start tying an intricate string bracelet using his finger as the base. His finger was stuck in the knot, and the guy ignored my friend's requests to be let go. It ended with quite a lo
456.
by hugh 18y ago
The paper is unconvincing. Sure, there's some mathematical similarity between Pagerank and the Schroedinger equation (they're both just eigenvector problems anyway, as I understand it) but they haven't really demonstrated that bringing in t
457.
by hugh 18y ago
This is probably good advice. But if you want to practice your sales skills, instead of getting involved in an existing door-to-door sales and/or multi-level-marketing racket, why not start your own door-to-door sales business? Pick a produ
458.
by hugh 18y ago
This is a silly post. As others have said, there's no problem making "most elements of the set P have property Q", even when the set P is very large or infinite. "Most real numbers are not integers. In fact, almost all real numbers are not
459.
by hugh 18y ago
Interesting advice on the knives. But perhaps a chef's needs are different from an ordinary person's, in that a chef has a lackey to sharpen his knives every night? For those of us who are too lazy to sharpen our knives regularly, perhaps a
460.
by hugh 18y ago
No, they trademarked the word "i'm" in some small and particular subset of its possible uses. There's nothing to stop you making a car called the "i'm", or a web-based social cause instant messaging advertising thingy (or whatever the hell
461.
by hugh 18y ago
I worked as a courier for a short while, and I have good memories of that time. It gives a certain kind of job satisfaction which is very different from what you get from being... well, anything else I've ever been. Your goals are short-ter
462.
by hugh 18y ago
There's something moderately worthwhile about being the first person to build a home-made replica of the Apollo landing computer. But I see nothing remotely worthwhile about being the second, using the plans put together by the first.
463.
by hugh 18y ago
My guess: actually it would take about five minutes. But the only guy who knows that is an employee of the state of California, so what the hell is his incentive to let them know that? He's probably working right now to obfuscate the code.
464.
by hugh 18y ago
Aren't fistfights between eight-year-olds common everywhere? It's the fistfights between 16-year-olds that indicate an area has problems.
465.
by hugh 18y ago
That is indeed a great visualisation of some not-very-interesting data. The only interesting point is the way that the host countries dominated the medal rankings for the first few decades. At the St Louis Olympics practically all the medal
466.
by hugh 18y ago
Why bother? Sure, you might save a few dollars a week, but in exchange you'd spend your whole driving time depressed. Not worthwhile.
467.
by hugh 18y ago
Even a very risk-averse person would see B as clearly better, but a risk-averse organization will usually prefer option A. Nobody gets in trouble for following the rules. Besides, the NHS, as an organization, sees thousands of dead babi
468.
by hugh 18y ago
Most likely, it involves private internal trading between employees Where would the money come from? Very few facebook employees are rich in cash.
469.
by hugh 18y ago
It seems like a dangerous route to take, to make some of your key employees rich before there's a proper liquidity event. I can only imagine what it will do to their motivation and to the internal politics of the company. Of course, very fe
470.
by hugh 18y ago
In my understanding an MBA isn't considered much of a qualification in finance, banking or trading. Quants have quantitative degrees, while traders... well, they just seem to be some kind of trained gorilla as far as I can figure out.
471.
by hugh 18y ago
I'm not sure about this idea. I think the problem with existing web-based Office substitutes isn't a problem of segmenting the market -- the problem is that they're just not as good as Office. In particular, they're slower, uglier and alway
472.
by hugh 18y ago
Are you Japanese?
473.
by hugh 18y ago
I actually found the two-page "Technical note" at: http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/sbfxot55p5k3kd454n14... and it's pretty useless. Lots of talk of parts-per-million, but absolutely no justification of the most important danger-wo
474.
by hugh 18y ago
The interview is reasonably interesting, but despite the title and the interviewer's introduction she doesn't even mention facebook. Not once.
475.
by hugh 18y ago
It'd be nice to have a [pdf] warning in the title of this one.
476.
by hugh 18y ago
I missed that on my first read-through. Yes, that's truly terrible. But if you stopped after that you missed the bit about how great life was in Britain in the period 1938-1944, when we apparently were using less resources, but were happier
477.
by hugh 18y ago
Usually I err on the side of not killing stuff critical of YC no matter how crappy it is That sounds like a good policy, and I think you should have stuck to it in this case and erred on the not-killing side. I mean, I can understand kill
478.
by hugh 18y ago
I'm gonna go with a guess and say "Ummm, no." I did, however, look up the folks who wrote this. Climatologists? Nope, some guy called Andrew Simms from some place called the New Economics Foundation. These are the same guys who made up that
479.
by hugh 18y ago
This is a silly attitude. Ultimately everybody is fucking everybody else over simultaneously. You fuck your boss over as your boss fucks you over. You fuck your employees over, and they fuck you over too. Occasionally you'll get fucked over
480.
by hugh 18y ago
Correct. Furthermore, they don't even necessarily claim it's more efficient -- or at least, they don't give any numbers. It may be more efficient than electrolysis of water (that's not saying much) but is it more efficient than charging and

More ›