hugh

72 ms·

751.
by hugh 18y ago
Only a small minority of jerks would bother to try, so just make sure that the professor you're approaching isn't a jerk. Frankly most professors don't have time to bother trying to steal credit, especially for something which isn't close t
752.
by hugh 18y ago
Millions of people all over the world have heard of Jigglypuff. I personally have bashed jigglypuff's oversized head in with a large mallet many times in Super Smash Bros. Jigglypuff is no doubt an important cultural touchstone for the gene
753.
by hugh 18y ago
Y'know, I'm a physicist, specializing in quantumy stuff, and I suspect that some form of many-worlds is probably true. But I don't really like the preachy "Many Worlds is just the way it is, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool" tone o
754.
by hugh 18y ago
I admit I don't really come from a corporate IT background, but don't a lot of those pretty much sound like almost the same job: "Guy in charge of some big ugly database system"?
755.
by hugh 18y ago
Gramatically perhaps, but in context these sorts of statements about the personal characteristics of groups of people are generally understood to be generalizations. "Ravens are black" ==> "All ravens are black" "Germans like beer" ==&#
756.
by hugh 18y ago
Other things you can get for that $500 include two nights at the Venetian in Las Vegas, a 1992 Buick Regal in need of serious engine work, or a couple of hundred gallons of milk. You're comparing prices of two rather different devices.
757.
by hugh 18y ago
That's probably overdoing it (especially the semi-automatic sending of gifts) but I genuinely think that a "help you select gifts" application would be a nice idea. The way I see it working is that you start off by telling it basic data abo
758.
by hugh 18y ago
OK, I'm getting pretty bored of the Everybody Panic articles. Who keeps voting them up? I always pick up some books every time someone is giving them away for free. One of my favourites (which I unfortunately left in my old office) is calle
759.
by hugh 18y ago
Incorrect. (Yes, I'm a physicist.)
760.
by hugh 18y ago
Well it's not a necessary condition either. Plenty of companies, and indeed plenty of shoe companies, are successful without purchasing their entire supply chain down to the plastic-factory level.
761.
by hugh 18y ago
Are we really going to state, as educators, that some people just aren't cut out for thinking rationally? Speaking as a sometime educator, I think you can afford to lose the last word.
762.
by hugh 18y ago
This article comes so close to telling us what we actually want to know, and then doesn't. Why no numbers on how many people are in each (bronze, silver, etc) tier?
763.
by hugh 18y ago
Would it be possible to detect Markov-generated text? Perhaps the only way to do it would be to note that the probability of one word following another seems more constant over time in Markov text than in human-generated text? It'd be inter
764.
by hugh 18y ago
Isn't the roof on, say, a 1980s Lincoln done like this? Or is that just fabric covering metal?
765.
by hugh 18y ago
Yes, they just won't be powered by fossil fuels anymore. Boy, there's a big wave of doom-and-gloom sweeping the globe these past few months, isn't there? I can't wait 'til it's over.
766.
by hugh 18y ago
Not quite, but I'm in Sacramento (ex-Sydney).
767.
by hugh 18y ago
I'd say there's more downmodding only in that there's more modding in general. Far more 10+ point comments now than six months ago, as well as far more -10 point comments. I only rarely see negative-karma comments that don't deserve it one
768.
by hugh 18y ago
Actually that point isn't necessarily obvious to me. Maybe we can create an AI which is 10% smarter than ourselves, but maybe a 10% smarter AI still isn't smart enough to create an AI 10% smarter than itself. Maybe building a 121% AI that s
769.
by hugh 18y ago
Ultracapacitors are cool, and may in fact be useful for this kind of thing, but in order to justify a headline like "Finally, an [x]" then you really need at least a working prototype of an [x], not just a press release that says "we're gon
770.
by hugh 18y ago
Not as interesting as I thought it might be. I thought they might be fishing with lines, or bait, or nets, but instead they're just reaching into the water and grabbing them. I'm actually surprised nobody's ever observed this behaviour in m
771.
by hugh 18y ago
Without reading TFA, I could tell that had to be a Kurzweil quote. I don't think there's much chance that I'll live forever, and there's much less chance that Kurzweil will. But I sure hope that we both don't, because otherwise he'll never
772.
by hugh 18y ago
Both. Salmon (the fish) are disappearing, while salmon (the meat) is also disappearing.
773.
by hugh 18y ago
Probably the same reason that just about all large companies have annoying websites. Something to do with large companies being terrible at anything which isn't the core of their business.
774.
by hugh 18y ago
He's not a politician and we don't have the opportunity to vote for him, so that's not much of an analogy. There are laws about how much a publicly-traded company needs to disclose, and I'm pretty sure that the health of its CEO isn't on th
775.
by hugh 18y ago
Not especially. It's mostly just an urban-rural thing.
776.
by hugh 18y ago
The "Smalltalk community" needs to get over it. Not everybody can be bothered keeping up with the capitalization conventions of every obscure language. If he were claiming to be a Smalltalk expert but didn't know how to capitalize it then t
777.
by hugh 18y ago
Is a data-only package really only $20 a month? If so I'd be tempted to get an iPhone with a data-only plan and stick with my cheap prepaid for voice.
778.
by hugh 18y ago
He's not kidding about the beard thing. When I was 22 I went on a six-week round-the-world trip without packing a razor. By the end I had a terrible unkempt beard, and was getting "randomly" selected for extra searches at every airport.
779.
by hugh 18y ago
Isn't alphabetically sorting a document containing (potentially) tens of thousands of words going to be pretty slow on a machine of this vintage? Isn't it a bit perverse to have a spellcheck which scales worse than O(N)?
780.
by hugh 18y ago
Sure, but ten-finger 50+wpm typing is a very different proposition to one-finger hunt-and-peck on a tiny screen.

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