ianb

13 ms·

61.
by ianb 14y ago
"For example, all surfaces that are shaded with interpolated normal will have an unnatural shadow discontinuity at the silhouette edges with single shadow ray traces." For some reason I really want to understand what this sentence means.
62.
by ianb 14y ago
Another approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_method_multiplication Of course it's all multiplication, and all essentially the same thing. I find the grid method the least notation-focused of at least these three, and so I think mo
63.
by ianb 14y ago
I think doctest and a UI around the doctest concept (there have been a couple) is a better approach. There was one whose name I can't remember – r...something. Unfortunately it used wxWindows, and was a pain to install... native UIs suck.
64.
by ianb 14y ago
> Splitlines are very likely to cut through urban areas. Since the urban/rural distinction is meaningful in American politics, this has interesting consequences. Thinking about it more, in a place like New Mexico (and there are many sim
65.
by ianb 14y ago
In the case of a lot of states with one major city, the algorithm basically just splits that main city, for instance New Mexico: http://rangevoting.org/Splitline2009/nm.png – when the city is big enough to have a couple districts of its o
66.
by ianb 14y ago
I don't see how instant run-off voting would change much of anything, unless perhaps you got rid of the endorsement process at the same time so that people of the same party could more easily run against each other.
67.
by ianb 14y ago
Well, with Python it doesn't seem particularly fast. I put together a small test: http://svn.colorstudy.com/home/ianb/msgpack_json_comparison.... It uses some random JSON data I found. msgpack is more compact (87% of the JSON representa
68.
by ianb 14y ago
Where does this happen? I'm not seeing it: https://gist.github.com/4329831 – the exception seems to come through just fine?
69.
Do the Easy Ones First(troubleshooters.com)
1 points by ianb 14y ago|0 comments
70.
by ianb 14y ago
It's not clear to me if Texas is taking anyone else's money – from what I can tell some Texans (and Texan companies) have to pay higher taxes because other Texas companies are receiving these tax benefits.
71.
by ianb 14y ago
Minnesota (low on this list) implemented something like this, where when an area gets a particularly large tax windfall like from a corporate campus, a portion of that goes into a general fund. So if a location wants to give away some port
72.
by ianb 14y ago
It doesn't look anything like Java. There's a class statement, but it's not something dramatic, just some syntax around normal JS prototype patterns. The JS2 proposals years back started to look a lot more like Java, but those never went
73.
by ianb 14y ago
Mozilla's Prism/WebRunner/Chromeless are all basically defunct, and Chrome Apps aren't really the same as those anyway. Chrome Apps and Firefox OS Apps are basically the same – and in both cases it's adding some extra APIs that web pages c
74.
by ianb 14y ago
I think WebRTC is going to be more of a 2014 technology – it's still pretty raw as a technology, and even more so as implements, going into 2013.
75.
by ianb 14y ago
Now we're demanding that progressivity must balance the budget too? This is car salesman accounting, muddling unrelated choices together to distract from individual choices that can be rationally considered. You keep giving these pundit ta
76.
by ianb 14y ago
I'd kind of dismissed the idea of a consumption/sales tax as terribly regressive, but it doesn't have to be, and lately I've been wondering what the distribution might look like. To make a sales tax more progressive, you might in effect sa
77.
by ianb 14y ago
I offered a thought experiment, and using the example of "giving $1,000" is easier to think about than "not taking $1,000". As a thought experiment they are equivalent, with respect to the question: who utilizes resources most efficiently?
78.
by ianb 14y ago
The whole point of my post is that progressive taxation is a question of which individuals pay what, not whether money stays with individuals or goes to the government. You appear to be caught up in the framing of political rhetoric.
79.
by ianb 14y ago
This response has become the standard (non sequitur) response to proposals for progressive taxation, but it doesn't engage at all with the argument being made. The degree to which taxes are progressive doesn't determine the total tax collec
80.
by ianb 14y ago
If you have a "simple" package, i.e., Python-only, and no namespace fanciness, find a setup.py from a package you use, copy it, scan and rewrite it, and you are probably good to go. Just avoid: - Namespace packages. This is where you have
81.
by ianb 14y ago
I find SJC quite nice when it's convenient to my destination. I suppose it's not nearly as luxurious-feeling, but it's so much more relaxed. I went through OAK just once, and was surprised how much of a dump it was. Reminded me of Midway
82.
by ianb 14y ago
Is it a good idea to be headquartered in San Francisco? That's halfway between EVERYWHERE, and the vast uninhabited expanse of the Pacific. Most airlines have hubs inland. (Maybe I'm just bitter because I'll probably never take a Virgin f
83.
by ianb 14y ago
Looking at the site, it seems like MMD is Yet Another Markdown Implementation. Which is a good reason to participate, and they might have some particularly good things to contribute (like a test suite), but it's not itself "standard Markdo
84.
by ianb 14y ago
Coursera doesn't care if you break their Terms Of Service in this regard, so I see no reason they would put up any restriction. Their interpretation is that you can spend up to 49% of your studying time in Minnesota, probably including off
85.
by ianb 14y ago
It's not the "free" part that is causing the problem – the law is that anyone offering courses has to register and pay a fee to the state, which might seem reasonable for an institution charging tuition. It becomes absurd when they ask tha
86.
by ianb 14y ago
Eval sure, but the way that type coercion works in Javascript is an error. Boxing in Javascript is an error. You can figure them out, you can code around them, but they are bad and can't be justified. All coercion isn't bad, but some i
87.
by ianb 14y ago
FWIW, doctest.js briefly supported CoffeeScript, back when the format was essentially language-neutral: $ makeRequest({ > url: 'http://example.com/endpoint', > data: 'foo', > success: Spy('makeRequest', {
88.
by ianb 14y ago
With doctest.js potentially the HTML docs/examples are runnable tests, and you wouldn't have to generate both (or the difference would just be whether you included doctest.js) If you could just do: ```javascript;commenttest print(capitalize
89.
by ianb 14y ago
This is a good critique of the form of Bill Nye's anti-creationist screed: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/08/bill-nye-demonstrates-how-... The form of his argument only encourages the conflict. He clearly feels contempt towards creatio
90.
by ianb 14y ago
In my experience I would find myself frequently falling back to explicit brackets and more traditional Javascript syntax when I wasn't sure how to construct the statement. Which was okay (I wasn't stumped), but it happened fairly often. Y

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