jacobolus

1273 ms·

3601.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Imagine getting rid of all your possessions and wealth, moving somewhere that you have no support network, not talking to anyone you know, and living on the street (going hungry sometimes, facing the elements, not being able to shower regul
3602.
by jacobolus 9y ago
These are all based on a saying from the early 19th century about the foolishness of trying to do something impossible, e.g. “It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fe
3603.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Moreover, in a distributed systems context where many machines are involved in each task some 'rare' issues can end up happening a large proportion of tasks, and solitary problems can cascade and cause positive feedback loops that
3604.
by jacobolus 9y ago
10+ years before a green card? Yeesh. That’s an outrageously long time to wait for permanent resident status.
3605.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I guess I haven't walked much on ice. There the standard bearer is probably something with metal spikes. I found vibrams pretty good for e.g. climbing around tide pools.
3606.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Instead of the Converse shoes, which have a somewhat rigid rubber bottom outsole, consider buying some plain canvas-bottomed shoes. You will wear through all of the layers of canvas within a few months, but if you get them from China (e.g.
3607.
by jacobolus 9y ago
How cold are we talking about? I find that thin uninsulated flexible shoes often keep my feet much warmer than more insulated inflexible shoes as long as I keep moving, because they require a lot more muscle use by the feet and lower legs,
3608.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Some further advantages of forefoot walking: it is much quieter; it is easier to precisely place your feet (e.g. 10 people can all walk in the same footprints and hide their numbers); you can very quickly and easily transition between walk
3609.
by jacobolus 9y ago
It takes months if not years of frequent deliberate practice to change your unconscious gait as an adult (or at least it took a year or two for me; maybe some people are prodigy athletes and can master new physical skills faster). Just swit
3610.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Which “barefoot shoes” are you talking about? Most of the styles of e.g. Vibram shoes have rubber soles (and in particular you end up being able to shape your foot to the surface) so there is relatively good traction compared to other shoes
3611.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Rigid shoes are not strictly “better”. Arguably they are in many ways worse, stunting development of small stabilizer muscles throughout the foot and lower leg (through disuse), reducing flexibility and dexterity, encouraging poor posture,
3612.
by jacobolus 9y ago
How old is your daughter, and how is the weather where you live? My son is about 17 months old and has been walking for about 5 months. We live in one of the warmer parts of San Francisco, so for the first 3–4 months it was warm enough that
3613.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I have spent a few years mostly walking around either in Vibrams or in canvas shoes I bought for $10/pair in China, and frequently walk like this. The guy in the video is exaggerating his motions a lot though (could explain part of why
3614.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I know several CS PhDs from “world elite universities” with undergraduate math or physics degrees who switched to CS for grad school because they decided that math/theoretical physics were too difficult or too competitive, and found th
3615.
by jacobolus 9y ago
If you have ever studied vector calculus, the idea is a straightforward application of Green's theorem. The discrete version is the 'shoelace formula'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%27s_theorem ht
3616.
by jacobolus 9y ago
No. ACH is the digital equivalent of depositing a paper check. The debit networks are what you use to withdraw money from an ATM, and require entering a PIN, but most debit cards nowadays can also operate through credit card networks.
3617.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I think a big compounding problem is the overall prevalence of guns. In most places domestic abusers aren't untrained gun nuts living in a macho wave-your-gun-whenever-you-want culture. People can obviously do plenty of damage beating
3618.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Paper is an incredibly versatile tool: 1. You can cut, tear, fold, roll, crumple, burn, sew, staple, glue, laminate, etc. it, including sticking found objects to it, wrapping things with it, making it into 3-dimensional structures, ... 2. I
3619.
by jacobolus 9y ago
How about a literal decathlon? But come on, there are tremendous differences difference between the body types and skills involved in swimming, gymnastics, bobsled, trick snowboarding, 100 meter dash, marathon, boxing, sumo, table tennis, b
3620.
by jacobolus 9y ago
People living in a snooty wealthy bubble get 'really fucking scared' pretty easily. It's not like drug addicts sitting on the sidewalk go out of their way to attack strangers walking by in the middle of a busy public street.
3621.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I've never felt unsafe walking around in the Tenderloin, e.g. carrying an infant. The main 'problem' people have is that there are poor people living there in SROs, and a good number of homeless people loitering all the time.
3622.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Archaeologists also aren't structural engineers, usually. So they often have quite different ways of approaching problems. As an example of what happens when a structural engineer does some amateur archaeology, check out http:/&#
3623.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Logo is a great tool to use to learn visually about basic shapes and their properties (circles, polygons, conic sections, spirals, various sorts of roulettes, ...), logic, graphs of data and functions, fractals, cellular automata, synthetic
3624.
by jacobolus 9y ago
I think it depends on getting access to enough mentor guidance and/or stumbling over the right initial materials and tools (simple enough compiler/interpreter, some books/magazines, ...). In the WWW era this is in some ways g
3625.
by jacobolus 9y ago
https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/hofstadter/analogy....
3626.
by jacobolus 9y ago
No idea why people are downvoting you. My comment about blackboards is kind of a tangent.
3627.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Maybe an analogy in poor taste, but the premise of BBT is basically “look how many negative stereotypes of scientists and engineers we can get our audience to point and laugh at, if we take our lazy awkward mean-spirited writing and put a l
3628.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Not so much “evolved” changes, but human bodies definitely undergo differences in shape depending on use and context. Just look at athletes who start playing different sports from a young age – some of the difference is genetic and selectio
3629.
by jacobolus 9y ago
The long-term (and very successful in many countries) right-leaning policy strategy for decades has been replacing inheritance and capital gains and corporate profit taxes with income taxes, income taxes with (capped) payroll taxes, propert
3630.
by jacobolus 9y ago
Blackboards are much better as lecture tools than digital whiteboards with autoscroll, or most uses of powerpoint, or whatever else people try, in my experience. I wish that more lecturers would consider returning to blackboards, instead of

More ›