jballanc

22 ms·

1. 181.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   I'd be inclined to agree with you regarding the "general safety" concern, except for two things: 1. AF1 is a 747. If you've never been on a 747 (or A380), then you might not appreciate how smooth landings are in general.
2. 182.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   IIRC, the SRBs generated enough thrust to break the hold-down bolts even in the event the frangible nuts don't fire. I'd guess the thinking is that, if both fire you might as well have the main engines running than not (since, as
3. 183.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   Makes you wonder why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to put solid boosters on a man-rated rocket...and yet NASA is repeating that "mistake" with the SLS.
4. 184.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   This is far from the closest to launch SpaceX has called an abort. Many may not remember 3 years ago when they called the abort at T-1 after main engine ignition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v0k_0PTLnI To be honest, th
5. 185.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   "The Lady or the Tiger" is, quite literally, probably the single most influential book from my childhood. In 6th grade, my math teacher had a copy in his classroom. He noticed that I spent so much time before class, after class, (
6. 186.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   That's a straw man. "Audition via github/coding tests/open source contributions" is not equivalent to a "blind audition" for musicians. GitHub/OSS already have lower participation rates from women a
7. 187.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   I don't know that they've ever (publicly) published a post-mortem, but I know GitHub used to emphasize being a "meritocracy" but have since moved away from that after some long-festering issues (that were distinctly anti
8. 188.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   It's an interesting question to be sure. I can only speak personally... My mother was an immigrant. My grandfather worked in the embroidery industry, and was as close to a "programmer" as you could get in his day (he turned n
9. 189.▲
   by jballanc 10y ago

   This post is no more or less political than the last two times I made it 3 and 5 years ago.
10. 190.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    "First" in the sense of doing a breadth-first search up your family tree starting from you. ;-)
11. 191.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    0 generations (I am an immigrant)
12. 192.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    1 generation (One of my parents is an immigrant)
13. 193.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    2 generations (One of my grandparents is an immigrant)
14. 194.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    3 generations
15. 195.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    4 generations
16. 196.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    5 or more generations (if you can cite an exact number greater than 5: bonus points!)
17. 197.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Right, my only quibble with your previous comment was the notion that being 50 in tech means migrating to a management role. I think that advice is slowly (hopefully) becoming outdated as there is more recognition that software engineers ha
18. 198.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    > Plan your exit into management, a related field, or some other job altogether. If you expect to be a coder at age 50 you're going to be disappointed. I'd like to simultaneously disagree and agree with you. If you were a 50 ye
19. 199.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Except that, as I understand it, Osama was tracked down using "good ol' fashion HumInt", not surveillance. Obama's attitude toward intelligence gathering has been one of the more perplexing contradictions of his entire a
20. 200.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    I feel like this package is more appropriate for the humanities than sciences. (I kid!)
21. 201.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Instead of piling on with all the usual frameworks (which I do actually use to get work done), let me add one that I've been playing with purely for side-projects/fun: Escher.jl - http://escher-jl.org Yes, I primarily
22. 202.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    I think a Poison distribution would be more appropriate here, so the probability of 1 man in 5 being colorblind, assuming 10% of the population on average is colorblind, is: e^-0.5*sum((i)->(0.5^i/factorial(i)), 1:5) = ~39%
23. 203.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    I don't understand how people constantly miss the most obvious solution to keeping a community grounded: charge an entry fee.
24. 204.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Profession is not a "protected group" (those are traditionally race, gender, age, religion, disability, and depending on the jurisdiction, sexual orientation).
25. 205.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Agree completely. Where I have a problem with r/The_Donald is more than any one post, there are patterns that have emerged over time. Hence others calling out "coded hate speech", a concept which I am even more uncomfortable
26. 206.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    The question at the crux of it, and this is where it gets complicated, is would the same joke be made if they were men? Or a bit simpler of a question would be: were there overweight male celebrities that denounced Trump and claimed they wo
27. 207.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    I was curious. So I looked. This was the top non-stickied post I saw: https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5fltt9/amy_schu... To save others the trouble, the title of the post is "Amy Schume
28. 208.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Are you from the US? I ask because I (also originally from the US) used to think similarly: how can you have so many 1M+ cities? Then I moved to Turkey. Istanbul is almost 2x the population of NYC and Ankara (Turkey's capital and 2nd
29. 209.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Very interesting idea. It certainly jives with the British tradition of Letter's of Last Resort ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort ; "This American Life" also did an interesting piece
30. 210.▲
    by jballanc 10y ago

    Then they'd be "drilling" a hole, not digging one. (Educational tangent: the deepest hole in the ground is the Kola Superdeep Borehole - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole )