jltsiren

26 ms·

541.
by jltsiren 1y ago
In modern parliamentary systems, political leaders are not in direct control of the executive branch. Politicians may issue priorities and guidance, but career civil servants run the show. Department heads serve fixed terms that are indepen
542.
by jltsiren 1y ago
You can do that, but it's inefficient with larger arrays. Iterating over 10 billion elements in a random order can take up to an hour. Which is probably more than what you are willing to wait for a single case in a benchmark. On the ot
543.
by jltsiren 1y ago
If the next index is stored in the target array and the indexes are random, you will likely get a cycle of length O(sqrt(n)), which can be cached. You can avoid this with two arrays. One contains random query positions, and the target array
544.
by jltsiren 1y ago
I guess it's because of the shrinking middle class. Fewer Americans live in middle-income households, and their share of total consumer spending has gone down even more. Businesses specialize by being cheap or targeting the wealthy. Ni
545.
by jltsiren 1y ago
There are plenty of places where many people can afford market-rate rentals, while there is nothing they can afford to buy. That includes some major cities, where land is inherently scarce, as well as other desirable locations, where the lo
546.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Often, houses are depreciating assets that are expensive to maintain, but people take mortgage and buy them anyway. Often, renting is cheaper than buying, but people buy anyway, because they like the idea of owning their home. Often, people
547.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Finland tried the VVER option as well, and it was even worse than EPR. Between 2013 and 2022, the Russians proved incapable of providing sufficient documentation that a construction permit could be issued.
548.
by jltsiren 1y ago
You normally submit a LaTeX or Word document, and the publisher does the final typesetting. Even in computer science, where people often spend a lot of time tweaking the typesetting, the pdf generated by the authors is essentially a preview
549.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Very little about Finnish mythology is clear. Pretty much everything known about it was written down centuries after Christianity had become established in Finland. And the same applies to other Finnic and Uralic peoples as well. In some se
550.
by jltsiren 1y ago
The context here was a claim that reducibility is usually a goal of intellectual pursuits. Which is empirically false, as there are many academic fields with a negative view of reductionism.
551.
by jltsiren 1y ago
I meant that the word "reductionist" is usually an accusation of ignorance. It's not something people doing reductionist work actually use.
552.
by jltsiren 1y ago
"Reductionist" is usually used as an insult. Many people engaged in intellectual pursuits believe that reductionism is not a useful approach to studying various topics. You may argue otherwise, but then you are on a slippery slope
553.
by jltsiren 1y ago
A reply to a comment with a false generalization and a personal anecdote. I'm gen X from a country where schools typically have 200-500 students. Small enough that rare things like leukemia didn't happen in most schools. They were
554.
by jltsiren 1y ago
That depends on the size of the school you went to. With 500 kids, it's unlikely to have even a single leukemia case in 13 years. It gets more likely with 1000 kids. And if you went to a giant school with 2000 kids, there probably was
555.
by jltsiren 1y ago
The G in AGI stands for "general", not for "superhuman". An intelligence that can't learn to perform information processing and decision-making tasks people routinely do does not seem very general to me.
556.
by jltsiren 1y ago
AGI should perform on the level of an experienced professional in every task. The average human is useless for pretty much everything but capable of learning to perform almost any task, given enough motivation and effort. Or perhaps AGI sho
557.
by jltsiren 1y ago
> The exception to this are licensed doctors and lawyers. They enter the military as captains instead of lieutenants. And chaplains, I think. The three professions corresponding to higher faculties in a medieval university. Many weird th
558.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Lack of social status was historically the key. The guys who knew how to operate the ship had some critical expertise, but because they lacked the social status of nobility (or a college graduate), they were made warrant officers instead of
559.
by jltsiren 1y ago
If you bring in people from other organizations, you usually give them titles that reflect their actual roles. Warrant officers are a leftover from an era when you had to be nobility to become a commissioned officer. Today a lieutenant is j
560.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Isn't it usually the other way around? The less important you are to the company, the more rigid your hours are. If you actually matter to the company, you probably get flexible hours and the ability to take leave on a short notice, as
561.
by jltsiren 1y ago
You are an emigrant in the country you left. Immigrants and expats are overlapping terms, but there are some differences in common usage. An immigrant may intend to stay in the host country permanently and make it their new home, while an e
562.
by jltsiren 1y ago
AI is a special case of a special case. First you have the weird CS publication culture with conference papers and a heavy focus on selecting a (small) subset of winners. And then you have a subfield with giant conferences, a lot of money,
563.
by jltsiren 1y ago
How do Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland fit in that picture? WW2 was a complex war. The big picture for the European part was that the two main powers divided Europe in their spheres of influence, fully intending to fight ea
564.
by jltsiren 1y ago
There was moral clarity in West and South Europe. But if you happened to be in East Europe, WW2 was primarily a war between nazism and communism. Everyone else was trying to find the least bad option, which usually meant choosing a side and
565.
by jltsiren 1y ago
As a city grows, it's common for the transit system to evolve from direct bus routes to trunk lines supported by local buses. Maybe there was a good bus service to the city center when you bought your home. But now the buses only go to
566.
by jltsiren 1y ago
The left-right division in the general sense is based on equality. The left supports some interpretation of equality, no matter how misguided. Specific instances have included classical liberals supporting free markets and the rule of law,
567.
by jltsiren 1y ago
Explanations are also useful, because people often find them interesting. Some things are valuable, because they keep us alive and healthy in the short term. Some things are valuable, because we find them interesting, enjoyable, or somethin
568.
by jltsiren 1y ago
"Publish or perish" is not about publishing papers. It's about winning the competition for opportunities to do science. It's about collecting more merits than your peers, in order to land on the right side of the funding
569.
by jltsiren 1y ago
The article also says "I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations.", which is clearly an administrative activity. It's also easy to find what the author currently does. A
570.
by jltsiren 1y ago
This sounds like something written by an administrator. Someone who used to be an active scientist but then chose an administrative career. I'd say that the biggest barriers to progress are the people who choose to take the easy path.

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