jmmcd

40 ms·

451.
by jmmcd 14y ago
How about "Learn Python the Hard Way"?
452.
by jmmcd 14y ago
I think wexpect (a fork, used in Sage) is faster, and fixes some bugs. [ http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/goreckc/sage/wexpect/ ]
453.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Oh I see, thanks. "s=<>" is less ugly than "s={@}" but, obviously, is inconsistent with "s={1, 2, 3}".
454.
by jmmcd 14y ago
set = <> is still available Did this get misformatted? I don't know what you mean.
455.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Then use Python for both. Everyone's happy. Python's nice syntax also makes pawk nicer to read than awk or perl, to my eyes.
456.
by jmmcd 14y ago
I have wasted so many hours failing to get everything I need to work on OSX 10.6. I tried pip, easy_install, install from source, brew, Enthought. Now Anaconda has just saved my life, thank you! It was the best moment of my day when I was a
457.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Finally found it here http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/sayings.html
458.
by jmmcd 14y ago
That search (and lots others I tried) just returns the above HN post.
459.
by jmmcd 14y ago
John McCarthy (AI, Lisp) once said something akin to: "I think everyone should learn programming. It's the language we'll use to talk to our servants." I want to use this great quote to advertise a programming class I'm teaching. Can't fi
460.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Sure, but I said "like", not "better". When I learned Python, I had that feeling described as weightlessness by xkcd [ http://xkcd.com/353/ ], because I didn't have to write several lines and a loop to make a list. It made me happy. Fair co
461.
by jmmcd 14y ago
This article is only about primitive literals, not compound ones. I think the list and dict literals in Python are the #1 reason I like it better than C. I think the regexp literals in Perl were one of the main reasons people liked Perl bet
462.
by jmmcd 14y ago
> At the moment there are efforts underway to pleasure publishers into a saner pricing structure Perhaps a bit more of the stick and less of the carrot is what's needed... if they find carrots pleasurable, that is.
463.
by jmmcd 14y ago
> more work for your brain to filter No matter how much resolution and FPS they put into movie screens, your brain still won't have to process more than it does when looking at the real world. The analogy with BPMs makes no sense. Beats
464.
by jmmcd 14y ago
A software practitioner, you say? As a researcher in machine learning, I think you're wrong. I agree that recursively self-improving AI is not around the corner, but I think it could happen in a few decades. Even if it has a 1% chance of ha
465.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Anyone whose thinking is wishful can safely be disregarded, of course. But this utopian resurrection and transcendance story is just one version of the singularity. There are many people who think AI is not physically impossible, nanotech i
466.
by jmmcd 14y ago
It's better to distinguish the singularity (semi-infinite rapid change caused by recursively self-improving AI) from AI.
467.
by jmmcd 14y ago
This is already in place almost across the western world. Norway's welfare state is not all that unusual. > Eventually, the social stigma of recieving such benefits will vanish, since a significant part of the population will not do eno
468.
by jmmcd 14y ago
> As for those who say that there will be an increase in wealth inequality, you only need to look at the technological progress of the last 200 years to know that the reverse is most likely true. While Henry Ford became incredibly wealt
469.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Research is not the same as science. This article is about research. The title is wrong.
470.
by jmmcd 14y ago
A necessary distinction is between a "normal" thesis and a "thesis by papers". In the latter, the thesis is really just and intro and conclusion wrapped around already-published papers. In some universities in Ireland and in some other Euro
471.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Well, that one data point certainly disproves the entire argument.
472.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Yeah that's an important point, also mentioned in the article. It also mentions coffee that is designed to smell like "seasonal celebrations", ie pumpkin spiced latte and similar. We have to distinguish between coffee and dessert-in-disguis
473.
by jmmcd 14y ago
I don't disagree with your point about neuroanatomy. But it may well be that true AI is possible via some avenue other than emulation of existing biological intelligence. As for "DECADES" -- that is a pretty short time, when you have a very
474.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Garageband! It's a pretty crappy sequencer, but the synth sounds are fine. I imported the midi tracks saved by the algorithm and then mostly just chose from the preset synth sounds. One problem I noticed sometimes was a limit to Garageband'
475.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Thanks -- I think they're kind of nice at a "local" level, but they don't have the more "global" coherent movement that yours have.
476.
by jmmcd 14y ago
I have generated quite a bit of music using evolutionary algorithms. My research is mostly about figuring out representations that are not at too low a level (eg 1 "gene" per note). I like representations that in some way represent the pat
477.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Two bizarre comments on that page. One is (paraphrasing) "we don't do maudlin stuff like this -- that's for people across the pond" and the other "here in the US we don't go to debtors' prison". From this end of the pond, I would've guess
478.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Bad title! The only smuggling is of an SD card. The USB sticks in Cuba are "passed around", not smuggled. (Everyone's being pedantic about the numbers, so I felt entitled to be pedantic about something else.)
479.
by jmmcd 14y ago
> The reality is that Linus is good at kernels and DRCS for the same reason OP says that whatever makes him good at kernels doesn't help to make him good at version control systems (X->K but X-/->V), whereas you say that there i
480.
by jmmcd 14y ago
Well yeah, but being pro-Romney in a strong red state, or pro-Obama in a strong blue state, your vote still doesn't mean anything. The question is whether the "don't bother voting he's going to win anyway" effect is stronger than the "don't

More ›