john_b

23 ms·

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by john_b 12y ago
Regarding getting into the aviation industry: First, a disclaimer: the aviation industry is very large and surprisingly diverse. Different practices exist in different parts of it (engines, airframers, rotar winged aircraft, etc), so it&#x2
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by john_b 12y ago
My experience, while nowhere close to being representative of the aviation industry at large, has been that large industrial companies are somewhat schizophrenic in this regard. I often find myself appreciating, for example, the care that s
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by john_b 12y ago
I didn't (and wouldn't) claim that programming "is" math in any literal sense. The foundations of software engineering are heavily derived from math, but a degree in software engineering isn't necessary for all form
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by john_b 12y ago
> "But saying "programming is math" is like saying "biology is physics"; it might be true at some level, but it is not often very useful." I agree and actually thought about making this analogy. I think so
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by john_b 12y ago
I write software that runs on various jet engines. There is a lot of software that goes onto a modern commercial engine, but the general theme of the software I focus on is the modeling of the underlying engine dynamics using sensor data. I
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by john_b 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_theorem_proving
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by john_b 12y ago
The numerous compilers (courts) for this language frequently produce different and conflicting results, a situation which cannot be fixed but merely worked around by adopting the result of a master compiler as the authoritative version. The
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by john_b 12y ago
Link for the curious: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/frege/frege.pdf
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by john_b 12y ago
Apparently a rebel leader was bragging about having captured a Buk, but the post has now been deleted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048729https://news.yco...
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by john_b 12y ago
Interfax claims it was flying at 10km: https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/489794112212959232
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by john_b 12y ago
I don't think anyone except a few fringe anarcho-libertarian types really expects masses of people to start a violent uprising solely because of government and corporate spying. What's really dangerous about ubiquitous spying is t
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by john_b 12y ago
> "This is where American Founding Fathers got it wrong, with the 2nd amendment. The reason why soldiers refuse to shoot against citizens is because they are unarmed and have moral upper hand." This is a cute theory, but hist
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by john_b 12y ago
It sounds like you're applying journalistic standards to this site. There is no obligation to tell both sides of the story here; it's just a neat visualization, useful as an aid to other pieces of journalism which don't conta
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by john_b 12y ago
They may not be exactly the same, but a prediction market provides a quantitative way to measure confidence at both an individual and group level without requiring people to revise their estimates at a later time. This is arguably superior
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by john_b 12y ago
While I agree with your larger point, invoking a systematic trend to support a specific issue in a specific context is a logical fallacy [1]. The parent's comment, while crudely phrased, did actually highlight some legitimate counterex
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by john_b 12y ago
Note that the job descriptions the site labels as "better", and which it presents as neutral, are those that are explicitly labeled as "feminine" in the source it quotes. If you want to recruit an even ratio of men to wo
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by john_b 12y ago
It's good writing style in a persuasive essay, but this blog post hardly provides enough support for the first sentence to be called an essay. The only distinguishing fact about the font presented as support is that it's legible w
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by john_b 12y ago
Many intersections could be safely altered to use yield signs in one direction, or converted completely to roundabouts. For some reason (and this is purely anecdotal), it seems that a lot of Americans, particularly older ones, seem to be ve
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by john_b 12y ago
The author of the original article misquotes the 30% statistic. According to the PDF he linked to [1], 30% of American motorist fatalities are "speeding related." This is not the same thing as "caused by speeding." Accor
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by john_b 12y ago
> "However if we're reducing everything to violence (as libertarians tend to)" Libertarians tend to reduce arguments to discussions of violence since it is the fundamental primitive around which most governments (or lack
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by john_b 12y ago
Agreed, unfortunately meaningful projects such as this are not a high priority for the US electorate (and thus the US Congress) [1]. My hope is that growing interest by college students in STEM subjects [2] will ultimately lead to an increa
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by john_b 12y ago
By that argument, how can you justify reserving the section of earth (by force of arms if necessary) that your house resides on? Aren't you taking away others' access to that land? Presumably they paid to reserve the land for a we
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by john_b 12y ago
> "BTW I'm not entirely sure how the NSA can justify an anti-Tor stance, when anonymous speech is clearly protected by the First Amendment." Well, at least they are consistent with their stance on the Fourth Amendment. N
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by john_b 12y ago
> "My questions was, why didn't the author become a U.S. citizen?" Her personal motivations and desires really have no bearing on her legal status here. Questions like these imply that the only people the US can accept i
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by john_b 12y ago
What source(s) do you have for the "no threat of deportation" claim? I have known some immigrants who feared this every day of their lives, and the worry and stress it causes them is tremendous. I find it hard to believe that some
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by john_b 12y ago
As a practical level, I agree with you completely. On an ethical level, however, I find it difficult to put much blame on the OP. To quote Madison: "It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own
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by john_b 12y ago
You are ignoring a few decades of history in which successful court challenges have curtailed some NSA excesses. It's easy to forget that, while the capabilities of the NSA have increased in the past decade, intelligence agencies today
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by john_b 12y ago
This is great and I hope that people do call their representatives, but I wonder if it would be more effective if the pro-privacy and civil rights demographic would organize on a more permanent basis to call representatives rather than on a
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by john_b 12y ago
The context of the parent was violence in the absence of weaponry.
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by john_b 12y ago
> "IMHO, the most ideal strike a human can give without injuring themselves would be from the shin or heel. If you look at animals that don't have sharp teeth or claws, often they'll use their hind legs in a kicking motio

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