jtolmar

37 ms·

361.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Just two years ago in Seattle, the University Link Tunnel was completed ahead of time and under budget, while all media attention went to the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Tunnel (Bertha) which was over budget and massively delayed. The f
362.
by jtolmar 8y ago
All code is bad and Google puts almost everything in one repository, so I'm going to say that ;-). For more traditionally defined bad code, I worked with a team that rewrote an existing service from scratch using with 40000 lines of sp
363.
by jtolmar 8y ago
let tokens = []; tokens.push("Fizz", "Buzz", "Fizzbuzz"); for (let i = 0; i <= 100; i++) { tokens.push(i); } function generateFizzBuzz(n) { if (n > 100) { return [[]]; } let result = [
364.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Well, it actually has 4 modes. You can use the fourth (Object testing arena) to see who would win a hypothetical fight. Because it roughly simulates every organ and layer of flesh on every limb of every creature and stores them in a combat
365.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Dwarf Fortress is more like if you liked Sim City but wished it was more like Nethack. It's quite a different beast, but you should give it a shot if that description sounds good. Also the UI is self-inconsistent and the learning curve
366.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Gentrification doesn't benefit the people who actually live there. The block gets nicer buildings and more services, but land isn't people. People in poor neighborhoods rent, so when the cost of the neighborhood goes up they just
367.
by jtolmar 8y ago
It started a few years ago when there were stories about how many new programmers don't have the traditional nerdy background and instead there are an increasing number of frat boy stereotypes getting in on the industry because it&#x27
368.
by jtolmar 8y ago
I think you could automate a wide variety of dishes by making a robot that dumps ingredients from hoppers into a food processor then dumps the chopped food into a skillet and stirs them. You'd manually peel/core/debone your i
369.
by jtolmar 8y ago
That was for Java4k 2009. Notch was a regular participant in the competition, winning several years with 4k demakes of other popular games (though in that specific year I won :-)). He was experimenting with hand-writing JVM byte code assemb
370.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Brood War has a significantly higher branching factor than Go: each of ~50 units can receive 3 orders with arbitrary targets (the untargetted ones hardly matter for branching). The map is 4096 x 4096 pixels, though some of those are functio
371.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Without timezones you'd have to know "when is noon where you are" (defining noon as the point where the sun is highest) or "what do most people start work there," either of which is the same amount of information to
372.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Completing projects does a lot to help you learn, and you can complete more small projects per amount of time than larger ones. So give your learning projects small, defined scopes. Actually properly learn the tools you find yourself using
373.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Capybaras are the largest rodent but not the largest mammal. Elephants birds were the largest bird but not the largest dinosaur.
374.
by jtolmar 8y ago
The richest people make their money primarily from capital investment, which has returns proportional to the capital invested, which in the long run is exponential. Laborers make their money primarily from effort over time, which is linear.
375.
by jtolmar 8y ago
> Is this, or next-day, available for every single product, or just a selection of products? Same-day is available for a subset of products if you order early enough in the day. Next-day is available for almost everything (for a premium)
376.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Noon also means when the sun is highest in the sky. If everyone uses the same timezone, one of these two meanings must be broken. It makes more sense to keep the definition that doesn't have an alternative name (you can always call 12:
377.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Remembering what's a reasonable time of day in each locality is the same amount of information as remembering what their timezones are. Instead of asking what timezone, you'd just ask when are work hours, or when is noon.
378.
by jtolmar 8y ago
This is entertaining but it's completely broken on Chrome mobile in a way I've never seen before.
379.
by jtolmar 8y ago
There's nothing reproducing on blueberry planet so there's no evolution. It is a boiling mass of organic compounds so maybe life would spontaneously form again. But the planet is mostly sugar so as soon as something evolved to met
380.
by jtolmar 8y ago
It works if $25 of gas lasts long enough to get to a different price (harder at a bad price), and your tank has sufficient room to hold $25 of gas (harder at a good price). Those constraints make it worse than real dollar cost averaging, bu
381.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Say I have a bag of dice one of each of the usual D&D denominations (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20). I draw one at random, ask the models for predictions, and roll it. Model A ignores the information about which one I drew, and predicts a c
382.
by jtolmar 8y ago
He has $150 bn in stock that he could just distribute to his employees.
383.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Say I have two models - model A returns around 20% likelihood that the top team wins the world cup, and model B returns around 80% likelihood. I use both of the modeling techniques a few thousand times in various parallel universes, and bot
384.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Shareholders and keeping wealth disparity under control are at odds. As long as people are able to buy investments and own the profits of those investments, those people are paid proportionate to how much money they have, making their wealt
385.
by jtolmar 8y ago
> As soon as they have sufficient technology to reliably kill 99% of people, what will stop them from doing it? Reminds me of: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/04/quiz-which-dystopia-h...
386.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Different people have different priorities; someone whose top priority is early retirement would take the extra BS hours, but someone who wants to have more free time now might take the company that offers shorter hours. There's an adv
387.
by jtolmar 8y ago
> How else, exactly, does wealth get from the rich to the poor if not through employment? Taxes. > Well what other "economics" are there if not "trickle-down" economics? If the people have money you can make money
388.
by jtolmar 8y ago
How about a language that loses the ability to redefine structures and methods after a certain point? I've been thinking of making a scripting language where you can freely redefine things until you return the main function to the scri
389.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Explore as much as you can without the rebel fleet catching up to you. Generally speaking, you actually want to pick as many fights as possible. The game implies that you're supposed to be a peaceful and heroic Star Trek style Federati
390.
by jtolmar 8y ago
Starting with the GBA games, Fire Emblem's hit and critical chances take the average of two random numbers. So what shows as a 90% hit rate is actually 98% (that is, (2d100)/2 <= 90). I think this is a pretty neat trick; it&#x2

More ›