lutusp

57 ms·

541.
by lutusp 10y ago
> How I should rewrite that text so it will not cause unwanted emotions, but will not look like a dictionary article? That's easy to answer. A "good" post, one likely to generate light, has many topical references and almo
542.
by lutusp 10y ago
> You know that everything around us is both matter and wave at same time (wave-particle duality). Right? I.e. small bit of matter surrounded with wave. It's not quite like that. Imagine a particle whose location we don't know,
543.
by lutusp 10y ago
> If you pressurize a sealed cavity with a gas, it's not going to move due to the internal pressure regardless of what shape you make it. That's true of the container as a whole, but if you put a delicate torsion balance inside
544.
by lutusp 10y ago
> We have a repeatable non zero result ... Yes, but they aren't sure what they're measuring. Remember that science (and Occam's razor) requires us to apply the most pedestrian explanations first, like some overlooked exper
545.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Shouldn't crazy stuff be exactly why we fund tenured positions? Crazy stuff becomes an option after one is granted tenure, it doesn't necessarily make one more likely to achieve tenure. On the other hand, theoretical physicis
546.
by lutusp 10y ago
From a modern perspective it's fun to think about the layers of sometimes-trivial complexity that we fly over with modern development tools, but when I wrote Apple Writer in 1978, I first had to write an assembler, and to do that, I fi
547.
by lutusp 10y ago
Wait ... a millinewton is 1000 micronewtons, not the other way around. Not taking a position on this issue, just posting a clarification.
548.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Perhaps electromechanical is in reference to something like the enigma machine. Yes, I agree, good example, but that also predates vacuum tubes as computing/logical elements. So the temporal order is still wrong. Maybe the author
549.
by lutusp 10y ago
Quote: "Here’s the list of the underlying technologies: (1) Electromechanical; (2) Vacuum Tube; (3) Relay; (4) Transistors; and (5) Integrated Circuits." Surely not in that order? Because Relay = Electromechanical. The "Relay
550.
by lutusp 10y ago
It might have been useful to see a comparison of active-portfolio versus buy and hold (not the chart's stated purpose). Also, to someone who doesn't invest or who doesn't think about compound interest issues, a 4% annual retu
551.
by lutusp 10y ago
There's an especially interesting picture in the article: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/10/16/exomars-lan... Obviously anything about Mars is interesting, but this picture has a peculia
552.
by lutusp 10y ago
> If these are attitudes typical of psychology, then I cannot say I consider psychology to be a proper social science. In my experience, such attitudes are typical. Here's a 2014 paper by a Harvard psychology professor who tries to
553.
by lutusp 10y ago
Who knows? Maybe if Firefly hadn't been cancelled, its audience might have evaporated, or Joss Whedon might have run out of ideas for new episodes (as unlikely as that sounds). We just can't know. I think Firefly was absolutely te
554.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Everything is based on luck. ITYM chance , not luck . Luck describes a supernatural force. Chance describes simple randomness.
555.
by lutusp 10y ago
> ... Paid for Luck I wish academics would have the sense to avoid the word "luck" when "chance" is the principle at work. These people should know better.
556.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Achieve better memory footprint than heavyweight distros using dynamic linking and all its problems If this is really effective in reducing executable size, it's supremely ironic, since the original point of dynamic linking was to
557.
by lutusp 10y ago
It would have been nice if the article's author had provided a short technical explanation of kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy, and energy is the time integral of power. It follows that energy in kilowatt-hours is the
558.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Files creation dates would show that the files were downloaded when the teacher was absent. But file creation dates are easily changed by a skilled hacker.
559.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Hang on, just to clarify: if someone else puts a file on my PC without my knowledge, without me ever having seen or opened it, he could call the police on me, and it would get me convicted? Yes. In such a case, a presumption of innocen
560.
by lutusp 10y ago
>> So if a simulator shows a deviation from this constant sum, there's something wrong with the simulator and/or the underlying mathematics. > Not necessarily so But the "constant sum" I refer to is the sum of g
561.
by lutusp 10y ago
Apart from the article's importance in exposing some bad science, its author is skilled in narrative, in making an essay readable. A worthwhile read.
562.
by lutusp 10y ago
There's a terrific test of the accuracy of a pendulum simulation, one that many workers overlook. The test is based on the fact that, for a swinging pendulum, gravitational potential energy (GPE) and kinetic energy (KE) must sum to a c
563.
by lutusp 10y ago
Quote: "Galois is a leader in formal verification, a technique that goes beyond testing and evaluation to provide mathematical assurances that a system works only as intended in all cases." Wait -- mathematical assurances that a
564.
by lutusp 10y ago
Quote: "When the tug of gravity is strongest, they added, "the probability of a tiny rock failure expanding to a gigantic rupture increases"." The article's author clearly didn't understand the original paper.
565.
by lutusp 10y ago
> To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right Yes, sometimes, but in many cases this only plays into the hands of narcissists. Remember that narcissists listen to you when you tell them they're right,
566.
by lutusp 10y ago
A retrospective study, the kind of study that notoriously cannot distinguish causes from effects. The fact that the subjects are drawn from an existing population who live in high-pollution areas is not, and cannot be, eliminated as a cofac
567.
by lutusp 10y ago
Why am I not surprised at the poor quality of this writer's prose? An uncontroversial observation that's made worse by its intent -- to teach others how to write. Even the title -- "How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly an
568.
by lutusp 10y ago
It's important to say that the primary treatment for depression (87% of cases) is drugs, and it's now established that available drugs do not work. A now-famous series of meta-analyses ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
569.
by lutusp 10y ago
Somewhat related to the topic, but as time passes, electrical engineering becomes more and more about choosing which software remedy to apply to what once were pure hardware solutions. And when that is not the case, when hardware is going t
570.
by lutusp 10y ago
> Basically, birth control leads to a slow death of civilization. So does overpopulation. Your argument applies to a society that requires and assumes constant growth, for which it's certainly true, but that model has its own innate

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