lutusp

54 ms·

601.
by lutusp 11y ago
Quote: "Reed’s entanglements serve as an apt metaphor for the school life of severely gifted children." Ah, "severely gifted" -- what a meme. What a commentary on the times in which we live. I can imagine psychologists s
602.
by lutusp 11y ago
> If we receive light that traveled a distance of X light years, then the event is occurring X years in the past. Not necessarily. By the time the light arrives here, its point of departure (and parts of its path through space) may have
603.
by lutusp 11y ago
Remember that a light-year is a measure of distance, not time.
604.
by lutusp 11y ago
> That blew my mind! So now it turns out Einstein was wrong?? No, because the light speed limit only applies to things moving through space, not to space itself, which can and does expand faster than light speed. > We can't get p
605.
by lutusp 11y ago
Your explanation is correct for individual stars, but it doesn't take universal expansion into account, which independently reduces the energy available from distant sources (apart from the 1/r^2 law). The reason? Same energy, mor
606.
by lutusp 11y ago
We do know the age of the universe, to a reasonable certainty. The discussion above doesn't argue against our current estimate of the age of the universe -- it addresses other issues.
607.
by lutusp 11y ago
As is often the case, this explanation fails to take cosmological expansion into account. An expanding universe is a cooling one. The explanation is correct as far as it goes, but failing to take expansion into account either dates the expl
608.
by lutusp 11y ago
Well, define "run". The code can almost certainly compile to ARM object code, but whether that code could meaningfully interact with a router based on an ARM processor is an entirely different question, with no clear answer in the
609.
by lutusp 11y ago
Creating an algorithm whose numerical result agrees with another algorithm isn't how "proof" is defined in mathematics.
610.
by lutusp 11y ago
> So, in the coming weeks, we will restrict access to articles on WIRED.com if you are using an ad blocker. Suit yourself. Goodbye, Wired, and welcome to reality.
611.
by lutusp 11y ago
> This does nothing for people suffering from lack of fundamental necessities. This is a basic philosophical question -- shall we give the poor a fish, or shall we teach them how to fish? The answer should seem obvious, and in the modern
612.
by lutusp 11y ago
> People wasting time on things that have an extremely low probability is still a waste of time at the expense of everyone else currently living on the planet. If your views were policy, we would have no modern medicine or agriculture, p
613.
by lutusp 11y ago
... when they could be working on real problems. What constitutes a real problem is not as absolute and self-evident as you seem to think. There are any number of science stories in which a seemingly impractical pursuit led to something val
614.
by lutusp 11y ago
> How about life without oxygen? It's thought that life began here in the absence of oxygen, and only over time did oxygen begin to play a part in cellular life. As another poster points out, there are still some cellular organisms
615.
by lutusp 11y ago
> I find these magazine-style articles that start with waffle instead of the conclusion very frustrating! Imagine there was a rule that popular-press science articles were required to have an abstract that candidly summarized the article
616.
by lutusp 11y ago
> ... but the problem is that scientists are not accountable. Arguable, but if they don't have to release their data, then very true -- they aren't accountable. By requiring scientists to release their data, we make them accoun
617.
by lutusp 11y ago
> ... because it assumes the data is valuable! In reality a significant chunk of it is made up ... Yes, but made-up data is also valuable. Were this not true, the world of advertising would collapse. An earnest economic evaluation has to
618.
by lutusp 11y ago
The article's writers say, "But for fields like science, technology, education and math ..." Then, later, without revisiting this term, they say, "What we found startled us. For STEM-related majors ..." I wonder whe
619.
by lutusp 11y ago
It's really very simple -- either publicly supported science is meant to serve the common good, in which case total data transparency is required, or publicly supported science is actually meant to be a vehicle for corporate profits, i
620.
by lutusp 11y ago
> What's the most elegant piece of code you've seen? Well, not the most elegant, but a very elegant piece of code, solves the Towers of Hanoi puzzle in a few ingenious lines (Python as shown): def printMove(disk,src,dest)
621.
by lutusp 11y ago
Quote: "... an ambitious program aiming to replace a long history of blunt trial-and-error treatment with what amounts to a training regiment [sic] for the body’s own immune system." Please -- it's regimen , not regiment .
622.
by lutusp 11y ago
Quote: "In an extraordinary move, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors last week issued a proposal to require researchers to share their clinical trial data as a condition for publication." If this happens, it wo
623.
by lutusp 11y ago
My favorite line from the procedure: > reboot # And pray it'll boot. This kind of thing should be performed by a well-tested script, not an interactive session. Otherwise you might have an "Oh, what did I just type?" momen
624.
by lutusp 11y ago
A classic tale of engineering gone wrong. Apropos, I designed high-efficiency 20 KHz inverters for the Space Shuttle crew quarters, flight hardware that ended up working flawlessly. But during the design phase, the primary Shuttle contracto
625.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Well. I think you might be getting a little bit too eager with your reductionist approach to mental illness. Schizophrenia is a classic case of a mental illness that isn't one, a condition that doesn't appear in people who do
626.
by lutusp 11y ago
> Yes, 70 years ago psychiatry had some odd ideas. Yes, that's true, but in the name of accuracy, the Asperger's fiasco wasn't 70 years ago, it played out seven years ago, when the condition was finally abandoned after an
627.
by lutusp 11y ago
Wait, what? Does this means schizophrenia isn't caused by refrigerator moms, as psychiatry once claimed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory )? And that endless therapy won't actually do a
628.
by lutusp 11y ago
Yes, true, but consider the fact that, at the moment, the best robots in the world still can't fold a towel without enormous effort. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/19/407736307/r
629.
by lutusp 11y ago
The irony of editorials like this is that it will reduce the likelihood that companies will hire older workers. Who wants an employee who is simultaneously less productive and more narcissistic than a younger one? Imagine the effect of gove
630.
by lutusp 11y ago
A quote: "We have an ongoing problem with growing inequality around the world and a few super rich people (latest numbers say it’s down to 65) have as much money as the rest of the world now. If we don’t change anything and do not obli

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