matt_j

10 ms·

61.
by matt_j 8y ago
Succinctly? :P
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by matt_j 8y ago
"The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916" by Alistair Horne Details the battle of Verdun (France v Germany), one of the longest and bloodiest battles of WW1 with around 700000 dead, more than 1 man killed every minute for 10 months. A sla
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by matt_j 8y ago
Don't do it.
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by matt_j 8y ago
A lot of business will make a lot of money before climate change affects them, and after, when they pivot to take advantage of a population that all of a sudden needs X (sandbags? boats? water purification?). Change needs to happen at the g
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by matt_j 8y ago
The ISS? It's above the atmosphere so there is no air resistance to slow it down. The velocity is constant after the initial boost into orbit. Actually that's not quite correct, I believe it is not quite out of the atmosphere comp
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by matt_j 8y ago
I finished high school in the late 90s and we learned to touch type on mechanical typewriters for 2 years. I'm not the fastest typist in the world, but it sure is a skill I've put to use every day of my life. Programming is a litt
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by matt_j 8y ago
I know how to copy/paste on an iPhone and it's still an insufferable operation. I don't know if my fingers are fatter than the average but I find it next to impossible to select anything, or even place the cursor at the end o
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by matt_j 8y ago
Repetition is the key. It's very difficult, at first, to consistently throw a ball in the same way. It's also difficult to do it in the same way with both hands (right to left, left to right). Once you master the simple action of
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by matt_j 8y ago
Scrounging is a fine art. I had a room full of electronic gear as a child, a steady stream of computers (286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, III) and hi-fi components (amp, tuner, tape deck, turntable). My folks were poor, but Dad was a tec
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by matt_j 8y ago
There's a delicate balance for moderators to achieve and I don't envy them. Some questions are clearly daft, the person hasn't done any prior research, the question is vague, the problem is not apparent and it's a big wa
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by matt_j 9y ago
Mike Bostock is the creator of d3.js and does, or did, a bunch of visualizations for NY Times. Check his website, it's amazing. https://bost.ocks.org/mike/
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by matt_j 9y ago
An $80 packaged game on a shelf probably nets the developer the same profit as a $20 digital version of the same game delivered via Steam. Packaging, distribution and retail markup are a big chunk of the price.
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by matt_j 9y ago
I worked at a Blockbuster for a few years right about when video was on the way out and DVD was on the way in. I don't think we screwed customers. A new release was $5 (AUS) for a night, that's hardly extortion. Almost all of our
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by matt_j 9y ago
If you're prepared to look beyond popular music services, there is a whole world of music out there, of all genres, that is perfectly healthy and doesn't necessarily conform to whatever is in vogue this particular minute. I haven&
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by matt_j 9y ago
I liked but didn't love mathematics in high school and as such I just did what I had to do and moved on. A decade later I worked through a CS degree and gravitated towards books about mathematicians and now I have a deep fascination wi
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by matt_j 9y ago
Throwing your hands in the air because it's 'too hard' is not an acceptable reaction. What is popular is rarely what is good. I'd venture to suggest that what is popular is often vapid, self-serving and short-sighted. Th
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by matt_j 9y ago
I struggle with depression. I haven't had any therapy, but taking my bike out to the forest and going for a good long ride in the trees does wonders for me. The adrenaline of a cross country ride and the deep fatigue after a couple of
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by matt_j 9y ago
The Coursera recommendation is spot on. MIT Open Courseware would be worth looking into as well. Studying a few mathematics and programming courses would put OP in a much better position to determine the next steps. I finished a comp sci de
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by matt_j 9y ago
Obligatory xkcd :) https://xkcd.com/378/
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by matt_j 9y ago
I concur. I play a fair bit of pool, and I play my best when I've had one drink and I don't think about the shots too much. If I try to line up every shot perfectly and concentrate on my cue action, I inevitably make a bad shot.
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by matt_j 9y ago
Lock 'em up!
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by matt_j 9y ago
I enjoy math books like: - e; The story of a number (Eli Moar) - An imaginary tale; The story of -1 (Paul Nahin) - The Poincare Conjecture (Daniel O'Shea) - The man who loved only numbers (Paul Hoffman) - Prime Obsession (John Derbyshi