maxander

85 ms·

781.
by maxander 12y ago
The sci-fi technology that will truly enable mankind to efficiently explore space isn't fusion rockets, or space elevators, or any other grandiose machinery- its cryogenic sleep, or hibernation, or otherwise the ability to just conk ou
782.
by maxander 12y ago
Neither "beauty" nor "shittiness" are part of how things objectively are, but rather things we project onto the world by how we relate to it. Why not, when given the choice, project the former?
783.
by maxander 13y ago
Happily (?) high school and college essays (and probably potential scientific publications) will also be read chiefly by software in the near future, just as GRE essays are graded in part by software today. Whichever side has the best algo
784.
by maxander 13y ago
Intriguing diagram, but where does the data come from?
785.
by maxander 13y ago
I was wondering when Satoshi Nakamoto would decide to cash out. If one (or several) big account(s) was making a huge trade like that, though, it would be visible on the block chain.
786.
by maxander 13y ago
According to the site, they pay the homeowner the entire cost of powering the server. They claim to save "60% of TOC" for not having to buy a dedicated datacenter building and cooling system, which sounds reasonable in the short
787.
by maxander 13y ago
Alcohol production has thousands of years of refinement and tradition behind it- pretty hard to beat as a marketing establishment. If the majority of people were just after pleasurable effects we would have most likely shifted to a more ef
788.
by maxander 13y ago
How far do these seeds wind up distributed geographically? Tens of miles from the launch point? Hundreds, thousands...?
789.
by maxander 13y ago
As a matter of fact, population growth due to births in developed countries drops very low- IIRC, the U.S. fertility rate is actually below replacement levels, and fertility in Japan is so low that people worry about a majority of Japanese
790.
by maxander 13y ago
While it does seem like this would give pre-existing selfish pools a competitive advantage (in addition to making the whole Bitcoin network less efficient), if you suppose that the selfish pool allows newcomers to join then it itself gains
791.
by maxander 13y ago
Could someone explain the difference between "incertitude" and plain-old "uncertainty"?
792.
by maxander 13y ago
I find the "iPhone killed Microsoft" story to be unconvincing, despite its popularity. Yes, the iPhone is wildly successful beyond anything Microsoft has invented in the 21st century, but its a smartphone - whereas, as this arti
793.
by maxander 13y ago
The article is saying housing in San Francisco is unaffordable compared to San Francisco's own median income. I'm not an economist (nor a San Franciscan,) but that sounds unsustainable no matter how you spin it.
794.
by maxander 13y ago
I'd imagine the NSA has crawlers that can parse LinkedIn profiles enough to make good guesses on who is likely to be involved in hacking, criminal entrepreneurship, etc., and to pull out relevant dates and other indications of ideologi
795.
by maxander 13y ago
I'm pretty sure that all of these points still apply if you substitute "computer security" with any other sub-field of computer science. In particular, internships! I've learned the hard way that these are very importan
796.
by maxander 13y ago
Perhaps I wasn't very clear; in your article, you contrast the apparent non-addictiveness of pure nicotine with, to quote directly, "the addictiveness coming from MAOIs & other compounds present in tobacco." And it is pr
797.
by maxander 13y ago
Its possible I've missed something? I don't have time to read all the papers you cite, but from titles/abstracts they all appear to be talking about the effects of MAOIs. If there are separate substances in play I've s
798.
by maxander 13y ago
If nicotine is supposedly "not highly addictive," what heretofore obscure, hideous compounds are lurking in cigarettes that accounts for their legendary addictiveness? MAOIs? True, they give withdrawal symptoms. But despite bein
799.
by maxander 13y ago
This is a wonderful example of how, given a complicated situation, picking your favourite numbers out of the pile can tell any story you like. Yes, its true that for a healthy young person with an average income, rates (adjusted for subsidi
800.
by maxander 13y ago
What I had taken away as the big impact of the original "amplituhedron" article was that the researchers had found a way to replace long calculations with a shorter, geometrical calculation. Which, unless there's some prof
801.
by maxander 13y ago
That may get you written about in popular-science magazines, but your work will have a low impact factor- this is largely measured in how many of your fellow researchers cite your work, and its crucial to an academic researcher's caree
802.
by maxander 13y ago
If universities have simply become huge, bureaucratic, grant-obsessed sweatshops exploiting grad students whose churned-out PhDs don't promise them decent careers... why don't people hire some of those poor excess PhDs/PhD-dr