mcbits

8 ms·

121.
by mcbits 6y ago
I think "because everything should be open source" is a fine answer to why something should be open source, even if it doesn't answer the different and more important question about how the company will make money.
122.
by mcbits 6y ago
And the specimen they said was older than the oldest known vertibrate was actually about the same age - potentially younger, considering the lack of a notarized birth certificate.
123.
by mcbits 6y ago
I don't think so either, although I wouldn't reject the possibility that those topics have some weight in the algorithm, whether intentionally or thanks to statistics. I do reject the absurd and dismissive "do people seriousl
124.
by mcbits 6y ago
If Sheryl Sandberg is the name of a program scanning messages for references to Mastodon (or decentralization, or whatever) and banning accounts promoting it, then yes apparently some people do believe that. It's not like some inconcei
125.
by mcbits 6y ago
Even as we expand our presence and every random ant has a better and better chance of encountering some kind of evidence of human existence, it still has to know how to evaluate what it's seeing. An ant finds a peanut. Being a smart an
126.
by mcbits 6y ago
We probably do have the technology (money is the hard part) to build a telescope array that spans the solar system, and to keep some rockets in standby orbits beyond Neptune. That would provide for earlier detection of an approaching object
127.
Radio wave propagation handbook for communication on and around Mars (2002; PDF)(descanso.jpl.nasa.gov)
4 points by mcbits 6y ago|0 comments
128.
by mcbits 6y ago
Maybe some articles just shouldn't have ads at all. That would be refreshing. Sites publishing ad-supported content obviously need to put the ads somewhere, but that doesn't mean every single article needs its own revenue stream t
129.
by mcbits 6y ago
Until we have more precise IFR numbers, my simplistic "model" is just to divide the current death count by 0.005, which suggests around 78 million have had an infectious exposure in the US so far. The CDC number doesn't feel
130.
by mcbits 6y ago
There are people who object to all gender-neutral uses of "man", probably more from the belief that it perpetuates bias than from personally taking offense.
131.
by mcbits 6y ago
If last summer is the standard to live up to, he should have been maiming as many random people as possible, with special emphasis on the photographers and any children that might unfortunately be present.
132.
by mcbits 6y ago
> ... whether the virus originated from a lab or from a wet market Maybe this is pedantic, but the introduction to humans could have happened in a wet market whether the virus itself originated in a lab (where bats could have escaped or
133.
by mcbits 6y ago
1/10 million species on Earth being intelligent doesn't really imply that 1/10 million planets with life would have intelligent life. Any planet with life undergoing evolution may also develop millions of species, with "
134.
by mcbits 6y ago
That just means the decision to block the site was made by someone outside of Vodafone. Assuming they face meaningful penalties for noncompliance, I wouldn't consider it false. But it would be nice if these kinds of messages identified
135.
by mcbits 6y ago
A lot of UVC webcams will output MJPEG, basically a sequence of pre-compressed JPEG frames, which would relieve pressure from the Pi's CPU. With some work I suspect you could combine tools like ffmpeg, tar, GPG (with private key stored
136.
by mcbits 6y ago
People complaining the loudest about "not OSI compliant" etc. are not complaining about the software being non-FOSS. They're complaining about non-FOSS software masquerading as/lying about being FOSS. If the solution to
137.
by mcbits 6y ago
If you own the DVD or BluRay, there's nothing wrong with backing it up to a file named Avengers.PIRATED.BluRay.ReLEAsE.1080p.Cr4ked.mkv or whatever suits your fancy. And taking a screenshot of it would not be evidence of infringement,
138.
by mcbits 6y ago
I have a Pi 4 (8 GB) with Ubuntu MATE and the main flaw I've run into is that a lot of programs don't scale down to the little 1024x600 LCD I hoped to use with it. Of course, that will be a problem with any distro on such a small
139.
by mcbits 6y ago
I would nominate "data apocalypse" based on the literal meaning of apocalypse (disclosure), but it seems others have already coined the phrase for various other events.
140.
by mcbits 6y ago
Immortality seems like a better problem to have than mortality. Easier to solve if it goes awry. And I would rather live forever (well, indefinitely) than have children, acknowledging that some would prefer the latter or insist on both. But
141.
by mcbits 6y ago
Since there is little to no creative input in merely enumerating permutations, I don't think he has a valid copyright to waive. But the fact that the data set exists might sway a judge or jury away from upholding copyright claims on tr
142.
by mcbits 6y ago
Greedy algorithms can be arbitrarily bad on large NP-hard problems. But if we're using terms metaphorically, we could also say each greedy company is just a Monte Carlo sample of the whole economy. Some fail or stagnate in local optima
143.
by mcbits 6y ago
My conclusion about flat-earthers is that the vast majority are just trolling. There are probably also a fair number who get sucked in by the idea, but they aren't the ones out there making the arguments for it. The frustratingly persi
144.
by mcbits 6y ago
They have poor naming. There is an Advertising API, and then there's a Product Advertising API which is often called the Product API. The Advertising API is for advertisers running ads with Amazon Advertising. Apparently they don'
145.
by mcbits 6y ago
Not sure what you mean by shopping API, but here is all that their affiliate program policies[0] say about price comparisons with other sites: > if you choose to display prices for any Product on your Site in any “comparison” format (inc
146.
by mcbits 6y ago
Another potential application/adaptation that would be useful is lossy text compression, but I'm not excited about using 300 GB of RAM or a web service to compress and decompress text.
147.
by mcbits 6y ago
I'd like my "smartphone" to be a tiny nugget that can (with permission) pair up with any display nearby as needed.
148.
by mcbits 6y ago
I would think orbiting near the sun still just feels like free fall (as far as gravity is concerned), but close to an extremely dense object like a black hole might have enough of a gradient to feel the "spaghettification" effect
149.
by mcbits 6y ago
I love watching video of activity on the solar surface because my brain has no intuition for the immense gravity and plasma dynamics at play. It's almost like getting a glimpse of a world with different laws of physics.
150.
by mcbits 6y ago
This reminds me of the infamous Speed-Up Loop. https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop

More ›