mcguire

51 ms·

691.
by mcguire 4y ago
" ...actual smart people can make real contributions in non-engineering roles. " Can they? Certainly. Do they? Well, not as often as you might like. I used to work for a government contractor who had what I liked to think of as a
692.
by mcguire 4y ago
There is more than one way to forage. At best, the army can pay the local inhabitants, maybe even a fair value, particularly if the area is nominally friendly. Even if the army "commandeers" supplies, it would want to keep the cri
693.
by mcguire 4y ago
It works well enough to be a consistent strategy, but you have to be careful taking too much from a given piece of territory. Eventually, the locals start getting unhappy with you. And then there's things like the Thirty Years' Wa
694.
by mcguire 4y ago
I don't know what the OP has in mind, but if you break an ankle, you can splint it and hobble until it heals. If a large animal breaks an ankle, it's not going to heal.
695.
by mcguire 4y ago
2017: 56 2018: 46 2019: 41 2020: 48 2021: 56 2022: 50 (projected) In fact, it looks like murders in San Francisco have been in roughly that range since 2009 ( https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/san-franci
696.
by mcguire 4y ago
Here's a question back at you: how well do modern sailing ships handle the Mediterranean in winter? As far as I know, the winds haven't significantly changed: mostly from the northwest for most of the year, with a period in the sp
697.
by mcguire 4y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that steam engines were the first crossing between science and industry, and that the industrial development and use of steam engines preceded their take-up as a subject of interest by sci
698.
by mcguire 4y ago
Additionally, " If you had given the Romans the designs for a Newcomen steam engine, they [...] wouldn’t have had any profitable use to put it to. "
699.
by mcguire 4y ago
While critical mass of population seems to be an important part, I feel like there are a fair number of other things that have to be in place to make it more economical to mine deeply. Then there's the next step Bret discusses: the New
700.
by mcguire 4y ago
Large scale use of coal predates electrification and railroads. 1712: Newcomen's steam engine. 1765: Watt's first engine. 1800: First battery. 1804: First steam locomotive. 1832: First DC generator. The book ( https://ar
701.
by mcguire 4y ago
I can't remember; does he have any problems with yellow chemistry in that video? :-)
702.
by mcguire 4y ago
How about "We kill people based on poor quality, indirect data"?
703.
by mcguire 4y ago
To be honest, I adapted a phrase I usually use for floating point numbers. But anyway, " So making ints signed makes the most sense otherwise there's an impedance mismatch that you need to explain away " is a pretty poor argu
704.
by mcguire 4y ago
I wonder what the expected value of entrepreneurship is? I rather suspect it is significantly negative, because most new businesses fail and the venture capital system means gambling with someone else's money.
705.
by mcguire 4y ago
In this metaphor, once you have decent funding you are no longer a "middle class kid".
706.
by mcguire 4y ago
" That your entire being is at risk. " What happens when you lose? P.S. It's not a risk if you can't lose.
707.
by mcguire 4y ago
How do you reduce your bet size when you're betting years of your life?
708.
by mcguire 4y ago
The mathematical definition of "integer" is unbounded above and below. The "numbers" used in computing systems are not mathematical numbers in any way.
709.
by mcguire 4y ago
Ok, so let's see here. 1. Got a meaningless certificate. Also expanded his "wildly successful business leaders" network. 2. Added people to a project in order to get it completed faster. (The ghost of Fred Brooks is making it
710.
by mcguire 4y ago
Dang it! And I was just getting together venture capital for industrial scale production.
711.
by mcguire 4y ago
Interesting. After Steve Jobs left Apple the first time, Apple became much more like the other hardware companies of the time, including opening up things that they had previously held tightly closed. When Jobs returned, they clamped back d
712.
by mcguire 4y ago
...which immediately turns into a tax on the poor, because if you are working three jobs to get by then you have little choice except the cheaper, more readily available "obesity foods".
713.
by mcguire 4y ago
I'm assuming they have already factored out age.
714.
by mcguire 4y ago
Any general statement. Would that be bad? How?
715.
by mcguire 4y ago
Fancy way of saying Meta is cutting head-count.
716.
by mcguire 4y ago
Mostly a case-by-case thing, I think. I know (from watching Time Team) that in Britain there are a fair number of fields which the farmer can farm, but can't dig deeper than that due to the archaeology. Other cases have existing buildi
717.
by mcguire 4y ago
How do you go to sleep watching Phil Harding's legs in those too-short cut-offs? :-)
718.
by mcguire 4y ago
As far as I know, it depends on what you mean by trebuchet. Counterpoise trebuchets (using heavy weights) are definitely medieval.
719.
by mcguire 4y ago
Greek and Roman catapults were lighter than medieval trebuchets, using tension or torsion springs rather than heavy weights, but were reasonably capable of hurling rocks well enough to take down a wall eventually. I don't have an exa
720.
by mcguire 4y ago
Err... I've been using the manufacturer's recommended (extended) oil change intervals since, well, when did Ford introduce the "bubble" Taurus design? Mid-1990s? I've been using the vehicle's "oil-change-o

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