mppm

17 ms·

181.
by mppm 2y ago
Thank you, I stand corrected.
182.
by mppm 2y ago
I'd normally agree with you, but in the particular case of dark matter particles something still smells fishy. The theories that the predicted cross-sections are based on are just too flexible and numerous. I'm not sure how much w
183.
by mppm 2y ago
The Bullet Cluster is indeed a very interesting example, and one that would be rather puzzling otherwise.
184.
by mppm 2y ago
By the way, apart from the fact that dark matter predictions have been contradicted by increasingly sensitive experiments over and over and over, there is another inconvenient piece of observational evidence: An analysis of stellar velociti
185.
by mppm 2y ago
But that's kind of ok? I mean, insurance is ultimately about amortizing the cost of unexpected adverse events. It's not a way of fobbing off the cost of expected damage onto someone else, even though many people intuitively thin
186.
by mppm 2y ago
Obviously it was not known from the beginning that it would be a dead end. However, engineers have this blind spot for keeping track of bigger-picture objectives, as opposed to technical specifications. If you set out to build a lawn mower,
187.
by mppm 2y ago
"Not as successful as was originally hoped" is quite an understatement. The program missed all of its economical and operational targets (reliability, cost per kg in orbit, launch frequency) by a factor of one hundred . It was su
188.
by mppm 2y ago
Eh.. am I misunderstanding something, or did you just suggest that Russia should have shown some balls and actually launched those nukes? Just asking.
189.
by mppm 2y ago
> I swear someone in Google's exec team is going out of their way to make Google products suck. This may be closer to the truth than many people think. In an analysis from 3 months ago [1,2] it was alleged that Google search sucks s
190.
by mppm 2y ago
I guess they will... once they actually have them. The batteries probably only exist in the lab at this point, but what do execs get paid for if not pretty roadmaps?
191.
by mppm 2y ago
This is your main complaint about this totally uninformative vaporware "announcement"?
192.
by mppm 2y ago
> Why not just get rid of them and book on the original flight number? That couldn't possibly work, as it will make it more difficult for airlines to play their bullshit games with inventories, differential pricing, status and bonus
193.
by mppm 2y ago
> So my theory is that probability is an ill-defined, unfalsifiable concept. And yet, it seems to model aspects of the world pretty well, empirically. I have privately come to the conclusion that probability is a well-defined and testabl
194.
by mppm 2y ago
Interesting. I lived in Auckland for a month pre-Covid and liked it quite well in general -- fairly clean, modern, lots of green, and not overflowing with traffic. Not much public transport, of course, and a moderately bad homeless problem,
195.
by mppm 2y ago
It's been six years since I was there, so things may have changed in the meantime, but back then I've explored central KL on foot for a few days, and did not find that particularly enjoyable. Public transport is indeed great, but
196.
by mppm 2y ago
This is not so much about which cities are walkable, but a survey of how people actually do get around there. Big difference. I've browsed the dataset and Auckland rates as less "walkable" than Kuala Lumpur. Yes, Kiwis do get
197.
by mppm 2y ago
No, the stability of elements peaks at iron and nickel and declines again after that. If you look at the curve of binding energy per nucleon [1], the trend is quite obvious. Note in particular that at some point past uranium, the average bi
198.
by mppm 2y ago
OTOH, I've been waiting for disposable coffee cups with OLED-based video ads ever since Minority Report. But tech progress is just too damn slow :P
199.
by mppm 2y ago
I stand corrected, thank you :) I always thought that `eval` in CL was an un-idiomatic and fairly expensive operation, even for code that is not compiled. You learn something every day...
200.
by mppm 2y ago
Mmh. Like I said, I'm not familiar with LispWorks, so take this with a grain of salt, but to me it looks like the system is just retrieving the original source expression that it keeps around in addition to the executable representatio
201.
by mppm 2y ago
> The debugger output of the currently running function looks like a linked list to me. I could modify it destructively, if I wanted. I doubt that actually, though I don't have LispWorks installed to try it. Modifying a function at
202.
by mppm 2y ago
It's not just temerity I think. Picolisp is a very different animal compared to all modern lisp and scheme flavors. It is the last "true lisp" that I am aware of -- it has an ultra-minimalist interpreter (hand-written in asse
203.
by mppm 2y ago
Everybody involved with the NASA manned space program seems to only care about their slice of The Budget nowadays, with actual mission requirements being a distant second priority. This results in a patchwork of bad design decisions and a w
204.
by mppm 2y ago
Such an impressive demo... but why did they have to give it this vapid, giggly socialite persona that makes me want to switch it off after thirty seconds?
205.
by mppm 3y ago
44100 = 210^2 = (2 * 3 * 5 * 7)^2
206.
by mppm 3y ago
Tell HN: Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
207.
by mppm 5y ago
> Tests just require differentiation and checking equality. Is that not implemented yet? I was wondering how a result with such an obviously incommensurate functional form could be produced.
208.
by mppm 5y ago
Interesting approach. The use of a numerical solver for the indeterminate coefficients is clever, but also not without dangers. One major drawback is that it tends to destroy the symbolic form of the coefficients. E.g., integrate(x^pi) will
209.
by mppm 6y ago
Yes, that is in fact one of the practical ways to do quantum key distribution.
210.
by mppm 6y ago
Initially, your particle in Australia and its entangled twin in the USA exist in a superposition of 0 and 1. When you "measure" the state of your particle, you force it to assume a definite state, and entanglement forces the other

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