mtdewcmu

12 ms·

121.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I agree with your dim view of prohibition. It clearly makes things much worse. In fact, I lean toward the extreme opinion that prohibition isn't merely counterproductive, prohibition is the entire problem. Furthermore, the notion of &
122.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
As far as I know, machine translations still come back as a jumble of phrases that you have to figure out like a puzzle. I am skeptical that machine translation will ever seriously approach professional translation. To effectively translate
123.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
Tasks for ML are relatively narrow and specific, so it's hard to see how that one task, or even a collection of tasks, could be identical to somebody's job. Jobs are ordinarily not restricted to performing one repetitive mental ta
124.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I didn't find it to be sensationalized, at least not when judged relative to other media. I think carfentanil actually poses a unique challenge, because it's extremely potent and it's hard to accurately portion out such small
125.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I think that's part of a near-universal fallacy that conflates good health with strength of character. In the situation you described, having the ability to shrug off lack of sleep is a source of pride, as if it was entirely about will
126.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
Microsoft Research is the genuine article. It's a world class research institution. I guess Phoenixey/LLVM type stuff is probably the way the winds were blowing in the compiler community at large. It's interesting how a lot o
127.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
Side projects die because your initial enthusiasm wears off and you start to realize that you are midway through a project that you initiated for your own self amusement and it's no longer making you happy. Don't beat yourself up
128.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
.NET Native is new to me. It looks like it helps CIL languages to perform better. I'm not sure what it does to C/C++. I can't tell what the grand strategy is, but I guess they are catching up to Apple in some ways. It's
129.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
Probably the parts that are still in native code include stuff that is performance-sensitive, like the guts of the compilers. It's probably intricate and finely-tuned.
130.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
You can sort of imagine that there is a faction that hates the idea of moving to managed code, and that is causing an impasse. Personally, attaching a managed code port to the 64-bit migration sounds misguided. The managed code port sounds
131.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
It's a false choice. 64-bit is the future, right? So the 64-bit transition is probably approaching inexorably. Optimizing data structures will be just as good in 64-bit. Actually, it will be even better, because the wasteful data struc
132.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
It's a market failure if people are suffering due to being unable to afford proper care. It's possible that the blame lies elsewhere than the insurers themselves. Maybe dentists charge too much. But the market isn't providing
133.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I only have VS2010, but I always felt that VS stacked up pretty well against the competition, performance-wise. Eclipse always seemed painfully slow, and Xcode hasn't really impressed with its performance. That's no reason to rest
134.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I think the issue with dentistry is that half-assed dental treatment is affordable, you just pull the teeth; if you want decent work to save the teeth -- then it gets expensive.
135.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
>> So insuring against completely predictable events is never worth it unless someone else pays for it, and even then it's less efficient than if they gave you the extra money directly. It's worth it if the government guaran
136.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
By the same token, you could argue that dentists are also real. They are licensed and they can prescribe drugs and perform procedures independently. My point was more to show that dentistry is not unique in being separate from the medical p
137.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
CLR is information-dense and authoritative. I have a copy from my college algorithms course and I refer to it occasionally. Skiena is a lighter read, so, I figure, you're more likely to actually read it. Whatever algorithms text you re
138.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
The real question is not why is dentistry kept separate from medicine. The real question is why dental insurance is treated like a luxury, compared to regular health insurance. The problem is that so many people are unable to afford dentist
139.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I was thinking of pharmacists. They are sorta kinda doctorish (they even get Doctor of Pharmacy degrees), but not really. They are supposed to be consulted by doctors as the prime authority on medications, but this seems to rarely happen ou
140.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
"The Algorithm Design Manual", by Steven Skiena, is very readable and it's generously free to download. I was going to post the link, but I couldn't unmangle it from Google. It's easy to find.
141.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
The problem with PPM is that it's slow. Zstd is targeting a certain general-purpose use case. There are other compressors that target different time-space trade-offs, if you need extreme performance or extreme compression efficiency.
142.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
No one ever got fired for using gzip. As much as I trust Yann, I probably wouldn't use Zstd for anything mission-critical yet.
143.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
bzip2 is BWT-based and Zstandard is based on Lempel-Ziv. They are fundamentally different algorithms and each algorithm has its sweet spot in terms of input data. BWT sorts, so it benefits from sorting-friendly data. LZ benefits from long r
144.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
There were guaranteed to be lots of people working on html5 parsers. If you want to have a niche to yourself, you have to pick something more esoteric.
145.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
In other ways, it's a great time for useless knowledge. One, barriers of entry are lower in a lot of cases (the internet, computers). Two (partly as a corollary of #1), there are more people empowered to seek useless knowledge (greater
146.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I was going to say something similar. We could do a lot of good just by shoveling more money to NSF and other established programs, like Obama did in the stimulus. It's a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
147.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I would think that having grad students around would be good for keeping things fresh and lively.
148.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
I made a cursory attempt to find the answer, and I was unsuccessful. I did find this[1], though (from my alma mater). [1] https://engineering.cmu.edu/media/press/2016/12_13_whitacre_...
149.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
With units of Wh/g (Li metal), my impression is that it's measuring grams of pure lithium.
150.
by mtdewcmu 10y ago
Right... You can make Windows 10 look like a unix workstation from 1995.

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