obastani

16 ms·

121.
by obastani 9y ago
From the context, I think it means that the 51 volumes (the ocean) contains very little content (the cup). I also don't think the grandparent comment reflects the intent of the original post -- prolificness is the number of attempted w
122.
by obastani 9y ago
I think this article is being somewhat selective in it's evidence. Several great mathematicians were highly selective in what they published, e.g., Gauss and Riemann. I don't think Einstein published that many papers. Though it mi
123.
by obastani 9y ago
For example, because they believe in a cause -- this might still be pursuit of happiness in an abstract sense, but it's not pursuit of happiness in the immediate "I want fame/money to be happy" sense.
124.
by obastani 9y ago
Is going from recording to playback a trivial step? The article doesn't make this clear, but if this step is nontrivial, then Edison's contribution still seems like a big deal. The article even seems to imply that the format he re
125.
by obastani 9y ago
It's a classic case of prisoners' dilemma. Taking your kid out of daycare isn't going to help the planet very much, but could hurt your kid a lot.
126.
by obastani 9y ago
I interpreted much of the article as being advice for the "hunter", who is not necessarily worth connecting to. For example, do your research beforehand, keep your requests short and reasonable, don't make false pretenses, do
127.
by obastani 9y ago
I think they are saying the volunteers performed no better than chance, i.e., volunteers are no better at guessing real vs. clone compared to randomly guessing. It's a really good outcome for the clone.
128.
by obastani 10y ago
This doesn't really answer the question -- how come there are usually only a few clearly defined species that descended from this common ancestor? Why isn't there a spectrum? I don't know anything about the phylogenetic tree
129.
by obastani 10y ago
The point I was trying to make isn't that the NSA doesn't have secret programs (like spying on American citizens), it's that these programs didn't come about through the scheming of a few people. Maybe it did, but I thin
130.
by obastani 10y ago
I'm not convinced that the NSA counts as a counterexample. From my very limited knowledge, it appears that the NSA's programs are known an approved by a reasonably large swath of government. I think the response of the article wou
131.
by obastani 10y ago
The most elementary explanation I ever got for why e^(i pi) = -1 is from the definition e = lim_{n -> infinity} (1 + 1/n)^n First, we can generalize this to e^z = lim_{n -> infinity} (1 + 1/n)^(z n) = lim_{m -> infinity}
132.
by obastani 10y ago
I suppose you could take [0,1] \cup Z, and put a uniform measure on that set.
133.
by obastani 10y ago
Nitpicking, but you can have a uniform distribution on the unit interval, which is infinite :). What you cannot have is a uniform distribution on an unbounded set. Edit: As pointed out, the correct assumption is not unboundedness, but havin
134.
by obastani 10y ago
How is the self driving car going to know it can't drive on that road? I imagine the argument is that the self driving car won't notice that the signs don't make sense (like a human would) and causes an accident.
135.
by obastani 10y ago
What innovations do you have in mind? LSTMs and convnets were both invented in the 90s. Stochastic gradient descent, momentum, etc. have been around for decades. I feel like it's quite the opposite of what you are saying -- in the 2000
136.
by obastani 10y ago
How did the proof you learned go? As far as I know, calculus is required to rigorously prove this fact.
137.
by obastani 10y ago
The entire argument (both parent and the article) is misguided at best -- a large fraction of Asians coming to the US are here for higher education (College, Masters, or Ph.D.). Therefore, many Asian immigrants are the cream of the crop, wh
138.
by obastani 10y ago
"Spooky action at a distance" does not violate locality in the sense that information does not travel faster than the speed of light.
139.
by obastani 10y ago
I'm curious -- does this kind of regulation apply to a site like WebMD as well?
140.
by obastani 10y ago
This seems like a cool idea! Are there tools to automate the translation from C to SaferCPlusPlus?
141.
by obastani 10y ago
Do other car companies allow cars to be controlled via an Android app? Some people might see that as a feature, but to me that seems like a pretty bad product decision precisely because Android is so vulnerable.
142.
by obastani 10y ago
Maybe it wouldn't keep a cure, once discovered off the market, but perhaps it could reduce investment in trying to find a cure to begin with? I can imagine that this wouldn't require much collusion, and there's nothing illega
143.
by obastani 10y ago
I think this is the link you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_in_s... Something just struck me -- one day, there's probably going to be a U.S.S. Donald J. Trump.
144.
by obastani 10y ago
I think the grandparent's point is that it doesn't matter whether it's technically possible for us to prevent climate change, it's politically impossible even with a Democrat as president. Which I hope is not true, but w
145.
by obastani 10y ago
The fact that the electoral college exists probably distorts the popular vote. People in non-swing states may not vote in the same proportions if the president were decided by popular vote. Of course, this trend could go either way.
146.
by obastani 10y ago
Maybe cars sit idle 90-95% of the time, but isn't it the same 90-95% of the time? I would imagine the peak utilization is much higher. Furthermore, if self-driving cars become a reality, then I imagine utilization would dramatically in
147.
by obastani 10y ago
It's impossible to guarantee that your theorem prover is bug free -- for example, if it has a bug that causes it to always return "correct", then it proves its own correctness, even though it is clearly wrong. This is not to
148.
by obastani 10y ago
It's not at all the same -- self-driving cars can risk the lives not only of the passengers, but of innocent bystanders. Several commenters have pointed out problems such as rain, snow, darkness, etc., but there are more fundamental pr
149.
by obastani 10y ago
AI/ML algos cannot magically guarantee safety, for example, deep nets are known to be very un-robust: https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6199 . We are not yet at the point where AI/ML based algos can be guaranteed to
150.
by obastani 10y ago
Isn't Hoffman's argument pretty mundane? The conclusion seems pretty obvious; we only see light in a certain (relevant) spectrum, we only taste certain (relevant) chemicals, we only hear sounds in certain (relevant) frequencies, e

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