pcnix

14 ms·

91.
by pcnix 8y ago
This might be specific to where you live though, in my experience in the electronics industry, I've pretty much only seen millimeters.
92.
by pcnix 8y ago
There's a reason measurements have a global standard, NASA attempted to work with a team from elsewhere that used Metric, and this lead to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter when they couldn't work well together and had a conver
93.
by pcnix 8y ago
The factor argument is not really something that stands up, because you need to consider factors for an arbitrary length of something in the world, not a well defined unit of your own making. How about 1/3rd of a tree? It's likely
94.
by pcnix 8y ago
That's false, the Imperial system is pretty bad at doubling or halving. What's double of 3.7 feet? Or half of 1.5? What is 3.7 feet even? Is it 3 feet 7 inches or 3 feet plus 7th of a feet (This last question is a nitpick) Any of
95.
by pcnix 8y ago
What about 1/5 instead? There's always going to be problems with some base, the point is that unit conversions are super easy with metric, and it's easier to teach to children. As for temperature, 0 is really gold and 100 is
96.
by pcnix 8y ago
Then you'd have a competitor stepping in that bought Chinese hardware. A company's ethics stretch only as far as it's survival is guaranteed. Corporations are black boxes that optimise for profit, not ethics or integrity.
97.
by pcnix 8y ago
If the bugs were annoying enough that they'd prevent proper functioning of the system, they'd be fixed. If the current users are able to get some utility out of the system with all the bugs, then you can be rest assured so will th
98.
by pcnix 8y ago
Spoilers The premise of the series is that the Universe is like a dark forest. A civilization is like a hunter wandering through a dark forest. Any sound is likely to first be met with a bullet and then curiosity. At galactic scales, by the
99.
by pcnix 8y ago
There's something called the Beckenstein bound[0] which is the higher bound on information density in a volume of space. That's probably the limit on complexity in life. That said, we're several orders of magnitude away from
100.
by pcnix 8y ago
There's always things like the Alcubierre drive that circumvent the speed of light. Thousands of years isn't necessarily what is needed. It's just that they have to find out that there's someone here, which will need lig
101.
by pcnix 8y ago
The argument against this is that a civilization that colonises more than two planets(which a K2 civ could do) has astronomically low chances of getting wiped out, so any that get there first should probably still exist. Which means the tim
102.
by pcnix 8y ago
It's not just about the chance of problems, it's also the fact that browsers are making it very obvious when a site doesn't have https, and this is enough to scare users away.
103.
by pcnix 8y ago
This is what Game Theory calls a Zero-sum Game. The economy isn't a zero sum game though, wealth creation does happen, and it doesn't necessarily come at the cost of someone else.
104.
by pcnix 8y ago
This is also the topic of the book "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.
105.
by pcnix 8y ago
http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
106.
by pcnix 8y ago
For anyone interested in fiction based on ideas like this, check out the Three Body Problem series. I'll avoid talking about it further to keep from spoiling it.
107.
by pcnix 8y ago
Am I right in assuming that your libertarianism leans left? Could you explain your libertarian ideals in a little more detail for someone curious?
108.
by pcnix 8y ago
It was something that happened last week, and was very widely publicized then. I remember reading it on the front page of every newspaper site I visited.
109.
by pcnix 8y ago
With John Carmack at the problem, this is definitely something I'll be keeping a close eye on. For people that are unaware, he's one of the original creators of Doom, and his innovations in computer graphics are legendary.
110.
by pcnix 8y ago
Does medicine still have universities teaching in Latin? I haven't come across significant latin usage beyond naming conventions in medicine.
111.
by pcnix 8y ago
I have migraines regularly, and the vision problems are definitely the worst part of it. The pain I can handle, but the aura usually makes me incapable of even moving somewhere safely, and puts my life at a standstill.
112.
by pcnix 8y ago
Native app support might be too much to ask, but at least a webapp should be a major part of the launch time product. It's fairly trivial to build a webapp around APIs that they've probably already developed for android/ios a
113.
by pcnix 9y ago
I've been reading up on this recently, and I've seen a few articles on DNSSEC vs DNSCurve, how would you weigh in?
114.
by pcnix 9y ago
I agree. Facebook's News Feed is a culmination of years of research in retention and attention management. While that isn't really what most users want, it's exactly what Facebook has optimised the News Feed for. We'd al
115.
by pcnix 9y ago
You might find this paper interesting, if you haven't heard of it already: https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
116.
by pcnix 9y ago
The Obama campaign was involved in laughably simple PR and door to door efforts compared to the complexity and microtargeting of this one.
117.
by pcnix 9y ago
This particular part of it isn't a new idea though, it's literate programming, been around since Knuth.
118.
by pcnix 9y ago
A topic very well explored in "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.
119.
by pcnix 9y ago
I'm very skeptical on the energy expenditure here, this does seem to be a fairly energy intensive mode of transport, but I assume the market would balance the price accordingly. It certainly doesn't seem like the sort of thing tha
120.
by pcnix 9y ago
The design of the system definitely contributes to how easily malicious propaganda can be spread through it. The tendency of the news feed to promote attention grabbing content biases it to extremes, and this is definitely a systemic proble

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