pjscott

54 ms·

541.
by pjscott 8y ago
The amount of forested land in the US has been pretty stable for the past century or so. (Not sure about other countries.) https://www.fia.fs.fed.us/library/brochures/docs/2000/Forest...
542.
by pjscott 8y ago
Whenever learned database indexes come up, people get worried about worst-case performance compared to the predictability of B-trees. So, to preemptively clarify: the B-tree alternatives used in SageDB are able to give the same logarithmic
543.
by pjscott 8y ago
When people move into expensive housing, they also move out of wherever they used to be living -- often some place cheaper where they lived when their income was lower. Any increase in supply helps.
544.
by pjscott 8y ago
Thiel's monopoly comments seem to provoke a lot of confusion; they make more sense if you replace the word "monopoly" with "a position in the market such that customers are willing to pay significantly more for what you
545.
by pjscott 8y ago
From Amazon's perspective, someone who just bought a toilet seat is much more likely than the average person to buy another one. Maybe they're doing interior furnishing work and put loads of seats on toilets. Maybe they're
546.
by pjscott 8y ago
The top result, tagged as Amazon's Choice, is the "AmazonBasics Multipurpose Scissors - 3-Pack" for $6.09. They look like everything I want in general-purpose scissors, there are tons of reviews from people who really like th
547.
by pjscott 8y ago
That sounds like a realistic number, considering the measured latency for the test satellites they launched earlier this year: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/8mccic/musk_tintin_...
548.
by pjscott 8y ago
And an implementation of Doom at merely 7 hours per frame! https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator/tree/master/vali...
549.
by pjscott 8y ago
A paper linked from that page, "MOV is Turing-complete", is as hilarious as it is clever. https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd601/papers/mov.pdf If you've ever wanted someone to accuse the x86 architecture
550.
by pjscott 8y ago
So... that's either UTF-16, an eight-bit encoding like ASCII or Latin-1, a variable-width encoding with an offset-translation table (as mentioned in the article), or a string with a different encoding but a constant upper bound on its
551.
by pjscott 8y ago
As long as there is enough oxygen in the air, what's disturbing about it? People breathe helium/nitrogen/oxygen mixtures all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimix_(breathing_gas)
552.
by pjscott 8y ago
Just tried this with godbolt.org and yes, the memcpy() thing is consistently good while the shift-and-or version often gets an unoptimized implementation (depending on compiler and version).
553.
by pjscott 8y ago
This is awesome, and (since it looks like he came up with the setup) I declare Tim Wheeler personally to be awesome. The thing kind of reminds me of the setup that Robert Sedgewick used for his algorithms textbooks. They've got code sn
554.
by pjscott 8y ago
A general problem with this genre of claims is that they're pure confirmation bias: you don't notice the people who don't tell you, because they don't tell you.
555.
by pjscott 8y ago
Your comment approximately matches my experience, and thank you for taking the time to do a bit of calculating. Upvoted.
556.
by pjscott 8y ago
We've identified over a thousand genetic loci that predict educational attainment [1], though each one has only a very small effect. That's far from being all of them, of course. [1] https://www.gwern.net/docs&#x2F
557.
by pjscott 8y ago
It's guaranteed to run in O(n log n) time. Currently it uses quicksort with heapsort as a fallback to prevent quicksort's quadratic worst-case time. https://golang.org/src/sort/sort.go?s=5414:5439#L206
558.
by pjscott 8y ago
How would the Established Order coordinate this? That's an awful lot of people who all have to work together to make the conspiracy function, and there would be a big temptation for rich people to shirk their oppression duties and just
559.
by pjscott 8y ago
Right. The problem with college is that customers are price-insensitive. If a college raises its tuition, plenty of people will just sigh and take out the necessary loans. And then of course they have no trouble getting credit, since stud
560.
by pjscott 8y ago
My grandfather, a chemistry professor, used to lend out his basement to any of his grad students who had no place to stay. His experience was entirely positive! They were nice people, and it was good to have a new friend in the house. Stude
561.
by pjscott 8y ago
There aren't a lot of barriers to entry in the ride-hailing market. Want to ride with another service? It's just another app. Want to drive for one more service in addition to the rest? Again, just another app that sends notificat
562.
by pjscott 8y ago
Agreed. It's evocative, and way better than the exhibit where the clown weeps at you continuously.
563.
by pjscott 8y ago
Well shit. I wasn't going to celebrate John McCain's funeral, but now I almost have to, after all he did to keep my country peaceful. I'll look him up, and be humbler in judgement from here on out. God damn it. :-(
564.
by pjscott 8y ago
I once described John McCain as an unprincipled torture apologist for his political positions during the Bush administration. I think I was probably mistaken, and I apologize to his ghost.
565.
by pjscott 8y ago
This is also one of the great things about working in Silicon Valley.
566.
by pjscott 8y ago
I'm not seeing the issue here. As you say, let's talk about this at the individual level: picture yourself as a prehistoric pastoralist raising cattle. They eat plants you can't digest, and from them you get milk and meat. Ev
567.
by pjscott 8y ago
I'm queueing up one of these as the next book I'll read. Thanks for helping me out!
568.
by pjscott 8y ago
The person you're talking to is German, so the answer is presumably at least two. :-) I'm a native English speaker, and I've noticed that English writers got much better over time -- ineffable depth be damned. When I read peo
569.
by pjscott 8y ago
There are a few heavy-hitters, though. I'd expect China, for example, to have written some great literature over the years. (Epistemic status: I don't actually know anything about Chinese literature, and I welcome correction on
570.
by pjscott 8y ago
I've read the book and can confirm that you're exactly right.

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