reidacdc

13 ms·

61.
by reidacdc 7y ago
I stumbled at that point too, but satisfied myself with a slightly more general argument than the first reply. Imagine the pyramid is made up of a bunch of small but finite-size cubical blocks. Extending a block along any single axis double
62.
by reidacdc 7y ago
Globus is definitely not dead[1], it has an active community with strong uptake in the Materials Science world (where I work), among others. The Globus folks have a repo for many popular Linux distros, it's reasonably straightforward t
63.
by reidacdc 7y ago
I more or less compulsively downloaded this, and started skimming it. I'm not an assembly-language programmer, but I thought I at least knew how to read an assembly listing. But right there on page 8, in the MIPS and ARM "function
64.
by reidacdc 7y ago
Unless I'm missing something, the Gompertz function you refer to has an implicit model that the organism's population stabilizes because of Malthusian constraints, a lack of some kind of resource. But birth rates have been declini
65.
by reidacdc 7y ago
I think the article's issues with hydrogen as a small-vehicle fuel have mostly been borne out -- one thing that seems to have happened since 2007 is that battery technology has gotten a lot better, and electric cars are proving to be a
66.
by reidacdc 7y ago
This one caught my eye also. I think the software analogy is not especially good, but it feels like there's some poorly-aligned incentives in landfill engineering. The point of landfills is to make trash invisible, so saving money by h
67.
by reidacdc 8y ago
The last-mile problem is also a significant issue for freight rail. US rail companies have been abandoning low-traffic and branch lines for years, because the revenue from the sparse traffic doesn't cover the infrastructure maintenance
68.
by reidacdc 8y ago
That's a great find. A noteworthy (to me) feature was the height of the orbit -- they're at ~1000 miles above the Earth's surface. This indicates that they were unaware of the Van Allen belts, which makes sense, in 1955, no a
69.
by reidacdc 8y ago
Charles Perrow's "Normal Accidents". It's sort of the beginnings of a general theory of systemic risk in technology, moving away from the particulars of various technologies or management strategies. There are several te
70.
by reidacdc 8y ago
Your speculative scenario has actually happened, but on a significantly less computerized Boeing 737, in 1978.[1] In that case, the aircraft touched down, reversers were deployed, a runway obstacle (a snowplow) appeared, and the pilots atte
71.
by reidacdc 8y ago
I also regularly go to a Whole Foods with this system, it initially felt like a good compromise between "one slow cashier shouldn't hang up a lot of people" and "people react negatively to long lines, even if they'r
72.
by reidacdc 8y ago
There is a very accessible "numberphile" video which I think is closely related to this, about playing the odds on predicting elements of a nominally-random coin-flip sequence using the expected run length. https://www.
73.
by reidacdc 8y ago
I'm really guessing, but perhaps the quality of actual metal is difficult to assess, but a minted coin with the right markings carries a promise of correctness. Counterfeits are still possible, of course, but less likely.
74.
by reidacdc 8y ago
It seems that the "heretical" parts are milder than I was expecting, though still outside the mainstream. On evolution, he says that Darwin got it right "up to a point", and asserts that selection is only an effective me
75.
by reidacdc 9y ago
This is interesting, and a good point, but the existence of harmful natural mutations isn't by itself a refutation. The idea I have (again, perhaps wrongly) is approximately that harmful-to-humans mutations make up a smaller fraction o
76.
by reidacdc 9y ago
This raises a question for which I have never found a satisfactory answer, perhaps some of the people chiming in here can help. It seems likely (intuitively, which is why this is a question) that a naturally-occurring mutation which is arti
77.
by reidacdc 9y ago
I guess this is one generation before my own experience, I worked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with CompuGraphic 7500 machines[1]. This is an integrated unit that accepts the keyboard input, shows the marked-up input on the display (no
78.
by reidacdc 9y ago
I think this is pretty insightful. I have some recent experience deploying web-based administrative tools in my organization, which are meant to replace and supersede legacy, often informal, workflows. Adoption rates are low and frustration
79.
by reidacdc 9y ago
The distinction you are missing is what is generally meant by (and is actually valuable about) plain text is, "simultaneously human and machine readable data". Many "plain text" formats, like markdown or INI files or jso
80.
by reidacdc 9y ago
My father was in AA, and I'm reasonably sure it saved his life, or at least lengthened it substantially. It was a major factor in getting him out of a spiral of depression and business failure. For him, it put him in touch with a comm
81.
by reidacdc 9y ago
There's a related idea in a movie made in 2003, called "The Corporation". The movie is pretty strongly anti-corporate, and the main point of it is that, in their role as actors in the legal system, "legal persons",
82.
by reidacdc 9y ago
> I often wish for the Open-Social equivalent of email... This is a pretty good description of the Mastodon social-network model, there are several nodes, and your account on one node can subscribe to accounts on others. It's distri
83.
by reidacdc 9y ago
That helps with the marketplace in general, of course, but it doesn't do me any good, my building was built in the 1920s. No garage at all.
84.
by reidacdc 9y ago
This is my issue also, although I suppose I represent a small fraction of the market -- I live in an urban apartment building with street parking, I won't be able to charge an EV at home until the infrastructure gets much, much better.
85.
by reidacdc 9y ago
I wonder if it's a (failed, obviously) attempt to control the optics. As I understand it, polls show a slim majority of Catalan residents actually oppose independence, but people likely to put in the effort and/or take the risk of
86.
by reidacdc 9y ago
The death of the DRM-free model was a big concern to me, but a recent supplementary blog post from Laura Baldwin, linked-to in the article but not called out, seems to claim that O'Reilly books will still be available DRM-free from Goo
87.
by reidacdc 10y ago
You might be interested in James Hamilton-Paterson's book, "Empire of the Clouds", which is about the glory days and subsequent decline of Britain's aviation industry. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/
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by reidacdc 10y ago
Yes, about three days. We didn't stop for much, really just gas and dinner, so you can do 10-11 hr days and also get some sleep.
89.
by reidacdc 10y ago
I did the Chicago to San Francisco (and back) run fairly regularly in the 1990s, and we didn't depend on vacancy signs. Our solution was basically brand loyalty -- the Motel 6 people published a book with addresses and phone numbers of
90.
by reidacdc 10y ago
That's an infuriating headline. The upshot of the article is, the bees that were recently in the news for newly being endangered are a small number of species in a geographically confined area. The commercially-important bees that are

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