rwallace

54 ms·

541.
by rwallace 10y ago
Actually, the minimal neural network that always outputs that string would basically have a weight vector equivalent to the ASCII coding of the string, so it would be equally easy to reason about compared to the Python equivalent.
542.
by rwallace 10y ago
Having been a programmer for thirty-some years now, I can assure you, impenetrable emergent effects in human-written software are very much a thing, and fully understanding the operation of one or more individual lines of code doesn't
543.
by rwallace 10y ago
Of course you do. You've presented a trivial Python program; an equivalent in neural networks would be a single scalar input multiplied by a single weight to produce a single output. That's just about as easy to understand without
544.
by rwallace 10y ago
Upvoted for the mosquito-killing billboard. According to the article, plans are freely available and you can build one yourself for a couple hundred dollars.
545.
by rwallace 10y ago
That would be an exception to the rule, sure, but bear in mind that if you're trying to innovate in both technology and business at the same time, that's a bigger leap than just one or the other, so the risks are going to be highe
546.
by rwallace 10y ago
Point. If you use a lot of things that require access permissions, maybe it should be part of your spring cleaning or some such to look through what you've given permission for, and cancel anything you haven't used in the last six
547.
by rwallace 10y ago
Caveat: I've seen a number of players state or imply that playing this game has been the first decent exercise they've had in years. Lack of exercise is a far greater threat to your well-being than having your Google account hacke
548.
by rwallace 10y ago
Fertilizer production is an ideal match for solar power because it's not time sensitive; it can happen when the sun is shining. Or put another way, producing energy-intensive stuff like fertilizer is one way to solve the problem of sto
549.
by rwallace 10y ago
There's also a big question about whether winning is actually necessary in the typical case. Think about it: if this sets precedent, anyone with enough money who dislikes you for any reason can ruin you by filing a bogus lawsuit about
550.
by rwallace 10y ago
Good list! A few suggested tweaks: Veblen goods clearly exist, but the evidence for the existence of Giffen goods is much more suspect. (Did the poor really eat more bread because the price of bread rose, or because there was an across-the-
551.
by rwallace 10y ago
That might be because you're trying to use it to argue politics, where it's less applicable; hard cases often make bad law, and you can easily end up with a straw man. It works better in science and engineering.
552.
by rwallace 10y ago
Yes. For another search term, the fallacy in question is sometimes called the Fundamental Attribution Error.
553.
by rwallace 10y ago
Aye, at least given that they are programmed to behave as though their utility function consisted almost entirely of the thrill of wielding power. So, fellow pawns? Stop voting for the damned Kings and Queens. It's a secret ballot; y
554.
by rwallace 10y ago
http://celtic-lyrics.com/lyrics/225.html "For Willie McBride, it all happened again, / And again, and again, and again, and again." And still humans choose war when we could have chosen peace, and follow
555.
by rwallace 10y ago
Fair enough, that's a reasonable position. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that every step is a hard step, because it's not just a matter of time elapsed to the next one, but of each step having to be taken in just such a
556.
by rwallace 10y ago
Then again, ever is a long time and what is impossible on one timescale becomes possible on another. If modern society does not succeed in drastically reforming the education system with which it has ended up, it will die off and be replace
557.
by rwallace 10y ago
Okay, but which of the following two positions are you arguing for? 1. We don't have enough data about other solar systems, so we don't know where complex life might exist. 2. We don't have enough data about other solar syste
558.
by rwallace 10y ago
If you're going to invert meanings, you need to be careful about the polarity. The way politicians (and corporations) do it is, as you observe, to take something bad (that they want to support) and put a good label on it; for obvious r
559.
by rwallace 10y ago
Partial summary: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/geophys/platelif....
560.
by rwallace 10y ago
> We find that unless habitability around low mass stars is suppressed, life is most likely to exist near 0.1 solar-mass stars ten trillion years from now. Microbial life perhaps, but as far as complex life is concerned, I claim habitabi
561.
by rwallace 10y ago
You're saying modern air to air combat is relatively simple and doesn't require that much pilot skill? If that's the case, why do all the accounts of the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars claim pilot skill was perhaps the single larges
562.
by rwallace 10y ago
Those systems were impressive for their time indeed, but let's not lose sight of our options today; if you want to do systems programming in a memory safe language you can use Rust, and if you want a live coding environment, with embed
563.
by rwallace 10y ago
A strong brand costs so much to build, is such a valuable asset, I can't think of any commercial motive that would come close to making up for trashing the brands of the company and product like this. So I'm going to conjecture a
564.
by rwallace 10y ago
Yes. The housing situation in Dublin is not as good as I'd like it to be, but it is significantly better than London, even if that is damning with faint praise.
565.
by rwallace 10y ago
Oh, you're right, startups aren't the main cause of the problem, but anything that moves out of London will help a bit, and it would certainly be good if people who want to create or work in startups had better options.
566.
by rwallace 10y ago
Shouldn't we hope that something does? By all accounts, the house price situation in London has become bad enough that it's wiping out the middle class, which is very bad news; the rise of the middle class was a key factor in enab
567.
by rwallace 10y ago
Ah, tried MuPDF just now and it's still coming out dark gray, but at least now I know it's not a problem with Foxit. Thanks.
568.
by rwallace 10y ago
Ah, this is one I missed back in the day! It looks interesting, but viewing the PDFs in Foxit, the pages are all black text on dark gray background. Is anyone else getting that? Any known fix? For reference, Byte scans from archive.org disp
569.
by rwallace 10y ago
Cache coherence has already scaled a lot further than I expected it to. I take him to mean that, while it has scaled remarkably far already, it won't scale forever and we are starting to push the limits on it.
570.
by rwallace 10y ago
If phrasing it as living longer isn't working, don't phrase it that way. Maybe phrase it as staying healthy or attractive longer? People have a very strong revealed preference for those things, judging by the amount of money they

More ›