rwallace

15 ms·

181.
by rwallace 7y ago
That sounds pretty grim! Which country are you in?
182.
by rwallace 7y ago
There is a school of thought that says rather than look at the requirements and make your best guess at the amount of work needed to implement them, you will get more accurate results by making your best guess at the number of lines of code
183.
by rwallace 7y ago
Yes please!
184.
by rwallace 7y ago
The way I see it, 'int' as a truncation of 'integer' nicely symbolizes the way the type truncates integers to a fixed number of bits. Of course any self-respecting modern language should also provide arbitrary-precision
185.
by rwallace 7y ago
> I miss building my own computer out of TTL chips. That sounds like an interesting project! Can you expand on it? When was this? How many TTL chips did it take? What other components did you use? What did you do with the end result?
186.
by rwallace 7y ago
It seems wildly improbable. Where did that number come from? I don't believe it's anywhere near that high.
187.
by rwallace 7y ago
> If you don't believe macroeconomics I'll bite that bullet. I don't believe macroeconomics. Microeconomics is pretty solid; that's the part of the field that's actually grounded in reality. Macroeconomics is
188.
by rwallace 7y ago
Yes. Excessive working hours and too little exercise are huge problems pretty nearly everywhere in the world. The problem of cruelty to one species is in no way diminished by observing the problem of cruelty to another species. Were you sug
189.
by rwallace 7y ago
Why? Is there a reason Leotek might be able to ignore a court judgment, or unable to pay?
190.
by rwallace 7y ago
What exactly is it about aluminum that you like?
191.
by rwallace 8y ago
Your conclusion is absolutely correct. The explanation is that Homo economicus, the economic optimizing agent, is a leaky abstraction on top of a killer ape. In the modern environment, it's easy to forget that our brains did not actual
192.
by rwallace 8y ago
https://www.amazon.com/Console-Wars-Nintendo-Defined-Generat...
193.
by rwallace 8y ago
Autodesk did understand the concept and fund them for a while. There are two reasons this conversation is not taking place via Xanadu: 1. The brilliant visionary wasn't also a skilled project manager, which is understandable enough, bu
194.
by rwallace 8y ago
It may not have helped, but let's not call people complete dumbshits for leaving a loophole in their DRM. That was a mistake that could happen to anyone, and the outcome was decided by then anyway. Now botching the Saturn launch becaus
195.
by rwallace 8y ago
Now that's a good question. The Atari 8-bit FAQ says 'Atari had sold 35,000 400/800 computers through 1980' and since it was obviously put together by Atari enthusiasts I wouldn't expect it to shoot low on the estim
196.
by rwallace 8y ago
The Atari 800. Beautiful design, but initially overbuilt and too expensive for the market; I suspect two different home gaming machines from the same company also confused consumers; later, when a lower-cost version was released, Commodore
197.
by rwallace 8y ago
Okay. That leads to some other questions. 1. This was basically a scenario of 'leave that computer turned on, and people will keep sending us money.' (I know it's never quite as simple as that, but it was as close to it as it
198.
by rwallace 8y ago
Yes.
199.
by rwallace 8y ago
Okay, I'm curious; does anyone have any idea why? Is there a way I'm not seeing, that it can fail to be profitable to keep this game running? Or a reason I'm not seeing, why a corporation – in the second Gilded Age, when mone
200.
by rwallace 8y ago
Not sure why you were downvoted; it's a fair question. To understand the answer, you have to realize that idiomatic C++ has changed over the years. Back in the nineties, it still placed a lot of emphasis on object-oriented programming
201.
by rwallace 8y ago
“I always found that mysterious, and I do not know the reason why it is that the correct laws of physics are expressible in such a tremendous variety of ways. They seem to be able to get through several wickets at the same time.” Conjecture
202.
by rwallace 8y ago
Yes. In the eighties, we seriously expected that such space habitats might be built in the next few decades. It was a reasonable extrapolation from the rapid progress that had occurred in recent decades.
203.
by rwallace 8y ago
Rule out absolutely, no, but we can say some kinds of physics are much more likely to be applicable than others. And what matters is applicability by terrestrial civilization. 'This could be applicable, but only by a civilization cap
204.
by rwallace 8y ago
Wild idea: Either there is a loophole in physics or there is not. By 'loophole' I mean 'some of the physics we don't yet know, has useful applications such as faster than light travel or unbounded computation, that could
205.
by rwallace 8y ago
> The greater availability of capital has been good for founders, but as Tim points out, it’s been a mixed blessing for society. The only way to suggest that even for a moment is to compare it with a hypothetical state of affairs where c
206.
by rwallace 8y ago
> In daylight, cameras can do that, too, but not so much in the dark Why not? We've been seeing TV footage of cameras seeing perfectly well in the dark for decades. Why is there a problems with using them for automatic driving at ni
207.
by rwallace 8y ago
Good article! I agree with most of it. However, 'As a leader, you don't want to tell your team that the reason things are changing is "because _ made me do it." That makes it seem like you have no power, as though you do
208.
by rwallace 8y ago
I was under the impression the best artificial vacuums here on earth are nowhere near as empty as space. Is that not the case?
209.
by rwallace 8y ago
I would think long and hard before giving someone ten percent of the company just for making the occasional phone call, when you will be expecting people to bust their asses for much less. I might do it if everything else so indicated stron
210.
by rwallace 8y ago
What surprises me about this is the throwaway remark suggesting soccer and hockey should be lumped in with American football. As I understand it, they are not close to being in the same category for brain injury. What's the justificati

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