seppel

22 ms·

211.
by seppel 7y ago
> is that floating-point math is not an accurate model of rational-number arithmetic Well, this is true. But integer math is also not an accurate model of rational-number arithmetic, yet nobody would claim that integer math is inexact.
212.
by seppel 7y ago
> Binary floats are unable to represent 1/10 just as decimal floats are unable to represent 1/3. That is true, but most humans in this world expect 0.1 to be represented exactly but would not require 1/3 to be represented
213.
by seppel 7y ago
> The real lesson is, no matter what base (radix) you use, floating point math is inexact. This is just not true. If you add 1.5 + 4.25 with IEEE754, there is nothing inexact or rounded. That you cannot exactly represent 0.1 in base2 FP
214.
by seppel 7y ago
> Why are we doing things in decimal? I think this is maybe the crucial part that you might be missing. All this long division (and long multiplication) stuff works on base-n represenations of numbers. I.e. if you have an number like 337
215.
by seppel 7y ago
> Google will still show original URLs when I hover over their links, but when I COPY them, I don't get the URL, but some redirect link through Google. Google is doing that for a very long time. I use this extension to get rid of it
216.
by seppel 7y ago
> You have oxygen. You have aluminum. Not exactly. You have aluminium oxide, which you could split into aluminium and oxygen using huge amounts of energy, like we do on earth. Helium-3 could be interesting, though.
217.
by seppel 7y ago
Cells are basically grey goo. It is also not uncommon for cancer cells to become independent of the host. See HeLa cells for a human example. These are cancer cells taken from a woman who died in 1951, but which are still living and dividin
218.
by seppel 7y ago
> the standard Ruby "json" gem can be made to overflow on just 202 bytes of valid JSON input. It is not overflowing, but about aborting with with a proper error. You can argue whether 100 is a reasonable default, but I think it
219.
by seppel 7y ago
Hardy said the famous "all mathematicians are isomorphic" which means there basically only one way of doing math. And I tend to agree.
220.
by seppel 7y ago
> Or just use a preemptive scheduler (such as a regular OS scheduler). Well... I can't help but whenever I see the await stuff it reminds me of times where I had to do cooperative multitasking and was longing for OS and/or CPU
221.
by seppel 7y ago
> Well, we're forgetting the very young (0-18) Of course somebody has to work for them as well. But does not really change anything, this is why I left it out. > It's not like the young come from nowhere and suddenly have so
222.
by seppel 7y ago
But the thing is: This is not a wealth problem. In every society where some people are working ("the young") and some people are not ("the old"), and everybody is consuming, the young people have to work for the old. The
223.
by seppel 7y ago
Well, you are right (and top has the same problem if not worse), but I'm always surprised what these tools are doing that they take significat CPU time. Parsing 200 virtual text files every second for sure should not. > Or even bett
224.
by seppel 7y ago
The whole problem with ipv6 is that earlier adaptors have not much advantages (while still having to support ipv4 anyway) whereas late adaptors will have it much easier (better ecosystems, much less bugs anywhere else, problems are document
225.
by seppel 7y ago
The metadata (size of allocated block, and whether it is in use) is already there. I really wonder why this is not checked. In a normal libc you should get a "double free" panic.
226.
by seppel 7y ago
> It stands to reason that if physical attributes like height are subject to genetic determinism, aspects of our brain & mind should be too. And if you don't believe in creationism and also don't believe that intelligence i
227.
by seppel 7y ago
The thing is, if you take the species dogs, pigs, horses, apes, and humans, then you can clearly put them somewhere on a scale regarding their ability to learn or understand (a) simple language (b) complex language, (c) simple math (d) adva
228.
by seppel 7y ago
> Should Starbucks be regulated as a bank because they let you prepay for a cup of coffee? In Germany, you might actually need a permit from the financial regulation (BaFin) if you offer gift or prepaid cards, at least if you store the v
229.
by seppel 7y ago
> Astonishingly, this mostly works out fine. In fact, just indexing is very likely to beat any sort of actively managed funds after taking fees into account. That's kind of incredible when you think about it. Well, what also works f
230.
by seppel 7y ago
For me (MBP from early 2015 w/o dedicated card) the upcoming FF 70 made a huge difference. I installed the beta today and I finally can go to youtube, facebook and reddit (the new design!) without the fan spinning up.
231.
by seppel 7y ago
> At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. No, in the end of the day it is a matter of efficiency, i.e. money. Hydrogen is just really inefficient in production, storage, and converting it back to energy. Unless this i
232.
by seppel 7y ago
The iShares one is actually cheaper (TER of 0.07% vs. 0.09%) but it seems its tracking difference is worse (for the last years), so it seems the SPDR performs better. However, you can also buy the Vanguard S&P 500 UCITS ETF in Europe, w
233.
by seppel 7y ago
Vanguard as well as iShares (Blackrock) funds are readily available in Europe unless you are looking for niche stuff. But then there also is Xtrackers, Lyxor, HSBC, .. which offern funds based on the famous and not so famous indices. And t
234.
by seppel 7y ago
I'm an EU citizen and I can buy, e.g, the iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF (ISIN IE0031442068) which gives me access to the S&P 500 and is as cheap as it can get.
235.
by seppel 7y ago
In general, you can ignore the currency that an index fund uses internally for reporting. You can buy A1JX52 using USD in the US or using EUR in the EU; the same as you can buy JPY using USD or EUR, whatever is more convenient for you. I do
236.
by seppel 7y ago
To my knowledge, EU citizens are still allowed to buy those ETFs, but EU brokers are not allowed to sell them. This means you can open an account at a non-EU broker (e.g. in Switzerland) and still buy them. This is perfectly legal, although
237.
by seppel 7y ago
The problem you describe here arises from using binary fractions, that is, a power of 2 as a denominator. You cannot represent the decimal fraction 0.1 as a binary fraction. You would have the same problem representing 1/3 with decimal
238.
by seppel 7y ago
I agree in principle. But I disagree that you cannot test GNFS on small numbers. You can do this, but you are right that you might have trouble to easily verify that it has a better asymtotic complexity than other algorithms.
239.
by seppel 7y ago
> Pretty sure Germany runs on wind solar and nuclear. Nuclear is pretty much dead. Unfortunately, nuclear was considered much worse than coal couple of years ago (and is still) so shutting down nuclear had and has priority. As for wind,
240.
by seppel 7y ago
True, it could still be impossible to break RSA keys used in the wild with one normal PC. But still, you could factor smaller numbers faster than any other algorithm which would give you the confidence that it works. > _I_ still wouldn’t

More ›