sesqu

79 ms·

571.
by sesqu 15y ago
Why do you refer to the area? Why not the diameter or the circumference? If you care about the area, why not use the unit circle with area 1? A quarter arc of a circle is π/2 radians, regardless of area.
572.
by sesqu 15y ago
I have had that thought, but find it incredibly hard to entertain. Do you genuinely believe it, or is it just something that explains why others' opinions might differ?
573.
by sesqu 15y ago
Pi is not globally reserved. It is commonly used in, for example, statistics to refer to multinomial probabilities, and wikipedia tells me it's also the name of the prime-counting function and parallax. I should note that this was annoying
574.
by sesqu 15y ago
I don't think in radians, I think in cycles (radians/tau). I used to think in degrees, and could never get the hang of radians. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the mathematical world moving to cycles, ever. The most I can hope for is that t
575.
by sesqu 15y ago
The last time I saw this, I used the numbers. This time, on a different browser, I automatically went to the left and right arrows on my keyboard. I'd wager it isn't so much about the trackpad, but the programs you've been using lately.
576.
by sesqu 15y ago
I believe the author means to use "small" as a descriptor of volume rather than of measure, and "mass" as a generic noun rather than a quantity. In fact, interpreting "a small mass" as "something light" would be incorrect without a constant
577.
by sesqu 15y ago
"random" is commonly taken to be uniformly distributed. There is no particular reason to expect unbounded support, even if you feel it shouldn't be a certain interval.
578.
by sesqu 15y ago
This functionality is actually built into Firefox and Chrome, and I'd be shocked if at least Opera didn't have it too. It's the "keyword" field in search engine settings. I believe multiple parameters are also allowed, but not having used t
579.
by sesqu 15y ago
It's a funny one. It's not smart at all, but it is clever. It's one of those things that seem properly impressive up until you see how it was done.
580.
by sesqu 15y ago
Interestingly, a documentary I saw on the on-site group studying Chernobyl mentioned that most of the group died prematurely, but not of radiation sickness or cancer. They died of heart failures and stress-induced health problems. A long ti
581.
by sesqu 15y ago
I was just today thinking about how so many sayings, like a few bad apples , reverse their meaning in a generation or few. References don't survive and witticisms are taken out of context.
582.
by sesqu 15y ago
Only if all your shapes are convex. Arbitrary angles can be up to 2π.
583.
by sesqu 15y ago
You can prepend two spaces to insert <code> ( http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc ): rm -rf ./* rm -rf *.* To stay on topic, because of this thread, I just added alias rm="rm -I" to .bashrc, and I have never yet needed -
584.
by sesqu 15y ago
That's how I understood it as well, but it seems to conflict with the researchers not being able to pick between hypotheses. If one hypothesis has the female growing their arsenal of antidotes, that is incompatible with the result that past
585.
by sesqu 15y ago
In an actual interview situation, I'd be likely to just choke, because it's a question I can't get a good handle on. I hope you prod & probe when asking that question.
586.
by sesqu 15y ago
I don't like this question. Comparison- or value-based? Worst in the average or the best case? What's to stop me from mapping the inputs into, say, busy beaver space?
587.
by sesqu 15y ago
Near-matches suffice for trademark infringement, if not straight-up counterfeiting. I am unsure as to which one piracy refers to.
588.
by sesqu 15y ago
I feel like you may be ignoring special functions, although you did mention NP completeness. The un-mathematized areas of CS make liberal use of intuitive formulations of feedback systems, and are more or less unassailable to analysis. Comp
589.
by sesqu 15y ago
Also, fingerprints erode with certain professions and are susceptible to environmental things like sweat and dirt. Retinas change with disease and pregnancy. DNA is far too expensive to use daily, unless you restrict their accuracy to popul
590.
by sesqu 15y ago
No. For the car example, lock-in means you aren't able to use off-brand accessories, or service your car in an unlicensed shop. However, cars are mostly self-contained, so this mostly only comes up with aftermarket stereo systems and member
591.
by sesqu 15y ago
If you don't like it, don't buy it. That's not what vendor lock-in is about. Lock-in means that after you bought it, you can't reasonably switch to something better, something that commonly you didn't know about or that didn't exist
592.
by sesqu 15y ago
Why?
593.
by sesqu 15y ago
It's only lock-in in that the user is locked in [--] In other words, no lock-in at all. I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Vendor lock-in doesn't only apply when you don't like the product. Now, if there were
594.
by sesqu 15y ago
Here's a plot: http://imageshack.us/f/192/stepsd.png/ It might be interesting to plot the mapping instead. edit: one has already been made: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2626879
595.
by sesqu 15y ago
I believe he's referring to the DCT transform, in which the image is interpreted as a mixture of sinusoidal waves. Low frequencies then correspond to differences between separate areas of the picture, while high frequencies correspond to te
596.
by sesqu 15y ago
I like this, but with one exception: Change the background color towards white instead of the username towards green. Adding more contrast with the background helps pick out the good/important comments, when skimming, and is consistent with
597.
by sesqu 15y ago
Everyone has to pay $10 a month to the film industry. We already have the IP tax. In my country, it's essentially a value added tax on all digital mass media, regardless of use. The money from that is lumped in with the money from concert
598.
by sesqu 15y ago
Laws in general seem to mostly ignore volunteer work, despite that having always been an essential part of community economies. That's just an area that hasn't sprouted many conflicts. It seems to me that the new change is that suddenly, di
599.
by sesqu 15y ago
No, retire. That said, 20 years is still a long time.
600.
by sesqu 15y ago
If you play it at logarithmic and slow, you will see actual plateaus and pulses of activity in the smaller languages. That was pretty interesting, to me.

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