shasta

19 ms·

151.
by shasta 12y ago
Well, there are sets of four points whose minimal containing square is not defined by any three of the points. That makes me suspicious that you're not going to get this plan to work. And playing with the program, I find minimal penta
152.
by shasta 12y ago
"Giving back losses" was supposed to be humorous. Apologies.
153.
by shasta 12y ago
As andrewla notes, big int operations aren't O(1) in an apples-to-apples comparison. In fact, if you work out all of the math for a Z(5) implementation, this approach is essentially the same as the fast matrix exponentiation approach
154.
by shasta 12y ago
They should be forced to give some of those losses back.
155.
by shasta 12y ago
> My understanding of the FLP result is that it only applies to algorithms without timeouts. No, I don't think timeouts help. What does timeout mean here? You've sent a message and didn't get a response. If you timeout,
156.
by shasta 12y ago
"Self awareness is a byproduct of an intelligence that can reason about itself" looks like a tautology to me. I've heard similar theories proposed that extend to broader notions of consciousness, but I don't find the ar
157.
by shasta 12y ago
The camera and the crappy mirrors in the bathroom.
158.
by shasta 12y ago
I'm not sure that calling this measure "collective intelligence" is fair. If you look at the paper, this is measuring the ability for a team to move quickly without stepping on each others feet. I'd expect "collec
159.
by shasta 12y ago
One of the central tenets of our criminal justice system is that it is better that two and a half guilty men be set free than for one innocent man to be falsely convicted.
160.
by shasta 12y ago
Why is it that 'this' has appeared as a one word response in 3 of the 6 sibling responses to this question? Is it related to the subject matter? Should I start reading 'This.' in a meat-head voice?
161.
by shasta 12y ago
Should they go kill themselves? Funny that the mental failings of the jumper evoke such sympathy and the mental failings of the "asshole" evoke such hatred.
162.
by shasta 12y ago
The selection pressure doesn't seem to be that huge to me. There are only on the order of 10,000 human cases. That those cases are caused by trillions of ebola viruses doesn't seem relevant to measuring evolutionary pressure.
163.
by shasta 12y ago
The quote pretty obviously is referring to checking a proof (series of logical statements) not an arbitrary logical statement. Compared to most reporting on technical subjects, this reporting was wonderful.
164.
by shasta 12y ago
You'll have to catch your ass, first.
165.
by shasta 12y ago
> One person pressed the button 190 times. New study finds researchers trolled by subjects.
166.
by shasta 12y ago
> The idea that patents are not necessary, useful or relevant in today's society is childish. It's childish to believe that patents are not necessary ?
167.
by shasta 12y ago
Nah, the companies pushing these contracts are the ones exhibiting distasteful behavior. That page is very tasteful.
168.
by shasta 12y ago
How are you going to define "consumable"? A game like clash of clans or candy crush could just restructure things so that you get to permanently "keep" your purchase, but it is still practically consumed. So for exampl
169.
by shasta 12y ago
I think "patent troll" should be applied to be anyone who waits for accidental infringement. That's not quite everyone who's an NPE, and I view this behavior as tacit admission that you know you shouldn't have a pa
170.
by shasta 12y ago
Your math is broken. It doesn't even have the right units to be a probability (children/(abudctions/year)).
171.
by shasta 12y ago
Why is this based on a symmetric problem (encoder solving the same problem as the decoder) requiring two days of crunching on a 16 core machine? Is it because all known asymmetric problems (factoring primes, etc.) allow large speed-ups wi
172.
by shasta 12y ago
I don't think that darklajid can be the one downvoting -- at least not your post replying to him. I suspect you're being downvoted (and not by me) for suggesting that a statewide missing child alert is warranted in response to a
173.
by shasta 12y ago
I think you've misread me. I think it's ludicrous that you can't leave your kid in the car for short intervals. I didn't "want" to take my kid in.
174.
by shasta 12y ago
> It was a temporary lapse in judgment. Leaving your child in a car for five minutes is definitely a lapse in judgment. Not because it's dangerous so much as because your peers are stupid. I remember a time where I was really temp
175.
by shasta 12y ago
A google search for "striped horse" gives me the Wikipedia article for Zebra as its first result. Similarly a google search for "wrapped integer types" takes you to a Wikipedia page for "integer overflow" that
176.
by shasta 12y ago
In case anyone has the same difficulty reading this as I did, "integer types that wrap" is supposed to refer to arithmetic modulo 2^n. I thought at first he was talking about wrapped integer types.
177.
by shasta 12y ago
Factoring p^2-1 into (p+1)(p-1) when you're trying to prove something about the factors of p^2 - 1 isn't exactly magic either. The entire proof is a pretty easy exercise. The only hard step is "stop reading and think for a
178.
by shasta 12y ago
Now isn't going to happen and later might be better. We're transitioning more and more to computers. The transition could be handled more easily if we have a generation of computer programs that can easily handle either. Pervas
179.
by shasta 12y ago
Esperanto then?
180.
by shasta 12y ago
Cool. Let's get everyone over to the English langauge, too. Think of the productivity gains we're going to have in a generation or two!

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