simonbyrne

9 ms·

31.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
> - You can't use a function before it's defined. I'm not sure what you mean by this. You obviously can't call a function before it is defined, but you can use a function in another function without any problems:
32.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Why? China's per capita emissions are less than half of the US.
33.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Agree 100%. Free CI really did provide a massive boost to collaborative open source projects. As a user, it did a lot to increase software quality: not just catching inadvertent bugs, but also ensuring that there was at least some reproduci
34.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
It's also a matter of integration (common ticketing, timetabling of connections, sharing stations): the Bay Area is atrocious for this. LA is slightly better, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
35.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
It's not just that governments are dependant on the money, it's also that the gambling can then fund vast lobbying arms to the detriment of good policy. This has certainly happened in Australia (especially NSW): two of the biggest
36.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I know it's an empirical result, but it would be interesting if it was truly logarithmic. Classic statistics gives various asymptotic results based on variations of the central limit theorem, which generally imply sqrt(n) scaling, but
37.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
The Queen has immense theoretical powers, but it would trigger a major constitutional crisis if she were to exercise any of them without being asked by the PM.
38.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
He has never been an MP.
39.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I agree that extended precision can be very useful, though I think the failing was on the software side: basically languages and compilers didn't provide useful constructs to control things like register spilling (which caused the trun
40.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Essentially there are two different sets of floating point instructions on x86 and x86-64: - the x87 instructions, which descend from the original 8087 coprocessor (and have 80-bit registers), and - the SSE instructions, which descend from
41.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
What is kind of funny was that it varied by markets: Yahoo Messenger was big in commodities markets, especially oil.
42.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
In general, no, but it's complicated ( https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=60a2afec-34c8... ).
43.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Interesting side note: his friend Persi Diaconis (mentioned in the article) is the author of many interesting probability papers, including the proof that "7 riffle shuffles is enough" ( https://statweb.stanford.edu&#x2F
44.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Any studies you can link to?
45.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
They're 32-bit IEEE floats (i.e. a typical "C float"), so the subnormal range is below 2e-38. Also, it isn't printing exact values, since for any non-integer value, the last digit should always be 5, though I agree it wo
46.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
There is precedent for this solution: https://academic.oup.com/biomet/article-abstract/76/1/183/22...
47.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
This is really cool, and I'm excited to see how this goes. When people first hear about automatic differentiation, their first reaction is "that's cool, why isn't it everywhere?", and the answer has been "it&#x
48.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
> Taxes are utilized notoriously inefficiently in the US. I've wondered about this: is this "conventional wisdom", or are there actual cross-country comparison studies?
49.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
There is also a lack of what is considered "Excel best practices", for want of a better word. The only resource I've seen along those lines is Joel Spolsky's "You Suck at Excel" video (which is excellent, and s
50.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
> Does the US government also manage food and water in China? No, but the US certainly does regulate how companies can act in other countries, e.g. the FCPA. > If Google gets screwed for doing business in China while thousands of othe
51.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
It still takes ~30 mins, and the one near me isn't open on Sunday afternoons, which cuts into my Monday morning and pushes a 2 day rental to a 3 day one.
52.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I don't understand why car rental places haven't tried to address this yet: e.g. offer drop-off and pick-up (of the car, not me), including evening and weekends. You can sort of get this through Turo, but you don't get the ne
53.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
A common work around is to make them all the same: that way you don't have to think which ones to type.
54.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Agreed. The costs vary a lot too: the US is pretty good ($100/5 years, includes precheck), but you would have to travel a fair bit to make it worthwhile in the UK (£50/1 year + £20 registration).
55.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
My suggestion: any politician who states "[country name] is open for business" should be required to enter through the foreigners line.
56.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
Though £1k/month is at the extreme end, UK train tickets can get expensive: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/15/dawn-10k-commute...
57.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
> They did a lot of mathematical analysis to decide that 80 bits for the internal number format would result in accurate 64 bit results. Something about losing lots of bits of accuracy during exponentiation, so you want extra bits the si
58.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I recall seeing a comment by Will Kahan that 80-bit bit was intended as an intermediate step: the intention was to eventually go to 128-bit. Also this was still early days: up until this point, fast floating point was the domain of much mor
59.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I'd be keen to know more about how the transcendental instructions worked.
60.
by simonbyrne 8y ago
I believe most electric buses do: adding regenerative braking to electric vehicles requires little additional hardware (the electric motors can act as generators, etc.), so it is certainly cost-effective.

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