tbabb

47 ms·

391.
by tbabb 9y ago
It's official. I will never work for Facebook. In terms of hipness (lack of it), positive impact (lack of it), and sliminess, this puts them on the same shelf as Comcast for me. It also frames their ruinous impact on societal discourse
392.
by tbabb 9y ago
Sorry, maybe that was a bit harsh. :) [Recurse Center]( https://www.recurse.com/manual ) (explained in the section 'social rules') has a social rule against "well-actuallys" which is intended to discourage
393.
by tbabb 9y ago
I agree with a lot of this. But I still disagree with: > With classical physics, you can reason based on your lifetime of observations of everyday objects. [...] QM is abstracted so far away that it is incredibly hard to test anything in
394.
by tbabb 9y ago
> ackchyually.jpg ;) I think you got my point, though? The rules of QM are not a busy beaver function. They are simple and they can be learned because the human mind is flexible. Yes, manipulating the algebra can be very complicated inde
395.
by tbabb 9y ago
There is a "sermon" that is given at the beginning of almost every QM intro lecture, and as it was given by Feynman more than a half century ago, it went something like: > "Quantum mechanics is weird. Particles are not lik
396.
by tbabb 9y ago
3D printing an entire new plate and making it retroreflective seems quite a bit harder than "putting some tape on it" to me, so it seems like it's successful?
397.
by tbabb 9y ago
What about this: Look squarely in the bathroom mirror. Hold your head firmly against something to prevent movement. Close your right eye. Use a fine tipped dry erase maker to make a dot over your left eye's pupil. Then close your left
398.
by tbabb 9y ago
1 acre covered in 1 foot of water. Makes sense where farmland is measured in acres, and actually probably a bit easier to visualize than "10^6L"-- though I know what you mean.
399.
by tbabb 9y ago
Not a diplomat, so I have no idea. But I'd guess the responses are much more often diplomatic or covert than military.
400.
by tbabb 9y ago
The U.S. government is in disarray (to understate it) and is in a moment of weakness. I am sure Pyongyang knows this and is testing the waters to see what it can get away with. Will a meaningful, competent retaliation come? Maybe they went
401.
by tbabb 9y ago
> An unreliable programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations. Be vigilant to reduce th
402.
by tbabb 9y ago
Since "intelligence" is ill-defined and "consciousness" can't be measured, some disambiguate with the term "technological". Take what I said to mean that if you prefer. :) My point: If technological civili
403.
by tbabb 9y ago
All evidence says it's exceedingly rare. As far as we can tell, it's only emerged once in the entire 3.5 billion year history of life on Earth. On top of that, Earth may be a very rare sample of planets that have intelligent life,
404.
by tbabb 9y ago
Canal Street is beautifully intricate as well. There are lots of barely-hidden abandoned platforms and tracks that would be cool to see.
405.
by tbabb 9y ago
You can't put more tenants in it and charge them rent.
406.
by tbabb 9y ago
> "It’s as if there’s a worldwide commitment to helping this company succeed" This statement makes me so happy, (a) because I feel I've noticed the same thing, (b) because it gives me faith that people actually care about
407.
by tbabb 9y ago
For the internet, there are some tools for this. I find it very helpful to decide ahead of time how many minutes a day it's acceptable to waste on "addictive" internet sites, and then use extensions (StayFocused for Chrome is
408.
by tbabb 9y ago
This is an ad. What's it doing here?
409.
by tbabb 9y ago
This guy is smart, and dead on: - People who don't understand AI are afraid of it; those who do know how fragile and limited it is. - The call for "regulation" of technology that doesn't exist is too vague to be useful.
410.
by tbabb 9y ago
I'd say that n-gate.com would have a field day making fun of the "Rust Evangelism Strike Force", but this almost parodies itself.
411.
by tbabb 9y ago
I would say digital patterns which follow the rules above could be called "life", albeit artificial and exceedingly simple compared to biological life.
412.
by tbabb 9y ago
> What about the global maxima, how can life evolve to that state? It doesn't. Evolution is indeed a greedy algorithm, and cannot plan.
413.
by tbabb 9y ago
Fire: Does not mutate. Crystals: Do not mutate, or if by some twisting of definition you say they do (e.g. defects are propagated through the lattice), the success of propagation doesn't depend on the inherited traits.
414.
by tbabb 9y ago
To me, there seems to be a pretty straightforward line to draw between life and non-life: Life is that which undergoes Darwinian evolution. If (a) it makes copies of itself, (b) the copies inherit traits from the original, (c) the traits ar
415.
by tbabb 9y ago
The topic of women and minorities in tech really provokes HN to display its neckbeard plumage. Really, I don't know why I click on the comments of these articles. People in tech-- nerdy or socially insecure men in particular-- often ti
416.
by tbabb 9y ago
Very cool. I'd be very curious to see what happens if you do exposure stacking-- in principle, you could get a lot more bit depth!
417.
by tbabb 9y ago
"Everybody does it" is not really a statement about its validity.
418.
by tbabb 9y ago
No mention of effect size. N=200 is pretty small. Smells a bit like BS. Anyone have the original paper?
419.
by tbabb 9y ago
So for long lines to move an argument over to align with its predecessor on the previous line, like int f() { int someVariableName = myFunctionCall(expr(5), // <--- line A
420.
by tbabb 9y ago
If I had to guess, developers who pay more attention to corner cases and/or carefully consider the secondary and tertiary effects of a design choice will tend to choose spaces. - "TABS WORK GREAT FOR ME" -> First-order eff

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