toemetoch

14 ms·

91.
by toemetoch 14y ago
There was a program on BBC2 recently [2] of a business owner with textile factories in both China & the UK. One of the illustrations they made was an increase in pay in China (something like 3-fold in recent years IIRC). The employees o
92.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I came across a very good text in 2008 from the time when there was a lot of confusion whether simulated annealing had cracked it. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to explain p vs np and the position of sim. annealing with respect
93.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I read the abbreviation from both the footnote ("... NP problems i.e. non-polynomial time...") and the text (" Problems in NP are not known to be solvable in polynomial time. " ... actually they're non-deterministic polynomial). Anyway, you
94.
by toemetoch 14y ago
NP is not an abbreviation for "non-polynomial". You made a very good attempt at explaining P vs NP, but just like most of the other articles that try to make it digestible for a wider audience you screwed up by leaving out the deterministi
95.
by toemetoch 14y ago
You have to make a distinction between what happens on a microscopic (the atom) and macroscopic (decay of an amount of atoms) level. On a microscopic level you need a stochastic model to describe the decay of an atom. With a lot of atoms (I
96.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Same question here. On the upside: they probably have a boatload of raw data on this failure now. Those are the first baby steps towards building in-house expertise.
97.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Related, but not completely on topic: "All watched over by machines of loving grace" by Adam Curtis. "Bumblebee Economics" by Bernd Heinrich
98.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Happy birthday!
99.
by toemetoch 14y ago
17:00 Brussels time
100.
by toemetoch 14y ago
How about just "facebook" as the word that describes this affair? After all, that's how we ended up with "Ponzi" scheme.
101.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I was under the impression that cryogenic thawing has never been done on that level (human head).
102.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Disturbing, yes. But keep in mind that there are warehouses out there with people's heads cryogenically frozen. So there's a line of people queuing up, waiting for it to happen. :)
103.
by toemetoch 14y ago
They have them in a lot of European countries, we call it "the green wave". There's also another trend on the rise: cameras that take photographs of license plates at an interval of several miles. If the calculated speed (the average) is la
104.
by toemetoch 14y ago
No, this grouping is not the intent but the consequence. What you actually do on G+ is tagging people and viewing them by tag. After a while, the tag-cloud per person over several accounts is a very nice statistical description. Most will t
105.
by toemetoch 14y ago
This reminds me of the "life below 600 px" story from last week [1]. So yes, there is a reason to do multi-page content from that point of view. Unfortunately, it's used as a cheap trick to smear limited content over pages that are riddled
106.
by toemetoch 14y ago
That's actually a very good question. Your average lawyer/doctor/accountant ends up in a very predictable career, just like your average engineer. People who end up in politics tend to have a degree in law or finance and debating as a hobby
107.
by toemetoch 14y ago
The point is that education says nothing about being able to do the job in many cases. I work with students for development projects. We don't get to pick them, they pick the projects we propose. Here's a question that tells us in seconds
108.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Isn't the iTunes Store a valid example? Its users have demonstrated that they'll pay per song instead of buying the entire album. Apparently that's what the consumer wants. Secondly, there is actually a media business on the internet that's
109.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Most of the cost & risk of space exploration goes into the short trip from earth's surface to orbit. Getting free from surface is such a major factor that it actually makes sense to move launch to a location near the equator. Once you h
110.
by toemetoch 14y ago
They play a role as trace elements. A lot of these elements are blocking in nature: other parts of the organism's metabolism are a function of the availability of trace elements. As an example, Molybdenum was found to put a ceiling on CO2 u
111.
by toemetoch 14y ago
One of the best educational tips I got as a teen was to write down my math problems (things I didn't grasp) in the evening and read them after waking up in the weekend. Suddenly you're hit with a series of "aha"-moments and problems get so
112.
by toemetoch 14y ago
At the moment we're not really seeing signs of malevolence from that corner. My worry is: what happens if those companies take a nose-dive [1] or get a new commander [2]. [1] There are plenty of examples like that floating around. Large com
113.
by toemetoch 14y ago
If done properly (linear vs log scale, well-chosen cut-off frequency, thresholding values and discrete colors) you get a representation of the patterns in the song. With electronic/techno music you see where the intro/beats are. With other
114.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Thanks for answering those two. The reason I'm not happy with "auto" is that as a programmer you'll end up hunting down types in source. Even more so if you inherit code from someone else. So we'll add them in comment as mental note instead
115.
by toemetoch 14y ago
3 questions before moving to C++11 - which architectures is the author discussing when he talks about performance gains, what are the ISA requirements and numbers? - what compilers are supporting it? - why is it good to have "magic" happeni
116.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley. There's a lot of history behind it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ
117.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I can relate to his frustration re Hulu ads. Discovery Channel (here in Europe) advertises mostly for their own programs - often for the program you're actually watching. The remainder is for a handful of companies. Clueless about why they'
118.
by toemetoch 14y ago
Thanks! This image moderation issue has been a real stumbling block for me.
119.
by toemetoch 14y ago
I could use this service, but I can't seem to find the pricing for image moderation. The blog post in the link says "clear pricing" but the products page is undefined for image moderation: http://crowdflower.com/products
120.
by toemetoch 14y ago
suggestion: frequency domain instead of time domain. The waveform in time-domain doesn't really contain info, with a spectrum you can see lots of patterns, scroll to the section where the beat kicks in, look for vocals, ...

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