tw1010

85 ms·

811.
by tw1010 9y ago
And why are flies found in the country significantly harder to swat than those you find in the city?
812.
by tw1010 9y ago
What do you mean by "data-driven"? What algorithm are you using to produce the palettes?
813.
by tw1010 9y ago
The book by Johnson has a few suggestions in its introduction.
814.
by tw1010 9y ago
I think they forgot to prepend "to convince the math-phobic you know what you're doing"
815.
by tw1010 9y ago
Right now, sure. But give it five years and you'll no doubt also need at least a years worth of undergraduate (pure) math.
816.
by tw1010 9y ago
Man are they good at marketing. They just knew this precise conversation would come up and created the perfect brief counter-argument preemptively ("hollywood quality masks").
817.
by tw1010 9y ago
I would bet a lot of money that engineers testing model after model in a state of flow, without any concern for biological validity, will yield a better result than any biologically inspired thing will. Time efficiency is also an important
818.
by tw1010 9y ago
Biological plausibility is just silly. What it mostly does is just put artificial constraints on the problem that doesn't need to be there. It's all mathematics. However you want to interpret or metaphorize the mathematics is up t
819.
by tw1010 9y ago
I think it's great that top researchers are actually learning from Kuhn's observations. I have hope that humanity can indeed learn from its earlier historical mistakes, but it requires us to be very aware of them in order to colle
820.
by tw1010 9y ago
You are right. I should be more open to other perspectives outside the paradigm I was taught. That's the only way to go against the historical pattern discussed in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thank you.
821.
by tw1010 9y ago
How does all this fare with Michael Pollan's whole thesis that nutrients aren't even the things we aught to focus on?
822.
by tw1010 9y ago
What is this a reference to?
823.
by tw1010 9y ago
Oh that article again. It starts out great but I just get so worried about his well-being when I read the epilogue.
824.
by tw1010 9y ago
Premature optimization is the root of all evil, etc etc.
825.
by tw1010 9y ago
Javascript programmers base a lot of their choice of framework on where the hypetrain is heading, which blog posts can have a lot of influence over.
826.
by tw1010 9y ago
That description doesn't explain why there has been such a sudden growth in recent years. Python is an old language. The real reason it is growing so much just recently is of course due to ML.
827.
by tw1010 9y ago
Why do us engineers have a tendency to oversimplify everything to one big major cause like this? I see it all the time. Obviously in this case this is not the only reason. The real reason is a mix of many influences.
828.
by tw1010 9y ago
The really interesting question though is how big of an influence meta-posts like this one has on the growth of one programming language over another. How would you model that?
829.
by tw1010 9y ago
Any tips for people who want to start writing speculative fiction (or just short stories), other than to just practice a lot?
830.
by tw1010 9y ago
I only think it is useful once you're comfortable with it. Before you are you are probably better off using whatever mental intuition you already have about the idea. Personally I consider it useful to associate the concept to the idea
831.
by tw1010 9y ago
I like HNs culture to reply with a call to action in response to complaints. I mostly wrote my comment with the hope that it might nudge all of us to think about our prose a slight bit more. (I know we're all mostly writing as a charit
832.
by tw1010 9y ago
I commented a post with a negative sentiment below, but I agree with you. A lot of his ideas and insights are valuable and thought provoking, and I wouldn't want the tone of these comments to make him stop.
833.
by tw1010 9y ago
I think "outstandingly useful" is a bit strong and I think it polarizes people who are on the fence on whether the concept is practically useful or just formalistic jargon.
834.
by tw1010 9y ago
Not sure about monoids themselves. But learning about monoids was a stepping stone towards mastering parts of pure mathematics, which has definitely contributed to my problem solving abilities. Sometimes you need to just bite your tongue an
835.
by tw1010 9y ago
Sometimes learning things like this actually changes the way you think. You might not notice it the first month you study these things, but little by little you'll grow comfortable with it and eventually it becomes second nature. Event
836.
by tw1010 9y ago
You don't need to give names to things, but often it's useful. It can reduce cognitive load (if you're comfortable with the terminology) and it can be useful when communicating to other engineers. Mathematicians did their thi
837.
by tw1010 9y ago
This article is about Monoids, not Monads. Monoids are simple. Just imagine a bunch of things, and imagine you can "combine" any arbitrary thing to another thing. The combination has the property of being associative (whatever) an
838.
by tw1010 9y ago
When I read stuff like this and reflect on the fact that this is about the peak quality of the philosophical discussion that is going on in our little niche of the world, I get slightly depressed. I get that it's hard to find people at
839.
by tw1010 9y ago
If you follow HN daily you'll notice these obsessions around certain subjects that often stretch for years. P-hacking and the reliability of scientific papers is one of these. This is just another article in that series.
840.
by tw1010 9y ago
Crypto and bitcoin and machine learning and equifax. Is that all we're getting excited about nowdays? Come on people, let's jump on the Bret Victor bandwagon again.

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