wgrover

13 ms·

91.
by wgrover 15y ago
On the kilogram: "I dislike having a prefixed unit as the base reference. What a horrible decision. Why don't you just have it go to ten and make ten a little louder?" Exactly right.
92.
by wgrover 15y ago
Worth reading just to find out about the units(1) program. How did I miss that all these years?
93.
by wgrover 15y ago
Nice! If you'd like to write biopunk sci-fi books, I'd read them. :)
94.
by wgrover 15y ago
Could this be turned into a plugin for Google Docs as well? It'd be handy to have a cloud-based LaTeX tool, as an alternative to a local-machine install.
95.
by wgrover 15y ago
It was like Geek Disneyland - frustrating because there's so much wonderful stuff and not enough time to see even a tenth of it. Man I love MIT.
96.
by wgrover 15y ago
It's amusing that the Hearst family made its fortune mining gold. Just 150 years later, they're mining data.
97.
by wgrover 15y ago
Rats, on my first submission no less! I knew this was too interesting to be original. I'll search harder next time. Thanks for catching it.
98.
The one second war: Finding a lasting solution to the leap seconds problem(cacm.acm.org)
81 points by wgrover 15y ago|27 comments
99.
by wgrover 16y ago
I think that CS is a lot more open than other fields, even putting preprints online and soliciting feedback before publication (that's unheard of in chemistry and biology). You're right that some authors put PDFs of their papers on their
100.
by wgrover 16y ago
Your "desk drawer in Tech Square" analogy is apt -- right now our publications are locked in a handful of those drawers, and folks can't even open the drawers unless they've bought keys from Springer/Elsevier/ACS/AIP/ACM/IEEE/etc. And how
101.
by wgrover 16y ago
I saw the Xoom for sale at Costco last weekend - the demo unit was in a locked case, powered up and running a demo but untouchable. Not the best way to sell a touchscreen.
102.
by wgrover 16y ago
I think there's an easier explanation than national security. There's a huge variety of research going on at all the National Labs. Their place within the Department of Energy motivates the development of unique energy-related resources (
103.
by wgrover 16y ago
For anyone interested in using Github to host their Jekyll-based site, you don't even have to install Ruby and Jekyll locally -- just "git push" and Github runs Jekyll server-side and hosts the generated HTML on Github. You can then set up
104.
by wgrover 16y ago
Phones have nothing to do with this. The advance was making an NMR small enough to be useful at the point-of-care.
105.
by wgrover 16y ago
Biotech is strong in Boston. The combination of MIT, Harvard, and Mass General Hospital is an extraordinarily fertile incubator for biotech.
106.
by wgrover 16y ago
Yes! Here's what I want in a modern successor to LaTeX: - Default output is PDF (DVI is a port on my computer :) ) - Optional DOC/DOCX output (even if it supports just a subset of the program's capabilities) - Bibliography management bui
107.
by wgrover 16y ago
I'd agree with you if it weren't for the iPad. Computers have proliferated, but they're also evolving in a way that makes programming knowledge less important (at least for the majority of people).
108.
by wgrover 16y ago
I agree - there's no question that lots of people would benefit from even a little coding knowledge! But computers are evolving in a direction that makes coding knowledge less useful - shell scripting is irrelevant in a world full of iPads
109.
by wgrover 16y ago
I feel like math teachers have a fundamentally different task than coding teachers. Everyone needs at least a low level of proficiency in math - being able to make change correctly and balance your checkbook. Not everyone needs a low leve
110.
by wgrover 16y ago
This looks great, but apparently no Priority Inbox integration yet: http://getsatisfaction.com/sparrow/topics/gmail_priority_inb... I love the increased signal-to-noise that Priority Inbox provides, and I'd miss it in a client that just s
111.
by wgrover 16y ago
Very cool - tried it with my MBTA Charlie Card and it returns "Unsupported card type: Mifare1K". Are we Bostonians out of luck?
112.
by wgrover 16y ago
The details: The cost of porting is $20 (payable through Google Checkout). Your mobile phone service plan will be terminated when you port your number to Google Voice and your carrier may charge you an early termination fee. Once porting is
113.
by wgrover 16y ago
Looks very interesting. I'd suggest that you offer as much feedback to losing submissions as possible (see my other comment), to help losers improve and keep them interested in trying other challenges.
114.
by wgrover 16y ago
My wife and I submitted a proposal for an Innocentive challenge sponsored by the local science museum a while back. The task was to design the next great traveling exhibit for science museums, and we had fun writing our proposal. A few mo
115.
by wgrover 16y ago
Wow. Reading the parallels between "Adventure" and the real cave in Kentucky reminds me of trying to synchronize Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz. What a wonderful insight into a programmer's mind. Thanks for posting it.
116.
by wgrover 16y ago
Interesting that Android edges out both iPhone and iPad. This would be a nice resource for students looking for skills that will land them jobs (mobile web yes, UNIX rockstar no).
117.
by wgrover 16y ago
You're definitely right. I just meant that, until you can sequence a genome faster and cheaper than you can read 90 GB off of a hard drive, storing information in DNA and reading it out via sequencing may not be feasible.
118.
by wgrover 16y ago
"an expensive sequencer is needed to retrieve data" Given how long it still takes to sequence an individual's genome ("only" 3 gigabases), this may not be practical any time soon. Anyway, generating astronomical amounts of data really small
119.
by wgrover 16y ago
Try "war": ( http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=war&year_star... ). Nice peaks on WWI, WWII, and Vietnam; maybe a tiny peak on the Gulf War. Any other search terms where you can see meaningful fluctuations?
120.
by wgrover 16y ago
Sounds like a great way for scientists to get their competitors' grants slashed. (Not advocating this, just imagining how you could game the system)

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