yaakov34

19 ms·

121.
by yaakov34 11y ago
Enhanced versions of Gaussian elimination are used for quite large matrices (with many millions of non-zero coefficients), but for even larger matrices, approximate algorithms can be used. These converge to the desired solution, as opposed
122.
by yaakov34 11y ago
Come again? A nonlinear matrix equation of the form AX=B?
123.
by yaakov34 11y ago
Gaussian elimination finds the inverse of a matrix. However, it is not efficient for large matrices, so they use a different algorithm.
124.
by yaakov34 11y ago
I think the relevant standard for comparison, from a safety point of view, is with mechanical throttle linkages that were used before throttle-by-wire. And it's pretty obvious that the mechanical linkages are less reliable: they involv
125.
by yaakov34 11y ago
Absolutely right. After reading any number of stories about these "runaway death machines", what becomes clear is that the only realistic way for a car to accelerate at full power against the wishes of the driver is for the driver
126.
by yaakov34 11y ago
Sure, they should improve or clean up the code on general principles. However, there are 2 issues here: 1) A lot of these articles imply that some expert has demonstrated how a coding error will cause unintended acceleration. Then when you
127.
by yaakov34 11y ago
This issue returns to Hacker News and to public consciousness every few months, and each time there is something missing: namely, some kind of direct proof that an actual failure of this software resulted in unintended acceleration, anywher
128.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Here's a story from someone who actually did buy some military vehicles for the guys in the South-East: http://vk.com/juchkovsky?w=wall151630709_7596%2Fall He says he bought two BRDMs (like the one in the article) for
129.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Ukraine has previously closed all airspace over the east of the country to civilian flights. I know that lynch mobs form very quickly online, especially to attack unpopular people, but in this case, the responsibility of directing a civilia
130.
by yaakov34 12y ago
I think the calculations are extremely wasteful, since the writing being discussed would actually be visible from much of the solar system, while we only need it to be visible from Earth. The Earth subtends 1.2 millisteradians as seen from
131.
by yaakov34 12y ago
There is a history of literally many years of bombastic claims being made by D-Wave (especially in the popular press) without anything to back them up. Scott Aaronson ( http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ ), an MIT profes
132.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Wasn't there some kind of unpleasantness around the time of Abe Lincoln's presidency, resulting in the killing of several hundred thousand American citizens without trials? It really irks me when this kind of discussion is focused
133.
by yaakov34 12y ago
I don't find it surprising that a giant heavy industry and consumer electronics conglomerate doesn't get software testing right. Software quality is extremely difficult to get right, and an electronic product company doesn't
134.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Light would travel about 660 millimetres in 0.22 nanoseconds, and the chip is about 25 millimetres on the side, so a beam of light could run a few laps around the chip in one clock cycle, or bounce off the sides 20-30 times. Maybe you wante
135.
by yaakov34 12y ago
I guess it's time for another one of my periodic rants about the importance of memory safety, and the undesirability of being left alone in the ring against a team of people who know the x86 architecture like you know the back of your
136.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Well, yeah, this guy is desperate, and it's because of a series of events and decisions, some of which may have been his own fault. He basically says as much. But the point here is that freelancer.com is taking advantage of desperate p
137.
by yaakov34 12y ago
Well, refocusing is what the marketing and the reviews of this camera focus on (ha, I kill me...), but personally I find the 3D possibilities a lot more interesting. On their not-very-usable website, the refocused shots with most of the ima
138.
by yaakov34 12y ago
I am not sure what you mean by each lens, since there is only one lens with this technology. The diameter of the lens has to be comparable to the separation between the two lenses in a stereo system. For meaningful stereo effect at distance
139.
by yaakov34 12y ago
You will never get it in a camera the size of a cell-phone camera. This technology relies on the fact that each patch of their lens sees a different image of the subject; it's like stereo, but with a single lens, and many views rather
140.
by yaakov34 12y ago
The light field technology has a lot of interesting applications outside of photography as such. I see a lot of sceptical comments here about the potential of this tech for creative or artistic purposes, and I wanted to comment that it has
141.
by yaakov34 12y ago
I am sorry you had a bad experience with your PMs, but what does SharePoint have to do with creating categories that don't match anything in the product, or with deleting databases prematurely? Search in internal databases is a very ha
142.
by yaakov34 13y ago
First, I do realize that rewriting the software stack from the ground up to have only managed code is a huge task. I do think that as an industry, we should set a goal of having at least one server implementation along these lines (where &#
143.
by yaakov34 13y ago
I don't have a reference, but I've seen this myself. Problems can happen whenever pointers combined with the STL or other modern C++ stuff. In the thread from several years ago, I gave as an example pushing a pointer to a local va
144.
by yaakov34 13y ago
Unrestricted pointer arithmetic is indeed incompatible with memory safety. You set a pointer to point to one structure, then you change it and it now points to another structure or array. The compiler doesn't know the semantics of your
145.
by yaakov34 13y ago
It is indeed astonishing how simple-minded this bug is. But these bugs come in all levels of complexity, from simple overstuffed buffers to logical ping-pong that hurts your brain when you try to follow it. We need to get rid of them once a
146.
by yaakov34 13y ago
I'd disagree about C++. In my experience, the only things it adds is (1) a false sense of security (since the compiler will flag so many things which are not really big problems, but will happily ignore most overrun issues), (2) lots o
147.
by yaakov34 13y ago
I am afraid you are the one who is not showing signs of having thought about this deeply. What is the ratio of the number of application programs, libraries, and services to the number of VMs and runtimes? Thousands, tens of thousands, mill
148.
by yaakov34 13y ago
This argument came up in the thread from a few years ago. It is quite wrong-headed. I would like to give a clear answer to it: Virtual machines and runtimes may be vulnerable to malicious CODE. That's bad. Programs written in unmanaged
149.
by yaakov34 13y ago
There was a discussion here a few years ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2686580 ) about memory vulnerabilities in C. Some people tried to argue back then that various protections offered by modern OSs and runtimes,
150.
by yaakov34 13y ago
I know it's going to sound like heresy to many, but personally, I greatly prefer Samsung's interface to the generic Android. The large soft buttons take up a lot of the screen, and I don't like them. I also get a lot of use o

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