JonathanMerklin

5 ms·

1.
by JonathanMerklin 4mo ago
Straight Outta Lynwood was a great album. One of the CDs that I took out of my case the most often as a struggling nerdling who was still a year or two away from having scrounged up enough spare cash for a secondhand iPod.
2.
by JonathanMerklin 4mo ago
I'll bite. What's your argument, or at least the comment-sized gist of it?
3.
by JonathanMerklin 4mo ago
I agree with almost all of what you have stated, save for a minor nitpick: I frankly don't think most functional adults think about the Fields Medal, similar annual prizes, or the qualities of the innovations of their candidate pools.
4.
by JonathanMerklin 11mo ago
The cyclic group generated by e.g. RU has order 105 (so 210 total turns or 105 of each side, alternated). If you have some math know-how, check out [1]. If you don't, take my word for it: when I was a teenager playing around with cubes
5.
by JonathanMerklin 1y ago
I think it's possible that that may be an additional benefit (for Google), but to me it seems overwhelmingly more likely that the main explanation here is Conway's Law.
6.
by JonathanMerklin 2y ago
You've identified a potential strategy by which a computer can play like a 1300-rated player, but not one where it will "play like a 1300-rated human". Patzers can still find and make moves in your set of N (if only by blind
7.
by JonathanMerklin 2y ago
I want to note for the HN crowd that the book is in the "just technical enough to inform yet not scare off the layman, but not technical enough for the practitioner" nonfiction subgenre. Critically, there are a number of finer det
8.
by JonathanMerklin 2y ago
Perhaps not the hyphenated form, but I'd had a chat with a friend a couple days ago where we meandered around some surface level philosophy and I paraphrased a section or two from Thus Spoke Zarathustra about the rabble ([1]), so I&#x2
9.
by JonathanMerklin 2y ago
Genuinely asking: is that huge in terms of their install base or revenue, or is that huge in terms of PR ramifications (like, "vocal minority" type of deal)? In my younger days I'd've had a heavily skewed pro-gamer and p
10.
by JonathanMerklin 3y ago
I get what you're saying, but "rule 34 also applies to scientific research" is a bizarre way to word it; the way I'd interpret that phrase out of context is just that it logically follows because scientific research is a
11.
by JonathanMerklin 3y ago
I don't claim to be in SBF's head, but the gist of the rationale for this type of thought is a hypercritical focus on effective usage of the limiting resource of time. Learning facts about reality is the only reason to consume tex
12.
by JonathanMerklin 3y ago
Worth noting for the interested reader that's disappointed upon reading your comment that there's also a Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics (ISBN-13: 978-0691150390, ISBN-10: 0691150397).
13.
by JonathanMerklin 3y ago
A math history book about one specific area of study written more in a popsci style that I liked: one of my favorite authors (David Foster Wallace) wrote "Everything & More: A Compact History of Infinity" which I'd call a
14.
by JonathanMerklin 3y ago
I was going to correct you by saying "if you didn't intend the pun, you should have used 'aether' (or 'æther' if you're cool)" but in going to the Wikipedia article to copypaste the "æ", I l
15.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
I haven't heard the "square root of employees are critical" rule of thumb. I have previously heard of Price's Law - paraphrasing: "half of the output is created by a square root of the organization". But as I u
16.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
What fight do you recommend I take? The way I see it, if I balk at additional fees, taxes, and tips, there is a relatively high risk that I don't even receive the product or service - which is no different than my current strategy of,
17.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
The system is bad, no doubt, but I personally have spent almost a decade living and interacting with reality with a hard fast personal rule that every numeric value I see fronted by a "$" is only 2/3 of the actual price, and
18.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
FWIW, I read it that way. It's not a sequence of "finish the game of social success" coming after "finishing the game of financial success", it's a complete replacement of which game the author/commenter w
19.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
Yeah, I've used it in Haskell for ignored variables, holes, type wildcards, etc. Another interesting little rabbit hole that this little conversation led me to: In the Chrome (and Firefox) developer tools, the variable for the previous
20.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
I just checked and this is true for the Node.js REPL (Tried in v12, v14, v16, and v18) as well, which I'm also just learning for the first time (and I had the same workflow as you before this). Neat!
21.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
I don't think that it's a strict binary of "art is not just another product of labor" and "artist and art are separate entities". Surely you've heard some variation of the turn of phrase "separating t
22.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
"Having your identity be singular and directly rooted in providing entertainment for others" is true of professional athletes. Comedians. Magicians. Writers. s/entertainment/value/ , it's true of software engin
23.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
We're getting a little off-topic here, but this is actually the first I'm learning that MtG can't explicitly mention the stack (I follow set releases and read cards casually sometimes, cube once in a blue moon, played standar
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by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
I'd love to hear some of your recommendations for books you've read or skim-evaluated that yield a large magnitude vector on your <1, 2, 3, 4>-space.
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by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
The endnotes are fundamental to the experience. There are some key plot points divulged or hinted at there first (and sometimes there exclusively, IIRC). Pemulis' funniest moments are back there. I still find my mind drifting to the de
26.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
Devil's advocate: this would be a horrible office for a teetotaler with a pet allergy, an alcoholic who wants to quit (possibly - from a productivity standpoint - also one who doesn't), or someone with dog-related trauma. None of
27.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
It's usually seen as immoral to bring up in this context, but if you can't increase the denominator, you can try to decrease the numerator.
28.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
(I love the "sneed" lampshading.) This isn't Reddit indeed but if you want that to change on your browser and to turn your "probably" into an "undoubtedly", this post titled "The more things change, t
29.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
Used to play a fair bit of MUGEN growing up. I remember waiting years and years to see "the next part" of Kung Fu Man's story... Also, I want to use this comment to shout out a creator I looked up to in those days: the late,
30.
by JonathanMerklin 4y ago
Give "Lyft color scheme" a quick search :) EDIT: Okay, I see you added an edit where you say you've never used it - so to remove any semblance of snark I'll clarify that you will in fact find pink if you do that.

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