Totient

6 ms·

1.
by Totient 11y ago
Scott Aaronson argues that, based on what we know about quantum mechanics, Wolfram's "long-range thread" cannot reproduce special relativity and Bell inequality violations: www.scottaaronson.com/papers/nks.ps
2.
by Totient 11y ago
I'm reminded of the classic Charles Baggage quote: On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend th
3.
by Totient 11y ago
This makes perfect sense. I know people who would be terrified of the thought that their organs could be harvested while they might yet recover, but also people who be horrified that their perfectly good organs are just laying there, unused
4.
by Totient 11y ago
I agree, and disagree with the author. > "Vision 1: CONNECT KNOWLEDGE, PEOPLE, AND CATS." > This is the correct vision. I would say this is a correct vision, which I happen to be in favor of. But I don't understand wh
5.
by Totient 11y ago
Satire, aside, I think a very short addition to the last line holds a lot of truth: "A hash is simple. A hash is fast. A hash is all you need to start with ". I can think of plenty of good reasons to stop using a map/hash&#x
6.
by Totient 12y ago
(Theoretically, at least) The ability to exercise a line-item veto would help. The rider to build an new bridge to nowhere would get vetoed, and the rest of the bill would go through.
7.
The Toxoplasma of Rage(slatestarcodex.com)
7 points by Totient 12y ago|0 comments
8.
by Totient 12y ago
I agree. It would be nice if everyone was exposed to programming, just to get a feel for what is possible/plausible - plus the benefits of learning how to think through a problem logically. But just as I don't consider someone fat
9.
by Totient 12y ago
Looks like a system to setup up assurance contracts for funding software. Glad to see more people trying to make this sort of thing work. What's interesting is that you can actually make pledging a dominant strategy, if you find someon
10.
by Totient 12y ago
There was a followup using actual shocks on a puppy. Similar results: http://www.holah.co.uk/files/sheridan_king_1972.pdf
11.
by Totient 12y ago
Hmm... I kind of want to figure out a way to make CAPTCHA-coin work now. Cryptocurrency mining for the people! I just can't think of a good way to generate CAPTCHAs (or something similar) from a block in a fashion that would give human
12.
by Totient 12y ago
Speaking analogously, "If we gave everyone one in the world a device that randomly shot paint at the wall, I would be more surprised if no one ended up with an interesting pattern." I agree, but whatever that pattern (or pattern
13.
by Totient 12y ago
I love this description of quantum. The paper Aaronson links to, "Quantum Theory from Five Reasonable Axioms" ( http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0101012 ), is also a great read. The "probability in L^2&q
14.
The Look and Say Sequence (and Conway's Constant)(mathworld.wolfram.com)
1 points by Totient 12y ago|0 comments
15.
by Totient 12y ago
> Had Java been not so broken for numeric stuff I'm curious, what makes Java an especially poor choice for numerically intensive computing? Is the JIT penalty too high, or is it something else entirely?
16.
by Totient 12y ago
You don't need a validation set. I'm pretty sure you still want a test set.
17.
by Totient 12y ago
Instead of "rest" (which the author mentions is a core function), the Clojure convention for getting the remaining items appears to be "more"; e.g. [x y & more] I really like this tutorial.
18.
Buy Health, Not Health Care(hanson.gmu.edu)
1 points by Totient 12y ago|0 comments
19.
by Totient 12y ago
I don't understand the difference between fn and fn* . After some brief experimenting in the REPL, they seem to behave exactly the same, the only difference being that fn* is what comes out of macro expanding the #( macro Is there a re
20.
by Totient 12y ago
The problem is that pretty much the entire standard library isn't thread safe. It would take some serious work to get OCaml ready, unless you stick to message passing between distinct processes.
21.
by Totient 12y ago
The guy I work for really has no idea how easy certain tasks are once you automate them. I have done nothing to correct his misconceptions. (I'm a CS grad student, working under a professor who somehow got tenure despite being unable t
22.
by Totient 12y ago
Clojure feels like a 'compromise' Haskell, but I mean that in a good way. Haskell really wants to pretend that everything is a pure function. But I think this is a case where the conceptually simpler thing (i.e. no state) is jus
23.
by Totient 12y ago
I wonder where things like classic rock / broadway musicals / opera / etc. fits on this spectrum. I really appreciate including Shakespeare and Moby Dick on the spectrum, but I'd still like some more perspective. For tha
24.
by Totient 12y ago
I really like this idea and it got me thinking about a lesser, but still bad, disaster: If all computers were to disappear tomorrow (let's say a super-EMP, or something) how could we quickly restart the digital age? As in, what sourc
25.
by Totient 12y ago
The Fourier transform .gif was gorgeous. Anyone know of a similar one for Laplace transforms? (I'm still having trouble building up intuition for the Laplace transform.)
26.
by Totient 12y ago
I think this article is side-stepping an important philosophical point as to what randomness is. Suppose we lived in a deterministic universe (e.g. one that actually ran on Newtonian mechanics and classic electromagnetism). If you're o
27.
by Totient 12y ago
"...they boil down to that choice being more useful than the alternative choices, leading to simpler theorems, or feeling more “natural” to mathematicians." Along these lines, my preferred definition of the natural numbers" i
28.
by Totient 13y ago
Smugness aside, I am actually concerned about this implementation and Telegram's response: > The rest looks like matters of taste as opposed to objective reasoning. Can you name an actual attack? The response to that is, "I sho
29.
by Totient 13y ago
This story kind of reminds me of this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/... For most of the Cold War, the RAF's nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key. &qu
30.
by Totient 13y ago
Patent trolls are certainly a problem, but realistically you can't have laws without someone trying to abuse them. I think it might be more effective to attack the problem from the other end: making sure patents like don't get iss

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