hugh_

5 ms·

1.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Heck, you're right, I should!
2.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Not really, it's just damn near impossible to buy anything that isn't made in China or some other crappy dictatorship.
3.
by hugh_ 17y ago
I don't have time to spend a lovely Saturday morning watching a 90-minute video just to criticize it, but how can one "debunk" the calories-in calories-out model? Surely this is just plain old thermodynamics?
4.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Y'see, this is why I don't like the fact that comments can no longer go below -4.
5.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Yep, I got my first bike for my sixth birthday and never had training wheels. What's the point of giving a four-year-old a bike anyway? It's not like you're going to let 'em ride it anywhere interesting, or unsupervised.
6.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Let's assume that the fraction of people in prison has grown over the last 70 years. This is either because sentencing has got harsher or because people are committing more crimes. Anecdotally, though, sentencing seems to have got less hars
7.
by hugh_ 17y ago
What cars do pilots drive? What foods do vintners eat? I'd say it's more like asking "What cars do park rangers drive?" or "What foods do wrestlers eat?" because we're talking about groups of people with quite specific requirements. The q
8.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Are the folks in prison really the same folks who would otherwise be attending the University of California? I think they're generally pretty different demographics. Better K-6 education could probably decrease crime, if we can turn the ill
9.
by hugh_ 17y ago
One of my favourite theories on prison reform: a huge problem with prisons is the formation of gangs and other social structures within the prison walls; not only do these promote the emergence of a criminal culture within the prison, they
10.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Sounds like what we really need to do is outsource the prisons. To, say, Mexico, or China. I'll bet the Chinese don't pay $50,000 per prisoner per year to keep their prisoners locked up -- heck, they probably harness their labour to turn a
11.
by hugh_ 17y ago
But the robot _might_ be being controlled by some guy in another room who is also controlling the lightbulb (alternatively the person could be following instructions given by an earpiece). Or maybe they're both hooked up to a geiger counter
12.
by hugh_ 17y ago
E.g., are we right to assume that all the laws of chemistry are "in principle" reducible to physics, even though we can never hope to make such a reduction in practice? Actually, making that reduction in practice is pretty much what I do
13.
by hugh_ 17y ago
It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind. What's the alternative to a single set of natural laws? Perhaps one set of natural l
14.
by hugh_ 17y ago
In this case we can be reasonably confident in the causal link between the switch and the light because we're controlling the switch ourselves -- this helps us eliminate the other causal possibilities (a) that the light going on and off cau
15.
by hugh_ 17y ago
The horizontal axis represents musical time, from the beginning to the end of the piece, while the vertical axis shows how far the similarities persist into the higher-level structure of the piece. If I understand this correctly, this mea
16.
by hugh_ 17y ago
I reckon that the best way to become a generalist is a two-step process: 1. Become a specialist 2. Become a generalist This has two advantages. Firstly, you'll be useful and employable in your youth, since a specialist with a few years' exp
17.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Really? Wow. And people are complaining that the crash was caused by under -regulation? How about first removing all the laws which force banks to lend money to folks who are unworthy of credit?
18.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Even if we did develop a lie detector with high accuracy, how would we know? There's good reason to believe that lie detectors might work much better in the laboratory, on test subjects telling inconsequential lies to experimenters and know
19.
by hugh_ 17y ago
The article says that fears of damage to your credit rating, if you do this, are "overblown". But surely the damage to your credit rating among rational creditors should be really severe? If I were a bank and I found out a borrower had wa
20.
by hugh_ 17y ago
It's largely economics of scale. The linked post says that New York State is spending vast sums of money just to house twelve inmates on death row, so obviously it would be cheaper to throw those twelve inmates into the existing prison syst
21.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Without any suggested strategy that would defend against all possible attacks, though, it's not much of a suggestion. The current strategy may be the best one available. If unreliable two-component powder+syringe underpants bombs are the
22.
by hugh_ 17y ago
I have adopted a "we are homosapien" (note: not plural) outlook towards the humanities While I have no idea what that means, I would like to point out that "homo sapien" is not the singular of "homo sapiens"
23.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Does he consider Blink 182 to be more "mainstream" than Vampire Weekend?
24.
by hugh_ 17y ago
They're still a helluva lot more expensive than coal-powered plants, which is what the third world is actually building.
25.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Except Iran isn't a sovereign nation, it's just a patch of soil run, in practice, by a bunch of unelected mullah-thugs. The doctrine of sovereign rights should be restricted to democracies. The mullahs have no more sovereign right to the te
26.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Perhaps, but the social dynamics are made extra interesting by the fact that the "passionate entrepreneur" is the too-cool-for-school kid of a dozen years ago, and he's having trouble coping with it. I'm not sure whether it's pathos or scha
27.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Why was the abridged, no-value-added version linked instead of the original? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/print?guid=83A47014-F...
28.
by hugh_ 17y ago
I'm pretty unconvinced that it's a worthwhile product. I don't see a worthwhile gap in the market in between smartphones and laptops. Smartphones are great because they fit in your pocket, but annoying because they lack some of the features
29.
by hugh_ 17y ago
Perhaps solutions should be aimed at slowing down the churn rate on the "new" page, then? What if everybody were limited to submitting, say, one article per day?
30.
by hugh_ 17y ago
This is probably a good thing. A large prize might create some rather perverse incentives for, uhh, direct intervention in the data set.

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