jcdreads

8 ms·

1.
by jcdreads 13d ago
Oh man. This gets really exciting when in addition the Finance team has to tell the SEC how many active users there are, but they're using different definitions every quarter because they get their numbers in some non-reproducible way
2.
by jcdreads 5y ago
I like that everyone is trying to make something like SQL that reads more naturally to them. More alternatives is good! SQL is a widely accepted standard, and has strictly defined and super broadly accepted semantics. As someone who has w
3.
by jcdreads 8y ago
My response to this question or to "Are we there yet?" has always been, "Yep, we've arrived! Hop out!" Best delivered while the car is still at speed for maximum frustration. (Also best when the mood is already li
4.
by jcdreads 8y ago
I miss DabbleDB greatly. I once made a real meals-and-visits schedule signup sheet app for a sick relative (dozens of folks signing up for slots over days, etc.) in about 20 minutes, including learning a bunch about the tool. Ultimately it
5.
by jcdreads 9y ago
Generation [ obviously.
6.
by jcdreads 9y ago
Any wrist-mounted Fitbit will do this, even the tiny ones without a screen. I've been using one as my only alarm for about a year, and it works great. Disclaimer: I work for Fitbit. Edit: Also, the battery needs a 90-minute charge onl
7.
by jcdreads 12y ago
I have rolled an extensive (purpose-built) general data quality system at work, and would love for there to be a general purpose tool that does the same sort of thing. I would love to use, contribute to, or otherwise make real an open sour
8.
by jcdreads 13y ago
Fanta is one kind of coke that I didn't see much growing up. My brother and I used to argue about whether Orange Fanta counted as a coke. He thought it wasn't, because it was orange soda and not cola. I thought it was, because it was suga
9.
by jcdreads 14y ago
It is almost entirely big city. Most American cities, considered by themselves, would be over there on the left with Washington. Here's a visualization of this; mostly bluer cities and mostly redder non-city: http://www.princeton.edu/~rvd
10.
by jcdreads 14y ago
The Project Euler problems might be right up your alley. They are little programming exercises that start easy and rapidly become harder. Along the way you figure out enough math to make the programming easier, or at least enough to make
11.
by jcdreads 14y ago
Ah. My refusal to read press releases about scientific papers when the original is available bites me again. The press release is definitely less useful, and the quoted coauthor's quote less measured, than the original paper.
12.
by jcdreads 14y ago
It's sarcasm. (viz. George Carlin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGOBm2J4tn0 at about 2:20 in; the whole thing is classic Carlin at his most abrasive.)
13.
by jcdreads 14y ago
The authors do not say "drastically lower our population very quickly" anywhere in the paper. The closest I can see that they come to saying this is in the conclusion, where they talk about, "reducing world population growth and per capita
14.
by jcdreads 14y ago
Full text of the speech: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/wellesley/2012/06/youre_...
15.
by jcdreads 14y ago
Why choose?
16.
by jcdreads 14y ago
_"At any time"? Do you mean "With a court order"?_ A National Security Letter would do just as well, and at least two years of data need to be at the government's disposal. Without addressing the merits of National Security Letters, I shou
17.
by jcdreads 14y ago
http://xkcd.com/933/
18.
by jcdreads 14y ago
Primary source: http://www.quantumnano.at/
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by jcdreads 14y ago
Without addressing the merits of either copyright or patent protection, I believe you're confusing the two. Folks around here tend to believe that software patents are bad; the view that copyright is bad is less widely shared. In fact, op
20.
by jcdreads 15y ago
I was amazed watching the video of Bret V. using a tool like this, but even given those expectations I'm impressed with how cool this is to use. Thank you very, very much for showing us this. (Only such a beautiful specimen deserves such n
21.
by jcdreads 15y ago
This is fantastic! I've been ephemerally plotting my GPS tracks for a few years (though I'm only up to about 1.6M points), but the thought of publishing my tracks on the open internet has always seemed just a little too creepy, even by int
22.
by jcdreads 15y ago
Drivers in most U.S. states (I can only speak for VT, PA, and MA) are required to carry liability insurance in order to drive legally. The amount varies. Robot drivers are a new and unproved technology. After not too many years I'd expect
23.
by jcdreads 15y ago
Anyone thinking of doing Swing programming (or, indeed, Swing programming at all) should check out the seesaw library: https://github.com/daveray/seesaw It makes a great deal of the pain of Swing syntax and boilerplate evaporate in a way
24.
by jcdreads 15y ago
Thank you very, very much for this. Note: Installing failed for me until I replaced git:// with https:// in two places in script/deps. Then it worked.
25.
by jcdreads 15y ago
This is great. I usually tell people that planes fly by pushing air down and backward: down so the airplane doesn't fall and backward so the airplane moves forward. I tell them this because otherwise they completely forget, and jump into a
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by jcdreads 15y ago
Oh man, bugging people in pine with talk was the worst/best. Kids, it was a world in which someone could destroy your email session and spray characters all over the screen just by IM-ing you. Everyone knew how to do it, and everyone chec
27.
by jcdreads 15y ago
...unless Goldman stopped selling derivatives on chemotherapy drugs and instead began to stockpile a large fraction of the available chemotherapy drugs in warehouses in Detroit.
28.
by jcdreads 15y ago
Even if you trust a company not to do you harm with the information they store, there exist entities that can compel them to turn this information over. For example, the information can be (sometimes secretly) subpoenaed by the U.S. govern
29.
by jcdreads 15y ago
Probably worth noting about the author: > Robert A. Muenchen is the author of R for SAS and SPSS Users and, with Joseph M. Hilbe, R for Stata Users. He is also the creator of r4stats.com, a popular web site devoted to helping people lea
30.
by jcdreads 15y ago
My wife had her wallet stolen on the T (in Boston) once, which would have been manageable but for the fact that Massachusetts driver's license ID's were your Social Security number. The thief (or someone) then used her SSN to open a series

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