kenfox

11 ms·

1.
by kenfox 17d ago
The computers at the time had very little ram. The IBM System/360 didn’t get 1MB until 1968. I suspect a lot of programs were I/O bound just to be able to work at all. Most modern engineers cannot conceive of doing anything useful
2.
by kenfox 1y ago
System prompts themselves have many contradictions. I remember hearing an Anthropic engineer (possibly Lex Fridman's interview with Amanda Askell) talking about using exaggerated language like "NEVER" just to steer Claude to
3.
by kenfox 1y ago
I'm not sure what article about looting is being referenced, but NPR did interview author Vicky Osterweil about her book "In Defense of Looting". It would be extremely surprising to hear that NPR endorsed looting as a form of
4.
by kenfox 1y ago
I wonder if the low literacy rate is partly an artifact of non-English speakers. The 54% stat seems to come from PIAAC which only evaluates English literacy in the US https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/faq.asp The
5.
by kenfox 5y ago
Your 10 to 15% figure is total transmission and distribution loss from producer to consumer. If you scale up the transmission distance only, the total shouldn't change much. There are several studies referenced in this course http:&#x
6.
by kenfox 5y ago
The author assumes we will only ever use raw materials on Earth. There are definitely impractical fantasies about asteroid mining in sci-fi, but the author ignoring the cost of getting things off Earth means the article is just a strawman.
7.
by kenfox 5y ago
Coal and oil formation would not occur due to lifeforms able to digest trees. It would be extraordinarily difficult to reset to those primordial conditions. I don't think an asteroid hit could do it.
8.
by kenfox 6y ago
The nuclear family is an American white cultural norm. It may also be a norm for other groups. You are seeing black as the opposite of white and blackness as defined as the opposite of every white norm. That seems pretty extreme; a deductiv
9.
by kenfox 8y ago
A perfect vacuum is a perfect insulator. There are capacitors that use vacuum.
10.
by kenfox 8y ago
You think there is a conspiracy to supress detailed global temperature measurements that were taken before 1880? It's interesting that we have ways to estimate global temperature before 1880, but that marks the start of modern record k
11.
by kenfox 9y ago
North America is a large place. There are at least a half dozen different climates. Michigan has excellent variety with apples, peaches and cherries for example, but bananas are limited to Dole or Chiquita's Cavendish. Perhaps the avai
12.
by kenfox 9y ago
The language that scientists have used is significantly less confident than yours (from http://www.projectmidas.org/blog/calving/ ): > Dr Martin O’Leary: “Although this is a natural event, and we’re not aware of
13.
by kenfox 12y ago
The 2 volumes of authoritative X documentation came from Digital Press. X Window System by Scheifler, Gettys and Newman. X Window System Toolkit by Asente and Swick. If you read further in the acknowledgements that you quote, you'll se
14.
by kenfox 12y ago
You are seriously trying to add up all the O'Reilly books and compare that to documentation published by NeXT? I think I still have my books at home somewhere. They were by Digital Press if I recall.
15.
by kenfox 12y ago
The X documentation was 2 volumes: 5 inches total. If you throw in Motif, Display Postscript (which came out in early 90s on SGI) and GL, it's still under a foot. I never had NeXTSTEP manuals, but I did have the OPENSTEP box set which
16.
by kenfox 12y ago
Author here. That's a nice trick to put the animations side-by-side. Thanks! I had looping versions of the images, but changed them to stop because it seemed confusing to not clearly see the initial and ending states. Refreshing the pa