pavedwalden

10 ms·

1.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
I loved the India/China border sub-plot, both as a fun story and as a metaphor for geopolitics. At the end of the book no faction of elites is clearly winning, they're just hashing out The Line Of Actual Control.
2.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
I've heard him say that REAMDE was his attempt to write an airport paperback. I don't think he succeeded there, but Termination Shock does work as a light thriller so maybe he was taking a second swing.
3.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
I think the moon theory was almost right, but I didn't see any reference to insects keeping the light source to one side or the other. The researchers seem to think that insects orient as if the brightest thing they see is "up&quo
4.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
"valves" is a good short answer. If you want a long explanation, this video gets into a lot of details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdD0yMS40a0
5.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
When I worked in an office it was much easier to casually ask for quick help. It was often pretty obvious whether a senior engineer was busy and focused or between tasks, checking email etc. and the overhead/friction of these ten-secon
6.
by pavedwalden 3y ago
I use Siri just for playing music, setting alarms, and reminders, but even there I run into bugs on a regular basis. One day she stopped being able to find songs from Apple Music, but could still play anything I'd saved to my phone (wa
7.
by pavedwalden 5y ago
Businesses with high chargeback rates might get rejected by some payment processors, but there's usually another one willing to take them on in exchange for higher fees.
8.
by pavedwalden 5y ago
Interesting way of looking at it. I don't know if the marketing value alone could justify the $100m price, but when you think about a 30 second Super Bowl ad being $6m and compare that to all the discussion and news coverage generated
9.
by pavedwalden 5y ago
Thanks for supplying the fact-check I was looking for. I think I've been seeing headlines about this "discovery" for over a decade, always presented as if it's a promising new technique but obviously there must be some r
10.
by pavedwalden 6y ago
Point taken, as far as the scale of his theft. Myhrvold is still a villain in my eyes, but OP overstated things.
11.
by pavedwalden 6y ago
There's a lot about this in Michael Lewis' "The Fifth Risk". The most maddening part is that the company lobbying to weaken the National Weather Service can't replicate much of what the government is doing here and
12.
by pavedwalden 6y ago
I think the only long-term solution is cultural. Different cultures have different relationships to intoxicants, and they can change over time. Over the last 60 years in America, drunk driving "high-functioning" alcoholism has bee
13.
by pavedwalden 6y ago
Among the many other ways our system amplifies recidivism, it's horrifying how common it is for police and prison guards to strike people in the head during confrontations.
14.
by pavedwalden 7y ago
The explanation that iOS users are subsidizing all other Anki users with that price somehow made it easier for me to swallow than if I viewed it as mere price-gouging.
15.
by pavedwalden 7y ago
There's an edX course about scientific illustration that looks interesting: https://www.edx.org/course/drawing-nature-science-and-cultur...
16.
by pavedwalden 7y ago
Originally, Google was very effective at looking at the interconnections of content people had put online and using that to infer which pages were most relevant. SEO tactics immediately started gaming this system to create false signals of
17.
by pavedwalden 7y ago
It was called "Send Me to Heaven" https://www.wired.com/2013/09/send-me-to-heaven-app/
18.
by pavedwalden 7y ago
That reminds me of this very cool video from a gaze-tracking study of someone walking on rough terrain: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8bzdr8/gaz...
19.
by pavedwalden 8y ago
I got very interested in chess after downloading the 'Magnus Trainer' app. I hadn't particularly been looking to improve my chess playing (I knew the rules but rarely played and had never studied strategy before), but I'
20.
by pavedwalden 8y ago
Thanks for making that game! When I was trying to learn better rhythm, I found it really interesting. I never got very good at it, but it was an engaging tool.
21.
by pavedwalden 8y ago
Could you wrap the cardboard in aluminum foil?
22.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
If someone worked for Halliburton, even just as a secretary, I'd link less of them and might let them know it. Given Disney's influence on copyright law, I could see Doctorow putting all Disney employees in the 'enemy' c
23.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
That simulation reminds me of the flash game 'QWOP'
24.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
Poorly cared for, pets can do an epic amount of damage to a property (getting the cat piss smell out of flooring is more than just a few dollars). Do you believe that landlords who forbid water beds are also misers who deny others small joy
25.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
Maybe what usaphp is getting at is that the AI could still gain an advantage by doing a set of actions much faster than humanly possible in just a fraction of a second as long as it kept its total number of actions that minute below the cap
26.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
http://www.theonion.com/article/report-stating-current-year-...
27.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
FWIW, I was drawn in by the term Spaced Repetition because I like Anki in theory but hate the UI
28.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
kefka's comment appears* to be carefully worded to comment only on the situation she finds herself in, and does not make any assertions about her state of mind. *does HN indicate when a comment has been edited?
29.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
Although their (commendable, IMO) limits on data collection may be a handicap, I think the extremely narrow Siri API is a bigger problem. At first I thought Apple was behind Amazon in terms of opening up the possibilities of using voice com
30.
by pavedwalden 9y ago
> capitalizing on public infrastructure for far too long without giving anything back. Does amazon not pay taxes?

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