pfedor

6 ms·

1.
by pfedor 13y ago
You want per capita, otherwise you'd think China is wealthier than Switzerland. And you want PPP (though it doesn't make that much difference) since that reflects what people can actually afford. If you made $1M a month but the pr
2.
by pfedor 13y ago
For example, Alabama is almost as poor as France or Japan, and Mississippi (the poorest state) is almost as poor as Spain and New Zealand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... http:/&#x
3.
by pfedor 13y ago
For example, Steven Pinker looks into this a little in "The Better Angels of Our Nature", long story short there's nothing conclusive, and a sufficiently motivated person can find reasons to doubt it (e.g., the big drop in cr
4.
by pfedor 13y ago
The author manages to make saving a billion human lives into a morally ambiguous deed: had the people starved, they wouldn't be polluting the planet!
5.
by pfedor 13y ago
Under a "Futarchy", the corn lobby can spend lots of money to "predict" that a sugar tariff will make the country better. To do that they would have to bet a lot of money that the tariff will make the country better (b
6.
by pfedor 13y ago
Specifically, Bronze is a good game to get started, with some game features and a help system designed for beginners.
7.
by pfedor 13y ago
" Questions will be raised about Snowden’s mental balance. Also propaganda." Why? Is it not a fair question to ask whether the guy who is the single source of all the revelations might not be playing with a full deck? The guy w
8.
by pfedor 13y ago
So pretty much your argument boils down to, "such a lookup table cannot exist, therefore any argument using it is irrelevant." Note that even Scott Aaronson disagrees with you in the article you cited. If we were having this deba
9.
by pfedor 13y ago
Thanks for the link. I just read section 4 and I don't really see how it addresses the argument. It mostly seems to argue against the opinion that computer programs cannot be sentient. My point is much weaker: that it is manifestly a
10.
by pfedor 13y ago
So while we're at that, how do the proponents of Turing test respond to the lookup table argument? Say I make a giant lookup table, with keys being all possible conversation prefixes and values being the answers. E.g., h["Hi&quo
11.
by pfedor 13y ago
For example, consider this blog post: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=63 Now ask yourself: how on Earth did the author consider the information about Turing's persecution relevant to the subject at hand?
12.
by pfedor 13y ago
"All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren.
13.
by pfedor 13y ago
If you don't have a connection to the world of physicists you may not realize how huge Mathematica is. I have a friend for whom it is the environment of choice for pretty much everything. Like, when he needs to do some image manipulation,
14.
by pfedor 13y ago
And just in case you weren't perfectly satisfied with the level of mathematical rigor of the article, here is a complete, formal, machine-verified and hyperlinked version of the proof: http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/eulerid.html
15.
by pfedor 13y ago
I think the vast majority of Americans would not object to the government building solidarity and shared values. That is and always has been a core function of the educational system. Really? But Wikipedia tells me that After 1970 the d
16.
by pfedor 13y ago
You actually think that these states would still have slavery? To this day, thirty years after the last country in the world (Mauritania) abolished it?
17.
by pfedor 13y ago
I tried Elance and it worked surprisingly well for me, maybe I was lucky. Email me if you like and I'll give you details of the artist I'm working with and their pricing.
18.
by pfedor 13y ago
The reality is probably that no Linux (or FreeBSD) system in any configuration is secure from an attacker that can run native code in an unprivileged process. There's a lot of web hosting companies which use Linux on their servers?. Are y
19.
by pfedor 13y ago
As http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1400 admits, large-scale entanglement most likely does take place in D-Wave's computer. So now he just argues that their proof of concept prototype is not as efficient as classical devices that hav
20.
by pfedor 13y ago
Good to know, thanks. I'd argue that perl gets it right--as the default behavior, this behavior would gravely violate the principle of least surprise, but for the 0.01% of people who want \d to match ੧, there's no harm to making it availabl
21.
by pfedor 13y ago
Doesn't happen in Perl for me: pfedor@Pawels-iMac:~$ perl -ne 'print "Digit!\n" if /\d/' af 3 Digit! 23fa3 Digit! asdf ١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹ ৩৪৫৬৭৮৯੦੧੨੩੪੫੬੭੮੯૦૧૨૩૪૫ ୧୨୩୪୫୬୭୮ ౨౩౪౫౬౭౮౯೦೧೨೩೪೫೬೭೮೯൦൧൨൩൪൫൬൭൮൯๐๑๒๓๔๕๖๗๘๙໐໑໒໓
22.
by pfedor 13y ago
From what I've read, the best approach seems to be to sit, but also to set a timer to get up and walk around for a minute every half hour or so FWIW, that's exactly what my doctor recommended when I went to see him about back pain. I ask
23.
by pfedor 13y ago
The truth is, D-Wave has done nothing to foster the coherence of their "qubits", and so they have built a very expensive, superconducting, classical computer. There is no quantum trick, actually. Scott Aaronson, the self-described "Chief
24.
by pfedor 13y ago
Say I don't necessarily want to be ripped but I just want to do the minimum amount of exercise to be healthy. So I can go to the gym twice a week and do the program you advocate, or go to the gym twice a week and swim or run on the ellipti
25.
by pfedor 13y ago
For example, isn't it true that the Church of Scientology has been successfully using copyright infringement to quench speech against it?
26.
by pfedor 13y ago
I like C++, I think I know it reasonably well, I've been programming in C++ full time for the last 10 years. I never managed to warm up to Stroustrup's book. I've tried reading it a couple of times. It feels like a schlep. There are many
27.
by pfedor 13y ago
This reminds me of something I witnessed when I worked at Google. There was this long-standing problem, I don't want to go into details but it had to do with websearch indexing and it had gone unsolved for years though it was regularly aff
28.
by pfedor 13y ago
So do you believe that if you take a random sample of (eg) Google engineers, and a random sample of all software engineers, there will be no difference in ability between the two groups? Or do you think there would be a difference but attr
29.
by pfedor 13y ago
The corollary of course being that when you're so far gone that you can't even imagine anyone honestly thinking differently than you--that you're unwilling to even consider arguments in favor of other opinions--that you see what you believe
30.
by pfedor 13y ago
Anyone who thinks they're making sane hiring decisions based on conventional job interviews with developers is deluding themselves. So for example Google, Facebook, Microsoft, are all deluding themselves? Would they be not any worse off

More ›