tmoertel

4 ms·

1.
by tmoertel 16d ago
Another is Kalmia latifolia , the mountain laurel, the state flower of Pennsylvania. According to records at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History [1], "Benjamin Smith Barton (an American botanist in the late 1700s) wrote that in the
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by tmoertel 24d ago
The problem with alternative query languages is that the people who have the most knowledge about creating queries and of the relational domains underlying their businesses are all experts in SQL. Introducing something else, then, means you
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by tmoertel 24d ago
> Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I will give you approximately twenty delightful novels where the prose and the stories ar
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by tmoertel 25d ago
> I also think that we should have mercy for people who’ve made mistakes. Yes. When people make mistakes, they sometimes fall into holes that are hard to climb out of. It is in society’s interest to place ladders in these holes so that t
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by tmoertel 25d ago
I'm not who you asked, but I moved to Pittsburgh for a job, figuring I would earn money for a few years then move to real city. That was over thirty years ago. Turns out, I love the place. Pittsburgh has most of the benefits of a large
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by tmoertel 25d ago
Yeah, most people probably underestimate the effect that several things have on where they end up in life: education, self discipline, hard work, making good decisions, persistence, and, especially, chance. If you screw up majorly on any th
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by tmoertel 26d ago
It's available online for free: https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book And, yep, it's worth a read.
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by tmoertel 1mo ago
> Please, no. Don't blog about things you don't understand yet. Do you really mean this? Or do you mean "When you blog, be honest. Don't pretend to understand things you don't."? Blogging about things you ar
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by tmoertel 1mo ago
You raise an interesting point. I agree that discussing a subject with a knowledgeable mentor, AI or otherwise, is a great way to learn. But I think back-and-forth discussions are limited as a means of testing your mastery of a subject. Esp
10.
by tmoertel 1mo ago
One of the best ways to clarify your thoughts about a subject is to write about it, and one of the best ways to prove to yourself that you understand it is to be able to write about it clearly . Indeed, my primary motivation to write is to
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The Improbable, Inevitable Return of the Suit(bloomberg.com)
3 points by tmoertel 1mo ago|0 comments
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When the Denominator Disappears: FDA's Next Evolution Should Be Causal Inference(realclearhealth.com)
2 points by tmoertel 1mo ago|0 comments
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by tmoertel 1mo ago
They do not call attention to this aspect of their new company, but it is implicit in their business model: https://xcancel.com/JeffDean/status/2085034604172603724 In short, they are in the business of using AI to
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by tmoertel 1mo ago
Do you believe that securing cyberspace is problematic solely because it has military implications? I mean, everything has military implications. That fact doesn't imply, however, that those things are bad for society.
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by tmoertel 1mo ago
Note that Jeff and crew have cleverly structured their company to avoid problematic uses of AI (e.g., weapons or tracking humans). I suspect that many top researchers will want to work there for this reason, and to work with other top resea
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
This is great feedback. Thanks! Let me provide some additional context. Maybe it will change your mind about some of these examples? But just to be clear, I think all of your takes are reasonable. > While I agree with the conclusion, I d
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Thanks for your feedback. I am not sure Mr. Martin agrees with me, however. To be frank, I don’t know how to interpret Martin’s advice. If his concern was, as you suggest, that comments can be abused as a crutch to prop up confusing logic,
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Thanks for your feedback. (I am the author of that article.) I was trying to argue that it’s the code’s job to communicate its authors’ intent for the code itself. To help me clarify my writing, can you tell me what I wrote that led you b
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Mountain mints are also pollinated by beetles—and a bazillion other critters. They are extraordinary pollinator magnets. Beetles, bees, flies, wasps, mosquitos (!), moths, butterflies, ... A recent study of just a few mountain mint species
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Of late I have been reading the writings of some of the United States' founders. I am struck by how sophisticated they are compared to modern writing. Consider this portion of a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to Isaac McPherson on
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
I'm not talking about using a walk as a way to avoid doing real work. I mean doing real work, putting your focus in it, while you walk for, say, at least twenty minutes to really get the blood moving. But don't wait until you&#x27
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Counterpoint: I have been running Fedora Linux on multiple systems for about two decades, including on my daily drivers, and it's been pretty much solid.
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Here's something that worked for me: put your phone in your pocket and go on a design walk . While walking, design the next step in whatever you're working on. Design walks work great with more than one person, too. Aristotle was
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
I don't believe the GP is claiming that the idea of human rights is itself rubbish. Rather, the GP is claiming that what is rubbish is the practice of veering into the topic of human rights whenever a new AI model is announced from C
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Until you replace it with "1" because your title is too long for HN to accept as is.
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
For me, it maps to pandemic, which was midway through my time at GOOG. That's when the COVID-sparked Zero Interest Rate Policy caused the company to hire engineers and PMs like crazy. There were suddenly too many new hires to inculcate
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
Are there any risks associated with NAC supplementation? For example, could long-term usage reduce aptosis and thereby increase risks of developing cancer?
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by tmoertel 2mo ago
But five years ago they had a stronger engineering culture. The old values were rapidly eroding, but some still held.
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by tmoertel 3mo ago
I think it’s important to acknowledge that today U.S. citizens in the bottom economic decile live longer lives and do so with more comfort and convenience than even the wealthiest and most powerful people of 100 years ago. Not even the infa
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by tmoertel 3mo ago
Why do we have legislated cliffs instead of gradients? Because approximately nobody understands lerp. And linear interpolation is the simplest (nontrivial) gradient scheme. Consequently, we get cliffs or, if we're lucky, lookup tables

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