xhedley

9 ms·

1.
by xhedley 5y ago
I was hypothesising the subconscious reason why Douglas Adams would think "42 will do". I find 42 funny for the conscious reasons I stated. It's perfectly possible this did not apply to Douglas Adams. But a hypothesis around
2.
by xhedley 5y ago
But why did Douglas Adams think of 42? My theory is that it is from "times table" memorisation questions. Back in the day in the UK we learned "times tables" at school as a verbal by rote memorisation technique. For eac
3.
by xhedley 5y ago
The book "how to lie with statistics" (1954) was written before tags like /s were invented. Referencing "how to lie with statistics" is an indicator that the author is trying to avoid common pitfalls in statistical
4.
by xhedley 6y ago
If a customer owes money to an electricity company which goes bankrupt, that doesn’t cancel the customer debt. The insolvency firm will sell the debt on for what they can get in order to repay some of the company’s creditors.
5.
by xhedley 6y ago
The daily growth in Britain is -6% to -3% with current British lockdown measures which I believe are stronger than average worldwide. Certainly stronger than pre-Christmas 2020 British measures. In England (Wales Scotland and Northern Irel
6.
by xhedley 6y ago
First question posed to data set: when is the best time to post to Hacker News to maximise expected page rank? Given you posted at your calculated time of 11:00 UTC on a Sunday, will be interesting to see how it does. It’s at 13 right now.
7.
by xhedley 6y ago
The number of ads on YouTube seemed to increase enough recently to be annoying. So I installed uBlock Origin extension on Chrome. It's a great extension - kudos to the developer Raymond Hill. Plus point - I don't get annoying adv
8.
by xhedley 6y ago
The 8 outputs were generated by prompts written by journalists and submitted by an undergraduate. I wonder what the processing cost was - is this approaching consumer available technology? > For this essay, GPT-3 was given these instruct
9.
by xhedley 6y ago
BA British Airways had a bad go live day for Terminal 5 because of parking assignment, baggage handlers having trouble logging onto the system, other staff not having maps, delays in getting staff through security and so on. That’s bad chan
10.
by xhedley 6y ago
Realise that you will be a translator who is paid to understand the technical enough and the business enough that the project can have a conversation. As far as tools and methodologies - you have to use what your customers use to communicat
11.
by xhedley 6y ago
The 17M is the data set from detailed primary care records linked to 5,683 of the deaths recorded in English hospitals in the time period. The data could be improved by linking to more primary care records - but the population of England is
12.
by xhedley 6y ago
Reading the full paper, the population surveyed was people registered for at least one year with General Practice doctors using SystmOne software. That covers 40% of the English population. It is probably safe to assume that almost everyo
13.
by xhedley 6y ago
UK privately-sponsored healthcare specialises in things that you cannot get free from the National Health Service or things where the wait time is long - for example knee surgery. People don’t use private healthcare for emergencies or inte
14.
by xhedley 7y ago
The Verge report says that the Android version was distributed using TestFairy beta testing free version, and that this is limited to 200 users. Assume 25% of the 1600 sites used Android and half of the users would be rejected. But looking
15.
by xhedley 7y ago
UK police forces have an option to offer drivers who speed a speed awareness training course. This costs money but less than the fine and insurance rise from the points. A friend of mine did one after being caught at 33mph in a 30mph zone.
16.
by xhedley 7y ago
The merchant can definitely see whether a card is a debit card or a credit card. The charge structure and chargeback rules are different. A debit card is to spend money you already own, hence why a 14 year old or younger can have one. A c
17.
by xhedley 8y ago
In the case of mobile banking, your smartphone acts as a second factor of authentication. Older style UK banks require you to have a separate authentication card reader for authentication of transfers, and use the card reader to generate
18.
by xhedley 8y ago
The frames on these were aluminium alloy - so no rust!
19.
by xhedley 8y ago
For mindfulness awareness in the moment I would recommend Mindfulness:a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Williams (Oxford University). It takes you through a course in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. MBCT is aimed
20.
by xhedley 8y ago
I find this cool as well. I felt (not thought - I’m talking about gut reaction) that the robot was aware just when looking at the video. I suspect the feeling would be magnified when interacting directly. It’s not just the robotics, althoug
21.
by xhedley 8y ago
Is Bird suggesting a pledge likely to have any impact on the other players in the sidewalk transport market? I live in London UK. We don’t have Bird because electric scooters are illegal to use on both the sidewalk and the highway. Individu
22.
by xhedley 8y ago
Original post has added London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Warsaw. Rome (established 753BC per legend, occupied earlier) is close to a circle.
23.
by xhedley 8y ago
In the UK I believe domestic washer-dryers outnumber standalone washing machines with standalone tumble dryers. I assume this results from smaller property sizes than the US. If you live in a city in a newer property - there is no room fo
24.
by xhedley 8y ago
The guidelines say to use the original title of the link, unless that title is misleading or click bait. The original title was expressing an opinion.
25.
by xhedley 8y ago
This is a really interesting comparison of human brain wetware versus silicon hardware. On the one hand "The fastest synaptic transmission takes about 1 millisecond" which is far slower than the hardware limitation which is basica
26.
by xhedley 9y ago
Indeed. Only 5% of police officers in England and Wales are Authorised Firearms Officers, and AFOs are only issued arms for specific operations. I was surprised that there were only 10 incidents where police shot their firearms in year ende
27.
by xhedley 9y ago
Do work have PowerPoint? Insert Shape Flowchart works OK. You can add line connectors and align shapes and so forth.
28.
by xhedley 9y ago
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every interstellar colony in search of good fortune must be in need of a banker”. Neptune’s Brood also by Charles Stross has slow money transferred between two star systems requiring authenticat
29.
by xhedley 9y ago
I knew that blue eyes were due to light scattering but didn't know the theory that excess collagen resulted in a grey eye colour. I have blue-grey eyes - they look more blue in bright light (pupil contracted) and more grey in dim light
30.
by xhedley 9y ago
Practice with colleagues. I find networking events impossible if I go by myself but fun if I go with someone from work. As far as specific books go - find something that fits your culture. Lots of people from the USA rate Dale Carnegie hig

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