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emptybits
6,415karma·1,004submissions·November 20, 2012
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Darren Stone, Vancouver, BC, Canada
"Once men turned their thinking over to
machines in the hope that this would
set them free. But that only permitted
other men with machines to enslave
them." - Frank P. Herbert, Jr., 1965
"The programmer, like the poet, works
only slightly removed from pure
thought-stuff. He builds his castles
in the air, from air, creating by
exertion of the imagination."
- Fred P. Brooks, Jr., 1975recent activity (1,004 total)
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Some English background on this saga, for those unfamiliar: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alexander-gro... TL;DR: he's "regarded by some as t…
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> If the problems don't change, then students don't learn as well. Do you mean that students who choose to cheat don't learn as well? (That doesn't garner much sympathy from me.…
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From a purely functional programming perspective, yes. In reality, global state may have changed. So, no. i.e. What we refer to as "the same thing" often isn't , in a non-FP world.…
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> "You have probably paid many AC-3 license fees over the years. AC-3 license fees are part of the cost of TVs, game consoles, and other AV equipment sold in the last 25 years." I'm …
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Sure, we call them chocolate bars in Canada also. The point I meant to make was, whatever we prefer to call those popular/fun/iconic products in the article, they don't represent great …
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The article focuses on a golden age of candy bars more than a golden age of chocolate . Big difference IMO.
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When "perfect" emulation (or pixel-perfect "better" displays) fall short of the real goal. Art. :-)
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Eventually, this might be seen as non-suspicious. Maybe. I hope so. It's quite prudent. BUT for now it's also something only a very, very small percentage of the population would consider …
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I'm not sure the study had much to do with butter. It mentions butter just once but leaves it very unclear how much butter was actually involved (versus "shortening"). The study talks e…
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Any insight into whether matcha drinking causes a higher risk of kidney stones? (Drinking matcha is consumption of powdered tea leaves, unlike nearly all other teas where the goal is to steep and then…
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I suppose the self-employed will have a new level of privilege -- an arrest event will remain exactly what it always was and not a loss of livelihood.
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Thank you. I'm saying the above somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because my gut feeling is that some aspect of interest has been violated in the case of the email owner or related parties. Of course, &q…
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So should we soon expect courts to reject copyright infringement or piracy claims? So says the court in the article: "Electronically transferring data from a server in a foreign country to Google…
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The question to reflect on is: "What is the purpose of fines?" Answers vary by country. There are at least five classic purposes for punishment: (I'm assuming the felon is a company, no…
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For the first time (starting in the fall), Nintendo will be charging subscription fees for its online multiplayer service. So expectations and pressure will be on more than ever. I want to believe.
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What you describe (non-linear) would probably have been superior but in my youth and inexperience over 15 years ago (and pressed with time and code-size constraints) I am sure I did nothing more than …
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I have a pair of friends that are serious tandem riders and they now run their premium touring tandem with Gates Carbon Drive. They switched from chain because, if you didn't know, tandem bikes w…
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I was a programmer on several baseball games on Playstation (1) & Windows. Among my duties was AI. That meant consuming, encoding, and deploying a lot of historic stats. They'd be sliced and …
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Braess' paradox is a little more indirect than that, so an analogy might be: Adding more fish to a pond causes you to catch fewer fish.
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For those inspired by "old cyclists", I encourage you to look at the sport of randonneuring. TL;DR: randonneurs ride in timed, regulated road-coarse events that start at 200 km and work up…
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Your question is addressed in the fourth paragraph at the link: > "Then why 6502? Why not a useful assembly language, like x86? Well, I don’t think learning x86 is useful. I don’t think you’ll…
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> "He said users can visit a page in Facebook’s help center, which provides links to the opt-outs for six data brokers that sell personal data to Facebook." The link provided is: https:&…
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Good on Apple for "completely" fixing this, according to the authors. But am I wrong to wish for more plain-English acknowledgement of the problem and reassurance in Apple's 10.12.2 rel…
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Maybe a better analogy is ... if hearing aids are glasses, these are reading glasses. i.e. off-the-shelf, self-diagnosed, cheap and easy solution for part-time use without getting "medical" …
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Saw the film last night. If you blacked out, then so did I. (Or else we're already only remembering what the heptapods want us to...) Like a lot of good sci fi I think this is one of those movies…
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Simply: a goto never returns while a function call returns to where it was called from. So specifically in the example above, if you called failure-handling functions instead of using goto's then…
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The 68k is still being made in the form of the 680x0-compatible line from NXP. http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/... They're in the "lega…
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> the question literally wanted a number in $ for net worth That is literally not true. The question did not literally ask for a number in $ for net worth. I do agree the questioner may have had …
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> * solving Go (hard) 1. Perfect play from any game position. 2. Proof of perfect play. #1 may be achievable with a sufficiently clever algorithm. (We may suspect it is perfect and may only later p…