privong

Thanks. I guess I've shied away from those because I'm often out of cell service when I need directions :) But I should do some test runs to see how they compare.

I use it for a general idea of where to drive. But I don't follow the directions blindly. It seems to equate all "highways", meaning it gives equal weight to interstates and state highw…

I found their other website[0] to be a bit more informative about what the project was actually aiming for. (Of course, the github page is better for working with the code.) It's an interesting (…

I don't think species are classified solely on size. I'm pretty sure juvenile specimens have been discovered and identified as being the same species as the adult specimens. Yes, mistakes ha…

I'm not so sure. I think within the HN circle, it seems this way, but I bet if you go ask a randomly selected sample of people, you'll find they use their tech devices to look up sports stat…

I agree with you that learning the physics is distinct from learning the numerical aspects. However, I think there is value in learning computational techniques early on (and possibly in parallel with…

Yes, I'm finishing my PhD right now in the astronomy dept at UVa (studying galaxy mergers), then moving on to do a postdoc.

> Numerical calculations are powerful, but they're also subject to a whole host of issues related to finite-precision arithmetic; it's quite possible to set up a numerical calculation tha…

It doesn't appear to work with a regular viginia.edu email (at least not if the BTC are supposed to be deposited immediately upon account confirmation). But, Wahoowa! :)

I like that the DOI association is with a tagged release, making it easy to identify specific versions of the repository. In principle, this will make duplication/checking of research results eas…

Interesting that this has appeared here now, since it's been around for quite a while (I first saw colleagues using this nearly 7 years ago). I've only heard good thing about it, though I&#x…

My recollection is that part of the uptake of the Kinect for this sort of hacking corresponded with the developement of an open source driver [0]. I imagine something similar will happen for the Kinec…

I think one could make an analogy with cars. A large fraction of efficency gains have been "lost" to accessories like power windows, additional electronics in the car, etc. A lot of fuel eff…

To be fair, this is often less true for colleges, where there's a stronger emphasis on teaching.

The article states, "Perhaps most importantly, the idea of mesh networking seems to be a fit with our current trend toward decentralization..." I think this isn't really an accurate sta…

> Any idea why these older sims wouldn't create the correct angular momentum in late-type galaxies? My understanding from seeing talks this group has given is the culprit was the same effect I…

For context, this project just published a paper in Nature on this simulation [0] and a preprint is available [1]. One of the reasons this simulation is big news is its use of a new numerical techniqu…

I agree that those things are benefits of dumbphones. But it's not obvious that's what GP was referring to as they used the word "increasingly". The aspect of smartphones vs dumbph…

Preprint is now available: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1418

Why do you say that? The location tracking and call/sms traffic analysis is equally doable with a dumbphone as a with smartphone. Sure, there may be more ways to track a smartphone, but using a d…

The abstract is: Previous simulations of the growth of cosmic structures have broadly reproduced the ‘cosmic web’ of galaxies that we see in the Universe, but failed to create a mixed population of e…

I wish they still made the galaxy player. I'd love to have an android device that was a smartphone in all senses except for the phone.

> I do use DuckDuckGo and love it, but the article does make some good points. To be fair, the article suffers from what the author's main gripe with DDG is – a lack of actual evidence to back…