NAFV_P

> If you are unsure to which class you belong, then consider the following two statements. (i) The point of solving problems is to understand computation better. (ii) The point of understanding computation is to become better able to solve problems.

Like the original statement in the article, your paraphrasing strikes me as being egg and chicken. I think most mathematicians and hackers would sit on the fence.

Has anyone come across the Neo-Doom megawad?

There is one level with a Cathedral.... you walk in through the entrance to see a few dozen imps standing at pews, and there are a couple of Knights of Hell and a Baron on the front stage giving a sermon.

The mock up was pleasingly realistic, then I noticed that the crucifix on the front wall was inverted.

> That reminded me that Descent is the only game to really* make me feel nauseous - great game though!*

What a coincidence, I mentioned Descent's notorious nausea inducing properties on HN a few days ago.

The version I played was on the Playstation One. Because I was resident in Britain I was playing an incomplete NTSC to PAL conversion. This resulted in noticeable object warping if you did a barrel roll. I swear it intensified the effects.

By contrast DOOM on either PS1 or PC wouldn't make me sea-sick at all.

If you are referring to "the two cultures", what would those cultures be?

> The code on most of SpaceX's spacecrafts is in C++.

A few weeks ago I found out that the B-2 Spirit now flys on olde C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#Fur...

> I think it is rather embarrassing that most code written in modern languages performs worse on today's computers than native code running on 1980s machines.

Are there any sources to support this statement, or are you drawing on personal experience?

> I was up to 900 mg/day at my peak.

How many cups would that equate to?

> Not very Von Neumann was a genius in every single form of the word. The only historical figures I feel safe comparing him to is Sir Isaac Newton (which is a stretch Newton is really beyond compare).

Newton is overrated, and has been for too long.

The mathematician Greg Chaitin thinks that Newton's contemporary Liebniz is superior in intellect.

> That's a vacuous statement. She said "big" gaps. And I'm saying that she's making errors that no one with a background in CS (e.g. a degree) ought to make. I have no idea what your agenda is in lavishing all this unnecessary praise on Morgan Phillips, but it's gross. Please stop.

Is your name Linus Torvalds by any chance?

IIRC RMS has a good background in physics.

Seymore Cray worked with radios during WWII and had a very strong background in electrical engineering. He had to rely on Maxwell's equations to analyse signal paths [0]. The bottom anecdote [1] I found highly amusing, very "egg and chicken".

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray#Technical_approach...

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/craytalk...

> I've got a CS degree and 10 years of industry experience, and I'm still at clueless as she is and probably more.*

Realising that you are clueless keeps you on your toes.

Henri Poincare [0] is sometimes called "the last polymath" in mathematical circles, specialisation in subjects increases geometrically with time. Modern CS I would say dates back to the 1930's with guys like Neumann, Turing and Church. A mere 80 years and the subject has just ballooned.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9

> That seems a bit semantic to me. She's basically saying "I never studied or worked extensively with X, so I have knowledge gaps about Y [which is tightly related to X, and often comes by studying X]".

You can apply that to professionals in certain scenarios. Referring to my original quote: “Every time I'd come across some concept, some data structure in the kernel, I'd have to go educate myself on it.” The only difference between someone who has a formal CS background and someone who doesn't, is that the former is given a lot of guidance by one of the most sophisticated data processors on Earth - the human brain, the latter has to bootstrap their knowledge.

You didn't mention your area of research, I would be interested in knowing.

> I mean, I appreciate the concept of what she's doing here, but that self-assessment sounds reasonable to me.

I would use "realistic", as opposed to "reasonable", look hard enough and you will see that everyone has gaps in their knowledge.

Phillips' on github:

https://github.com/mrrrgn

> “I have all this experience but I suffer from a thing that almost every person who doesn’t have an actual background in CS does: I have islands of knowledge with big gaps in between,” she said. “Every time I'd come across some concept, some data structure in the kernel, I'd have to go educate myself on it.”

I get the impression that Morgan Phillips avoids saying she has a background in CS due to not holding a degree in it. I think she has every right to state that she does have a background (being classified as a hacker goes without saying).

Now, I am going to compile her poetry.

Interesting, the link you posted refers to a "vomitorium", as opposed to a "vomitarium". I think the latter is a modern colloquialism that hasn't yet been adequately defined, but it sounds great.

[0] is a good alternative.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_gravity_aircraft

Potentially looks like a grand vomitarium (and I am terrified of heights), thank you. I've noticed you can download it on the site posted, I'll have to give it a go.

Second paragraph in the article > YouTube is about to begin testing the new service – which will charge people to watch and listen to music without ads, and download songs to their mobile devices – within the next few days, initially within Google.

Make a note of the wording: "watch and listen", as opposed to "listen and watch".

Looking at the decay chain of U-238 [0], some of the descendants of radon-222 have extremely short half-lives.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238#Radium_series_.28or...

The video did make me feel quite queasy, but it is not as bad as Descent [0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)

I am replying to the last paragraph of darsham's comment.

  z = x + i*y = e^(a + i*b) = e^a*(e^(i*b)) = e^a(cos(b)+i*sin(b))

Both sin and cos are many to one functions. In the equation above, replacing

  b

with

  b + 2*pi*t

where t is any positive or negative integer, would result in the same complex number.

Dare I mention hypercomplex numbers?

The first ones you come across are quaternions, represented by set H. Something I learned a few years ago, in set C there are two solutions to x^2+1=0, but in set H the set of solutions forms a Lie group, or basically an infinite number of solutions.

I gooooogled it [0], the patent was filed on 10/11/2009 (I'm British, so read that as dd/mm/yyyy). Some of the other patents listed go back a few years [1].

[0] http://www.google.com/patents/US8255379 [1] https://www.google.com/patents/US5889522

> I've calculated free education, it would basically collapse our government's finances.

Free, useless education is costly, but in the long run, useful education works to the benefit of governments.

Yeah, I found this old chestnut:

http://www.nostarch.com/assembly2.htm

After reading this article, I was reminded of [0]. The Earth's core is hot due to the presence of radioactive isotopes, both the uranium-238 and thorium-232 series occur in substantial quantities. This could alter the chemical composition of the water present due to radiolysis.

Anyone up for a hydrogen peroxide cocktail?

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

> That's the style in C-like languages.

That style is in many cases inefficient.

  /* summation of successive integers */
  /* don't worry, this should not cause overflow in a 32-bit signed integer type */
  volatile int i=0;
  int j=0;
  for( ; i<65536; i++) /* ++i is better suited to this scenario */
    j+=i;

Being declared as volatile, the compiler will not attempt to optimise the for loop and change the code that increments i in the preamble from postfix to prefix. I will admit this is an extreme example, but I often see examples on the internet of simple for loops written in this manner when prefix is more suitable and simpler for the cpu to execute. Postfix increments of integer types involve making a local copy (y) of the variable to increment (x), then incrementing x and returning y. Prefix increments merely involve incrementing x. The former method is rather expensive.

On the other hand, it would make sense to use postfix on something like [0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff's_device#Original_version

Disclaimed: I know sweet f-a about cryptography, and was expecting 100% of this pdf to go straight over my head.

On the other hand, why is the author using "i++" in a preamble of a for loop?

I've been watching [0] for the past ten minutes or so.

Fucking hell, individual instances of radon-222 are more predictable.

[0] http://bitcointicker.co

> Carrier's hypothesis is interesting and well argued, but only time will tell if it stands up to further scrutiny.

I have experience of martial arts, on and off, for fifteen years. A few months ago I was having a go on a punch bag, which weighed over 100 pounds. The elbow strikes I was swinging at it would make it rise about 4 to 5 feet in the air, almost above the fulcrum. I was afraid that I might rip the rope it was attached to.

If I were to elbow this hypothesis it would never stand up again, and unlike my fist it wouldn't break.