bendykstra

Oh, I really like this idea. I might go with a number greater than two though for the aesthetic reason that 25% of the time, you will select a song that has been played more recently than half of the playlist. With four, you'd be selecting something from the back half of the playlist more than 90% of the time.

Also, there's almost zero food waste (assuming you eat everything) as they provide ingredients in the amounts required by the recipe.

That is known as a misplaced modifier.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/2/1/36/

I'm curious why it is not possible to import data from an SQLite file.

There is humor in the disparity between the resources and people marshalled to resolve the issue (including Bill Gates himself) and the humble origin of the issue, a shower curtain.

The self-incrimination clause was motivated by the practice of forced confessions, which were elicited by threats, indefinite detention and torture. You can get a DNA sample with a cotton swab, but it takes much worse to extract information from someone's mind.

Wow, norms change quickly. I traveled with my golden retriever several times last spring (always asking first by phone) and the drivers were all genuinely surprised when I offered a tip at the end of the ride.

Also, e.g., the Moon landing conspiracy theories involving Hollywood and director Stanley Kubrick.

The amount of competition in the beer world is just incredible. (I just checked with a beer-enthusiast friend and he tried over 1000 different beers just in 2016.) To get people's attention and then to maintain a reputation as a great beer for several years, a beer has to be more than just an extreme example of a certain style. No doubt, though, the ambition to be interesting to aficionados of a given style does push certain beers towards the extreme. These beers are not bad, just niche in their appeal.

There is truth in what you say about the psychological value of scarce beers. However, being hard to acquire cuts both ways in a world of so many alternatives: the beer enthusiasts that I know are quick to dismiss a beer as not worth the effort after one sip.

It's not necessary in any real sense, but a foul-mouthed astronaut who doesn't swear isn't a foul-mouthed astronaut. It's a trait that works well with the character's irreverent attitude.

USPS is especially bad. Google 'how to talk to a human at USPS' for an illustration of their approach to customer service. Then know that the advice on the first page of links is all obsolete. USPS is plugging the 'security flaws' in their customer support system as quickly as people can find them. However, there are other options. When I recently had a problem with a package, I was finally able to talk to a person by first calling Amazon. The Amazon employee connected me using a secret number.

On what grounds?

Interesting predictions:

1. Exercise videos

2. A work environment reminiscent of the world of 1984

"Usual office rush. At 10, we salesmen all gathered in Television Hall, where the president of the company gave us a fight talk. He is in Chicago, but his three-foot jaw on the huge screen made him seem to be with us in the room. (...) They say around the office that we are being watched for yawns and wandering eyes, and that each one of us is being rated by the personnel vice-president on our early-morning attitude."

3. Closed-circuit television in security systems

4. Speed cameras

> If Hillary Clinton had won, the same kinds of people on the other side would be attacking 538 for being too bullish on Trump.

In fact, that very thing did happen in the week leading up to the election, so sure were some that Clinton would win. There was a raft of articles nitpicking the model, particularly the adjustments that it applied to polls and the level of uncertainty that it assumed.

There were other issues as well.

Decommissioning[1]

With a total of 438 malfunctions during its operational lifetime from 1964 to 1972, the reactor at McMurdo proved to be an unreliable source of power generation, available only 72% of the time. Because of this, in May of 1972, it was determined by an independent assessment from the Bechtel Corporation that the PM-3A was not cost effective and that replacement with modern diesel-electric generators would require less staff and would also be more reliable.

1. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/reid2/

I have had Spotify for about a year and have never had to connect Facebook.

The article fails to mention that the genie lamp configuration relies on additional "point weights," which are blocks of zero height and width and non-zero weight. In the figure, those are represented by arrows.

http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22...

His point is that Apple should show the energy consumption rate in addition to the percentage indicator, just as cars show fuel consumption as mpg and fuel remaining as a percentage.

The disclaimer might be new, but not the product placement. The first season of Netflix's House of Cards, which aired in 2013, had an obnoxious amount. It even made its way into the dialogue, turning one scene into a 10 second ad.

"Is that a PS Vita. What games does he have?"

"All of them."

"I have a console at home that I play to relax. I could use one of these for the car!"

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/dsbaldwin32/clips/hou...

It wasn't until 1983 that half of American daily newspapers included some color[1]. It was probably not economical before that time to print the catalogs in color. And if you're not going to print them in color, it doesn't make sense to capture the images in color either.

1. https://www.quora.com/When-and-why-did-newspapers-start-prin...

Tesla is a unit of magnetic field strength. Hertz is a unit of frequency. Siemens is a measure of electric conductance. Try to find an SI unit that isn't also a company or product.

Trademarks aren't about owning a word, only about having exclusive use of it within a certain domain. If Instagram is successful, you will still be allowed to use the SI unit to quantify mass. You won't be able to market a competing product or service with the same name.

That reminds me of the photocopier that used a very poorly chosen image compression algorithm. It would sometimes substitute similar looking characters to save space. A $7000 figure in a budget might become $9000 and a person looking over the document would have no indication that the '9' had been cut and pasted from somewhere else on the page.

Google Voice transcription often makes easily detectable mistakes that I can mentally correct using context. Smarter, context-aware mistakes might be worse, if they are also more difficult to detect.

Unsurprisingly, those turned out to be fabrications. Regardless, these models aggregate dozens to hundreds of polling organizations. If Monmouth tried to 'create a narrative,' as described in the purported memo it would just end up looking out of step and would lose credibility.

> The "leaked memo" is a small test of readers' credulity. Written in apocalyptic terms, with strange capitalization ("the Liberal base is demoralized — but will become more enthusiastic the more Hillary is seen as an iconoclast who will overturn the last foundations of Western Culture"), it was uploaded to Scribd by a pro-Trump website with the confidence-inspiring name of RealTrueNews. For a short while, it was credited to Nate Silver; his name was blacked out, rendering it slightly less odd that someone who did not work for Monmouth was credited on a Monmouth polling memo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09...

Saul Griffith[1]. There's also Herbert Stein's Law: Trends that can't continue, won't.

[1] http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/11/its-not-exponential-its-sig...

The internet has made it very easy to shield ourselves from the arguments of people with differing views. Disclaimers such as this are just another way for us to filter what we read and further isolate ourselves ideologically. Who cares who said it so long as what they said has merit? Conversely, a healthy skepticism is always valuable, regardless of the source.

"Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…"

Jonathan Swift (1710)

Postscript: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/09/nyregion/dormant-fire-hydr...

It's the word 'also.' Its position at the start of the clause sets up the expectation that the activity also does something, rather than others.

My high school physics teacher worked at Kodak's research labs on CCDs, including some that were for use in "specialized applications," which I assume to mean spy satellites†. He said that he had quit when Kodak decided to stop shooting themselves in the foot and shot themselves in the head instead. That would have been the early 90s, I think. I don't have any specific mismanagement stories, but I'll send you his email address (the most recent that I could find.) I always wished that he would talk about it in more detail and now that it is some years later, maybe he will.

† He told us one fun story. One of his research papers had been cleared by the censors for publication and accepted by a scientific journal. However, just before the journal went to print, the censors changed their minds. It was too late to fix the layout, so the edition was released with a sheaf of blank pages in the middle. He said that it was the proudest anyone had ever been of some blank paper.

Edit: Apparently, there is no way to private message an HN user. If you have a Reddit account or similar, I can pm you there.

Oh, you are right. That is actually a particle filter. I'm sorry, I studied both on the same day and misremembered which one I had implemented.