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bjd2385

131 karma · joined June 23, 2015

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bjd2385··on LaTeX Coffee Stains (2009)
They should make the scale of ``lightness'' by creams too; i.e. 1 cream, 2 cream, etc. and by roast as well. At least...that's what I would do if I knew enough LaTeX to write a package.
bjd2385··on LaTeX Coffee Stains (2009)
Love it! Any thoughts on supporting different shades too? I like extra cream.
bjd2385··on Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?
I'll approach this from a different direction. I currently work cleaning a meat room in a local market; machines,floors, scraps and such. It's a dirty job.

But if I could have any job in the world, it'd be what I spend every other hour not on shift doing, and that's programming and solving problems.

bjd2385··on Philae Found
What's that rather straight `rod`-like protrusion to the lower-left? Looks like some kind of antenna.
bjd2385··on The neurology of self-awareness
Makes a lot of common sense. The more I read about stuff like this the more ``common-sense" Nature seems. I mean, having this near- or far-future predictive ability gives a species a real advantage among others that don't.
bjd2385··on The neurology of self-awareness
I like this comment. Honestly it makes sense; that is not to say that philosophy doesn't have a place in science, but I would liken it to writing a website in assembly as opposed to JS, etc.
bjd2385··on The Myth of RAM (2014)
Now I wonder what would happen to our time complexities if we were near a black hole...
bjd2385··on An Interesting SETI Candidate in Hercules
The nonsense that looms in this story's wake is sickening. I couldn't even finish the article. It's nothing more than an attention-grabber. Funding comes from public support, so as long as astronomers and writers capture the imagination and attention/awareness of the public, i.e. looking up, the more relevant and important the `dry` research underneath will appear in Congress, or to those overseeing grants, etc.
bjd2385··on MIT Creates material that can remember its original shape
I'm tired of hearing about every little thing MIT does. Good for you! Great!
bjd2385··on 4 a.m. Is the Most Productive Hour
Funny, I'm reading this at 4am.
bjd2385··on Let's Write an LLVM Specializer for Python
This is neat. I can't wait to give it a try
bjd2385··on China Tops U.S. in Supercomputers
Please excuse my ignorance in this area, I was just wondering - why does it matter so much who has the biggest and baddest supercomputer? Shouldn't that which we process on them matter more?

A while back I recall reading rumors that China didn't even know what to process on their Tianhe-2. That kind of makes a supercomputer look like a pile of hardware, no matter how well it's organized or engraved.

bjd2385··on There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts
They're dropping for various reasons, I'm sure. But first and foremost because a bachelor's degree isn't worth anything anymore. Both my sister and my father have Bachelor's degrees and my dad's a janitor and my sister's a nurse. Granted, a nurse isn't that bad, but cleaning up people's feces on top of everyone in the practice being against her going to school to become a doctor (so she doesn't have to "ask permission" or clean up after people anymore) is a disgrace. And for my dad -- he's working with the lowest of the low. It's just awful that someone can bury themselves in 100k of debt to barely make more than minimum wage and clean up shit.
bjd2385··on There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts
My mother is an adjunct math professor at three universities in the Western NY area. She teaches 7 classes to support the family while she's also going for her PhD (she's got like a 3.98 GPA or something btw).

The thing that gets me is that we look around and the campuses have millions to put up for new buildings and infrastructure and sports, etc. But here they can't give my mother a full time job with benefits.

Education is nothing more than an industry. They don't care if I pass or succeed, as long as they've got a job at the end of the day. I'm convinced of that.

bjd2385··on A game made with CSS/HTML only
If you have a touch screen this game is really easy.
bjd2385··on Views of the Solar System
Damian is using cutting edge equipment and processing software, so it's no wonder he's got such great results. Many times it's more about the equipment than the observer; give an observer the necessary tools and they shall do wonders with enough motivation, experience and willingness to learn. Nevertheless, his images are great, and I've looked over them many times in the past.
bjd2385··on Computing 10,000x more efficiently (2010) [pdf]
I read that book recently. It was alright, seemed a bit far-fetched to me, however. I mean, obviously we're moving along at a fast pace, but by the time just _some_ of us (let alone _all_) experience the author's projections we'll probably be in the real-life Star Trek era.
bjd2385··on How Literary Fame Happens
I don't think there's a reasonable explanation. While it's not totally chaotic, I think a lot of it is just politics and reputation. After all, there are plenty of names in programming, mathematics, physics, and even journalism, that come to mind, and I would certainly buy their books before others to see what all of the hype is about. Very rarely do I find myself taking chances with 'unproven texts' that haven't been 'accepted' at-large to learn from.

What I took away was that becoming immortal in text, in the minds of following generations, is every literary scholar's, or scholars', dream in general. We all want to matter. We don't want to be caught up in useless things, unless being immortal doesn't matter to you.

bjd2385··on Raspberry Pi 2 Cluster Assembly Tutorial
I think this would be a cool project for someone who wants to fiddle with a desktop "super"-computer with multiple nodes. I've been interested in getting started or exploring with this kind of distributed computation, and I'm assuming that starting off I wouldn't be totally concerned with what it's capable of in comparison to a regular full-scale desktop but rather if I can get it to work. Beyond that, I would extend my sights to getting a couple desktops and trying it on a large system.
bjd2385··on How new 'white space' rules could lead to an urban super-Wi-Fi
I agree. It'd be great to have more frequency bands, but if we're all on the same wifi, what if someone starts downloading obscene amounts of data?
bjd2385··on Brains Sweep Themselves Clean of Toxins During Sleep (2013)
This is fascinating!
bjd2385··on SpaceProbes
Their site says it's a catalog of "the active human-made machines that freckle our solar system and dot our galaxy." Obviously it's not really the "galaxy," per se, considering we only have one probe that's actually left the solar system so far (Voyager 1). There are a number of inactive probes.
bjd2385··on SSD Prices in a Free Fall
I bought a $50 1TB HDD from Newegg for my gaming desktop (which I of course do not use for gaming) about 6 months ago. I've looked again and they're the same price. It appears SSDs are still hundreds of dollars for the same capacity. I won't be buying an SSD until they're under $100/Tb.
bjd2385··on SSD Prices in a Free Fall
I used to have roommates that were intense gamers (blew thousands of dollars on new GPUs and other desktop gaming parts per semester) and all they talked about were SSDs. SSDs are pretty big in gaming.
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