dehowell

Not true. Links from daringfireball.net to older episodes of the Talk Show are still intact:

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/09/30/the-talk-show-61

I bet this will be possible whenever a PC driver for Kinect becomes available:

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/ControllerManip...

About a year ago, I was working on a machine learning problem. I had a lot of training data I wanted to manually classify, so I put together a Mathematica interface for the data that would let me browse the training set and assign classifications from a USB gamepad. It was pretty straightforward... only took an hour or two to implement, and it sure beat classifying with mouse clicks!

You've got to get some statistical mechanics on this list. One would have a very difficult understanding quantum field theory without at least some experience considering phase transitions in more familiar settings.

Feynman's Statistical Mechanics is a pleasant read: http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Mechanics-Lectures-Advance...

I used to be an experimental particle physicist, so I've certainly got some bias here, but I really think learning particle physics and the Standard Model is worth while. Halzen and Martin is a VERY good textbook and an excellent preparation for studying quantum field theory.

http://www.amazon.com/Quarks-Leptons-Introductory-Particle-P...

Yes, it is expensive. But it is very well written and thorough.

Also, I think it's always important to mention in these conversations that most physicists don't take string theory seriously. From the outside, it looks like the exciting frontier of modern physics. But that's more about Brian Greene's skill in marketing himself than string theory's explanatory value.

That being said, the Fabric of the Cosmos is a good layman's survey of the modern physics landscape:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_the_Cosmos

Just bear in mind that Greene makes a lot of claims that aren't experimentally justified in chapters 12 and onward.

Don't you have to give mpg123 an explicit path to an mp3 file? dhun lets you play mp3 files by searching for them, through the Spotlight database.

Anyone who likes this should also check out mpd:

http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki

More work to configure, but also works on Linux. There's a wonderful ncurses interface called ncmpc as well. mpd + ncmpc has been my iTunes in a terminal window for years.

Wrong book, dude. You're thinking about Of Mice and Men.

Z bosons decay into a lepton (electron, muon, or tau particle) and its anti-particle. Those decay products pass through a magnetic field and eventually collide with a material that absorbs all of their energy. Measuring the path of the leptons (in particular, the deflection caused by the magnetic field) allows you to determine their momentum. The intensity of the collision with the stopping material is used to determine the energy.

Knowing the energy and momentum allows one to calculate the path. Gravitational forces are also acting on those particles, and any changes in their paths caused will change the final calculated mass.

Where is Be now?

With known equations, then yes, dimensional analysis is essentially just a form of bookkeeping that helps you verify your math as you go.

But once you get into using quantum field theory to study new systems, the standard approach is to concoct a conservation of energy equation by summing terms, where each term is a combination of the system's variables with units of energy.

From there, you can discretize the coordinates and predict the existence of various particles (or pseudo-particles, depending on what kind of system you're describing) and their dynamics.

> Start putting stuff in likely equations where the units work out to the desired answer.

Working physicists call this 'dimensional analysis' and it's pretty much the foundational skill of theoretical physics.

I couldn't agree more. Grant money is precious. Instead of spending three or four grad student salaries to pay a programmer a competitive wage, it makes more far more sense to fund three or four students on research assistantships where they have time to learn Perl.

No longer true. Indiana is mostly observing DST as of a couple of years ago.

Fraternity membership is voluntary. Race isn't. "Frat" is not analogous to a racial slur.

Many retailers tack an extra $1 charge when you use a bank card as a debit card... so I always run it as credit.

Well, if 18 year olds are good soldiers because they aren't fully mature, why not allow 14 year olds to be soldiers? Or 8 year olds for that matter... after all, as African warlords have shown, even a small child can be a great soldier with enough cocaine.

I'm so pissed that I upvoted you, now that I've seen your contributions to other threads. But hey, you managed to finally make a comment that didn't call someone gay or disparage gay people... maybe some positive reinforcement will help you grow up. Good job!

But yes, I can't for the life of me understand why someone would want to use TwinLisp.

Yes, but be careful to stay on Nurse Ratchett's good side.

Yes, the parents of Mitchell Henderson are indeed pussies. It's unbelievable that they could be so thin skinned about a few harmless prank calls... come on, it's only the suicide of their child we're talking about!

Being outraged by a problem is not synonymous with wanting the government to fix it. Bringing attention to a problem is not synonymous with begging for new laws.

No. Even though particle physics gets all the media attention, theories like this (and string theory for that matter), are shallow in comparison to statistical mechanics and thermodynamics.

It's exciting to find out what the smallest building blocks look like, but all the real structure in the universe arise from the interactions... and statistical mechanics addresses the interactions at all scales.

Modifications to our understanding of the smallest scales will trickle up to stat mech and thermo, but statistical mechanics is the true heart of physics.

There are two ways you can look at an aphorism such as this "brick wall" business. Either:

1. These words of wisdom are a useful way to motivate myself when things are rough.

2. These words of wisdom should be used as a criteria for judging other people.

I think it's a damn nasty metaphor only when you apply it to someone other than yourself. Let me put it this way... we should celebrate those people who have pushed past whatever tremendous barriers they found in their way, but we should never look down on those who tried and failed.

Probability of success in many areas of life is at least partially dependent on attitude... and as cheesy and vapid as they may sometimes sound, I will take whatever comfort and confidence I can from these sorts of inspirational messages when I come across them.

Nonsense. You're talking about politicians jumping on a bandwagon that earned them cheap family values points, which is neither surprising, nor indicative of the attitudes of liberals in general.

Yes, but being the market leader is meaningless unless your site actually generates revenue. YouTube's founders are in a nice position now, but as I recall, Google is still saying that they have no idea how to make money with YouTube.

If cutting out the gamer videos helps Vimeo make money serving the niche they feel passionate about, more power to 'em.

Wait, are you saying that Hacker News is left leaning? I don't know, I think there's enough diversity of political opinion around here to prevent a broad characterization one way or the other.

Umm, you can type regular HTML tags in a Markdown document. It parses just fine.

In the best of all worlds, this is the best of all possible comments.

Oh, man... I spent a happy fourth and fifth grade dialing into Richmond, VA area BBSes to download shareware games. Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, and many others... That lasted until my older brother got a dial up account with his university and let me surf the net with lynx on the family 386.

If you're a Firefox user, check out the "It's All Text!" extension. It lets you edit any text area in the external editor of your choice. For instance, I'm composing this comment in vim.

The download page at mozilla.com claims that it's hard to get working on Mac OS X, but that's actually not true. Skim through the comments... someone explains how do to it.

My favorite dirt cheap (but nutritious) dinner is mujadarrah.

1 1/2 c. lentils (rinsed) 3/4 c. rice (rinsed) 1 onion 6 Tbsp. olive oil

Slice the onion into 1/4 inch thick rings. Fry them in the oil over medium heat for 15 minutes. They'll be kind of ropy when they're done, at which point you should take them off the heat. While the onions are cooking, put the lentils and 1 quart of water in a medium to large saucepan over medium high heat. Get the water boiling and cook the lentils uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. Once the lentils have started to soften up, add the rice, a little salt, and a lot of pepper. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Once the water is all absorbed, stir in the onions, let it cool for a minute or two, and dig in.

Definitely stay as close to raw ingredients as possible. I've lived out of two cookbooks for the last several years: - Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" - Deborah Madison's "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone"

Learn to not be picky. Ramen may be cheap and taste sort of ok, but you need to take care of your body if you want a well functioning mind. Learn to love things like kale... cheap, available year round, VERY good for you. Boil it until tender and hit it with a little tabasco.

I can't verify this from experience, but git is probably faster. Git is written in C and Mercurial is written in Python.