efferifick

Are you telling me that 14972 is the smallest non-interesting number?

Go to those sections (Philosophy and History) in your university library and read the titles of all the books. Take books which titles grab your attention, and read the table of contents. If you see a Chapter that interests you, read that chapter. If you think the book is worth reading whole, grab the book.

EDIT: Also consider subscribing to magazines. I love these: McSweeney's and Lapham Quarterly. McSweeneys is great for fiction and Lapham Quarterly for non fiction/historical perspectives on topics.

EDIT2: It is also important to remember that books are for you to enjoy and you should never feel forced to read books you don't want to read (except if it is required reading on a course) nor finish reading books just because you have started them (sunk cost fallacy).

But, there are advantages to reading whole texts, especially non-fiction. In today's day and age, we can search for terms and read precisely what we need for a paper. However, if you read the whole text you might read some unexpected gems that will enrich you. I find that reading the table of contents and skimming through paragraphs is a great way to avoid missing these gems. However, please note that "skimming" does not mean "move your eyes and pretend you are reading". You still need to make an effort to understand what the author is trying to convey. If you find yourself lost in thought after "skimming" through a couple of paragraphs then you are not doing it correctly. Ideally you want to summarize the paragraph to a single idea.

Can someone explain the advantage of compiling to C instead of compiling to LLVM-IR? I have seen more languages that compile to C than to LLVMIR. It seems to me that there are a lot of advantages in using LLVM but I fail to see the advantages of compiling to C.

Thanks

Didn't read the article but I wanted to share this quote I read once:

"Mathematics is a language where truth rhymes".

* Freakonomics

* Radiolab

* Comedy Bang Bang

* Planet Money

* This American Life (sometimes)

* Everything by Gimlet Media (when I remember)

If you are interested in image processing I recommend Digital Image Processing by Gonzalez and Woods. Great introduction to image processing.

EDIT: Added title. I can't believe I googled the title to make sure I had the correct authors just to forget writing it here.

I disagree. The Information has a broad scope, so there is a lot of content but none of which I found to be InfoJunk. I thought it was very interesting and just kept on reading.

Shameless plug: I wrote a firefox addon that simulates synesthesia by wrapping every character in a span and in a class and adding CSS to assign colors based on its class.

It may break some sites.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/synsim/

The library.

These are very good notes on static analysis. Thanks for sharing this.

I took a compiler design and development course last year, and this is a refreshing review.

Ha! Thanks for the chuckle. Yeah, I agree with you on the the fact that "enjoyment" can be seen as a tool evolved for improving our fitness function's scores.

The only problem I see with this line of thought is that if we keep following it, we get into the absurd. "Why even play chess?", "Why even bother doing anything a computer is better at doing?", "What to do then?". And, this is my personal answer: do things because you enjoy them.

I don't know if we will ever reach a point where a computer can decide if it wants to play chess, but I hope that if we do, then the computer chooses to play on the basis that it wants to play and not on the fact that it has to optimize some external parameter. (Although as I write this, I realize that "do things because you enjoy them" practically means maximizing your utility function.)

Ok, you win. Haha. I just stopped enjoying analyzing this issue. :)

> 'what are humans still good for?'

Enjoying playing chess.

I would suggest you start with reading "Signal Processing and Linear Systems" by Lathi (great book, had it on a course) so that you gain some understanding on signal processing.

After understanding filters, and frequency analysis, you will be able to ask more specific questions than "how to isolate a voice from a single sample?". I am just finishing a course on Image Processing and while some of the stuff that I learned on Signal Processing was useful, I would describe it as being only primitives (think of as integers, doubles, and control structures in programming languages) and we explore higher level of abstractions (segmentation and classification techniques). I assume the same is true for audio signals, and recommend as well to read a specialized book on the subject. I am sorry I cannot recommend one.

A neural network that takes all conceivable input (electromagnetic spectrum, sound, temperature changes, etc) and then performs the same algorithm google translate uses to communicate a message.

The question would then be, "what input definitely comes from alien intelligence and which is just noise?" so that we can train the NN properly.

Edit: I have no knowledge of NN whatsoever. Just a thought.

Electrical engineering.

Why are we seeking solutions like this? Because by investing in them, we can also make money by selling the solution / services / patents to governments.

Why don't we instead focus on reducing society's consumption? Because we would not gain any profit from such venture.

If this is true, we are already extinct.

The most similar thing I've found so far: http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis

NPR all songs considered 24/7 audio stream.

Another 4D game: 4D rubik's cube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonf34s0Bqg

I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make it"... Maybe this summer.

Creative coding and interactive installations? Try http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_us if you like those sorts of things.

I love everything by James Gleick. I recommend Faster, The Information, and Chaos.

If you implement these food halls I would be really happy.

http://ahistoryofthefuture.org/2012/04/the-new-halls/

I imagine them somewhat different: food by subscription but paid by the government instead of financial aid to ensure people eat healthy.

If you want to be truly efficient, read it on your own time through RSS. Here is a link to RSS feeds sorted out by points or the front page stories.

http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/hacker-news-feeds

Hope this helps!

Sorry, I study at the UofA and we have a "software option" within the Computer Engineering program. Students graduating from this branch will get the iron ring. I just assumed that Software Engineers elsewhere got them too.

Software Engineers get them too! Sadly, Computer Science students won't get them.

Similar, a subreddit called "somebody make this" http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis

I am currently taking operating systems (not virtually) and wanted to see the differences between what I was being taught and what is being taught elsewhere. I can say, that Berkeley's CS 162 https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/computer-science-162-00... is a decent program. Slides are presented as a video. For textbooks, we had Operating Systems Concepts by Silberschatz. I didn't like the book that much. Hope this helps!

EDIT: I did like more the "recommended" book Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by Richard Stevens and Stephen A. Rago