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jckton The Dark Night of Mathematics

Disregarding the competing definitions of “science”, a significant value in mathematical work is “the journey”. The truth or falsehood of individual results are rarely as important as the machinery developed to deliver it. If all the genie did was tell you something was true or false, the only learning you gain is to backtrack and develop the machinery yourself. To a certain extent this is true of the other sciences too.

jckton FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers "100% disagree," refuse recall

There aren’t mass deaths in the US either (no deaths reported per the article). But there are definitely cases of listeriosis due to raw cheese in France. A recent outbreak was in 2025 and led to 2 deaths.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20250813-deadly-listeria-outbre...

jckton Chinese military entering Shenzen, just across the border with Hong Kong

I actually thought that the whole "mainland infiltrates HK police" conspiracy was just PRC-phobia (which is a real problem in HK when it becomes xenophobic, sadly) but there's actually been evidence of it (albeit not much). If you're interested you can find videos of a riot policeman saying 「退後一點」 to protesters (and other weird sentences), which is extremely awkward in Cantonese (instead Cantonese would be 「褪後啲」 or something, sounds totally different), especially if you're in an intense situation.

jckton Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

Wasn't the Obama campaign tech effort more about coordinating organisers/canvassers/etc in a "data-driven" way, rather than the Cambridge Analytica "propaganda network" type?

Clinton did indeed have a programme similar to Obama's, which has since (perhaps uselessly overdue?) been panned heavily in the MSM[1].

This isn't to say that Obama/Clinton wouldn't have relied on a Cambridge Analytica type service for moral reasons (in fact IIRC Clinton's campaign did do something similar, but at a much smaller scale), though, but more that they underestimated its potency...

[1]:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11...

jckton Welcome, ACLU

Doesn't make him not a bad guy.

jckton What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

Would that not be against the interests of the US neoliberal elite, who in turn have enormous influence on the USG?

jckton What happens when you stop relying on resumes

Would that completely backfire once everyone knows the selection process is random?

jckton How to pay $400 instead of $70,000 in Delaware franchise tax

Surely someone else would have done it for them, and paid the $400? After all, you don't get wealthy by having your loved ones paying $71k when $400 would suffice.

jckton The Mercedes Robo-Car That Made Me Want to Stop Driving

I think a lot of that is just to advertise the car ("this the future, people!!"). For example, the article notes how large parts of the F 015 is made of "plastic that changes shape in hot weather", which Mercedes (or any other self-respecting auto brand, for that matter) is never going to put in their actual cars that they sell.

So I don't think we can take the cosmetic aspects too literally as to what Mercedes' design team will actually go for with the final product.

jckton Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

That's a really weird reading of michaelochurch's comment. Note the past tense -- he "wanted to find KP guilty". I'm pretty sure he was simply illustrating his initial reaction to the case, that he feels KP isn't completely innocent, but (more irrationally, perhaps) also that SV clearly has some problems with sexism.

But the case is about whether or not Pao was mistreated by KP on the basis of her gender, and to that, as the jury has (likely?) decided, michaelochurch's opinion is "probably not".

jckton Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

I think he was downvoted because some people can't see further than his Michael Brown analogy.

jckton Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

Sorry, I was just quoting the last sentence in the article.

jckton Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

Indeed, the last sentence

> One of the stranger points brought up in testimony was how Ms. Pao, before she was married, had dated a colleague for six months without ever realizing he was still living with his wife.

sounds like the article wasn't even finished.

jckton In College and Hiding from Scary Ideas

I think the Internet as it was originally designed would have had the opposite effect. I mostly browse the "old" Internet -- i.e. static pages and the like. And all I really see is a diversity of opinion. It's honestly difficult to find someone I completely agree on any given day.

But the rise in "recommendation engines" (Facebook, Tumblr, etc) and even "news aggregators" (yes, the irony) may indeed impart the provincial-ising effect you mentioned. As people are automatically fed information that they have been measured to prefer, they end up grossly overestimating how widely-held their views really are.

jckton Who are the Japanese? (2008)

Is there any reason why the submission title has "2008" in it? The article in question says it's from the June 1998 issue

jckton Time travel in Braid

Barely related, but I just thought I'd point out that the author writes, in my opinion, quite nice sci-fi too [1], ranging from short stories to a web serial.

[1] http://qntm.org/fiction

jckton The Puzzling Galaxy at the Edge of Time and Space

If you're referring to what Einstein referred to as the "finite, unbounded" universe, i.e. a spherical topology of the universe, measurements from the last decade and a half have shown that to be most probably (if not completely) wrong[1], and that our universe is in fact "flat".

[1] http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html

jckton Britons: You Have 72 Hours to Stop the Snooper's Charter

http://grammarist.com/usage/briton/

This link supports the opposite of davidgay's comment (sources within).

jckton Inactivity 'kills more than obesity'

I think he/she means that normal exercise, or rather the typical amount of exercise that people do, is insufficient to burn the calories in a normal diet. So while the exercise you do is healthy, you shouldn't be expecting weight loss, though at the same time you should expect less weight gain (which I wouldn't consider as weight loss).

jckton Proposal to move CoreOS off of btrfs

I've been using it on 2 home machines, for the home partitions, one using a HDD and one SSD. Been at it for over 2 years now, and I don't think I've ever had any filesystem related hiccups. Granted, they don't do anything special, just home stuff, but one is at around 75% capacity, so I guess you don't need that much extra disc space.

jckton Game Theory

Not exactly an "online course", but these notes (used for an undergrad course on games) I found quite readable: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/games/

jckton Should I Get a Ph.D.?

What would be the UK equivalent of a US PhD? A postdoc position? And in that situation would the stress be comparable? Or is the system just totally different?

jckton Should I Get a Ph.D.?

A question for those who got their PhDs -- do you think there is a difference between getting one in a European Uni versus getting one in the USA? I've known a few science PhDs in the UK that seemed to be quite content in their decision, while the people that seem to have a bad time tend to do theirs in the USA (speculation in general, not just from the comments in this thread). Would this be an accurate assessment or does the location of your institution not really matter?

jckton Ask HN: How or where to begin learning mathematics from first principles?

You seem quite resourceful so you might enjoy MetaMath[1]. This is, in my opinion, literally learning mathematics from first principles. Well, it's not really learning mathematics (insofar that lot of the concepts won't be particularly novel), but it's really showing you the "first principles" of mathematics, and how you can build that up into other stuff.

If you feel like MetaMath is your kinda thing, do visit the FAQ; it's quite good (and virtually required reading if you're going to do this alone).

Admittedly, it's not going to give you the tools suited for solving problems of antenna designs, or enlighten you about electromagnetism, but if you're into just pure recreational mathematics, it's worth a look.

[1] http://us.metamath.org/index.html

jckton The Shrinking World of Ideas

The source on "7.6 percent of bachelor’s degrees were granted in the humanities in 2010" seems flimsy. The Chronicle links to the NYT, and the NYT links to a blog (and not even a specific post). The numbers here[1] I think are trustworthy. For those who can't be bothered, it says 16.8% of all Bachelors' conferred in 2010 -- more than double 7.6% (and according to the same source, around the same as that in the 70s). So I don't know if the liberal arts "are not where the action is these days". There's certainly still a lot of people going into them.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_318.20.as...

jckton South Korea to raise $500B for unification

The Soyuz programme is still in active development. It began in the 60s but they're still designing/making new Soyuz rockets/spacecraft.

jckton Should the United States Declare Books an ‘Essential Good’?

While I am inclined to agree with you (government overreach? almost sounds like some form of censorship, as a law), I think it's fallacious to believe that new books have some intrinsic good. In fact, new books probably don't, if we take into account the vast number of them being written every year. And I do think that if someone has written something great, a discount is unlikely going to do it any real damage. The point is that good books will be good, and their newness has little to do with it. Conversely, classics are classics for a reason.

That probably leaves the question about books that become "accidental hits" or "sleeper hits". But even then, this discounts aren't going to completely wipe them out and I would believe that these sorts are the exception rather than the norm. Again, there are simply so many new books published all the time, and very little of it can possibly be good.

Gwern has some good thoughts that I feel are relevant:

http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics

jckton Landing on a Comet, 317M Miles from Home

The ESA has their own Flickr album of the Rosetta mission (with more pics), for anyone interested

https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157...

jckton Lost Civilizations of the Andes

Peer review isn't the problem. In fact, many of his article do appear to be peer reviewed. For example, this[1] article was published in the peer-reviewed "Journal of Scientific Exploration"[2]. This JSE also publishes a quarterly magazine called EdgeScience[3]. Topics include ESP, telekinesis and UFOs affecting aviation. This doesn't mean nothing he says is valid, but I believe it's a good indication that one ought to read the OP with caution.

[1] http://davidpratt.info/tecto.htm

[2] http://www.scientificexploration.org/

[3] http://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/

jckton Make Dinner: A Home Cooking Manifesto

Before you go and buy a book, you should check out ChefSteps:

http://www.chefsteps.com/

It's linked to Modernist Cuisine, which is also linked to Nathan Myhrvold, who isn't popular here (for good reasons), but it's really a good resource for cooks -- comprehensive and pretty reliable. I haven't really looked into their basic stuff but it's always getting new content so even if they don't have what you are looking for now they might in the near future.