jplasmeier

That's true, but there isn't enough value in macOS for me to justify buying old hardware, especially moving forward.

I can't wait to retire my 2013 MBA and set it aside with my OEM 8800GT (nVidia's iconic desktop GPU). Both represented the best combination of tradeoffs with the tech that was available at the time at a price point that led to ubiquity.

I'm not sure what my next portable computer will be, but if I want it to fit into that criteria of iconic hardware, I doubt it will be an Apple computer.

What's the difference if the effect is the same?

I think you misspelled "cannabis" ;)

I think you've posted the wrong link...

Somewhere in between "Since when do hackers bleat about obeying laws and regulations?" and "I want a nanny state to protect me 24/7" exists a middle ground where people realize that government regulation exists for a reason. You can't just throw away the law for the sake of your definition of progress...

I certainly agree with this sentiment (and the author's words "Read code that you can actually grok"). As a younger programmer, I tried to get into reading the source code for Flask and learned pretty much nothing.

The thing that has seemed to have the most effect for me (of course, this may not necessarily be effective for everyone) is refactoring or even completely rewriting my side projects after/near finishing them. It's a little bit maddening, since I would rather move forward and build new features or start a new project, but the exercise is really helpful. It forces me to take a step back, look at everything I've done, and figure out where I could have done something better. Then, hopefully at least, when I'm in a similar spot in the future I'll be able to think ahead better. In fact, "thinking ahead" might be the most valuable skill for a programmer to have, and I don't really see how reading code can help with that. All of their design decisions have been made by the time you read the code, and it's really difficult, especially for a junior developer, to actually consider how and why those decisions were made.

Hmm. I had read in a book that volitional attentional binding (being able to shift your attention to different parts of your experience was closely related to what we call consciousness/experience, and that a lot of animals exhibit this behavior. So, most likely, animals are in fact conscious. Sadly I don't have any sources of research done in this area...

This strikes me of an example of a sort of dualism that exists within software. The .zip spec is flawed, and can be broken in all sorts of different ways. However, after years and years of using computers, I've never had an issue with extracting or using a .zip file.

I wonder if this same pattern can be applied to physical engineering disciplines- e.g. a structural engineer assessing a bridge and finding numerous faults in the design, despite traffic still using the bridge as normal...

I would prefer water-resistance to removable batteries...

(I don't think it's that simple, but given the choice, I would take the tight seal)

When I was in elementary school I was singled out as "a genius" because I could add numbers in my head faster than anyone else. I was pretty good at consuming and regurgitating all of the information thrown at us, and I spent a lot of time reading/doing educationally valuable things thanks to my parents (of "ordinary" intelligence, whatever that even means).

Naturally, this went straight to my head, and left me with a lot of latent narcissism around my intelligence.

Around middle school I lost interest in my education and being smart and was no longer the best at school, though I still got A's without much effort. I struggled socially, but I don't think that this was caused by my intelligence; rather an inability to find the right people to do the things I enjoyed with. By the end of high school I was fairly popular, once I started finding those people and others stopped being so socially nepotistic.

By the time I got to college, my smarts were running out and I feel like I've hit an "abstraction ceiling" [0]. Compared to most STEM students towards the "top" of the board, I'm about average or below and very far from "a genius".

It's really difficult for me to continually remind myself of the fact that I was never special, and that there are a lot of people above me who are, because that was such a core part of my identity at a very formative age. That's been the biggest difficulty for me.

[0] - https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premiere...

Or just stay at a few different airbnbs. Which is annoying, but you get what you pay for.

Per his LinkedIn[0] he started college at age 16. He's 23 now. The fact that he started college 2 years early, seven years ago, made him decide to DDoS a huge DNS provider? That's quite a leap...

[0] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/webbmt

By matching the author implies couples with XX,XX and XY,XY chromosomes, not necessarily identical chromosomes. Though, it is an odd way of introducing queer couples and does conflate gender with sex chromosomes (and intersex people _do_ exist).

I find this argument to be an unsatisfactory against "algorithmic consciousness". There have been automated proofs of Godel's theorem for a long while [0]. I don't mean this to be evidence on the contrary, but Penrose seems to ignore the fact that a computer can realize multiple axiomatic systems, and use them to make statements like Godel's Theorem(s). Godel's Theorem(s) are often taken out of context for philosophical purposes, for better or for worse, and it's important to remember that Godel's Theorem(s) relies on a meta-language (ZFC) to make statements about PA.

For a much more intuitive explanation as to why consciousness is not algorithmic, I recommend "The Neural Basis of Free Will" by Tse. His argument is that neurons and neuronal circuits (and more) harness randomness to provide inputs to "criterial detectors" which are satisfied when the right combinations of inputs (spatiotemporal patterns) arrive at the detector at the right time. This can't be algorithmic, because of the requisite noise in the inputs and because the brain realizes true parallel processing. As a further note, he posits that free will is realized in the resetting of the input weights, so "current" actions set up the criteria for future actions avoiding the issue of causa sui in free will.

[0] - https://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0505034.pdf

[1] - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/neural-basis-free-will

Rain is normally acidic due to dissolved Carbonic acid.

Source: http://chemistry.elmhurst.edu/vchembook/190acidrain.html

Nevertheless, the title does read a bit like clickbait.

Today I learned about Betteridge's Law [0], which seems apt here. It states that when a news headline asks a question, the answer is always "no." When it applies to a paper, I'm disinclined to take the paper seriously...

[0] -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

I nearly skimmed over this line but it's pretty important:

"The classifier was trained by the developer using Buzzfeed headlines as clickbait and New York Times headlines as non-clickbait."

I think we put a little bit too much faith in the scientific process for dealing with cognitive processes (note: I have little background in cogsci or related fields, just books I've read). There's so much happening in our unconscious minds that is difficult or impossible to scientifically dissect. This applies to physical, quantitative methods (measuring the possibly quantum coherent electron transfer inside our brains, or actually getting a grip on the LFP of every neuron in a brain, etc.) as well as more qualitative approaches in psychology/cogsci (language limits this). Neuroscience is making leaps (I'm currently reading "The Neural Basis of Free Will" by Tse [0], it's tough as I've not take a neuro course but it's fascinating) but lacking a "reflective" ability outside of our experience will limit what we can truly know about our experience. It seems waxing philosophically is our only option, barring some kind of breakthrough.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Neural-Basis-Free-Will-Criterial/dp/0...

I took John Duncan's course on intro abstract algebra when I was a sophomore at CWRU. I had signed up to take his class on modular forms the next semester but he had been hired away before I had the chance to take it. A big shame as he was one of the best professors I've had (nearly the entire course grade was based on homework- exactly as it should be IMO).

Shouldn't it be "500 Lines or Fewer"?

I'm a rising Senior Math and CS double major looking for a Fall term co-op, full time. This will be my third internship. Ideally I'd like to something related to Data Science, but I would be interested in any kind of software engineering work.

  Location - Cleveland, OH
  Remote - not preferred
  Willing to relocate - of course!
  Tech - Python (Jupyter, Django), Java, C#, SQL, HTML5, CSS, some C, Javascript. Git, Linux, Bash.
  Website - http://jplaz.com (has a web resume, email me for a PDF of the single page version)
  Email - jplasmeier@gmail.com

Well, what do you want for free?

"ad-supported"