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kamagmar

73 karma · joined May 16, 2011

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kamagmar··on CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson
> the first fundamental particle observed since the quarks in the 1980's

A minor correction -- the tau neutrino wasn't discovered until 2000.

kamagmar··on Court Overturns Conviction of Ex-Goldman Programmer
He didn't intentionally upload code to Germany. He uploaded to xp-dev.com, and the server happened to be in Germany.
kamagmar··on America’s top export in 2011 was . . . fuel?
According to this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-shift-for-gas-guz...

we exported $37.1B worth of vacuum tubes last year. I could be wrong but that amount seems wildly implausible. Could the category actually be "Vacuum tubes, etc." where "etc" is semiconductors?

kamagmar··on CERN Press Release: Higgs Search Update
Just to be clear: what they've ruled out is the Standard Model version of the Higgs boson. There are actually many possible kinds of Higgs bosons, the SM version being the simplest.
kamagmar··on Examples of errors detected in various open-source projects
Reminds me of this article on how hard it is to convince companies to use static analysis:

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/2/69354-a-few-billion-lin...

kamagmar··on Forbidden Fruits: Infographic Guide to Illegal Fruit
Mangosteens may be legally imported to the US from SE Asia if irradiated. They may also be imported from Puerto Rico.

The Chicago fois gras ban ended in 2008.

kamagmar··on Another Airbnb Victim Tells His Story: “There Were Meth Pipes Everywhere”
> it's possible there are actually meth-heads who are also into identity theft

Not just possible, it's actually quite common, and has been for awhile. For example, see this article from 2004:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4460349/

kamagmar··on Should we worry about what the LHC is not finding?
I believe the main RS discovery channel is looking for a p pbar -> graviton -> e+ e- resonance, where p is a parton (i.e., quark or gluon).
kamagmar··on Should we worry about what the LHC is not finding?
Standard gravitons are already constrained to be almost massless, so i'm guessing the article is referring to Randall-Sundrum type massive gravitons in 5D.
kamagmar··on Greece defaults
> FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default.

Yes there is. If this plan goes through, S&P will downgrade Greece's credit rating from CCC to SD ("selective default").

kamagmar··on Apple Reports Third Quarter Results
I thought enterprise value was market cap plus debt?
kamagmar··on Physicists: Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram
The title goes a bit too far. The new experiment doesn't rule out the Holographic Principle, it rules out Craig Hogan's model, which was inspired by the Principle.
kamagmar··on Youth unemployment: The outsiders
> Business owners who take a loss are defined by the government as living in poverty.

The poverty line sets a minimum level of consumption. These people are consuming above that threshold, so i don't think the government counts them as poor.

> If it weren't, consumption would be equal to income + change in net worth.

You're forgetting change in asset prices. If i own a house, and consume all my income, my net worth can still change if the price of the house changes.

kamagmar··on Youth unemployment: The outsiders
I took a look at the data you cite in your blog post. You seem to imply people earning < $5k/yr receive on average ~$20k in welfare. However, in the BLS Expenditure Survey you used to create the figure, under the section marked "Sources of income and personal taxes", the real number is only $467.[0]

This cohort doesn't appear to be very poor at all, in fact -- they report negative self-employment income. I wonder if you've confused low income with poverty. Or perhaps i'm confused, and haven't grasped your argument.

[0] I'm taking welfare to be the sum of "Unemployment and workers' compensation, veterans' benefits" and "Public assistance, supplemental security income, food stamps".

kamagmar··on What every programmer should know about time
> UTC (which is an arbitrary human invention)

Hmm, i wouldn't call it totally arbitrary. UTC = TAI + LS, such that |UTC - UT1| < 1 second, where:

* LS are leap seconds,

* TAI is "physicist" time, based on the ticking of atomic clocks at mean sea level. The length of a second is constant.

* UT1 is "astronomer" time, the rotation angle of the Earth with respect to the quasar reference frame. The length of a second is not constant.

The Earth's rotation is slowing down, so UT1 is gradually drifting away from TAI. UTC is a pretty natural scheme to reconcile these two systems.

kamagmar··on Bank of Canada: The New $100 Note
We should get rid of the penny and the nickel, and then issue 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 cent coins.