std_throwaway

Keep it as simple as possible but don't try to make it more simple than it actually is.

If something looks stupid but does the work, it's not stupid.

Why stop there? One could use the raw device to get even greater performance!

Can we say that the number of possible states that the universe can assume is finite? Can we further conclude that everything that is possible must fit within the boundaries of the universe and therefore everything is either O(1) or unrealistic?

I only get a black window after the startup screen.

You can actually win the game in the solitaire clone; the minesweeper clone not so much.

I wonder if this kept AMD alive during the hard times.

x86 isn't going away for the next 10 years or longer.

Both can afford to spend hundreds of millions on a lawsuit. The lawsuit will be only a part of the budget for both and non-existential. So I don't think that the size matters here.

It would be different if the lawsuit is so expensive that one party could go bankrupt due to it.

This isn't about right and wrong. It's about money. Who has to pay how much to the other party? Both parties think they are better off if they fight. Both parties think they could win money in the end. It's a gamble in the courtroom.

You can win a lawsuit and still lose so much time and money on the way that you are worse off afterwards.

Vice versa you can cause your opponents so much trouble with lawsuits that - even though you don't win them - you are better off than them afterwards.

This is how visitors from other planets look at us in regard to resource distribution on earth and space exploration.

What keeps them from doing it? Internet communication is not private. Everybody with access can record and sell it.

More important than the optimizations themselves is the instrumentation they built up to reliably measure and monitor the performance.

One thing to keep in mind is that python 3 is still considerably slower than python 2 (edit) in some areas such as startup times while it has gotten faster in most other benchmarks.

...so we should hide before saying things that could offend someone?

Cutting down to the point.

* What these students did or didn't do does not matter in this case.

* Harvard can withdraw the acceptance for anyone at any time for any reason.

We don't need to argue about privacy or free speech here. All we can argue about as a first point is if Harvard should have the ability to withdraw their acceptance or not.

So they can keep out everyone they don't really like by an arbitrary set of rules?

Maybe you spit out chewing gum somewhere one night and violated the rule of not spitting for one example.

I'm not saying that these students are good people or that I endorse anything they said. I'm defending the right of privacy and free speech for anyone at any time.

...that privacy probably doesn't exist and free speech shouldn't be used.

Not yet. The data is there to link it to you.

If it's of any indication: listen closely how the politicans argue that we always need more surveillance and never less. They seem to have their speeches ready even before the incident happens.

I don't care what they said. If it's against the law, let the law deal with it. If it's covered under freedom of speech, let them speak.

What platform isn't personal? Sure, you don't use your real-name here or there, but it can and will be linked to you in the future. Any online and offline activity has a real chance of being linked to you at some point in the future.

Extend this to any place connected to the internet or other means of collecting information and linking it to you. Social media is just the easy way in.

People go to the toilet to get the crap out. Same for many online forums.

We'll have to create a public and a second, private, personality just like in the old days of the police state.

Society is more open than it probably was ever before but at the same time, if close minded leaders of fascist political or religious color came into power they'd have their tools handed to them to create an oppressive apparatus never seen before.

People use Python to actually do stuff. Performance-wise it's a nightmare but usability outweighs it in many many cases.

A quick google says: Drinking water in the US of A must have at least a pH of 6.5. They should have tested with that.

I assume, the copper concentration would increase over 10-fold in that case versus the tested case.

Safety standards aren't as black-and-white as the law. Some people will suffer way earlier than other people. Some people can tolerate some substances in way higher concentrations than the average person.

It could be an exponential curve and also be influenced by other ions in the water.

There is no easy answer. My approach would be something like this:

* Take 100 identical machines and run them with a specific setting for a year. Take the number of failures and write it down.

* Take another 100 machines and run them with a different settings for a year. Write down the failures.

* Do this for like 10 different speed settings. (You need 1000 machines and have to wait one year of time.)

* Make a graph of the data. Log of failures over linear speed axis.

* Try to see a curve in the graphed data.

* Determine the failure rate that you want to achieve.

* Look up the speed setting in the curve.

* Now you have your speed.

I guess only people like the processor manufacturers actually do it this way. Most other folks just do guesswork.

If you have advanced knowledge about the failure curve you might come up with a law like this:

* Turn up the speed until you hit 1 failure per 24 hours under heavy load.

* Turn down the speed by 30% and sell.

Wait three days and they will be "sorry" again and they "won't do it again" again.

It's a Pro feature and Microsoft tends to ship a lean distribution tailored to the customers needs in order to provide superior user experience.