the_duck

The C++ jobs I've been approached about are in the music and gaming industries. Both jobs are audio-related. I have a strong background in audio signal analysis and processing, despite my minimal C++ chops.

I wrote mine in Word and it's SO UGLY. I wish I'd procrastinated more by fiddling with different rendering methods!

The authors of this book also offer an excellent free online course that covers some of the same material. I found it incredibly well presented and easy to follow, without being superficial.

https://online.stanford.edu/courses/sohs-ystatslearning-stat...

    There is no such thing as a sentence, or a phrase, or a part
    of speech, or even a "word"---these are all pareidolic
    fantasies occasioned by glints of sunlight we see reflected
    on the surface of the ocean of language; fantasies that we
    comfort ourselves with when faced with language's infinite
    and unknowable variability.

'Pareidolic' is my new favourite word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Can you share a link to the video?

paywalled.

The author's job title might have given this away. In Canada (assistant|associate|full) professors are tenured or tenure track, and hence higher status. Any other title could be assumed to mean non-tenure track and under-employed, hence lower status.

I enjoy my homogenous Facebook feed, full of people who share my views and my life circumstances, just as much as the next guy.

But I also sometimes enjoy reading posts I disagree with, and posts from people who aren't part of my "tribe". If Facebook had a knob that could amplify the stuff it thinks I won’t like (less Bernie Sanders, more conservative talk radio! less wedding pictures, more farmville invites!), I’d turn it once in a while, just to go on a little social vacation.

A well-timed announcement for April 20th. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

I've heard vague tales of Canadian companies receiving tax incentives to do research, in the form of SR&ED credits. (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/menu-eng.html)

Does anyone have any concrete experience with the program?

>In the last 15 years or so, researchers have created a number of tools to probe the geometry of these hidden structures. For example, you might build a model of the surface by first zooming in at many different points. At each point, you would place a drop of virtual ink on the surface and watch how it spread out.

It sounds to me like this 'ink drop' is a metaphor to explain some state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction technique. Does anyone know the common name of this technique?

I also get migraines if I don't sleep 8-ish hours! I didn't realize that was a thing that happened to other people, too.

This game makes me feel like a cat.

What do you mean by "cycling"?

I'm talking about cases where human involvement is minimal. If all I need to do to make a painting is press the "run" button, there's not much intention there. I haven't expressed anything.

You could certainly make the case for "expressive individuality" in the program making the art, especially if it was written by just one person. But computer programs, IMHO, fail the "valid art" test for other reasons. Of Dutton's twelve criteria they miss at least two: representation (6) and emotional saturation (9).

To me, computer generated art always feels less remarkable than traditional art. If you present me with two paintings that are identical, pixel for pixel, and tell me that one is human authored and the other computer authored, I'd be less interested in the computer authored one. I'd spend less time thinking about it.

I always found this fact fascinating. Why would I attribute different levels of worth to two artifacts that were totally identical, save for their method of construction?

I didn't have a good answer to this until I read a book by aesthetician Dennis Dutton (The Art Instinct). Dutton presents a 12 factor model of art, and claims that artifacts exhibiting all 12 criteria tend to be unambiguously judged as "valid art", while artifacts that miss some but exhibit most are considered "edge cases", things that reasonable people can dispute the artistic validity of.

One of Dutton's 12 criteria is "expressive individuality". Most art objects are the products of a single person's imagination. Computer generated art tends to lack this trait, and this, I think, is why it feels less valid than human-made art.

Here's an outline of the 12-factor model: http://www.aristos.org/aris-10/dutton.htm

What amazes me about mosh is how it handles transitions in and out of the private wifi network at my school. When I want to ssh to school machines from off campus, I generally need to use a VPN. Without the VPN the machines are unreachable: if I ping them, no packets are returned; ssh attempts fail. Using mosh, though, I've found that I can start a session at school and resume it off campus, no VPN necessary. This seems like magic to me. Can anyone explain how mosh does this?

Also, we probably have a lot more footage of 1985. Since video recording equipment got cheaper, more videos got made. Since many of those videos still exist, 1985 is still "present" in 2015 to a much greater degree than 1955 was in 1985. The same holds true for audio recordings.

>The only time I ever hear this application is for the joke, “Aye you got Kik?”, normally seen as someone trying to “spit game” to attract a partner. It’s really difficult for me to describe it here but it isn't super relevant.

This paragraph is mystifying. Can someone explain what he's talking about here?

There's a special irony to the fact that this high fidelity audio format is being promoted by Neil Young. Young's a rock musician. He's been around loud noises (e.g. rock concerts) most of his life. He's also 69 years old. Our ability to hear high frequencies decreases dramatically with age and exposure [1]. If anyone were able to discriminate 24/192 from 16/44.1, it sure as heck wouldn't be an elderly rock musician.

[1]: http://www.patient.co.uk/health/presbyacusis-hearing-loss-of...

> Several investigators have found that performers tend to stretch their intervals

Johan Sundberg has excellent examples of this "stretched" tuning in some of his talks. He claims that musicians stretch intervals intentionally in order to add excitement to particular passages. The link below contrasts equally tempered and "stretched" versions of the same musical phrases.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxFVjKMsaTc&t=50m32s

To my ears the stretched versions are far more engaging, especially the example with the tenor Jussi Bjorling around 52:50.

Whenever I read about coding bootcamps I feel a tinge of worry that they might mean the end of the "good old days" for software developers. Do we expect that they'll have any tangible impact on the labor market by pumping out so many graduates with basic coding skills?

I briefly considered connecting my credit and debit cards to Datacoup, but their dialog box set of warning bells. It asked for my card number and my online banking password. These are the same as my online banking credentials. In principle, with that information, Datacoup would be able to log in to my bank's website and drain my accounts.

It seems incredibly foolish to give this information to ANYONE over the internet. Why should I trust Datacoop with it? That's not a rhetorical question.

... and mined by organic, free range computers. :)

Artisanal bitcoins!

They're 67 quadrillion times more expensive, but they're all natural and locally-sourced.

Huh. "Belt-phone business guy" is a new expression for me. What does this mean, exactly?

Non dynamic:

>From 2000 to 2009, no province had lower so-called “firm entry” than Quebec. In fact, in the manufacturing, retail, transportation and finance sectors, more companies went away than were created. No other province had that level of “destruction” without the customarily accompanying “creative.”

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/why-quebec-business-...

sigh (Current Quebecer here)

"The anxiety of feeling lost and stupid is not something you learn to conquer, but something you learn to live with."

I started practicing mindfulness meditation a few years ago. Mindfulness trains you to experience your emotions without judging them; in other words, it helps you to "live with" feelings like frustration and anxiety without getting overwhelmed by them. It's been an invaluable addition to my programming toolkit.

"Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations."

I'd wager that software engineering is one of these "specific specialties" in which there really is a genuine shortage.