HN user
The little man in the screenshot is from the "LOFI Fantasy 2D/3D" tileset[1], which has a CC BY-NC-ND license. After a quick look around, doesn't look like it's available on Oryx's site any more, however.
Your reasoning reminds me of the danger of retinal damage when observing a solar eclipse - a human's natural inclination to not stare at the sun is sharply reduced because the viewable area is so much smaller than usual. Looking at a thin slice of the sun is as dangerous as looking at the unobscured sun, even if it doesn't feel like it. But I don't think Betelgeuse would be dangerous in this way. It would be more like watching a lunar eclipse, which may be done without safety equipment.
Can you elaborate? What does Mark Karpeles have to do with xkcd?
3,3,4 isn't a valid solution because then B would not reply "that's not enough information." There's exactly one triplet that adds up to eleven, so if B's phone number ended in 11, she would have immediately deduced the solution instead of asking for more information. Same with 1,4,9: that's the only triplet adding to 14. The only valid triplets are ones that share a sum with another triplet. Only two triplets multiplying to 36 share a sum: 1,6,6 and 2,2,9 both add up to 13. Once B learns that A has an "oldest kid", B can rule out 1,6,6, because A would have said "one of my oldest kids has blue eyes" in that case. That leaves 2,2,9 as the only valid triplet.
Yes, Tetris DX's maximum speed is pretty permissive. Even at level 30, you still have enough time to orient your piece and place it anywhere on the playing field. This isn't the case for the maximum speed of other Tetris versions.
Not too weird. That's just how high the score counter goes. You can keep playing after that, but the number stops going up. (source: I've gotten that score myself. (although I paused every hour or so when my arms fell asleep, so that disqualifies me from submission))
Ok, but how do you determine which ideas are "correct"?
What about the other direction? [4,2,2,0] while shifting left or up?
Mars does have wind. In fact, dust storms have been known to last for weeks and encompass nearly the entire planet.
However, I don't think the wind is a likely culprit. If the wind was strong enough to knock over a rock, it would also be strong enough to blow a lot of dust around. That would be very noticeable to anyone watching the rover's feed, and would surely have been mentioned in the article.
Some simple resolutions would be: a freak lightning strike disables the robot's button-pressing hardware. Or a cosmic ray flips a bit in its machine code, causing it to shut down. Or the robot's designer suffers a heart attack before turning it on.
These may seem like contrived examples, but when you eliminate all outcomes that aren't self-consistent, it may be that _all_ the remaining possibilities are contrived. Probability gets weird when time travel is involved.
I know of one other mathematical fact that matches the Monty Hall problem in the loudness of its opponents: 0.999(...) exactly equals one. Despite a number of proofs existing, you can still find ten large pages of arguments on Wikipedia's talk page.
Perhaps Kellogg's limiting factor was not their salary budget, but maximum occupancy on their assembly lines. Switching from eight hours to six means you can hire a whole additional shift of workers, assuming the machines run 24 hours a day.
If 6 hour workers are 112.5% as productive per hour as 8 hour workers, then this turns out to be a good deal for Kellogg's.
Playing the devil's advocate here: if contractors self-select themselves out of being hired because they're not sure they can get the job done, then all the better! The remaining applicant pool will be stronger on average.
An additional upside for them is, it sets an example. If MegaCorp gains a reputation for being revenge-driven life ruiners, then future contractors will know the stakes are serious, and they'll be less likely to violate their contracts.
Not that I consider that strategy cost-effective in general. For one thing, it's bad PR. (Unless you're some kind of wizard that can spin it like, "we're principled and don't let bullies walk all over us. That's why we hold people to their promises")
Doesn't Stack-anything fill that niche already?
If you ask, "how do I use [library X] to draw a rounded rectangle?" on Stack Overflow, they will put your question on hold until you show code that demonstrates that you tried. This may be difficult for someone who has only just succeeded in getting the library to compile!
To continue the author's car analogy, Ms. Smith sits in the passenger seat while you try to drive to grandpa's house. When you fail to reach your destination and give up, Ms. Smith will tell you what you did wrong. But only if you made a non-trivial effort. If you ram into the living room while trying to exit the driveway, you'll only get a disapproving glare.
The way you phrased it makes it sound as though, if you are a Windows user that experienced fraudulent charges, then the _only_ possible explanation is malware.
Your explanation is certainly possible, but it doesn't contradict the Linode explanation. You might say that the former is much more likely than the latter, but that doesn't rule linode out.
It's possible you're getting downvoted because of the way you phrased your post.
>> At the same time so upsetting that I am unable to completely read it all.
At first I interpreted this as, "[it is] so upsetting [because] I am unable to read it all". It makes it sound like you're complaining that the page didn't load all the way, or something. I had to read it a few times to understand what you meant. It could have been less ambiguous worded as, "At the same time, I am unable to completely read it all because it's so upsetting". If a reader misinterprets this sentence, the rest of the post becomes incomprehensible.
>> Time to Google if this is 'normal'
"this" is a bit vague here. What do you want to know is normal? Being upset by articles in general? Being upset by articles specifically about rare diseases? Being upset by this specific article?
>> Starts to Google.
Narration is the kind of thing I'd expect to see in a chat room, but not HN. It makes your tone much less formal, and some might see that as inappropriately flippant for a serious topic.
>> Does anyone else feel this way about this and other things?
"about this" is vague, again. The "and other things" clause makes this question so broad that it becomes tautological. "Does anyone else feel [upset] about [things that are upsetting]?"
A roughly spherical asteroid of radius r has volume
4/3 * pi * r^3
Using Ceres as a benchmark for typical asteroid density, an asteroid of radius r has mass
[volume in meters^3] * 2077 kg/(m^3)
On the asteroid's surface, acceleration due to gravity is
[Gravitational constant] * [mass in kilograms] / (r in meters)^2
which simplifies to
(6.67384E-11 * 4/3 * pi * 2077 * r) m s^-2
If we mine on a 1km diameter asteroid, the dust we kick up will accelerate towards the surface at 2.9 * 10^-4 m/s^2. A dust cloud 10 meters high will settle in about five minutes.
Wikipedia says[1], IBM experienced a growth spurt towards the end of the war. If they had any sort of hiring quota to reach, it would make sense to relax eligibility rules.
Additionally, the presidency of the company changed hands from Thomas Watson Sr to Thomas Watson Jr around that time, and he may have been more progressive. He drafted the "company's first equal opportunity policy letter" in 1953.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM#1946.E2.80.93196...
> When you argue that Sheldon is a “totally accurate portrayal of someone on the autistic spectrum,” then you have broadened the definition of autism to the point where you have rendered the word meaningless.
How so? It's called the "autism _spectrum_", after all, so it's natural that there are varying levels of severity among those affected. Sheldon having high-functioning autism doesn't somehow invalidate anyone else from having more severe autism.
> That seriously offends me. It offends me on behalf of the mothers and fathers who are living with autistic children [...]
To me, this smells like a pre-emptive ad hominem against those with an opposing viewpoint. If you disagree with me, then you've offended me, you're disrespectful, you're ignorant. If you want to argue that Sheldon doesn't have autism, that's fine. But if you do, then keep in mind that part of your audience _does_ think he has autism. Why would you attack the people you're trying to convince?
The title is a bit of a garden path sentence[1], since "build" can be a noun or a verb. I initially misread it as, "Before launching (your) build, software people use" and was confused by the apparently nonsensical second clause[2]. "Before launching, build software that people use" would be a less ambiguous wording.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
[2] well, semi-nonsensical. If you ignore the plurality disagreement between subject "software" and verb "people", then "software people use" could be interpreted as "software occupies a purpose for which something may be employed", which is par for course in corporate buzzspeak.
I'm a bit lost by this sentence:
> We will hire several (as many as possible, in fact) throughout the next few weeks only to show you, dear reader, the confidence we have in developers, we initially invited to be a part of our TaskForce!
First, what are you hiring several of? Is it implicitly referring to the "our guys" from the previous sentence? But then they aren't "your guys" yet, so I'm uncertain that's the intended meaning.
Also, the final clause confuses me. Who or what is being invited? Possible subjects are: "We", developers in general, the dear reader, the guys you will be hiring several of, or the guys from the previous sentence that are taking it from here. You could also mean you are "inviting confidence" by dogfooding.
I've been on the wrong end of #4 a couple of times. My boss' opinion of what is "interesting and really challenging" rarely coincides with my own opinion. By this criteria, "make me a Facebook" or "solve the bin packing problem in linear time" would be perfect tasks! And yet I can't imagine many developers jumping for joy when assigned to them.
Perhaps he thinks the cofounder wants to coast along in a cushy position for the rest of his life, burdening the company. He's saying "phew! I don't ever have to apply for another job! puts feet on desk"
Not that I agree with it, but I understand the interpretation. It's a fairly common view in the tech industry that you should get a new job every 18 months or else your skills will degrade.
When you say, "coders have solved for this issue", what do you mean?
Do you mean that the movie industry's coders have made DRM so un-intrusive that it's no longer an issue for consumers? Many would disagree with you there.
Do you mean that "pirate" coders have been able to circumvent all existing DRM techniques, so consumers can always get DRM-free movies if they seek them out? That may be true, but it's a continuing arms race with the movie industry, so it's not an ideal solution.
I figured we were taking it as a given, since no one refuted it when it was implied in gte910h's post. I'll try to support the idea anyway.
There was a study performed on young students, concerning their perception of STEM fields. Most respondents indicated that "techie" people are all white males in lab coats, and that the respondent wouldn't fit in well with that group. (Sorry, I don't have a link to the study. But I know I saw it in the last 8-12 months)
If more women are publicly visible in tech fields, then young people's perception of techie people will swing away from "homogenous white male group" towards a heterogeneous group that is necessarily less discriminatory. This should cause a corresponding increase in enrollment by non-white non-males who would otherwise have been dissuaded from joining.
If temporarily increasing the concentration of women panelists contributes towards permanently reducing discrimination, then it's a net gain for humanity, even if it's a net loss for panels in the short term.
Reminds me of the Zune leap year bug that got some press four years ago [1]. A Zune running during 11:59 PM, Dec 31, 2008 would freeze when the clock ticked over to Jan 1.
Even the response to the problem is similar. Microsoft says, wait until the 2nd and the problem will resolve itself. Apple says, wait until the 7th and the problem will resolve itself.
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/156240/microsoft_zune_failure...
> Are you asking me to believe that's all there is just because that is all science has seen?
No, I object to the use of past tense there. I believe that "all there is" that is observable could eventually be explained by science. Of course, science in its current state is insufficient to explain all there is, as evidenced by all the things we can't explain. But nothing will remain inexplicable forever.
> Science is a philosophical subject, not the other way around.
That's reasonable. Really I'm just using science here as shorthand for "obtaining knowledge". If philosophers can come up with a good explanation of qualia and consciousness etc, without the use of test tubes or brain surgery, that will be fine with me.
Perhaps I'm missing your point. The rush you get from skydiving _is_ explainable by physics. The human fight-or-flight response induces the adrenal gland to release epinephrine, which causes a raised heart rate, excitement, etc. Even complex feelings like "yearning to find the meaning of it all" and "loving your disabled son" have a biological basis.
(Disclaimer: I get my science facts from Wikipedia and xkcd)