murrayh

I was a test subject for someone's PHD on this. AFAIR it was about identifying the part of the brain that is responsible for aborting actions. Like if you decide to pickup a pan, and then notice the handle is hot, some people can't help but pickup the pan anyways because they lack this abort function.

They took an MRI of my brain. They found where one part of my brain resided in the MRI images. I performed reaction tests -- press this button for green circle, press that button for blue circle, abort pressing button if the icon gets crossed out (the crossing out was delayed) Then they strapped the magnet to my head (not touching but very close AFAIR) Then do all the tests again

AFAIR they showed that part of the brain did affect your ability to abort an action. I think they knew this anyway because of behavior of people with brain injuries. So I guessed they learned the magnet scrambled that part of the brain?

It was extremely boring doing these tests. I don't remember much about it except that the magnet made unreasonably loud popping sounds.

This is the paradox of tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Each of Chicago Review's two choices (to publish, or not to publish) will generate disapproval.

My personal view is that deplatforming intolerance is ok -- that the Chicago Review are right to deplatform intolerance.

Was Kunin's article intolerant and who decides? I have no idea, an uninformed opinion at best.

Acusensus | Software Engineers | Melbourne, Australia | ONSITE | https://www.acusensus.com/

We want to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries caused by distracted driving. Come help!! Check out the website for the office address and media videos if you're into those things.

The technologies we are currently using includes AWS, C#, C++, Python, Ubuntu, darknet, docker.

We're ONSITE but we do work flexibly. e.g. I work from home 2 days a week.

Send me an email! murray@acusensus.com. I love reading code. If you have some code that you are able to share, send it to me! I will read it and send back any commentary that pops into my head.

My understanding is that the motor pulls the card in using random speeds which vary as the card is getting sucked in (start sucking, slow, fast, slow, fast, etc, fully sucked in). The machine knows how to account for the variance, but the skimmer doesn't (in general skimmer's assume a constant swipe speed). You can kind of see it cause the machine does the same thing when spitting out your card. It would be more convenient to spit your card out fast like a transport ticket, but then your card could be skimmed on the way out.

Oh man, I feel for you. If you want to and are legally able, you can send the sample work to me and I will review it for you. (I am firmly settled in a different country -- zero chance of application plagiarism).

Isn't that exactly what a nap is?

Does your awareness reduce? It's hard to notice a change in awareness. Sometimes I notice a transition from haziness to attention when a sound draws my attention. My understanding is that the haziness is a form of sleeping and is exactly what a nap is meant to be. If you fall into a deeper sleep you will get some of the side effects others talk about -- grogginess etc. The length and depth of sleep is related, so I thought that's why you need to be careful to only nap for short periods of time.

It is worth noting that the unintelligible accent issue is context dependent. A native English speaker can be the person with an unintelligible accent, and that person may need to work on their communication skills in order to have influence.

I experienced this phenomenon first hand as a native English speaker with an Australian accent. At my first hostel abroard there was a mixed group of european (non UK) people conversing in English, and I thought I'd try and join in.

me: howrya?

group: blank stares

me: how are you?

group: blank stares

me: how - are - you?

group: look of fear

me: hello?

This first experience was definitely a shock, and it took me some time to realise what it must have been like for the group.

In terms of learning to understand native speakers, travelling in their country for an extended period seems to work. My family has hosted many international guests through exchange programs, including adult guests who had never left their home country (but were taught English at school). Communication was sometimes very difficult, but universally the guests were able to pick up on the Australian accent over time. When exchanges move from blank looks to questions about particular words used, you can start having clunky conversations.

The exchange programs did give our family tips on how to converse with the guests. The only tip I can remember is to try and use different words. Often the longer and fancier word (e.g. gigantic, massive) is easier to understand for the guest than the short and simple word (e.g. big).

Interesting. Could a better-than-O(n) parallelisable tuple space be implemented with something like skip lists?

I still don't understand. What makes the XML version better than the JSON version? Why is creating XML like that a good solution, while creating JSON like that is not?

How about this?

    <Foo1 name="foo1">
        <Bar1 name="bar1"/>
    </Foo1>
    <Foo2 name="foo2">
        <Bar2 name="bar2"/>
    </Foo2>


    [["Foo1", {"name" : "foo1"}, [
        ["Bar1", {"name" : "bar1" }]
     ],
     ["Foo2", {"name" : "foo2"}, [
        ["Bar2", {"name" : "bar2" }]
     ]]

Heh, just what I need, a new toy to play with!

I spent a few hours looking into Ragel over the weekend, and, honestly, I can't envisage how a html5 parser mostly written in Ragel would look. But I'm going to give it a crack.

Just for kicks, I am going to try and implement these two algorithms using using the State Machine Compiler (http://smc.sourceforge.net/). I expect that my "code" will be much less than 10,000 lines, although I don't really know how long the code SMC itself generates will be.

Melbourne, Australia (not really able to move). I have over 4 years experience developing commercial win32 C++ software. I like to read programming books like "Programming Erlang", "On Lisp" and "Real World Haskell". I would love to help develop quality software with a small, talented team.

You can prevent caching optimisations by declaring a variable 'volatile' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_variable).

The differences aren't invented. I see them every day within my own family. My Dad literally argues with himself out loud. I used to think he was arguing with me, but he's not, because now I just remain silent and the argument still happens. He's not being brash, and he's not shooting first. He's just figuring out the problem with his own method. And when he's done, he's usually right (warning: son idolising father bias).

I don't see the problem labeling my Dad an extrovert... there's nothing negative about it, and it describes one general aspect of his personality pretty well. Even more so, recognising this aspect of his personality has helped me interact with him in a much more productive manner.

Sorry, I should have explained myself.

The literal interpretation of the challenge is a paradox. The contradiction is that a secret is no longer a secret once revealed (hence my comment).

I don't think that is what you were trying to convey. You do raise a valid point, but without any supporting evidence, it is thoroughly unconvincing. The absence of X is not enough to conclude that X does not exist (especially when X is being purposefully hidden, as in this case).

NOTE: I am not disagreeing with you. I don't know whether or not secret rich people exist.

I see a flaw in your challenge...

Maybe after World War 3 the new global government will search through the 25 year old database and exterminate all past and present believers of <some religion>.

(Yes, I know, plain text emails to hotmail/gmail recipients would probably be just as bad as plain text private messaging on facebook. Protecting privacy is so bothersome that my efforts are pretty token. But I do try... because I don't comprehend the ramifications of releasing so much information.)

How long is the survey?

If you brake really hard, you're probably going to decelerate at around 7 m/s2.

25 MPH / 7 m/s2 ~= 1.6 seconds.

If you get caught running a redlight, you went through the intersection > 0.5 seconds after the light turned red, which is at least > 4 seconds after the light turned amber.

If you can't stop safely in that time, you weren't driving safely, or there were exceptional circumstances (eg. an ambulance, or a tailgating semi-trailer). The video footage of the event will exonerate you in those circumstances.

The total number of accidents increase, but the number of severe accidents decrease.

I love seeing people running red lights getting flashed. It makes my day.

My Dad uses bing.com, because that's the default. My Dad often clicks on ads. I think the Google OS is just a way to make google.com the default for people like my Dad.

Each bid is an independent gamble - one bid buys you one chance of winning. Many bids increase your chance of winning, but do not guarantee it (bidding wars can be infinite).

No one likes to break a website, but... given the options of breaking the website's Javascript features, or letting NoScript perpetually undermine the Easylist2 filter, there wasn't much choice for Easylist2.

Easylist2 has nothing to apologise for. If anything, staunchly defending the integrity of their list was a good thing.

Yes, I agree that fixing ABP would have been a much better solution to the problem. At the same time though, NoScript specifically targeted ABP, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that ABP specifically targeted NoScript (through EasyList2).

The whole "choose" business is just word play that can be slanted either way. And it's misleading, because the conflict was over NoScript's obtrusive default setting, not the ability to choose what you wanted to block or unblock after the fact.

NoScript has for a long time automatically changed the users default choice from: "block all Google Ads" to "block all Google Ads except NoScript ones". And, the feeling I get from that blog post is that the NoScript author still considers that program behavior acceptable. For this reason, the conflict was probably not avoidable.

So, while it was a good apology, I am not sure that the author has learned the entire lesson. Never-the-less, it is a mistake made and a mistake fixed, and the author is probably a better developer for it.

That was most likely the end result of the Easy List update war. Had the NoScript author not entered into such a battle, only the Ads would have been blocked.

Billboard space in our universe is unlimited (in the same sense as ad space on the Internet is unlimited) as well. Not all locations are equal, and hence there will be competition for the best locations.

I was trying to demonstrate that while the conclusion (use AI because they lose cheaper than it costs to get humans to lose) is not false, it is far too broad to be of any use. I can draw that same conclusion for any tool that humans have used to automate a task.

The idea that the tool's purpose is to lose is tangential.

And I dispute that. AFAIK, the AI in WoW is not designed to lose. A monster will kill you (win) if it gets the chance. The monster is trying to win (the AI is designed to win), it just isn't very good (the game is designed so you win the majority of individual battles).

And I don't think you can make the jump from "the game is designed so that you win the majority of individual battles" to "the game is not challenging". Doing so infers that "only games designed so that you do not win the majority of individual battles are challenging".

And since the basis for the PVP argument is undermined, it is a waste of time to consider it (regardless of whether it may be true or not).

The reasoning followed from flawed beginnings to a uselessly broad conclusion.

PS. I did intend to post something more thorough the first time, but I ran out of time and pressure posted only a snippet of my incomplete ramblings.

We need calculators because it's cheaper than keeping a human with you at all times to calculate sums for you. That sounds pretty silly, right?

Our knowledge of physics is uncertain, but it is not inaccurate. Perhaps absolute truth is unattainable, but we can achieve enough truth that it becomes practically equivalent to absolute truth. I haven't read any of Rand's arguments, so it is difficult for me to understand the context, but dismissing an argument on the basis of absolute truth not existing seems a little too convenient.