rkowalick

FIS was the text for my first “real” mathematics class and it is near and dear to me.

I ended up getting a math PhD so it must have done somethings right!

As far I know, Euler's constant hasn't even been proven to be irrational.

The correct calculation isn’t too hard either.

If currency halves in purchasing power in 25 yrs, that means inflation is 100% in 25 years, so

    (1 + r)^25 = 2
    r = 2^(1/25) - 1 ~ 2.8%

Going to Vieques in 2011 was one of the most sublime and wonderful experiences of my life. I never felt like I was at an undiscovered treasure more than I did there: The beaches, the biolumniscent bay, the feral horses, the view over the bay in Esperanza, all of it so breathtaking.

Sounds like the nethack equivalent of seeing bad code, running

  git blame

and finding out it was me.

the job board could even pitch jobs in the language an exercism user is currently learning

This actually works quite well: https://github.com/mdonoughe/neko-mac/issues/5#issuecomment-...

I remember being blown away when I was told about Henry Cavendish’s attempt to calculate G (the gravitational constant) in the late 18th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_experiment

To clarify, in the US, there are two commonly used HVAC heat pumps:

- A/C units, which can only cool a room but can’t heat it up

- Heat Pumps, which typically do both.

The Well-Grounded Rubyist is my favorite Ruby book because it really drives home just how internally consistent the Ruby object model is. It gave me a deep appreciation for the aesthetics of Ruby.

That page misses my favorite XML quote, which is also on cat-v at http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/:

XML is a classic political compromise: it balances the needs of man and machine by being equally unreadable to both.

  - Matthew Might

A coworker of mine shared this neat little book which contains, among other things, descriptions of a lot of the internet infrastructure markings one can find on the streets of NYC based mostly on the author's own observations:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018CH0MX2

Definitely something I had never really thought about until recently.

I think my favorite way of trying K is John Earnest’s JS-based interpreter Ok:

http://johnearnest.github.io/ok/index.html

Here is an excellent video of Linus talking about why he specifically chose the GPLv2 and how he felt betrayed when the FSF released GPLv3:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU

I don’t think it as as ‘tinfoil’ as people may suggest. Moves like this combined with the lift on local news station ownership restrictions make plans to ‘control what people see’ more and more plausible.

An 8.8 second 1/4 mile is crazy for any car, let alone a stock one.

If you can make the trip to Chaco Canyon, I highly recommend it. During the day, you can spend time exploring (and I really felt like I was _exploring_) the canyon and spend the nights looking at the nicest views of the night sky you'll ever see.

PS Rental compact cars can get totally handle a 13 mile dirt road.

I imagine the only reason Apple Maps is worse than Google Maps is because the community around Google Maps has been updating it consistently for over a decade.

Apple maps transit experience is, in my opinion, much more carefully though out than Google's, so I know they can do something with the right information.

I totally used that watch to shut off random TVs in public places! nostalgia

I have been told that praising a kid for effort vs. results is much more important.

As a child, I was told I was smart and basically tried to coast as much as possible. I still have a lot of trouble learning how to do something new, especially because I have kind of internalized that I'm good at everything.

Orson Welles also famously used an ambulance to get around to various radio shoes in NYC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AOrson_Welles

  Due to his busy radio schedule,
  he was hard pressed to find ways
  to get from job to job in busy New
  York City traffic. In an interview
  conducted in his later years,
  Welles tells how he "discovered
  that there was no law in New York 
  that you had to be sick to travel 
  in an ambulance." Therefore, he
  took to hiring ambulances to take 
  him, sirens blazing, through the
  crowded streets to get to various
  buildings.

I think I heard Kent Beck refer to this as the 'pee-modoro' technique

This is basically money laundering, right?

I would argue that the first computer verified proof in some sense changed the mathematical aesthetic.

I am a little confused by your example, but the definition

  σf(x_1,...,x_n) = f(σx_1,...,σx_n)

is certainly consistent and I'm not sure what you were hoping to show with your example functions.

I'm really not sure what σ(2) is supposed to represent? σ acts on rational functions like f and g, so

  σf(5, 3) = f(3, 5) = -2

and

  σg(5,3) = g(3, 5) = 2

Of course σf and f might not be equal, but I don't see how that is a contradiction? Happy to try and clear things up.

There was actually an entire conference in 1996 pretty much dedicated to talks about "How not to prove the Riemann Hypothesis" to prevent people from wasting time on approaches that were known not to work:

http://www.aimath.org/research/conferences/rh-conf.html

Contract Bridge is a lot of fun, but definitely not as popular in the US as it used to be.

I just find it hard to think about playing with every set of magic cards. With booster draft, there are only a few hundred cards that you even have to worry about.

Another unlisted benefit of draft vs. pauper is that almost any store selling Magic cards will have a weekly draft.

I pretty much refuse to play any format other than booster draft. Flat price, loads of fun, and easy to get into for a brief period of time since you only need to know about the set you are drafting.

I don't think anything matches paper in terms of annotatability. I print things put all the time to just mark them up with red pen.