sls

I'm not familiar with the story, but this is what I take from the comment above:

* captain arrives in FTL ship looking for evidence of a thing

* captain isn't satisfied with a painting offered as evidence, because it could be fake

* aide says that photography is unknown to the natives, implying that the production of a photograph would be taken by the captain as having more evidentiary value

=> captain knows about FTL but is unfamiliar with the technology required to produce false but convincing photographic images

Since you obviously like this sort of thing, let me point out that quantum uncertainty isn't simply a factor of measurement/observer effects[1][2]. (The only part of what you said that I am addressing by this is the "this is because" section.)

[1] https://www.nature.com/news/quantum-uncertainty-not-all-in-t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

The word "mindfulness" in the context of a particular faculty or practice derives from attempts to translate the Pali word "sati". Cultivating sati correctly is part of the Noble Eightfold Path described by the Buddha. Unfortunately, the constituents that comprise "mindfulness" don't really convey the meaning behind "sati," so it's only really useful if you know that this is a token pointing to a foreign concept and you understand that concept. Because mostly Westerners don't, it has certainly been broadly misused to cover all kinds of unrelated things, including many practices/ideas you might call "new-age nonsense." (You may also think of Buddhism as nonsense, but the cultivation of sati being a practice with several thousand years of history should at least exclude it from being "new-age.")

Hopefully you can find out a lot more about the concept by googling for it under its real name. I'm happy to point to additional resources, please feel free to pm.

[Edit: typo]

Methodology described here [1] if you want to go beyond assuming their result is essentially a lie. In the per-state data [2] you see results like 31-32% below ALICE in the Dakotas, but 47-49% in NY and California. If one wanted to present a partisan hit piece to encourage establishment liberal/"Great Society" safety net policies, this would appear to be the opposite of what you would want to produce.

[1] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/methodology [2] https://www.unitedwayalice.org/in-the-us

I don't know why you point out that it's impossible to falsely diagnose cancer in a patient who has cancer. Surely you agree that it's also impossible to falsely diagnose autism in a person with autism? But perhaps your remark simply reflects a metaphor stretched too far.

I realize that you are not the original commenter who alleged that the term "autism" was being thrown around too lightly, but you're happy to agree. Is the entire basis for your view that sometimes people are misdiagnosed? Or do you have a stronger claim in mind?

Do you think the word "cancer" is thrown around too lightly when people say that they had a melanoma removed?

I know something about the wholesale auto auction business. What kind of collusion are you suggesting?

This struck me as very surprising. Straight Dope's take[1]:

> While coal-burning power plants are responsible for producing most of the sulfur dioxide out there (and thus acid rain), they don’t contribute that much of the compounds that actually cause silver to tarnish, namely hydrogen sulfide—best known as a key player in the smell of rotten eggs and flatulence—and the similarly pungent carbonyl sulfide. About 90 percent of the hydrogen sulfide and more than two-thirds of the carbonyl sulfide in our atmosphere come from (you guessed it) volcanoes, salt marshland, undersea vents, and other natural sources.

[1] https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/columns/straight-dope/ar...

Your contention is that the public policy decisions to start adopting license plates around the turn of the 20th century also encompassed the decision to track and permanently store all licensed vehicle movements?

Back in his collection All the Myriad Ways, Larry Niven wrote a brief essay called "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel" that explored ideas like these. One excerpt:

> GIVEN: That the universe of discourse permits both time travel and the changing of the past.

> THEN: A time machine will not be invented in that universe.

> For, if a time machine is invented in that universe, somebody will change the past of that universe. There is just too much future subsequent to the invention of a time machine: too many people with too many good motives for meddling with too many events occurring in too much of the past.

thus

> Niven's Law: If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe.

I think the Smalltalk systems that use image-based persistence[1] meet that criterion, despite the image itself eventually being persisted in a file system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk#Image-based_persiste...

Have you had a chance to look at the Theoretical Minimum books by Susskind, Hrabovsky, and Friedman?

I think the reference is to this book, "Site Reliability Engineering" [1]. As you will see on the main page [2], it is part of Google's effort to describe "How Google Runs Production Systems", which is basically what the parent comment was asking about.

[1] https://landing.google.com/sre/book.html [2] https://landing.google.com/sre/

The Greek historian Polybius (ca. 200 BCE) observed characteristic weaknesses of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. He theorized that the Roman mixed constitution in which powers were separated was a key factor in the success and stability of Rome. His thought influenced the American founders both directly and indirectly.

It's interesting to observe how the institutional and technological changes since the American founding, and the systemic problems we easily note, align with his discussion. He theorized that each of the unmixed systems had weaknesses that led them to eventually be supplanted by another form, initially well-administered, which too would in time succumb to its inherent weaknesses. The mixed form resisted this cycle. So to the extent that the polity "un-mixes" the arrangement of powers, e.g. making the Senate directly elected instead of chosen by state legislatures without making a corresponding anti-democratic change, the system becomes more exposed to the cyclic risks associated with the unmixed state that was favored.

You are hearing a lot of different advice about what GDPR compliance means, and until that is settled (or proven so unsettled as to be unknowable), you lack a key factor in your business decision. My advice is to consult an attorney who you trust to be knowledgable about GDPR compliance and find out what exactly you need to do to become compliant, or to determine what the options are and what level of comfort you have with them. Then you can make the call whether you want to spend the required effort.

The upside here is that this investment also opens the possibility of giving your co-founder the confidence that they need to stay with the project, should the answer be that the compliance work is small / simple.

Maybe… but I've never once asked to see the lease at a client site to verify the terms under which they were allowed to do business there.

Expressions like the American greeting "How are you?" are examples of phatic expressions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression), meaning that they are functional as opposed to communicative. Although they take the form of communicative statements, in this case an interrogative, they are really not. Understanding this distinction was very helpful for me, letting me answer "fine" with no ethical concern when asked this sort of question in quotidian encounters such as checking out of a grocery store. I don't think there is any dishonesty in that. Again, the speaker is not really asking the question, but performing a social ritual, and they neither expect nor wish a reply to its literal form.

It's quite different if someone asks a real question such as the example you give about the quality of their food. If I don't want to be honest with whatever level of tact, I may avoid directly answering. I won't choose to lie to them. I don't agree with you if your view is that my unwillingness to declare my feelings about their food (omission) is equivalent to telling a lie about my feelings about their food.

The problem is that a lot of what happens in American prisons really is absurd, Kafkaesque, sadism apparently for its own sake, and yet this hasn't actually led to the reductio. When we know that other approaches are better for society in that they lead to less recidivism, and are also less painful for the criminals, and yet continue to push in the opposite direction, it's reasonable to ask if there are any limits to our appetite for inflicting pain. If we can't even ask, then imo that is what prevents the meaningful discussion.

fyi - Why Ukrainians Hate When You Say 'The Ukraine' http://www.newsweek.com/why-ukrainians-hate-when-you-say-ukr...

If I may make a suggestion, the part that's of interest to me is what went into the making. I also wouldn't have taken special note of the old submission, because it doesn't tell me anything about how it works or how it came to be, and I have no actual need to translate to or from Chinese. It seems you've been very thoughtful and done a lot of work, which I think would be of interest to people, should you feel the inclination to describe it. All the best :)

I would love to see a Show HN about your amazing project sometime.

You shouldn't be convinced by one sentence saying that a conclusion was reached a few years back. But you also have no basis for confidence in the negation of that conclusion on the basis of that almost total lack of data or theory.

You can't honestly believe that teams of people with physics Ph.D.s just didn't address these questions - how do we infer from observational data, what do we infer from that data - so go read the paper.

RMS is very clear on the difference between open source and free software [1].

> The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, essential respect for the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand.

Confusion certainly has arisen over the dual meanings of "free", where the intent is to convey "unrestricted" but often "without cost" is understood. Similarly, a confusion naturally arises between what OSI may define as qualifying for the term "open source," and the plain meaning of the words which imply that when the source is open for inspection, then the project is open source. But as you see above, even when the terms are understood as their definers intend, they have very different meanings even if they describe a similar set of software, because they have very different cultural contexts and goals behind them.

[1] "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

"The harder I work, the luckier I get," is the quote I've heard. You prompted me to research it and I found this article [1] suggesting that the version "Diligence is the mother of good luck" may be the oldest attested quote for this concept in English, occurring in the late 16th century.

I don't doubt that a version of it goes back much further. It seems like something one might hear in ancient Athens, or from some of the Roman humorists.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/21/luck-hard-work/

I didn't downvote, but it may be that those that did are tired of seeing this same "insight" on every single story about a free service.

I've been delighted with "Mack's shut-eye shade premium sleep mask" for years. I've only needed to replace my original once.

I started using these when I was a traveling consultant, and now use it only for travel, when taking an afternoon nap, or sleeping in (usually due to illness).

It's very comfortable. The nose bridge is padded. There are two straps, from the top and bottom of the sides, so you don't have a strap routing over the ear. I find it lets in the least amount of light of the masks I've tried precisely because of the comfort features. I don't have to try to arrange the mask in some contorted way to get comfort, so it can sit as intended and block light.

from the paper:

> Training proceeded [...] using 5,000 first-generation TPUs

> We evaluated the fully trained instances of AlphaZero against Stockfish, Elmo and the previous version of AlphaGo Zero [...]. AlphaZero and the previous AlphaGo Zero used a single machine with 4 TPUs.

So the 5000 TPUs processing power or energy consumption should be compared with those spent in devising Stockfish, not running it.

Yes, you're right. I wrote hurriedly and was ambiguous. I meant to say that the rule about not ending a sentence with a proposition is aping Latin style. Thanks!

N.B. ending an English sentence with a preposition is fine, c.f. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/ending-sentences-w... - it's just aping Latin style

If you search for "desk pad" on Amazon, Google images, etc. you'll see them. A large rectangle of paper, typically being held in a base at the corners, top and corners, etc., sometimes printed with a grid, calendar, etc.

My father's desk featured one of these, used exactly as described.