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User: i+kan+reed

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  1. Re:I thought the distinction was arbitrary already on Laser Creates Quantum Whirlpool · · Score: 0

    Light absolutely has mass. For what definition of mass does a photon not have mass?

  2. Re: I thought the distinction was arbitrary alread on Laser Creates Quantum Whirlpool · · Score: 1, Troll

    Let's see here:

    I thought the distinctions made already are already mostly ones of convenience and scale:

    Independent clause introducing the rest of the post

    Matter is slow and heavy enough to mostly be possible to model as point masses

    Independent clause describing matter's characteristics

    , while

    Comma and conjunction to join two independent clauses

    light is fast, light, and numerous enough to be more convenient to treat as non-discrete energy than as individual photons.

    Independent clause describing the properties of light.

    Which part went so far over your head?

  3. Re:Another word for robbery on US Marshals Auctioning $20M Worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but some standards are quite reasonable. Other states can still demand proof from the police seizing things, where the states I listed keeping things alleged to be involved in a crime essentially require an affirmative defense.

  4. I thought the distinction was arbitrary already on Laser Creates Quantum Whirlpool · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Polaritons form in semiconductors when laser light interacts with electrons and holes (positively charged vacancies) so strongly that it is no longer possible to distinguish light from matter.

    I thought the distinctions made already are already mostly ones of convenience and scale: matter is slow and heavy enough to mostly be possible to model as point masses, while light is fast, light, and numerous enough to be more convenient to treat as non-discrete energy than as individual photons.

  5. Re:But the case hasn't even started! on US Marshals Auctioning $20M Worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You know, I'm feeling a little wary of that +4 Informative I got.

    I'm not a lawyer, and I could be misconstruing the law, which says

    United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.

    It could be the concept of "legal tender" is way more complex than I'm giving it credit for. It's certainly the case that people have gotten in legal trouble for paying in nothing but pennies, for example.

  6. Re:This is a huge first step! on Launching 2015: a New Certificate Authority To Encrypt the Entire Web · · Score: 2, Informative

    He did get put in jail, though, on other occasions. Apparently for protesting in a disruptive manner at a nuclear test site.

    So technically they were right up until the part where they identified the reason for his arrest.

  7. Re:But the case hasn't even started! on US Marshals Auctioning $20M Worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins · · Score: 4, Informative

    If it were a debt you owed, they'd be legally obligated to take it. If payment is a condition of keeping your space, it's not.

    Once they evict you, and send you a bill for past-due rent, they have to take cash.

  8. Re:Another word for robbery on US Marshals Auctioning $20M Worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins · · Score: 1

    The states that have completely unreasonable standards for when this can happen are:
    Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Wyoming, Georgia, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington.

  9. Re:But the case hasn't even started! on US Marshals Auctioning $20M Worth of Silk Road's Bitcoins · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bitcoins were deemed to be regulated as currency, and thus the remuneration the US government might owe the defendants can be delivered in US dollars, should the property not be found to be forfeit.

  10. Re:Sharpshooter fallacy on Interviews: Ask Malcolm Gladwell a Question · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, it's not.

    Confirmation bias is a problem for this sort of thing too, but the sharpshooter fallacy comes from the fact that any given random dataset will have random relationships between variables. Real measurable ones. Especially in small data sets. It's like if I rolled a 6 sided die 6 times, it's very likely some numbers would show up twice and some no times.

    let's say they came up 5,5,4,2,1,1

    A reasonable person, from that dataset alone, might conclude that 5s and 1s are more likely on these dice. If you take that hypothesis, and validate it on the same set, you'll be right.

    You don't have to come in with a preconceived notion that 5 or 1 is somehow special, that you're confirming to yourself, willfully ignoring other data, if those are the only die results you ever see.

    It's a separate class of error.

  11. Sharpshooter fallacy on Interviews: Ask Malcolm Gladwell a Question · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The areas you work in focus on very small sample sizes: software billionaires, major cultural shifts, and cases where the most improbable result happened.

    Within these areas, you've developed mental frameworks off of shared elements between each. This runs into a problem, the Texas Sharpshoot fallacy. You pick out some characteristics that are shared by the things you're looking at, and then the only available data to confirm your hypothesis is the data you extracted your predictions from.

    How did you address this when researching your books?

  12. Re:PDF? PDF??? on Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases First Issue CC-BY-SA · · Score: 1

    Well, it's the 21st century, so no. I think we'd be alright with UTF-8.

  13. Re:Next trick on Magic Tricks Created Using Artificial Intelligence For the First Time · · Score: 0

    No, I'm quite ready to admit I'm wrong, when it's outside the context of dipshits willfully misunderstanding things.

    You on the other hand can be completely and totally ignorant of even the conversation you're currently having and demand others admit you're right.

    Fuck off and grow up.

  14. PDF? PDF??? on Crowdfunded Linux Voice Magazine Releases First Issue CC-BY-SA · · Score: -1, Troll

    How the heck is anyone supposed to do any sort of "share aliking" with such a locked down format?

    Literally the best thing you can say about PDFs is "At least they're not .doc"

  15. Re:Enough already on NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet Android Lollipop Update Performance Explored · · Score: 2

    Here's the thing:

    Power users can manage to get through dumbed down interfaces.
    Regular users get confused and give up on "smarter" interfaces.

    You can see that microsoft doesn't dump their current god-awful interface design choices on Visual Studio, but anything they even remotely imagine a typical user using, they wrap in useless shiny crap.

    (None of what you described, however, quite matches the evil of websites that think you want to do anything other than scroll when you scroll)

  16. Re: I am sure there will be a challenge on Court Rules Google's Search Results Qualify As Free Speech · · Score: 1

    A fair point. I cop to my ignorance of the details. Thanks for the clarification.

  17. Re:Obama Administration White House Fellow on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but if you clicked that link, you'd see that White House Fellows are specifically not intended to return to the whitehouse after their year there.

  18. Re:Obama Administration White House Fellow on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 2
  19. There's not a lot to say, this is scummy on Uber Threatens To Do 'Opposition Research' On Journalists · · Score: 1

    I mean, what do you say other than draw needless comparisons to make it appear worse or better depending on whatever prestanding beliefs about Uber being good or bad you have.

    PR denial is obnoxious too.

  20. Re:I am sure there will be a challenge on Court Rules Google's Search Results Qualify As Free Speech · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Okay, let's enlighten you, since you asked.

    Some technically inclined homosexual people, who were tired of Santorum using them as both a legal and verbal punching bag, got together and decided that they'd name something kinda gross after him. Then they used their technical prowess to make that the new definition for "Santorum" the top google result for that search.

    The OP thinks that this kind of political protest is a reason why the governments wouldn't view google search results as free speech, but it's quite clear that the opposite is true.

  21. Re:This study is... on Electric Shock Study Suggests We'd Rather Hurt Ourselves Than Others · · Score: 1

    The irony here is that penguinoid is empathically projecting a common human sense of empathy onto a group whose most defining characteristic is the lack of it.

  22. Re:Next trick on Magic Tricks Created Using Artificial Intelligence For the First Time · · Score: 1

    So let me get this straight:

    You want me to ignore the context of the things I was saying, and then acknowledge I was wrong in that lack of context?

    No.

    Fuck you asshole.

  23. Re:Next trick on Magic Tricks Created Using Artificial Intelligence For the First Time · · Score: 1

    I specifically said to extract the visual components way back. But I can understand that we were talking past each other until this point.

  24. Re:Given how most spend their time in college... on Coding Bootcamps Presented As "College Alternative" · · Score: 1

    Oh, god, don't make me support those people's code. The thing is: we work as a team. And people who can't manage the engineering theory: design process, design patterns, complex algorithms. These people as team mates make life harder for me, not easier.

  25. Re:Next trick on Magic Tricks Created Using Artificial Intelligence For the First Time · · Score: 1

    No, but spacial pattern matching is exactly what this sort of thing is testing. And if you fed each of the parent segments into an image recognition algorithm, I bet it would pull out the right final result for at least some similar questions.

    This is a hypothesis that requires testing, but it's still the case I'm making.