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throwaway879

Re:Why do we use R rather than Excel? on Sunday July 11, 2021 @11:29AM (#27801564)
Worse Is Better™
This and the first few replies to it feel like they're coming from bean counters, not engineers. Who reads HN? I mean anyone can, but who's the core audience. I'm confused. Shouldn't the top voted thread be about the tech and the engineering behind it, and debating whether it's worth funding or not based on that, not based on things that are mostly the concern of business people. Is it that most engineers today have MBAs or are MBA wannabes? or well roundedness? But this focus on business metrics is not well roundedness, for an engineer, IMO.
Re:Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @01:35PM (#27531205)
Except, they have video footage of radar screen spotting objects flying at high speeds and disappearing into the sea. Not sure that there is any other way to explain it than acknowledge that there are physical objects that pop up randomly, move at high speeds and disappear. What you make if it is up to your imagination, but you cannot dismiss as optical illusions. Maybe this planet is capable of producing physical objects that fly at high speed and then disappear into the sea. Some kind if illusive sea creatures that pop up to say hello then disappear?
Re:Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report on Wednesday June 16, 2021 @12:47PM (#27530621)
Teleport? Wormhole? Advanced tech that makes them pop up in our space? I doubt it. But not sure how else we have those things caught on military radars and pilot cameras that are not always explainable by optical phenomenon related to orbital objects or natural atmospheric phenomenon.
And members of Congress trading on insider news (before bailout packages etc) get away with it?
>>how about if you send millions of bottle messages?

assuming we can integrate all learnings from those bottles into a system that can classify any given situation and apply the learning in that domain. But to build a system that can classify any problem is where we're stuck at and RL can't get us there

If you send a message in a bottle it will eventually land ashore somewhere, maybe in a century, who knows, and who knows whether it will be relevant by then or not, or civilization may not even exist by then, but sure it's similarly plausible to get to AGI via RL.
Re:El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @10:49AM (#27448538)
What are the chances the President of El Salvador was paid off by Coinbase or the like?
Re:Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2 on Sunday May 30, 2021 @10:33PM (#27339405)
Their Tommy album was pretty good.
Re:Why Don't Americans Use Bidets? on Sunday May 30, 2021 @03:14PM (#27335768)
Flushable Wipes.

I used bidets growing up (discrete unit as well as seat integrated) and 99% of the time it worked but the 1% of the time when someone's poop got stuck to the fountain head/tube was enough to turn me off. However, wiping your anus with dry toilet paper, especially if you're a grown adult with a hairy anus, is bound to leave your own poop smear on your own anus, so these days i use flushable wipes. Works too if you're using a porta potti - just carry flushable wipes with you.

Using a made up but probably good enough analogy, if scientist created a blackhole in the lab that could end up sucking in the entire planet and the solar system, would it be OK for someone to jam the mechanism that sustains it? I think of PoW gambling casinos slash Ponzi schemes (Bitcoin) in the same way. If the governments don't have any motivation to stop the mayhem, then the company whose products are being used to create that blackhole should step in. I never liked Nvidia, but this is a necessary decision.
Re:So what’s wrong with 1975 programming? (2006) on Saturday May 08, 2021 @11:17AM (#27087882)
<< girls get disappointed if think they got hold of something else than the MP3 player you had in your pocket>>

Sexist B.S.

Re:What can mRNA treat next? on Monday May 03, 2021 @01:52PM (#27028324)
To those downvoting:

“The most worrisome part, he said, is that antibodies also can make subsequent infections worse, creating so-called antibody-dependent enhancement. Two vaccines — one against a coronavirus in cats and another against dengue, a flavivirus that affects humans — had to be withdrawn because the antibodies they induced caused potentially fatal reactions. If an antibody binds weakly against these viruses or falls to low levels, it can fail to “neutralize” the virus, but instead help it get into cells.”

https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/09/for-an-effective-covid-...

Re:What can mRNA treat next? on Sunday May 02, 2021 @06:02PM (#27019480)
Why would anyone down-vote a question asking if there is any merit to some concerns raised by a clinical researcher? The target audience is people working on mRNA vaccines who might be able to shed some light.
Re:What can mRNA treat next? on Sunday May 02, 2021 @05:48PM (#27019368)
Do the concerns raised here have any merit?

https://osf.io/epr24/