Viewing profile — hfinney

What % of the sky is visible from a point on a sphere. 50%, duh.

The problem with functionalism is the difficulty of unambiguously determining whether a given system implements a given calculation. This is inconsistent with the need to say that …

It's hardly fair to compare Bitcoin to credit cards in terms of "instant gratification", unless you turn back the clock to when you said, Oh, there are such things as credit cards?…

I'm not sure where the headline came from, but the income figures in the report are adjusted for family size (and inflation). Since families are getting smaller, this causes an inc…

The text is totally invisible on my iPad.

Part of the problem is that the journals are part of a complicated infrastructure for judging academic quality. The best authors compete to get published in the best journals. The …

The conventional wisdom is usually right. That's how it got to be the conventional wisdom.

Here is possibly a better link: http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_mitochondria.html This is a sequel to the Inner Life of a Cell animation that came out a few years ago. It sh…

I suspect you may have received the old "mild" patdown and not the new "enhanced" one. I think the new one uses the front of the hand. The guy in San Diego who refused the patdown …

Right, although the NY Times on Saturday claimed the jury is still out on cell phones: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html OTOH apparently there is evidence that…

Wow, 1 in 45 billion? Yet today TSA announced an investigation into this case, the first step towards a fine. Sounds pretty likely that they'll go through with it. http://news.ycom…

How can he be charged with leaving the security area "without permission", when TSA had him escorted out of the security area?

Don't forget cell phones, they cause cancer too.

It's a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court, a step below the Supreme Court. The appellate courts have regional jurisdiction. As it happens, San Diego, where this incident occurred, is …

What do you think are the odds that he'll actually get into legal trouble over this? Calibrate your model of reality!

Checked luggage will not fly on the plane without the passenger. Especially if he refused screening! They might want to search it some more but it will stay at the airport where yo…

California is a "two party" state for audio/video recordings. He could get in trouble for posting these recordings made without the consent of all parties. And the records would no…

"It's inconsistent for the Americans to accuse the Chinese of manipulating exchange rates and then to artificially depress the dollar exchange rate by printing money." Not really. …

For your first example, you could ask whether there was any corroboration of the story, and whether the scanners were even capable of printing out nude images to be autographed, as…

I'm worried that we're only hearing one side of the story on these scanners. If you listen to the net you learn that they are a total waste of time and money, security theater, the…

There are two kinds of scanners. One uses low energy X-rays, the other uses microwaves. If you got the microwave kind, that would not add to your X-ray dose. I understand pat-downs…

I've been programming 40 years, so there. Here are some he missed: - Keep at least two rubber bands around your punched card deck. It doesn't take too many times trying to put your…