Viewing profile — hughlomas

The only state preventing free commerce through the strait is Iran.

People seem to forget that China is a fully authoritarian state. The fact is that China is an adversary and blocks virtually every western social network, including YouTube, Instag…

When a parent tells their child not to touch the hot stove, they want the best for the child. When the child does it anyway, the parent hopes that the lesson will be instructive fo…

With respect, allowing political posts that clearly violate the HN guidelines will normalize such posts, incentivize them in the future due to karma, and attract the type of people…

Perhaps they use some form of steganography.

I think Amazon's Echo device is doing this the proper way, which "uses on-device keyword spotting to detect the wake word. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams…

A World War 2 training video for evading flak cannon fire is one of the best examples of graphical information presentation that I've seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP_-WUMi…

Ah, my apologies, that was my first time uploading to youtube, haha. It is public now I believe.

I loved reading this because I made something exceedingly similar a few years ago, and I'm similarly fascinated with how complex behavior can emerge from such simple rules. https:/…

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/guinea/index.html Current outbreak appears to be around 50-55% mortality.

Similarly, I've heard that the cockpit voice recording only keeps the last two hours. While that deals with 99% of the cases, here it will miss out on all conversation near the poi…

The organism is a vessel to propagate the genes. Germ cells such as embryos usually have additional defenses and repair mechanisms, such as for DNA damage, that the somatic cells l…

Can anyone please explain why it is necessary to identify the precise remains of the dead, especially those that died so long ago? It seems like a waste of time and resources, driv…

This looks intriguing and I will likely try it out. As an aside, half of the links under "Features" are not actually links, and half of ones that are links go to the same page with…

"Natural" has more than one definition, dependent on its context. In some definitions of the word "natural", yes, twinkies are technically natural. In the more colloquial senses th…

A name is not a definition. Artificial selection is a subset of natural selection. Humans are natural components of the environment for the thing being selected.

As far as consciousness goes, where do you draw the line? At what point are creatures merely programmed by instinct, mechanical in their nature? Rotifers [0]? Nematodes? Flatworms?…

A simple //comment would have sidestepped all of that and still clarified the number's purpose.

I do not intend this as a contradiction but merely a tangential tidbit: Devil facial tumor disease [0] is an example of an actual, transmissible cancer in mammals, showing that it …

The illustration has 2 dimensions, x and y. If we have x, y, z, i, j, and n then we'd have six dimensions. If each word represents a dimension, any blog title with that word gets a…

DNA is the hereditary material, RNA isn't "decorating itself" with DNA.

As far as I'm aware, CryptoLocker demands $300 or 2 bitcoins in the first 3 days. The average person isn't going to try to get bitcoins to pay, and right now no one would even want…

I am truly ignorant of anything relating to finance, can you explain why dumping only 1.5% of volume would be an issue?

None of these weapons would be of much use for anything besides maiming one or two people, which could be accomplished with much simpler things. They are novel creations though.

I was intrigued by your statements and looked up some information on them. "Forcing them to buy hybrid seeds" appears to be a baseless statement. Apparently "Order 81" by Paul Brem…