Viewing profile — tb

You do have a sliding scale, in the form of the hosting cost pass through. Your average restaurateur is entirely unqualified to estimate the AWS hosting costs of your software in r…

This suggestion comes up whenever the topic of self-driving cars arises, but I wonder if access to a fleet of self-driving cars would be more akin to a cheaper taxi service than a …

Default risk. The price for a bitcoin that is currently held by Mt.Gox factors in the market's expectation that said bitcoin will be able to be redeemed from Mt.Gox. Analogous to w…

For anyone who's interested in why this is the case, here is the classic article on this situation: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

OP uses a fresnel lens and gives instructions on how to focus the HUD at infinity to avoid this problem.

"However, although important for the local economy in Congo, the contribution of coltan mining in Congo to the world supply of tantalum is usually small. The United States Geologic…

It's to keep all the railway clocks in sync. You could have one that's running up to 1.5s slow and it will still be able to keep up with all the rest, and they're all resynchronise…

See elsewhere in the thread [1] where I discussed this. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4738558

The camera is on the end of the arm at the bottom left in [1]. By comparing that to this picture you can see where part of the arm is in the self-portrait, above and to the left of…

Very OT, but why in God's name do some people/countries feel it appropriate to use imperial units rather than metric units? The reasons are the same - historical usage and inertia …

> Some other particle may interact with nothing we are familiar with -- and thus we could never study it. Is it even "real" then? Philosophically, this is equivalent to the questio…

Most modern cars will have lots of separate controllers. Many of the functions of the car are largely independent and having them on separate boards means they can be physically cl…

You are referring, of course, to this excellent (and somewhat frightening) article: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

I absolutely agree. I now have an instinctive reaction to reach for my pocket whenever I'm feeling the slightest bit impatient, and I have caught myself on a couple of occasions re…

It's an art piece, not a serious piece of espionage equipment, hence its form reflects its (symbolic) function.

Exactly. You might make 10 for your early prototypes but it's not unusual to make 100 or more for the final test run.

Aha, thank you. As most of my C code has been written for a single compiler and a single platform I was less aware of the pitfalls than I should have been. I will know now to be ex…

I completely agree with everything you've said except for "any use of bitfields." The comma operator is ok in this circumstance, mixing unsigned and signed is a big no-no, but what…

"Selecting those with most artistic potential" were the exact words I used. The fundamental question is whether "found art" is copyrightable.

I love the small print at the bottom: Text copyright (c) 2004 Scott Nesin. Drawings copyright (c) 2004 Guy Nesin, used with permission. You just know he did actually ask his 4-year…

The person who took the photos, since that would be the creative act. Sorting through the photos and selecting the good ones is also a creative act, but it is a derivative work bec…

The monkeys took many photos, most of which were out of focus or poorly composed. Could not sorting through the essentially random photos that the monkeys took, and selecting those…

It's not that simple, because you have to factor in all the negative externalities. That's what got us into this mess in the first place, people aren't paying the full cost of the …

It's an introductory post for a new blog. Obviously the author intends to go into much more detail in future posts.

What is a bee if not a miniature flying pollination machine? :)