Viewing profile — wjy

Vance seems to be confusing the right to privacy with the ability to actually enforce it. Apparently, a "right" to privacy is all well and good, as long it can be casually violated…

Many processors in a modern car have no floating point capability whatsoever. Fractional numbers are represented using integers - "fixed point" representation. While it's almost ce…

Heat. If there's no airflow around the blower (and therefore the blower motor which is usually integrated, then the motor will run hotter. Temperature has an inverse relationship w…

If he wanted to be shut down over guilty feelings, he could, you know, just stop. So that's probably not it.

You push a button and the blade snaps out in both cases. What's the real difference? The internal mechanisms differ, but the end result is the same.

It's also interesting that there is no effective difference between a switchblade and these "spring assisted" knives. Yes, the mechanism is different. But in both cases, you push a…

No, but that's just the point. It's smart enough to know that at key-on, it has very little information about the actual fuel level, so it allows the needle to move rapidly. As it …

Edit: grammar Some cars are really good at this. Some are not. It depends on so many factors, including the egghead quality. I'm one of those firmware eggheads, btw. As another exa…

Being a controls engineer, this behavior always drives me crazy. I love to observe the temperature controller do its job. But it does depend on the car. A good controller will blas…

My carrier didn't subsidize my phone. I bought it from Google, and put my old SIM card in it.

There's a book called Buddha's Brain that documents several studies of people meditating while being scanned by an fMRI machine. It's quite fascinating. Regular meditation alters c…

Thank you both _delirium and bermanoid. You have managed to express my sentiments exactly, but much more eloquently than I could have. I am always so frustrated by the notion of "t…

Scheme works great in SICP because it doesn't get in the way. After the first few pages, it doesn't feel like you're reading a programming language so much as reading the direct ex…

In that sentence, "one" is the subject and "in four teens" is a prepositional phrase. When choosing the verb form, we look at the subject, which is this case is singular. So, "is" …

That sort of reasoning works fine right up until there are only ebooks. Then there's no alternative, and the terms of service are effectively no longer voluntary.

If voting was meant to indicate agreement or disagreement, then EVERYBODY would be able to downvote.

I believe the article states they notified the banks before publishing the original work.

On capitalization: You're not E.E. Cummings. He deliberately eschewed punctuation as part of his poetry, exploring possibilities. HN comments are not usually poetry in that sense. …

I think you're right. They want to close the deal because they may have been searching for a new hire for a while, and they can only field ONE offer at a time. If you decline, they…

With all due respect, if you want the airlines to listen to you, you should say it to them , not HN.

Good point. Maybe we should stop thinking of Lexus and Acura as luxury brands. Real luxury brands are the ones those of us in the middle class can't even consider buying. Maybach. …

Testifying is providing information to the court. Decrypting your hard drive is providing information to the court. What's the difference? I would argue that all evidence is really…

You're exactly right. As a sole proprietor, I can save WAY more in my own 401k than I could at any previous employer. I think about 3x more. It's known as a "Solo 401k", adapted to…

That's really funny. It reminds me of my old Quiz Bowl days, where I would raise my hand while still working out the answer. I trusted my brain would finish the problem before the …

All good questions, I think, except the last one. It doesn't matter if you volunteer to sip your explosive liquids because your intent is to die in the upcoming explosion anyway. S…