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Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#181

Post by chadcmulligan »

m0zg wrote: post #154
huhtenberg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's accurate though. It says I'd be at around half of the DUI limit after 2 glasses of wine in one hour. That's certainly not right.

And it can't ever be accurate. Thing is, how drunk you're going to get within some time frame depends on what (and how much) you're eating, and whether your stomach had some food in it before you started drinking. If there's stuff in your stomach, its sphincter is closed while it's digesting it. Stomach itself absorbs alcohol (and nutrients) much slower than the intestine. TL;DR: don't rely on this calculator to dete…

Oh wow, so there is a reason for the old "Don't drink on an empty stomach"

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#182

Post by withinboredom »

Keyframe wrote: post #120
mike_d wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a frequent WA user. I use it for things I could calculate, but are much faster to just ask in plain text. How much that cloud instance really costs $0.03/hr * 1 month Bandwidth calculations for hosting providers 10 TB per month in Mbps

You also might want to try google search. They display calculations for these particular queries and quite a few more.

Google is also often wrong. For example, my computer is set to US English, as is my profile. Yet somehow it still gets confused on decimals and commas (they are switched in my current country’s locale).

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#184

Post by rtsil »

barabba wrote: post #165
onion2k wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wolfram isn't reporting how much protein you'll get from eating something; it's reporting how much there is in the bread. Protein assimilation depends on a huge range of factors, and varies significantly between individuals (based on everything from gut microbiome to health factors to how much you chew your food to your saliva production to... Well, it's a long list). There's no way a website could report the amount…

So you're saying that "fat people eat too much" is a statistically inaccurate statement?

Not if "too much" is relative to their physiology. How much is too much varies for each person.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#185

Post by sokoloff »

every wrote: post #170
5- wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you might want to try units(1). https://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html the input language is less flexible than wolframalpha/google, but i quickly got used to it. it's nice to have something local and reliable. you can also define custom units. i prefer using it in terse mode: $ units -t 0.03$/hr*1month 21.914532 US$ $ units -t 10TB/month Mbps 30.421214

Units advises there are 118.20896 smoots per furlong..

Wouldn’t that be properly expressed as 118 Smoots plus 5 Ears?

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#186

Post by still_grokking »

The pricing seems random to me. (Even it seems cheaper than last time I've checked).

It's ~20% more expensive in Euro than in Dollar. (And Poland, which I checked for curiosity as it's in the EU but does not use Euro, has a price in Pound with is even higher; Poland is not a rich country).

Also I don't think charging for example people in countries in Africa as much as for example US people makes any sense.

The service is really great for some questions but the commercial offer never added up for me.

If the software would be OpenSource and run on prem I would consider buying some additional online services for it (even at the current random price point and without having a real use case; it's not more expensive than an average online game, so bearable). It would make also that "Wolfram Language" worth having a look at. But I don't bother even glimpsing at closed source programming languages. That's especially one of the things they do very poorly.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#187

Post by moron4hire »

marcinzm wrote: post #179
onion2k wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wolfram isn't reporting how much protein you'll get from eating something; it's reporting how much there is in the bread. Protein assimilation depends on a huge range of factors, and varies significantly between individuals (based on everything from gut microbiome to health factors to how much you chew your food to your saliva production to... Well, it's a long list). There's no way a website could report the amount…

>This is something that actually annoys me immensely when people say "you eat too much!" to fat people. Two people can have the exact same diet and the exact same exercise regime, and if one assimilates particular foods more effectively they'll be getting more calories, and put on weight. Food intake is far more complex than many people believe. I don't see why that statement is inaccurate. It's not "you eat more tha…

The problem is that it is usually presented as a "simple" solution. "Just eat less. Reduce your food intake until you're at a calorie deficit". For some people, that can mean eating three small, but satisfying meals a day. For others, it can mean eating extremely strict rations for only two meals a day, leaving the person constantly hungry and cranky. Then it becomes a will power issue, which as we all know is a function of brain energy reserves (right, we all know that, right?!). Throw in a mentally challenging job versus just phoning it in and it's really not actionable advice.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#188

Post by nimih »

5- wrote: post #101
mike_d wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a frequent WA user. I use it for things I could calculate, but are much faster to just ask in plain text. How much that cloud instance really costs $0.03/hr * 1 month Bandwidth calculations for hosting providers 10 TB per month in Mbps

you might want to try units(1). https://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html the input language is less flexible than wolframalpha/google, but i quickly got used to it. it's nice to have something local and reliable. you can also define custom units. i prefer using it in terse mode: $ units -t 0.03$/hr*1month 21.914532 US$ $ units -t 10TB/month Mbps 30.421214

qalc[1] is also quite nice if you're looking for a command line calculator; it handles units well, but has some other fancy features, and has a very lax parser which i find to be a huge plus.

    $ qalc '0.03$/hr*1month'
    error: "r" is not a valid variable/function/unit.
    (0.03 × (USD / hour)) × (1 × month) = $21.915

    $ qalc '0.03$/h*1month -> CAD'
    (0.03 × (USD / hour)) × (1 × month) ≈ CAD 27.28388011

    $ qalc '10TB/month -> Mbit/s'
    10 × (terabyte / month) ≈ 30.42056430 megabits/s

    $ qalc 'integrate(x+x^2)'
    integrate(x + (x^2)) = x^3 / 3 + x^2 / 2 + C
[1] https://qalculate.github.io/manual/qalc.html

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#189

Post by b112 »

ghostly_s wrote: post #129
b112 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use verbatim search too. All words must exist without aliasing. (google aliases ubuntu and debian, john/jon/Johnathan for example)

>google aliases ubuntu and debian, WHAT the FUCK. Is there a more convenient way to bypass this than "quoting" "every" "word?"

Yes verbatim search , under search tools after an initial search.

Google takes quotes as just stronger suggestions, fyi, but verbatim is supposed to prevent this.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#190

Post by b112 »

dylan604 wrote: post #162
emmelaich wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

click tools -> show all results -> verbatim

i just tried this for: 48 * 6 the results after choosing verbatim are even worse

Verbatim gives no aliasing, interpretation. 48 means 48, not forty eight.
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