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Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#251

Post by franga2000 »

mike_d wrote: post #71
onedognight wrote: post #4

I use it regularly. Sometimes it’s broken, and maybe nobody notices but me? :) Their natural language queries for things that I know they know about are amazing. Here are some that I have used recently. You really need to see these results to appreciate them. I wanted to know how tall my daughter might be. 8 year old female 55 lbs http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8%20year%20old%20female... I wanted to know the nu…

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

Same here, the way it seamlessly wrangles even the most ridiculous combinations of units is insanely useful. Just yesterday I used it to calculate power consumption for a house by timing one of those spinning wheel meter things. Something like "(10 rot / 46 s) / (375 rot / kW*h)" and it gave me straight answer in watts.

I definitely could've worked that out by hand, but it would've taken a minute or a few, mostly on unit conversions. With WA, I can just think in variable relationships and not worry about units at all.

Don't get me wrong, it often returns complete garbage, see all the memes of Siri passing non-math questions to it. It's annoying to figure out or explain to someone because the syntax is very loose and you just kind of need to get a feel for it, but once you do, it's really powerful.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#252

Post by tomcam »

loo wrote: post #50
vortico wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the bad performance is due to evaluating expressions itself. If I type N[Log[2]] into Mathematica, it evaluates in less than a millisecond. It's probably because Wolfram Alpha is using natural language process to try to process my query and then finally deciding that by N[Log[2]], I mean N[Log[2]]. And it's probably not because of that, but because their grid scheduler isn't optimized for sub-second latency.

Ha, hearing the word "process" in Wolfram's voice, there.

Big fan! No, I mean Stephen Wolfram is a big fan… of Stephen Wolfram

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#253

Post by marcinzm »

renox wrote: post #242
marcinzm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also don't need to eat that much less if you're at a stable weight. 10% less a day means you lose a pound every 1-2 weeks. In my experience people seem to not like it when you tell them, after they ask, that you lost weight simply by eating a bit less every day consistently for a year.

Trying currently to lose weight: the reason why I don't 'like' this answer is because I don't track my food intake closely enough to be able to know what removing 10% means. So I guess that the first step is write everything you eat in a way you can monitor it, to be able to reduce it by a small amount if necessary.. Any advice on how to do it?

You don't really need to track your intake perpetually as I see it. But measure you weight weekly. Same time and day to better account for water/food/etc.

If your weight is not going down then try to eat somewhat less. Maybe skip a side or order a salad instead of fries or get 1% milk with your coffee. Or cut a potato from your dinner if you're cooking.

That said, tracking for a while is good to figure out what you can cut since you may not realize how much you eat (snacks, night snacks, soda, etc.).

In my case I stopped eating those free chips at work and stopped drinking a can of coke with lunch. I also tried to avoid large dinners but just large enough ones that I wouldn't go to sleep feeling hungry.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#254

Post by Invictus0 »

crdrost wrote: post #233
Invictus0 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a willpower issue for 3 days, the time it takes for your stomach and appetite to readjust to a lower volume of food intake. Anyone who's fasted knows how easy skipping meals is--it's certainly not the agonizing test of willpower you and many nonfasters seem to think it is. And by the way, if diet and exercise are not the path to weight loss, then what is?

Diet and exercise are indeed not the path to weight loss. This is well known: most fad diets work this way in some fashion or another, and it’s well known that most fad diets fail. Since it touches my field, physics, why people have this misapprehension, (“a calorie is a calorie” is an attempt at a thermodynamic statement) I feel somewhat qualified to talk about part of this even though I am not an endocrinologist or…

> Diet and exercise are indeed not the path to weight loss. This is well known: most fad diets work this way in some fashion or another, and it’s well known that most fad diets fail.

I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not suggesting people go on keto or weight watchers. Those fad diets don't necessarily fail because they're ineffective, although they probably are--they fail because they are highly prescriptive and restrictive and it's difficult for people to actually execute the diet.

What I'm saying is that reducing total food intake for 3 days creates a lasting decrease in appetite. You can prove this to yourself by skipping breakfast for a few days: after a while, you will simply not be hungry at breakfast time.

The best post I've ever seen on weight loss comes from Andrej Karpathy, head of AI at Tesla: https://karpathy.github.io/2020/06/11/biohacking-lite/

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#255

Post by Invictus0 »

renox wrote: post #242
marcinzm wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also don't need to eat that much less if you're at a stable weight. 10% less a day means you lose a pound every 1-2 weeks. In my experience people seem to not like it when you tell them, after they ask, that you lost weight simply by eating a bit less every day consistently for a year.

Trying currently to lose weight: the reason why I don't 'like' this answer is because I don't track my food intake closely enough to be able to know what removing 10% means. So I guess that the first step is write everything you eat in a way you can monitor it, to be able to reduce it by a small amount if necessary.. Any advice on how to do it?

Don't do a bunch of tracking: it's too much effort and you'll have a hard time sticking with it. Try 16:8 fasting (you can only eat within an 8 hour period each day). I also recommend reading this post to understand how the body works in terms of weight loss: https://karpathy.github.io/2020/06/11/biohacking-lite/

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#256

Post by Wowfunhappy »

moron4hire wrote: post #212
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I could say the same thing about quitting cigarettes. I absolutely realize it’s hard to do, and that’s why so many people still smoke. But my advice would be the same...

... and that is also extremely bad advice. There is very wide variability in how nicotine addiction affects different people. Some people can quit after a pack-a-day habit and have no problems. Some people have trouble with getting off a pack-a-week habit. Someone who is having extreme difficulty quitting smoking could benefit from working with a doctor to discuss quit-smoking aids or even seeing a therapist to work…

> Someone who is having extreme difficulty quitting smoking could benefit from working with a doctor to discuss quit-smoking aids or even seeing a therapist to work through their addiction.

Oh—absolutely! As I said, it’s hard, and frequently requires professional help, strategies, etc.

But, it ultimately comes down to, you have to find a way to quit! You shouldn’t let yourself off the hook.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#257

Post by skinnymuch »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #180
hawkjo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is amazing! The rest of this thread completely buried the lead. Delightful.

Hope I'm not sounding like a grammar nazi but its "buried the lede" I only recently discovered - the reason is really interesting - https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/bury-the-lede-...

The link says it can still be lead. Lede seemingly came about fo random reasons. I learned the opposite today. That I can still write lead instead of lede. M

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#258

Post by presto8 »

For certain types of queries, Wolfram Alpha gives wonderful answers that are superior to almost every other general purpose search engine:

distance to the moon

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+the+moon

W.A. shows the actual current distance to the moon (as of right now, 224,520 miles). Google shows this as 238,900 miles, presumably an average value, but it has no explanation at all of what the number is. W.A. also includes a graph showing the variance. And a lot of other info.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#259

Post by eric_cc »

moron4hire wrote: post #187
marcinzm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 func…

> it's really not actionable advice.

It really is though. It is hard and requires discipline but it’s actionable.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?

#260

Post by eric_cc »

onion2k wrote: post #238
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I could say the same thing about quitting cigarettes. I absolutely realize it’s hard to do, and that’s why so many people still smoke. But my advice would be the same...

The problem here is that you think you're giving people advice when really you're just telling them what to do. The difference is that advice comes with kindness, compassion, an understanding of how the advice is affected by someone's situation and context, and deep knowledge of the subject you're advising about. Equating changes to diet for weight reduction to quitting cigarettes shows you probably don't have that.

How does the poster comparing two difficult life changes indicate a lack of compassion?
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