I needed to plot something real quick to see if I’m picking correct function. I had don’t remember how many data points but no much, under 200 I believe. W.A. told me to piss off and pay for it. So obviously I went and spent an hour more to learn how to do that with Gnuplot and did it with Gnuplot. Now I always go for Gnuplot right away.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
271–280 of 281 posts
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#272Earlier 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…
Americans love to come up with complicate theories about why it’s impossible for them to lose weight.
Go to Europe or East Asia and you’ll see it’s definitely possible and definitely influenced by diet (as in what you eat).
The reasons people are fat here are the huge serving sizes, the corn/meat/milk subsidies, and car culture.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#273I use it ~6 times a year.
My luck is mixed:
* ~33% - It works
* ~33% occasions - I mess up syntax and give up
* ~33% - I mess up syntax, but believe it SHOULD be possible, and push much longer than I untended. Until finally settling on a partial solution, and wishing I knew more - but also recognising I should used a different tool e.g. excel
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#274I use it exclusively when I'm drunk, to calculate how drunk I am "4 drinks in 3 hours at 64 kg"
I'm unable to try to compute something similar by indicating the quantity and the percentage of alcohol, such as :
"2 beers (composition of 8% alcohol, 44cl) in 1 hour at 80kg"
I tried with or without parenthesis and with varying query. Never worked.
Any ideas?
(I'm interesting on knowing the level of blood alcohol percentage and the duration it takes to go under the limit, depending on the percentage of alcohol and quantity)
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently noticed that a number of SO questions have even been turned into Youtube videos containing a slide-show of the answers, now :-(
I absolutely hate this. Scanning a video is so much more difficult than just scanning a written explanation. If these videos are being monetized, I think that's a problem. If they are, someone could just create a channel by converting SO questions into videos. The question I have is what kind of keywords are people using on these videos that Google feel is more worthwhile than the actual text of a written version of…
Having worked a stint in social media for 4 years there was this huge guideline from Facebook to push publishers to churn out videos. I suppose Google ranking algorithm favors Youtube but i don't get Google's reasoning behind that. Engagement because of embedded ads ?
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there was some way to contribute to the english wiki (article or search) when you are lucky enough to understand the (better) german one... :-)
That's a bit recursive. I'd have needed english translations of the german articles to get to know the english math terms to be able to write about them in english :)
Maybe the German wiki pages on the specific math terms are already translated to English. If not maybe google can help.
Not saying it's easy.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#277Earlier 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
Julia is also excellent for working with units (Units.jl, IIRC).
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#278This? https://www.wolframalpha.com/
It's alive and quite healthy
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#279Earlier 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
Julia is also excellent for working with units (Units.jl, IIRC).
Unitful.jl
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to Wolfram Alpha?
#280Earlier 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.
He's telling them what will actually work, not simply what to do.
Eat more than your base calories and you will be fat. Smoke and you will be unhealthy.
Reality can't be expected to be kind, compassionate and understanding.
It's simply reality, and that's the way it is.