Coolest Things I Learned in 2018 • Hacker News Board

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#71

Post by CleaveIt2Beaver » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #58

Kurtz79 wrote: post #11

"To survive a Northern winter, bees change the composition of the swarm by shrinking the overall population, caulking the hive, getting rid of the deadweight males (i.e., ALL of the males), and laying just enough eggs to preserve a minimal survivable population through the winter and into spring. They cluster together in the center of the hive, keeping the queen in the center, shivering their wings to create kinetic…

The bees would teach Thanos how stupid his idea was by surviving year after year, because cutting a population in half does almost nothing. This is one of the things that have irked me the most about the Avengers movies, they propagate his idea as somehow making any sense at all, when in fact it is doing a great disservice to the world by not teaching them about populations and use of resources. A reduction of the un…

They literally title him "The MAD Titan" because everyone agrees his plan is idiotic. I'm not sure it gets more obvious than that.

That said, it made a lot more sense in the comics when he was doing it because he fell in love with Death herself.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#72

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

NasKe wrote: post #47

That list of word is incredibly misleading. Basically all those words come from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows", which in turn is: > a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig Meaning, those are all made up words by "John Koenig". The project is cool, but I think don't think is right to treat those as "real" English words.

Why not? New words are invented all the time, and they can end up being part of the regular vocabulary. "noob" is an example coming from the gaming world. "Yeet" might become one, who knows?

All I'm saying is, if there's a need for a word to express something, it will evolve and it will become part of the language. Here's a list of new words added to the Oxford dictionary, for example: https://public.oed.com/updates/new-words-list-january-2018/. "commodify" is one that I've seen used a lot already. "hangry" is a slang ish words that has been promoted to a dictionary word, too.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#73

Post by hellofunk » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #11

"To survive a Northern winter, bees change the composition of the swarm by shrinking the overall population, caulking the hive, getting rid of the deadweight males (i.e., ALL of the males), and laying just enough eggs to preserve a minimal survivable population through the winter and into spring. They cluster together in the center of the hive, keeping the queen in the center, shivering their wings to create kinetic…

I wonder how techniques like this came to be. Was there a single "genius" bee that thought of this and convinced the others to give it a try? Bee brains are so tiny, how is advanced behavior like this possible?

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#74

Post by msla » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

076ae80a-3c97-4 wrote: post #33

pba wrote: post #29

This article (post?) is the 2019 version of chain mail. Weak insights, no academic substantiation. I had to stop reading at the 'words for emotions' part.. 'sonder' and the rest are not dictionary words; they were made up by some guy. Yet this ridiculousness continues its way around the internet..

'Sonder' is most certainly a word! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sonder

Yes, Sonder is a word in German which means "special", as in the German term Sonderweg which is the German equivalent of "American Exceptionalism" ("German Exceptionalism", I suppose).

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#75

Post by jmcqk6 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

NasKe wrote: post #47

That list of word is incredibly misleading. Basically all those words come from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows", which in turn is: > a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig Meaning, those are all made up words by "John Koenig". The project is cool, but I think don't think is right to treat those as "real" English words.

I've used words from that dictionary as part of regular conversation. If that doesn't make them real words, I don't know what does.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#76

Post by jmhobbs » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

twtw wrote: post #63

jmhobbs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see a source on that one, it's hard to believe otherwise. edit: I reverse image searched one of the faces and found this, https://bgr.com/2018/12/18/nvidia-ai-fake-faces-look-100-per... It's not generating them from whole cloth, but it's still very impressive.

What would "from whole cloth" even mean for this?

Honestly, I'm not even sure. After watching the nvidia youtube video, I retract the statement. This is pretty amazing.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#77

Post by beat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

nickles wrote: post #57

beat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading Factfulness got me to pay attention to per capita GDP growth rates over decades, as opposed to static comparisons at the moment. China blew my mind. Their per capita GDP has increased around 130x (in constant dollars) since 1960, from the $60/year range to over $8000/year. I now use it as a rebuttal to the stock assumption that Western-style democracy, capitalism, and individualism are the only route to prosp…

[flagged]

Why are you assuming I'm "suggesting it's preferable"? Put down the pitchfork for a moment! I'm not arguing that Chinese-style communism is a better system. I'm arguing that the belief that western values and economics are the only path to prosperity is incorrect.

I'd rather live in the American system. I'm sure there are a lot of people who grew up in China and would rather live in the Chinese system.

As for your laundry list of "China bad!", I could come up with counterexamples of the US doing the exact same things at various points in our history. Chill.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#78

Post by beat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:15 PM UTC

ak39 wrote: post #27

Interesting read. Thank you very much for posting. I also read about a Hubble Extreme Deep Field image in December last year. I am still left flabbergasted that that image exposes only the space of the night sky covered by your thumbnail if you had to extend your arm straight in front of you. Just a thumbnail. And these are galaxies, not stars! Each one with hundreds of billions of stars.

I get the same weird sense of perspective thinking about the number of microorganisms, cells, and atoms around me.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#79

Post by beat » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

msla wrote: post #74

076ae80a-3c97-4 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Sonder' is most certainly a word! https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sonder

Yes, Sonder is a word in German which means "special", as in the German term Sonderweg which is the German equivalent of "American Exceptionalism" ("German Exceptionalism", I suppose).

Any word in any language can be turned into an English word, simply by mispronouncing it.

Re: Coolest Things I Learned in 2018

#80

Post by lopatin » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #3

> Instead of arbitrarily memorizing things, look for the explanation that makes it obvious. This is a higher learning method that I’ve always found most natural. I don’t memorize stuff, I try to understand it instead. That said, there is still great value in the classical learning model—if you don’t know the terminology of the subject it’s difficult to reason about that subject.

I tend to take the understand-don't-memorize approach to stuff as well. It's served me well in general, but it's also why I nearly failed micro-biology in high school.