hexagonc's comments

  {
    [how do you create a simple image button in html and css]
    -> style:
       .simple-button {
            background-image: url(...),
            background-repeat: no-repeat,
            background-position: center,
            background-size: 100% 100%,
            width: 100px,
            height: 100px,
            display: inline-flex
       }

       <div class = 'simple-button'></div>
  }

  ^\{\s*\[.+button.+css.*\]

If I had simply been satisfied with the original, simple process and stuck to it these last couple of years, I'd have a pretty comprehensive and useful knowledgebase by now. I realize that I'm too lazy to keep such a system up to date but hopefully I can adopt something similar as a commenting convention in my source files to make code fragments searchable.

[1] http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2015/

This. So much this. A lot of people think there is some big difference between mastery from a physical versus intellectual level. No one who is serious about learning to play a musical instrument will only play a song up to a point and then stop, saying "... no need to go further, I already know how to play the rest." I think the way the brain consolidates high level learning into long term memory is essentially the same as for "muscle memory". This is like when you learn to drive. At first, you have to think consciously about every little detail but with practice, your unconscious mind takes those over and your conscious mind is left to operate on higher and higher level concepts. Mathematics is hard and the sooner you can offload the details to your unconscious mind the better. And the only way to do that is by practice.

I consider myself to be a smart but sometimes intellectually lazy person and had to struggle to develop the habit of working problems out rigorously and completely when learning new material. The belief that you can learn material by just reading is seductive because it feels like you're saving time and getting to the interesting topics faster. But in all likelihood, this belief is false and will be proven as false the moment your understanding is put to the test, either in a real test, or when subsequent material requires a solid understanding of older material. Sure, you may indeed be understanding it at the moment you're reading and in the flow of the material. But what makes your knowledge solid and reliable even under adverse circumstances (e.g., when you're distracted or learning a difficult new subject that builds on that knowledge) is practice and repetition. This applies not just to mathematics but to learning a new framework or programming language.

[EDIT] And as an addendum to this fun tangent, even if the AI was capable, in principle, of reading billions of webpages fast and well, we don't know the power requirements would be for this. This hypothetical small company may have stumbled upon the right algorithms and the right training data to produce a true AGI, but they may simply not have the hardware or the engineering know-how to scale it up across multiple processors. Or scaling it up may require too much (i.e., more than the company can afford) data bandwidth if the robot is controlled. Again, it depends on the details of how they arrived at the AGI.

[EDIT] - My point here is that even if improvements to battery technology remain slow or constant, with sufficient innovation in energy efficiency and algorithms, we could still have robots with usable to good running times. Just figuring out a reliable walking gait and building materials for passive dynamic walking can significantly reduce the power requirements.[3]

[1] - http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JacquelineLing.shtml [2] - http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/bat.html [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_dynamics

Technically, Reuters could have gone to court on her behalf but why bother unless she was some highly sought-after journalist? Intimidating letters are meant to make you weigh your choices carefully. Also, while Law360 didn't literally sue her, it gave every indication that it intended to if she continued at Reuters.

Unfortunately, this isn't quite accurate, as shown by the Q&A at the end of the article. Although her previous employer didn't directly sue her, it essentially threatened to sue her. Moreover, the way her new employer found out about her previous non-compete agreement was because her old employer specifically notified them and indicated that she had confidential information. Her new company basically had no choice but to fire her.