WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

self_buddliea's comments

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: Denser cities could be a climate boon – but nimbyism stands in the way

From the article: "Drawing more people into cities could help significantly shrink the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Low-density developments produced nearly four times the greenhouse gas emissions of high-density alternatives, with research finding that doubling urban density can reduce carbon pollution from household travel by nearly half and residential energy use by more than a third."

This refers to the overall volume of pollution, but not the concentration of pollution in a particular location. If you're from the UK you've likely heard about Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who tragically died aged nine in 2013 after an asthma attack. Last year a coroner's verdict was given stating pollution played a part in her death, specifically the high levels of nitrogen dioxide. I know this is just one case, but it makes me think the fine structure of urban planning is very important in this respect.

self_buddliea | 4 years ago

I'd feel better off with MAD, it's supposed to prevent a nuclear exchange.

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: Urban Dictionary on Hacker News (2013)

I'm aware of the philosophy behind HN and the dictionary entry alludes to this. From my experience it's more focussed on technology and a liking of knowledge in general.

On the other hand, I still find this amusing.

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: Stonewall Nation

At the end of the article... "It has since been suggested that the entire Stonewall Nation idea was a hoax perpetrated by the Los Angeles GLF to generate mainstream publicity." I don't see the advantage in employing this strategy, it seems risky. You could be fairly confident that you would get criticism from within the gay community about the plan, but nothing more. It would be hard to predict the level of hostile reactions from people outside the community, and how hostile the reactions could get. To take this chance over a hoax sounds implausible.

Edit: I've forgotten how to format on this site, sorry.

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

Reading this article made me recall an incident back in art college. A mature student asked if I smoked cannabis, I said I do. There was another mature student in the room with us. Upon hearing my confession she stared at me with a very serious expression, then lunged forward at me and pushed her face into mine. I was so taken aback I nearly fell off my chair. I had never met this woman before, we were never introduced and I haven't seen her since.

I would argue this woman was sufficiently arrogant that she thought it was socially acceptable to invade my personal space because I was a stoner. Perhaps I myself was more arrogant when I was younger, in the spirit that user warent mentioned below. On the other hand, I'm not the type to spontaneously invade the space of others.

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: To compute a constant of calculus (2019)

I'm referring to the float registers, not arbitrary precision. So, 'math.pi' essentially.

You probably already know this, I'll apologise in advance - My understanding is you can only get accurate values of a value smaller than unity on a float if it is a sum of perfect powers of 1/2 (ie. the denominator is a perfect power of two). Therefore any reciprocal of an odd number will get an error (bar the first term, which is 1) since odd numbers don't fall into the above category (except for 1).

I tried using this series years ago to calculate pi. It was a total disaster, the final value was way off.

Edit: 'sum of'

self_buddliea | 4 years ago | on: To compute a constant of calculus (2019)

Reading this reminds me of Leibniz's formula for pi:

Although it computes the value correctly, it is almost completely useless on a computer. All the elements of the series are reciprocals of odd numbers, hence you will get errors on every term.

page 1
more