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jbullock35

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jbullock35
·22 giorni fa·discuss
This recent article has a few relevant notes about the uses (or lack thereof) of humanoid robots: https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2026/0612/ai-humanoid-rob....
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
> Don't call me "disgraceful". Why? Because THAT is an ad hominem attack.

You're right about that. I'm sorry.

No further comment from me in this thread.
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
> I don't know if this is your intent or not, but by engaging in this kind of framing you're essentially saying that all violence[1] is excusable by default. We're supposed to live in a society where the opposite is true, I thought.

> [1] All violence by your allied authority figures, that is. We both know you wouldn't grant the same grace and charity to the intentions of the protestors.

This is a disgraceful ad hominem attack. The previous poster's comment is entirely sensible, and it takes a great deal of intellectual dishonesty to portray it as a defense of ICE in any way.
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
Thanks. The link is to a Bellingcat analysis. They did great work on the Renee Good shooting, but in this case, they're describing stills from videos, and I can't see what they're seeing in the photos. The photos are just too fuzzy---at least for me, and I suspect for most other viewers.

I don't mean to diminish the importance of the shooting, which is horrific no matter what one makes of the photos.
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
Thanks. I watched the videos. It's a horrific event. But I can't see that either of the videos shows a gun being removed from a protester. At the end of [2], someone does seem to walk away from the scene holding a gun, just a fraction of a second before the shooting begins. But I can't see any point at which a gun is removed from a protester.
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
I've watched four videos but haven't seen any footage (clear or otherwise) of gun removal. Can you post a link to clear footage of the removal?

One video [1] shows someone walking away from the scene with a gun a fraction of a second before the shooting begins. But I can't see that the gun was removed from the protester.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1qlvpbr/footage_of_the...
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
From the article:

> A new preprint reports that in nearly one third of studies on social media appearing in major interdisciplinary journals, the authors have ties to industry that should be disclosed but aren’t. Some received funding from a social media company; others previously co-authored work with industry employees.

Note that last part. It makes this effort seem silly: there's no conflict of interest just because one of your past co-authors at one time worked for someone in the industry.
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
Oh, certainly, corporations run ten-year-old software. But for the record, IE 11 turns 13 this year [1]. Which makes it somewhat more surprising to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_11
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
Who is still stuck on IE 11---and why?
jbullock35
·6 mesi fa·discuss
I think that you're just off on timing. The previous poster didn't mention the even worse news for Tesla: its sales declined for the second straight year, and it's no longer the leading manufacturer of electric cars. (BYD is.)
jbullock35
·7 mesi fa·discuss
The previous Kindle Scribe had a slow refresh rate, and it showed every time you tried to turn a page. All I want so far as refresh rates are concerned is seamless page-turning – page-turning that doesn’t make me wait. Will this version of the Scribe be any better? The Wired review doesn’t say.
jbullock35
·7 mesi fa·discuss
I keep waiting for the Kindle to allow notetaking by dictation. It works well on an iPad; it’s so much quicker and smoother than handwriting notes.
jbullock35
·7 mesi fa·discuss
When I was a student in the United States in the 1990s, I took many tests in which handwriting speed limited me. It was purely a physical problem. When I was permitted to type, there was no issue. To be clear, I'm speaking of tests in the humanities and social sciences, for which students must write short essays.

Later, when I was a professor in the United States, I saw some of my students grappling with the same problem.

I don't think that my students and I are extraordinary. Other people were, and are, limited by slow handwriting when they are required to handwrite their exams. You could try to identify these people and give them extra time. But the better move would be to stop requiring students to handwrite essays under a time constraint.
jbullock35
·7 mesi fa·discuss
> Being able to read/write with some haste is not unrelated to job/academic performance.

Yes, I agree. But my point is about handwriting, rather than writing in general. Handwriting speed is something that we are effectively testing with many in-class exams. And handwriting speed - unlike reading or writing speed - is indeed unrelated to job performance. It is also unrelated to any reasonable measure of academic performance.
jbullock35
·7 mesi fa·discuss
> In general, being good at academics require you to think carefully not quickly.

Yes, but to go even further: timed tests often test, in part, your ability to handwrite quickly rather than slowly. There is great variation in handwriting speed — I saw it as a student and as a professor — and in classrooms, we should no more be testing students for handwriting speed than we should be testing them on athletic ability.

In general, timed tests that involve a lot of handwriting are appalling. We use them because they make classroom management easier, not because they are justifiable pedagogy.
jbullock35
·10 mesi fa·discuss
There is a larger issue that other commenters are missing:

> The city has paid the first two years of that extension but would still owe $145,500 for the final three years if the contract is upheld. The city intends to terminate the contract on Sept. 26 under its notice to Flock, but the company is challenging that termination, and the dispute could escalate to litigation.

The city is trying to terminate a contract with Flock. Under that contract, the city agreed to pay Flock for three more years of service. Flock maintains that the city doesn't have the right to nullify the contract. The linked article says almost nothing about the contract dispute, but another article [1] has some details.

I don't know whether the city is correct about its power to terminate the contract, or whether instead Flock is correct. Either way, I wonder whether Flock is re-installing the cameras out of fear that, if it doesn't, it will be voiding its right to future payment under the contract.

[1] https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/08/28/flock-challenges-c...
jbullock35
·anno scorso·discuss
I succeeded in understanding the Kalman filter only when I found a text that took a similar approach. It was this invaluable article, which presents the Kalman filter from a Bayesian perspective:

Meinhold, Richard J., and Nozer D. Singpurwalla. 1983. "Understanding the Kalman Filter." American Statistician 37 (May): 123–27.
jbullock35
·anno scorso·discuss
I worked there a few years ago. It was almost always easy to reserve a room if you wanted more quiet or more privacy.
jbullock35
·2 anni fa·discuss
The Power Broker is a superb choice for OP. This comment should be closer to the top of the thread.
jbullock35
·2 anni fa·discuss
There's at least one huge respect in which tech is different, at least in the USA: worker compensation.

In the book, Tracy Kidder writes repeatedly about how Data General (the company at the heart of the book) is proud of its austerity. It doesn't pay well. It's proud of having an ugly, austere, warehouse-like building. It puts its critical engineers in the windowless basement of this building. Kidder is describing a world that's very far from the FAANG of today, at least were compensation is concerned.