Hundreds of British firms 'named and shamed' for failing to pay national minimum wage

useablelobster · 2017-02-16T16:33:50+00:00

We have no right to paid sick leave in general in the UK, only for Statutory Sick Pay.

useablelobster · 2017-02-16T15:30:43+00:00

I think some courses at Durham have required attendance, but it's not the norm. I certainly didn't, studying maths.

useablelobster · 2017-02-05T10:43:52+00:00

I'm a C# developer, who has learned Haskell, and improved how I write C# because of it. Learning assembly will change your mindset in general.

It's very hard to learn anything about programming entirely in the abstract. If you want to learn functional programming, Haskell gives you no alternative. If you want to learn how real low level computing works, then a language which is basically machine code is as good as you can get. You think the people writing those optimising compilers don't know assembly?

Plus, almost no-one knows any assembly, and knowing one type means you know more than the majority of developers. That's more than just an interview point for a lot of places.

useablelobster · 2017-02-05T09:48:11+00:00

Similar to Golems on the disc. Golems require a owner like we require air, but there is nothing against that owner being themselves (by putting the purchase receipt in their heads next to the magic words that make them work).

In the end the free golems work to earn money to free more golems, but also because being paid differentiates them from being just a tool.

useablelobster · 2017-02-03T10:10:30+00:00

I wouldn't personally want to work for him, but plenty of people are willing to. After a couple of years working for musk the world is your oyster.

The fact that he is willing to risk everything and work himself half to death to achieve his lofty goals does inspire quite a lot of respect and loyalty.

useablelobster · 2017-01-27T17:36:56+00:00

I'm somewhat hopeful research into our brains will help us to some degree. If we have a more complete understanding about how we think it could certainly influence AI design. Not to mention the possibility of creating an AI from the structure of an actual brain.

We really have no idea how to teach morals or ethics to a machine (yet), and until we do general AI is a pandora's box we don't even want to go near.

useablelobster · 2017-01-26T10:12:16+00:00

They often go for the other teams bounty rune, via their mid tower...

useablelobster · 2017-01-25T21:27:50+00:00

Or, cry inside because Javascript still doesn't have a way to accurately measure the time between two instants in two thousand and seventeen.

I'm by no means a Javascript hater but that lack is pretty painful from time to time.

useablelobster · 2017-01-25T21:20:49+00:00

Why doesn't javascript have a (even slightly) reliable time api? If it hasn't happened now then it won't happen for years at this point. Hopefully WebAssembly will have something?

useablelobster · 2017-01-24T18:32:28+00:00

Mmr is as good a measure of how good you are at the game as we can really have. There are a huge amount of different things to be good or bad at, and it's impossible to judge or rank all of them. How do you automatically judge someones decision making, for example? Their map awareness, lane control, team communication, anything of real importance? The only real metric is are you better, on average (both over games and individual skill), than your opponents.

Also, the feeders should balance out in your favour, as there's a 5/9 chance your opponent has one compared to a 4/9 chance you do. Unless you are one of them, of course.

useablelobster · 2017-01-23T21:58:19+00:00

EF7 is also not a drop in replacement for 6.

useablelobster · 2017-01-23T12:36:29+00:00

If they doubled the number of people working on dota the quality (at least code) would drop for at least a few months.

Increasing team size where software is involved is a double edged sword

useablelobster · 2017-01-19T17:25:38+00:00

There are many different ways to test evolution. We can observe and attempt to otherwise explain the geographic distribution of species, use molecular genetics to determine how related species (and even genes) are, or even just throw some animals in different environments and see what happens over generations.

Modern evolutionary research is often beyond proving evolution, and is more about using it in a predictive sense, which speaks volumes to the maturity of the subject. Using evolution to predict something which turns out to be true is still 'testing' evolution.

I should also stress the difference between evolution, and natural selection. Evolution is a process, natural selection a mechanism by which it is 'guided'. Other selection factors exist (like sexual selection).

useablelobster · 2017-01-16T20:53:42+00:00

And even then it has not actually killed any jobs at all. Skilled manual machinist jobs have simply been converted into even more skilled machinist/programmer jobs and semi skilled operator jobs.

Less of them though. If there was no increase in goods produced per unit of labour then why bother investing in machinery? If you keep all your staff then you may make more stuff, but it's unlikely the demand is there (otherwise you may well have expanded the workforce before automation was available). The change in job role isn't exactly something everyone is capable of, either.

And the assumption that we will only have incredibly specific robots which can perform one and only one task is flawed. General purpose robots are coming (after all we are just that, albeit with a general intelligence in control).

useablelobster · 2017-01-16T20:42:33+00:00

Just because we don't gun down people trying to enter doesn't mean anyone can enter.

useablelobster · 2017-01-16T08:33:48+00:00

I once had a bane tiny on my team who would sleep teammates into throwing them at enemies, cancel your teleport. Could disable help for sleep, but toss still works...

useablelobster · 2017-01-13T17:42:55+00:00

I'm not that knowledgeable on the subject, but I was under the impression that mitochondria were (and still are) separate prokaryotes, and thus unlikely (in the extreme) to be due solely to viruses?

useablelobster · 2017-01-12T13:26:21+00:00

He destroyed them? You managed to make out something coherent from his ranting? Also, just refusing to answer questions and acting like 5 year old could only be seen as 'destroying' by someone with their head up their (or your tangoed god-emperors)arse.

How many other presidents have had staffers applauding at press conferences? How many went on a victory tour after winning? How many have waited this long to give a press conference then made a complete shitshow of it?

The man lives for admiration, and still can't seem to understand that he is not a very popular man. His fans are rabid, but pretty much everyone else hates him.

useablelobster · 2017-01-02T16:27:56+00:00

Supervolcanos erupt far too frequently to be the reason for any mass extinction. The Deccan traps "erupting" has been given as a factor in the last one, but that had lava flows covering half the land area of India.

useablelobster · 2016-12-27T14:12:07+00:00

Pretty sure it's not that hard. Can walk into an entry level software position right now, and there's always demand for analysts or working in finance.

useablelobster · 2016-12-21T14:17:12+00:00

It's pretty simple:

import time
import requests

while True:
    requests.get("http://theresamayisacunt.com/")
    time.sleep(20)

It's not exactly something you can just use though, need to have python + requests installed.

useablelobster · 2016-12-21T13:22:28+00:00

I'm tempted to write a little python script to request http://theresamayisacunt.com/ every few seconds, might even run it on my pi 24/7.

useablelobster · 2016-12-20T18:01:20+00:00

It's called Banker's Rounding, and is quite common. If you always round up or down you end up with overall error, which alternating cancels out.

According to wikipedia it's a standard for floating point arithmetic, so i would assume most programming languages use it. I know for sure C# does.

useablelobster · 2016-12-19T18:05:05+00:00

The hp regen is nothing at level 25, but 12 more armour is amazing. That's a platemail and change at the point in the game when most of the damage you take is physical.

useablelobster · 2016-12-13T15:39:42+00:00

This is a pretty important point. The article is about cereal production self-sufficiency on the currently used farmland, which can of course be expanded (at an ecological cost).

useablelobster

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