In case it was not clear to everyone reading TFS, "GPS Always Overstimates Distances" is incorrect. The point of TFA is that, on average, distances are overestimated. GPS distance estimates are subject to random error, and the random error is biased. So more often than not, the estimate will be too large, but not "always". A better headline would have been, "GPS Usually Overestimates Distances". Less sensational, but more accurate.

As others have pointed out here before, constructive conflict/disagreement in the workplace does not require acting like an asshole. If you read any of Sarah Sharp's comments on this matter, it is very clear that she had no problem at all with technical criticism or disagreement. Her problem was with unproductive and demeaning personal attacks. The summary seems to just lump all of this together, suggesting that Linus telling people that they are worthless and should kill themselves is an example of productively harnessing "conflict in the workplace".

Also, from the summary: "...Linus can get away with being somewhat prickly because he's a genius." Perhaps, but it could also be because he's in charge and has more power than anyone else on the project. There are plenty of really smart people who work on the Linux kernel, but most of them probably couldn't get away with the same kind of behavior because of their position in the power hierarchy. This further emphasizes why public, personal insults directed at subordinates are decidedly not an example of "harnessing workplace conflict" for productive ends.

Three puns in one punchline - nicely done!

There's plenty of material in the rest of the article that is even less convincing. Consider this:

"...the American Midwest is an agricultural breadbasket, not a large swamp, because railroads provided the link between that farming region and the demand of the East Coast..."

Does the author actually think the midwest was "a large swamp" prior to the arrival of settlers and the conversion to agriculture? Because it most certainly was not, unless the author thinks grasslands, savannas, and deciduous forests are the same thing as "a large swamp".

TFA was filled with sweeping generalizations like this, and mostly failed to substantiate any of them with references or other evidence. I imagine that this "large swamp" example wasn't the only case of pure BS.

The headline of the Quartz article and the Slashdot summary, "An algorithm can predict human behavior better than humans", is, not surprisingly, hugely overblown.

What these researchers actually did was develop a system for automatically taking a massive data set with a huge number of variables, identifying the subset of variables or new combinations of variables that are most likely to be useful for predicting a particular response, and then formulating a predictive model. (This is an extremely simplified summary.) That is really cool, but to present it as some sort of general "algorithm for predicting human behavior" is silly. It's no more an algorithm for predicting human behavior than are automated statistical methods for building a predictive model from a massive dataset.

Here's why. The entire article is well worth a read, but in a nutshell: The "paleo diet", as most often defined, makes all sorts of unsupported assumptions about "paleo people", their health, how they ate, and how humans have (or have not) evolved since then. For example, studies of actual paleo cultures have revealed that there was huge variability in diets. Some cultures ate lots of meat, some ate little meat, and so on.

That's not to say that the paleo diet doesn't prescribe some eating habits that are healthier than the way most westerners (or Americans, anyway) eat, but much of the supposed rationale behind the paleo diet is pretty silly.

I agree. I think it is one of the best "hacker" movies. As you and the GP have pointed out, one of the things that makes it so good is the repeated use of low tech to defeat high tech. Another good example is the way they defeat the ultrasonic/infrared motion detectors. In most films of the genre, the solution would be to magically break into the security system and remotely disable it. In Sneakers? Put on a neoprene suit and move really slowly. That is much more satisfying.

Considering that the hydramatic transmission was introduced in 1939, and you supposedly remember the good old days before the hydramatic was on the market -- how old are you?

I would have expected a much lower user ID.

For that matter, if you were just talking to your grandpa "the other day", how old is he? He must be pushing 130 years old, at a minimum. You'd better call the Guinness World Records folks before it's too late.

Do you have any references for this story? A Google search for "Chief Ullumongo" turns up nothing.

TFA (not the linked wikipedia article) basically just asks the question, "what if an alien's sensory systems (vision and hearing) were far more acute than ours?", and then gives a rather superficial answer to that question. TFA seems to be trying to make the argument that if an alien's vision or hearing were better than ours, the alien would not be able to comprehend our electronic visual displays or sound reproductions. The argument is not convincing at all, though. After all, we have color vision, but black and white media still works quite well for us.

TFA also makes some rather silly statements, such as, "With its advanced hearing, perhaps the Oculako [TFA's name for the alien] even transmits complex data by sound." Yeah, humans already do that, every day. Human speech is pretty good tool for transmitting "complex data by sound." Or, for a technological example, how does the author think fax machines and telephone-line data modems work?

Finally, the title of the Slashdot summary is "How To Make Messages Easy For an Alien Race To Understand", but TFA doesn't even attempt to answer that question. In fact, the article ends with this: "...it’s a very difficult problem to come up with an interspecies communication mechanism. ... Given the technological advances since the 1970s how would you design this era’s golden record?" And that's it. The closest TFA comes to the question is asking the reader how he or she would solve it.

Because the characteristics of a group are often more predictable than the characteristics of the individuals within the group. To illustrate with a very simple example: Suppose you gather a random sample of 1,000 people. You could predict the percentage of males or females in the sample with decent accuracy. But any one person? You couldn't ever do much better than flipping a coin.

The same thing is at work with sports teams. If you know that team A has more top-tier players than team B, you would expect team A to perform better than Team B, on average. But predicting the performance of any given player in a particular game? Much, much harder.

I think you meant "XX" and "XY".

And if you do take it to a school in Texas, when questioned by the authorities, don't make the mistake of saying, "No, no, don't worry -- it's just a bombe!"

As has been explained to you repeatedly, the lambda calculus encompasses all programming languages and the statements and expressions that can be written in them. So, let's be clear: Are you denying that the lambda calculus is a branch of mathematics?

I didn't say anything about "formal languages versus informal languagues" in my post. Back to my actual second point, let me restate. Here is what you said before (bracket comment added for clarity): "By this reasoning any language is math", and, "You conflating math with language and thus equating all languages to each other." You said those things in response to sribe pointing out that the lambda calculus is a formal mathematical treatment of programming languages and programming. In other words, you claimed that if the lambda calculus means that a programming language is math, than any language must be math. So, are you standing by those statements now, or abandoning them?

What were you claiming was not formatted in an academically accepted way? And how does this relate to my third point?

In case you missed my third point, I'll repeat it.

"3. Then, there is this comment [slashdot.org] you made earlier:

You are claiming that the lambda calculus is not math? Seriously? Or what did you mean by "a math exam"?"

Care to explain?

This thread covers topics that are of interest to me, so I've been following it for a while, but you are missing the point so badly here that I now feel compelled to comment. You really, truly, have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Here are four of the most egregious examples.

1. You said, and I quote you directly, "Coding is not math."

As sribe has already patiently tried to explain to you (in vain, apparently), that statement is completely, demonstrably false. There is an entire branch of pure mathematics devoted to computation and computability, and it includes formalisms that encompass all programming languages and the statements that can be written in them. Your ignorance of this, and whether you choose to accept it, does not matter -- it is an objective fact.

2. Your grasp on this subject is so weak you don't understand that you made a really poor strawman argument, even though sribe pointed it out to you. You said,

No, sribe explained it perfectly well, regardless of whether you were unable to understand. I'll try to explain it for you again. You claimed that if the lambda calculus means that a programming language is math, than any language must be math, which is false, so it must also be false that programming languages are math. Specifically, you said, "By this reasoning any language is math", and, "You conflating math with language and thus equating all languages to each other." That was the strawman argument that you made. Do you get it now? Besides being a strawman argument, claiming that the lambda calculus means all human languages are math is so bone-headedly stupid that it hardly deserves further rebuttal, so let me just say this: No, it doesn't. Not even close. Again, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Please, learn something about this topic before you embarrass yourself again.

3. Then, there is this comment you made earlier:

You are claiming that the lambda calculus is not math? Seriously? Or what did you mean by "a math exam"? Again, this comment displays such complete ignorance of the subject that I am almost embarrassed for you.

4. Finally, you keep claiming that math is just a subset of logic, but you contradicted this all by yourself in your very first post, where you said:

If anything in logic can be represented as math, than logic must either be a subset of math or equivalent to it.

You know, it's okay just to admit you were wrong about something. There is nothing wrong with being curious but uninformed, and graciously accepting help when people try to provide it for you. That looks far better than digging in, trying to defend an ignorant viewpoint, and making yourself look even more ignorant in the process.