IsaacL

26 ms·

151.
by IsaacL 10y ago
What do you think of Bret Victor's work? ( http://worrydream.com/ ) Or Rich Hickey? Who do you think are the people doing the most interesting work in user interface design today?
152.
by IsaacL 10y ago
Excellent comment. People need to be called out for this behavior.
153.
Bitcoin jumps to one-year high(blockchain.info)
13 points by IsaacL 10y ago|0 comments
154.
by IsaacL 10y ago
Not the OP, but it's sunday afternoon and you've piqued my curiosity. I'm not opposed to conspiracy theories, but my view of the world is one of different groups competing for power without a guiding plan. I find it interesti
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by IsaacL 10y ago
I'm British and pro-Brexit - an opinion I formed after reading arguments for both sides.(Essentially, I think leaving the EU will be painful, but staying in will be even more painful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
156.
by IsaacL 10y ago
I can't figure out what you're saying. Yes, China's legal environment is unfriendly to building a large business as a foreigner. But no, foreigners in China can start tech businesses with "near-zero regulatory compliance
157.
by IsaacL 10y ago
What's a fishing story? I haven't heard that phrase. Anyway, yeah, it's funny how often you meet experts on Chinese business who haven't actually done business in China but can go into elaborate detail about why it'
158.
by IsaacL 10y ago
I spent about 2 years total in China (over several periods) and a year in HK. In university, thought about working in China's tech industry but eventually decided there were better opportunities in the UK, for a variety of reasons. I d
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by IsaacL 10y ago
Go is very complex, and the fact that DeepMind could tackle this complexity is a huge technical achievement. No minimax-based AI could have tackled such a large state space. However, other problems have even larger state spaces. Imagine wri
160.
by IsaacL 10y ago
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. However, I actually said in my post that bitcoin may be too volatile, and for that reason I'm not entirely sold on the bullish case. The counter to the reduced volumes is the fact that bitco
161.
by IsaacL 10y ago
http://coindesk.com/price/ It also seems like bitcoin is enjoying a rally, possibly in anticipation of the reward halving in 10 weeks (in theory the reward halving should already be priced in, but the bitcoin market is
162.
by IsaacL 10y ago
I don't think bitcoin has much utility as a means to transfer value, over the existing solutions. It might be a superior means to store value. The theory is that is as the amount of dollars (or any fiat currency) constantly increases
163.
by IsaacL 10y ago
I agree. I went through a period where I seriously held the same insight as the grandparent and thought that it was profound insight into the nature of the universe -- "omfg, corporations are artificial intelligences! reality is an int
164.
Why Most Unit Testing Is Waste [pdf](rbcs-us.com)
3 points by IsaacL 11y ago|1 comments
165.
by IsaacL 11y ago
What are the top points to keep in mind regarding sleep hygiene? (Or what's a link to the best resource you've found?). Thanks.
166.
by IsaacL 11y ago
I disagree with your point of view (which sounds to me like Adam Smith-style classical liberalism) but it would take too long to explain why. The nutshell is that you're still advocating capitalist means for socialist ends -- e.g. that
167.
by IsaacL 11y ago
Who said that we should? States have justified their actions by many different codes of ethics. I know my answer to the legitimate role of the state: to protect individual rights.
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by IsaacL 11y ago
One of the most damaging things Clive Stafford Smith has done is to give public support for Moazzem Begg, who was almost certainly a high-ranking member of al Qaeda ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moazzam_Begg ). (Sure,
169.
by IsaacL 11y ago
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: &quo
170.
by IsaacL 11y ago
I disagree entirely. The essential point I want to make is that just because you have a right to something, does not mean you have a right to the material implementation of that right. (Because that would mean you had a right to the labour
171.
by IsaacL 11y ago
A related point from geometry is that high-dimensional spheres are "spiky". ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3995615 ) E.g. if you have a set of things which vary in many dimensions (even if each element is no
172.
by IsaacL 11y ago
Another interesting bit of etymology: the article mentions the field of statistics arising with the need for governments to manage information on their citizens. The word "statistics" literally comes from "state", a fun
173.
by IsaacL 11y ago
The problem with deregulation was that certain industries (e.g., finance) were deregulated much more than others (e.g., manufacturing), with predictable consequences. Rand is pro-government where it's needed. She's even pro-enviro
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by IsaacL 11y ago
Objectivist here. (For what it's worth: I don't hate poor people, nor do I think all rich people deserve their wealth, nor do I think the free market is a universal panacea for all ills. What Rand actually says is that there are g
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by IsaacL 11y ago
I feel the same way about Doctorow, and I couldn't even get through more than the first chapter of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It had an interesting setting, but was focused on a boring guy with a boring job. I'm genuinely
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by IsaacL 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221756 The first two comments on this thread were definitely snarkier and more aggressive. Part of me thinks there were advantages to the earlier culture of HN, though. People were more
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by IsaacL 11y ago
Any Indian HN users have any more info?
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by IsaacL 11y ago
Between Nero's persecution in AD 64 and the Decian persecutions in 250, there's very little evidence for state-led persecutions of Christians. The timeline is roughly (apologies if dates are inexact, but this is roughly correct fr
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by IsaacL 11y ago
I only have a fuzzy idea of what they're talking about here, but Terence Tao had an interesting reply: "This paradox is actually very similar to Banach-Tarski, but involves a violation of additivity of probability rather than addi
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by IsaacL 11y ago
"Sure, programming languages are cool and useful, but so is geometry, and I don’t spend my free time on that either." :D - I'm spending this sunday afternoon learning abut geodesic grids ( https://en.wikibooks.org&#

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