JackC

81 ms·

391.
by JackC 14y ago
In python if I was trying to figure out something complex 20 levels deep, I would stick in an "import pdb; pdb.set_trace()" to get a REPL at that spot. There's probably an equivalent for Ruby? (Off-topic, the werkzeug debugger even lets you
392.
by JackC 14y ago
Pretty much the only legal battles you hear about are the disasters. 98% of federal cases are resolved without a trial.[1] And my guess is that for every federal case that even gets filed and settled, there are lots of legal disputes that n
393.
by JackC 14y ago
I'll bite. I've used After Effects at the grab-a-demo-copy level for motion tracking and stabilization and rotoscoping. I don't remember anything that would have allowed me to detect and amplify color changes in someone's face that way, or
394.
by JackC 14y ago
Spelling that out would be like spelling out that you'd prefer people not to defecate in the hallways. This is a little different because: (1) it's probably a common occurrence (based on the general incidence of sexual harassment & as
395.
by JackC 14y ago
- Amazon's cut - prize fulfillment costs At smaller scales, there can be a huge difference between sticker price and what you actually have to work with: http://kotaku.com/5902280/what-the-hell-these-game-developer...
396.
by JackC 14y ago
This is totally badass. Instead of a technical solution to a technical problem, Google is going with a political solution to a political problem. There are a ton of technical ways Google could silently defend against this particular form of
397.
by JackC 14y ago
Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like
398.
by JackC 14y ago
I'm glad the EFF is working on this -- their bill of rights at the end is a great proposal. It is so deeply frustrating for Apple to promote a vision of the next generation of computers (i.e., iPhones) where the hardware maker gets to decid
399.
by JackC 14y ago
Thanks for your reply. Apologies for making it too personal. When I first had this conversation from the other side, I think my stance was "I say 'bitch,' and I'm not sexist, so it must be fine and I just have to figure out why." So I tend
400.
by JackC 14y ago
(1) This kind of "bat signal" is how a small group of dedicated people organize a large group of less dedicated people to press for or against legislation. It's a clever way to create a cheap, effective organization to do what you're propos
401.
by JackC 14y ago
Hmm. I agree that it's normalized (as you said below), and not controversial to lots of people. But I think that's because people are mostly fine with casual sexism, as long as it's not too obvious. So think about this. You've seen it appli
402.
by JackC 14y ago
Besides the salt point others have made, I've also read (on HN) that rainbow tables aren't much use anymore because the speed/storage equation has changed. If your hashing mechanism is dumb enough not to use salts, it is also fast enough to
403.
by JackC 14y ago
FWIW, I think I read at one point that WoW accounts were worth more on the black market than credit card numbers. So security isn't totally unimportant.
404.
by JackC 14y ago
Having directed large groups doing much, much, much less important things, the ability to run across the room and shout at someone when something goes wrong is still pretty indispensable. Plus it's fun.
405.
by JackC 14y ago
Respectfully, I think you're misreading pantaloons, and seriously I only came here to get to type that phrase. Anyway: when pantaloons said "you can't have a competitive market for what should (ostensibly) be a free and universal service",
406.
by JackC 14y ago
The point is that it's difficult to create a competitive marketplace while also providing a government guarantee that every buyer will find a seller. For example, suppose the government guarantee is "every high-school graduate with an SAT o
407.
by JackC 14y ago
My favorite, from your link: "[I]t has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts."
408.
by JackC 14y ago
Ubiquitous pocket computers are revolutionary. If you compare usability and adoption before and after the iPhone, I think Apple deserves a fair bit of credit for that. Of course not nearly all of it, but they are certainly a hero of this re
409.
by JackC 14y ago
I think there will be some things it's great at and some it's terrible at. Here's one for free: how about using this to create the Rosetta Stone of sign language? Or a portable sign-to-speech translator? (These are hard problems for other r
410.
by JackC 14y ago
The Kickstarter says that it might get you access to a packaged build, and that the price might be pay-what-you-want -- sounds a lot like the NeoOffice business model ( https://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/mirrors.php?file=NeoOff... ). Bu
411.
by JackC 14y ago
This is a great point. Not to get political myself, but if you compare this talk to Elizabeth Warren's "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class"[1] from a few years back, it's night and day. Before she made economic claims, she described he
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by JackC 14y ago
I think the idea is, it's like the difference between searching for new cancer treatments and bringing a promising treatment to market. If it takes the same kind of expertise to do both, then spending more time on one means less on the othe
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by JackC 14y ago
In case it's not clear -- you know all those people who want to have passive income but have mental barriers to the concept of passive income? They are imaginary . There is no one saying, "why would I want money coming in every month for s
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by JackC 14y ago
I read at some point that a lot of interesting theoretical AI research was abandoned in the 80s, because the results (like expert systems) got good enough that they had commercial applications, and the focus changed from research to perfect
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by JackC 14y ago
No HTML rendering engines because that's a security issue. It's not a security issue; there are plenty of apps that download and render content, just not HTML content. You're not allowed to publish browsers on iOS because it's a business
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by JackC 14y ago
That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I would bet this is some kind of business tort -- unfair competition, interference with potential business relationsh
417.
by JackC 14y ago
Oh, I get you. Yeah, that makes sense. Just because the idea is kind of neat: It's possible you're getting jumped on by the lawyers here because "legal proof" itself is such a non-legal concept. There's such a thing as mathematical proof, f
418.
by JackC 14y ago
Huh. I've never worked with canvas, but is it possible that moving the middle canvas itself would be faster than clearing and redrawing it every frame? Like you have two canvases side by side in a div with overflow hidden, move both canvase
419.
by JackC 14y ago
I don't want to pick on you in particular, since it's something a lot of non-lawyers are confused about, but you might be interested to know that "he has no legal proof" isn't really accurate as a legal matter. Your assumption should be tha
420.
by JackC 14y ago
I just read through most of O'Reilly's new Clojure book and implemented a simple Clojure app (a web-based tic-tac-toe game). The analogy to making friends in a new language is really good -- it was full of moments like "I'm sure somewhere i

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