alister

53 ms·

451.
by alister 14y ago
Is there a way to search for a particular showcased site? (In case you're wondering why: I would like to find my own site on the showcase site without browsing through all the pages.)
452.
by alister 14y ago
> equations can be as information-dense as entire paragraphs And generally the equation is easier to understand than the same thing written in prose. But did you notice this from the original article: “When you add consecutive numbers s
453.
by alister 14y ago
I might be interested in learning R if I knew what it was. Even the webpage doesn't explain what it is until you watch one of the videos. I see this all the time on software-related websites. They launch into the technical details without e
454.
by alister 14y ago
Why does this effect happen on the computer but not in real life? That is, when a friend (or celebrity) is approaching me in my peripheral vision, why don't I see grotesque person for an instant?
455.
by alister 14y ago
> insist that a renter...have valid insurance [or pay a higher fee] If you don't own a car it is just about impossible to buy a liability insurance policy. I know this. I tried. I tried very hard. I don't own a car myself, but since I
456.
by alister 14y ago
> German police statistics underestimate weapon use a bit Can you explain how?
457.
by alister 14y ago
Wow, so many Cassandras and hostile comments here on HN about what seems like a courageous idea to me. Does anyone here believe that the current system of ACH, checks, Visa, and Mastercard is good? Anything involving banks and credit card
458.
by alister 14y ago
In the spirit of the OP's point about tiny details, I can offer you two reasons why setting DST matters: (1) I want my cats to be fed just before I go to sleep so the cats have the maximal period of full belly when I go to bed. I go to bed
459.
by alister 14y ago
There's an obvious solution: Get people to write down their questions on paper from which the speaker can select questions that are of general interest and to which he has a useful or interesting reply. To keep some excitement, you can even
460.
by alister 15y ago
The very first leaked Stratfor email I looked at just now (see below) seems to have the same level of detail and passionate debate that we Hackernews types get into when we're discussing crypto policy or the design of network protocols. I'v
461.
by alister 15y ago
> You're assuming that the rate is evenly distributed. I think it's very likely that it isn't; if you're involved in espionage or organized crime, you probably know several people who were being tracked by the FBI. Yes, I assumed an eve
462.
by alister 15y ago
Good point. Considering that the phone companies have a long history of secretly sharing foreign call data with the NSA, and a recent history of secretly sharing domestic call data as well, we can expect more of the same. Rather than fighti
463.
by alister 15y ago
>prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use When I read the figure of 3000, I ricocheted between being shocked at the large number of people being tracked, then realized that it's actually tiny compar
464.
by alister 15y ago
Oh these researchers don't understand PR (public relations). Here's an amusing way they could get one hundred fold the publicity that they're getting now without (technically) lying. They cracked 12720 RSA keys. They could reveal the secret
465.
by alister 15y ago
> "So you didn't really write vi in one weekend like everybody says?" Whenever I hear that someone whipped up an impressive piece of code in a weekend or in an hour, I am skeptical. Time passes quickly when you're doing work that you lo
466.
by alister 15y ago
It is not unhealthy or insensitive (which is what "morbid" means) to know cause of death. Knowing cause of death has value for public discussion about policy, health, and medicine. Even if it's something like suicide or AIDS, we'll know tha
467.
by alister 15y ago
That explanation doesn't make sense to me. The employers were not merely classifying people into groups, they wanted to actually hire someone. If in the employer's mind, all black applicants were bad, the employer would hire a white applica
468.
by alister 15y ago
I think you misunderstood my point. I'm not talking about blacks vs whites. I asking why this experiment doesn't show any difference between high-quality and low-quality black candidates. Using the names suggested by the article, suppose
469.
by alister 15y ago
There's something about the CV experiment that makes no sense to me: The researchers also found that although high-quality "white" candidates were preferred to low-quality "white" candidates, the relative quality of "black" CVs ma
470.
by alister 15y ago
This is wonderfully counter-intuitive even for security geeks. The point could be made even more concisely by saying that "correct horse battery staple" and "}7m`5T-" are equally good. Who would imagine that four randomly-chosen--but common
471.
by alister 15y ago
It's really disappointing that none of the developers of these systems thought to add anonymity as a feature. It’s also sad that early adopters--who tend to be hackers/geeks--aren’t demanding anonymous transactions. It could even be limited
472.
by alister 15y ago
I'm not necessarily finding fault with Google, but I am disturbed that so much invisible meta-data is being stored inside images. It makes images trackable, and prevents anonymous speech and reporting unless you are sufficiently tech-savvy
473.
by alister 15y ago
I just wish that in the early UNIX days they reserved some of the flags to mean one thing only, and required all commands to have them (where it made sense). Like: -r recursive (i.e., it should always be recursive mode if a command opera
474.
by alister 15y ago
> You don't get bribes in the office, in a clear, visible way. Actually, you do. Numerous undercover TV news stories like on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and Dateline, as well as police sting operations, show exactly that. Another huge counterexa
475.
by alister 15y ago
So you're saying that (eg.) security patches 1 to 83 download eighty-three slightly different versions of file X, only the last of which is used. Presumably versions 1 to 82 shouldn't be saved -- and I don't see evidence in XP that they are
476.
Ask HN: Why are Windows security updates larger than the ENTIRETY of Windows?
3 points by alister 15y ago|3 comments
477.
by alister 15y ago
Those example are all technology. Astounding technology, sure, but still technology. They're not great theories or discoveries. (And by "discovery" I mean a discovery of something that exists in nature -- like plate tectonics -- not discove
478.
by alister 15y ago
There's no question that personal computing, the Web, Wikipedia, advance in semiconductors, networking, etc. have been amazing in the last few decades. That's why my question is not , "Where are the great technical developments of our life
479.
by alister 15y ago
These are technology (not theories or scientific discoveries): - SQUIDS (1964/1965) - Semiconductor Photolithography (1982) - Nanotechnology (1980s) - High temperature superconductivity (1986) - Quantum Computing (1982) - Spintronics (1980s
480.
by alister 15y ago
I can't comment on all of those, but the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is not in the same category of importance as the examples I gave. It's an accomplishment certainly, but not a theory or discovery of GREAT importance to the world. I do

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