arohner

37 ms·

331.
by arohner 15y ago
Including birth year helps significantly. Assuming an even distribution of births, you'd expect 54000/365 ~ 148/day. Then knowing gender lets you cut that in half. Dividing again by the age distribution of voters gets that down to a reasona
332.
by arohner 15y ago
ORMs aren't the problem here, databases not designed for use by programmers is the problem. ORMs exist because straight SQL isn't a good interface for programmers, and ORMs are bad/a leaky abstraction because the problem is really messy. In
333.
by arohner 15y ago
In my experience (using Clojure full time since before there were official releases), Clojure can be written exactly as fast as java. That isn't idiomatic clojure code however. The features clojure provides are somewhat slower, but well wor
334.
by arohner 15y ago
I do understand that aspect of their proposal. My point is that causes unnecessary amounts of work. In typical Clojure, there's a very high ratio of pure functional code to STM code. i.e. you'll probably make 10 or 100 pure functional calls
335.
by arohner 15y ago
It doesn't. What I meant by my last statement is that the transaction API forces updates to be functions of the old state, a somewhat foreign concept in python.
336.
by arohner 15y ago
Clojure's STM has several advantages going for it: * Clojure's data structures are purely functional, and built with the STM in mind. Updates and rollbacks to structures are cheap. * Clojure user-level code has always had access to the STM.
337.
by arohner 15y ago
> Most grocery stores I frequent have replaced several lanes of "efficient" cashiers with the much slower (for shoppers) self-checkout systems. Yes, the lines may be shorter, and the store needs fewer checkers (one can cover multiple se
338.
by arohner 15y ago
efficiency. I don't think that word means what you think it means. In any free market situation, like retail stores, you don't see lines as long, or employees that unhelpful. If there are 40 people in line (not uncommon at my local DMV), th
339.
by arohner 15y ago
Doctors are human, and respond to economic incentives just like all other humans. News at 11.
340.
by arohner 15y ago
> I have to ask though: Is Greenspunning such a bad thing? Yes, because if you knew you needed Common Lisp, you'd just use CL, rather than an ad-hoc informally specified implementation of CL. In general, the half implementation has half
341.
by arohner 15y ago
I think a better way of putting would be "technology is killing old jobs, and people aren't stepping into the new jobs fast enough". The author is exactly right that the gov't and mainstream are trying to hold onto the old ways. I think the
342.
by arohner 15y ago
"I see poor understanding of the performance ranges of various components" I'm totally guilty of this. I write new code on new hardware, and have very little intuitive of how fast it should go. Is 10k ops a second good? 1M? I just don't kno
343.
by arohner 15y ago
You'd be surprised. I worked through SICP a few years after graduating, and after the dragon book, and it still managed to warp my brain in new and exciting ways.
344.
by arohner 15y ago
On my 2011 15" MBP i7, I think I'm actually seeing less battery life on integrated than discrete. Anyone else seeing the same behavior?
345.
by arohner 15y ago
Yes, because it was possible and practical for the gov't to do so. Governments have always devalued their currencies, and citizens are rarely happy about. Just because it happens doesn't mean "we" chose it.
346.
by arohner 15y ago
Because they make tons of money from the in-app store. Valve has done pricing experiments on TF2 for years. Its retail price has varied from $20 to $1.99. They had already mostly saturated the market. Since they opened the in-app store a fe
347.
by arohner 15y ago
So that's why you're such a good blogger! Thanks for blogging and contributing on HN, you've really improved my understanding of software, and how to think about software. Happy Birthday.
348.
by arohner 15y ago
It's somewhat arbitrary which precious metal we use, but it's not entirely arbitrary. There's the usual reasons we use e.g. gold for money. It's fungible, ductile, rare and essentially impossible to forge. That rules out cigarettes and Yap
349.
by arohner 15y ago
Electric steering, too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_steering#Electric_systems Several years ago, a friend bought a BMW M6 the year they came out. A few days later, he noticed when the tires were pointed straight forward, the steerin
350.
by arohner 15y ago
You don't really have to get the diagnosis correct, you just have to get the error bars correct, and then disclose all of that. "Watson believes the best treatment is Foo. It has an X% chance of working, with a confidence interval of Y. The
351.
by arohner 15y ago
Most new drugs today win on marketing, rather than efficacy. Once you have a system like watson, it's rather trivial to do the expected value calculation of "This treatment has an X% chance of working, and costs Y. The competing treatment h
352.
by arohner 15y ago
I came here to post that one of the things I miss from the old internet is single-page articles, without having to search for the print button.
353.
by arohner 15y ago
> meritocracy doesn't exist Skills aren't everything. Not every valuable attribute can be taught. There's talent, motivation, work ethic. As edw519 said in his book today, the primary differentiator among programmers is passion. Assumin
354.
by arohner 15y ago
> I'd have no objection to government employees striking to get more vacation - provided the agency they work for has the right to fire (for cause) IMO, in certain kinds of industries, striking should be cause for firing. Imagine the pi
355.
by arohner 15y ago
The market working is a great thing. The issue is when the market doesn't work. There are many laws granting unions more power than they would otherwise have if the market worked. For example, in some states, if 51% of the employees decid
356.
by arohner 15y ago
Most of them fail because they don't have enough data, or they're using the wrong kind of data. The main assumption with social recommendations is that I give a damn about everything my friends like. With every one of my friends, we have
357.
by arohner 15y ago
There are lots of kinds of data that are illegal to possess. Classified documents, insider information, copyrighted music, etc. And remember certain US agencies have huge power outside the US. The DEA and the IRS come to mind. I don't know
358.
by arohner 15y ago
Wrong, but in an interesting way. The number one myth about business people is they know how to build a business. No MBA will prepare you for the actual experience of turning nothing into a profitable machine. Programmers don't know how to
359.
by arohner 15y ago
>Today's health crises, which exploded around 1980, can be traced back to the media trumpeting the twin (false) claims that dietary fat is evil and that corn syrup is a healthful alternative to sugar. I'm surprised you think this is onl
360.
by arohner 16y ago
> if you show up in freenode #clojure to ask for help with them they will actively laugh at you. #clojure has consistently been one of the most helpful resources for me, and the most helpful IRC channel I've ever been in. I've never see

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