lkozma

20 ms·

151.
Douglas Hofstadter's satire on sexist language [1985](cs.virginia.edu)
3 points by lkozma 15y ago|0 comments
152.
by lkozma 15y ago
Do you realize this argument works for any X and X+k ? I assume you are not thinking that an infinite number of people would get along just fine, so clearly there are some other constraints. It may well be that those constraint kick in at a
153.
by lkozma 15y ago
Nice going... For sentences like your last example, in the past few years I've been hearing "as in" with increasing frequency. I find it quite annoying and would be very curious to learn about its origins, as in how did it start.
154.
by lkozma 15y ago
It works for any number, I meant "reasonably small", because for those it can be done mentally.
155.
by lkozma 15y ago
Unrelated, you can square quickly a (reasonably small) number ending in 5: multiply the number without the 5 to the number one larger and append 25 to it. Example: 85*85 = (8*9).25 = 7225
156.
by lkozma 15y ago
I know and I appreciate his explanation, although much of it was not new to me. I was not trying to convince him of anything, just commenting on what I think the original story was about.
157.
by lkozma 15y ago
Patrick, your argument is flawless, but you've become a bit of a robot. There must be some reason why they don't put Marlboro ads in a lung cancer clinic or a Ballantine's ad in an alcohol rehab center. Surely they would be perfect choices
158.
by lkozma 15y ago
This is very informative and you make many cogent observations. However, you don't even remotely address the point of the article, which, as far as I understand it, is that something is fundamentally wrong if a child wants to learn about di
159.
by lkozma 15y ago
Not sure about Charlie Sheen, but hacking is all about ignoring what the competition is supposed to be and doing what is possible.
160.
by lkozma 15y ago
I am surprised by the attitude against what he did, both on reddit and even more so here. Afterall this is "hacker news" and the submission is called "hack your way...". Any definition of hacking that I know includes cleverly exploiting the
161.
by lkozma 15y ago
He mentions 1500 hours of labor, which, if you were paying somebody to do it, would be somewhere around 100000 USD (full cost of a skilled craftsman is around $60/hour). This statement could be used against almost anything falling under
162.
by lkozma 15y ago
Say you want to prove your problem A is NP-hard and you know already that problem B is NP-hard. The fact that you can transform every instance of A to an instance of B does not prove anything, because it could be that you only create instan
163.
by lkozma 15y ago
Similar thing happened to me when visiting a museum in the Vatican. Long queues, metal detectors, etc. After passing through the whole thing with no problem, I realized I had my pocket knife in my pocket throughout the day. I noticed then t
164.
by lkozma 15y ago
The Imus map does look nicer, but as a computer geek I am more interested in how one could capture the heuristics he uses and better automate the process. Surely all (or most) of the label placement, typography etc. ideas he uses could be c
165.
by lkozma 15y ago
Let's not dismiss the guy's opinion off-hand.. I also know people whose opinions I respect and who find GED pretentious and shallow. Personally, I found it extremely well written (although somewhat nonuniform) and extremely insightful as we
166.
by lkozma 15y ago
Just like ZMM, GED is also the kind of book that tends to split people into those that love it and those that hate it. Personally, I loved GED and hated ZMM. Similarly, I know people who find GED overrated, pompous and shallow.
167.
by lkozma 15y ago
Best books I read in 2011: * "Salonica, City of Ghosts" by M.Mazower. Tells the history of Thessaloniki, informative, entertaining, at times nostalgic. * "The Cauchy-Schwarz Master Class" by J.M.Steele. A guided tour of mathematical inequal
168.
by lkozma 15y ago
This is unfortunate. It is not the obtrusive ads I find most annoying, those I can filter out mentally with no difficulty. It is the non-obtrusive ads that masquerade as content that I dislike.
169.
by lkozma 15y ago
This asynchronous sending of emails sounds nice but it reminds me of the times when I started using email some 15 years ago. I would sit at a Unix terminal, fire up Pine, write all my emails and hit send with no delay or blocking, go to sle
170.
by lkozma 15y ago
I partially agree with you but I don't think it is helpful to draw conclusions from one field and apply them on the other. It could well be that bottled water is a scam and it is no different from the garden hose water and at the same time
171.
by lkozma 15y ago
Even if the resources were enormous, exponential growth would still have to level off sooner or later.
172.
by lkozma 15y ago
I really love the way these guys go about things: 1. create something of value, but serious value 2. generate traction, but in a big way 3. go after capturing some of that value. I like how they move to 3 only when 2 is fulfilled, like half
173.
by lkozma 15y ago
I agree with you and I have a wife and a son. I didn't say it doesn't change anything, but that it doesn't change everything. What I meant is that there will be things you cannot do anymore and there will be things for which you use the cha
174.
by lkozma 15y ago
The effect of a child on your life is partly due to things you can not change, partly due to your own and your spouse's decisions and partly due to what society/TV/advertisments/"common wisdom" tells you to do. If you limit the third factor
175.
by lkozma 15y ago
Wife and kid don't necessarily have to change everything, as long as you find someone who thinks similarly to you.
176.
by lkozma 15y ago
"was briefly considered a contemporary of Bill G and Steve Jobs" I think you mean that he was considered to be a "competitor" or someone "playing in the same league". Contemporary means someone who has lived at the same time, which he certa
177.
by lkozma 15y ago
"IIRC, Finnish has something like 28 noun cases. That is intimidating" Finnish (and other agglutinative languages) use suffixes to express many concepts that in English are expressed with prepositions: imagine if instead of "in my room" you
178.
by lkozma 15y ago
yes, lately HN feels a bit like conformist news. more context: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2803582
179.
by lkozma 15y ago
Exactly, and the variance of the maximum will decrease even faster than the variance of the mean.
180.
Show HN: Random wiki image as wallpaper(lkozma.net)
3 points by lkozma 15y ago|1 comments

More ›