mattchew

33 ms·

241.
by mattchew 18y ago
I don't trust Belkin products myself. A few years ago Belkin sold a router that would periodically override your web browsing and display an ad for parental control software in your browser instead: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1039_3-510486
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by mattchew 18y ago
There's a good point there, if you can get through the awful writing that it's wrapped in. It's just too easy to play a video game or read a blog post instead of write code. And in the short run it's more fun (if this isn't you, count your
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by mattchew 18y ago
Social Security isn't a Ponzi scheme because it would work perfectly well if the population remained stable over time, or shrank. And it would even be alright if it grew slowly and linearly. Only if benefits match contributions. If benef
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by mattchew 18y ago
Yes, a meta-resolution. When I want to get something done, I will break up the project into specific tasks that can be done in less than one day, and then make a written commitment about when I will finish that task. If it's a big project,
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by mattchew 18y ago
I'm guessing, but the article is probably talking about total debt, public + private. IIRC Japan has lots of govt debt, but private savings. U.S. has high-average govt debt and also lots of private debt. The sentence is certainly arguable
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by mattchew 18y ago
Sardines--I love good sardines. Unfortunately, good sardines are like $3 a tin. Crappy sardines are less than $1 a tin, but they're approximately inedible. This is shopping at Wal-Mart grocery. Anybody know of a good brand of sardines yo
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by mattchew 18y ago
> The best moments for me as a parent usually happen when no camera or PC is present. Sure. It won't be long before a continuously videocammed household becomes practical, though. (And probably commonplace not long after.) I'm a littl
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by mattchew 18y ago
> You play every hand your dealt. If you fold pre-flop, you played your hand by folding it. Mmmkay. This is the confusion. It's pretty common to talk about "playing" as opposed to folding your cards pre flop. I've seen this phrasing m
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by mattchew 18y ago
> If you can't lose an all-in, you can't lose a tournamnet. Only a tournament where you pay no blinds. Checked your website, you are that semipro poker player. I'm quite sure only playing and always winning AA would be a (relatively) l
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by mattchew 18y ago
Suppose when playing live poker, your hand always holds up, but you can only play pocket aces. Suppose even that no one else at the table ever figures this out. Would you take that deal? I bet not.
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by mattchew 18y ago
We've always had entrepreneurs in the U.S., but clever little firms haven't taken over the economy yet. Big clumsy companies still have the advantage in a lot of areas. I'd like to see those areas eroded, but I suspect some of them are gro
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by mattchew 18y ago
A malevolent AI could pave the earth. We might get a nanotech grey goo scenario, or just a sufficiently bad nanotech disaster to kill off higher life forms. Plausibly, the parent post meant erase modern civilization rather than every last h
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by mattchew 18y ago
The phrase "living wage" is loaded to start with. I'm sure there are political motivations here. However, when I ran their calculations for my town, I was surprised to get a number very close to what we had already figured out as our minimu
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by mattchew 18y ago
My sympathies on your sleep disorder. To me, your biggest solvable problem is learning to stand up for yourself. You are telling a story about your sleep phase syndrome, but I am reading a story about how you were bullied by people who pi
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by mattchew 18y ago
One way to look at the current crisis is that a whole lot of long term plans, once thought to be sensible, were abruptly shown to be unworkable. These plans included actual inventories, lines of production, houses and other buildings, and a
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by mattchew 18y ago
If you really are confident and want to bet, you can actually do it at Intrade (and others). Right now the betting market is strongly weighted toward recession in 2009. Taking the other side of that bet will be quite profitable if it pays
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by mattchew 18y ago
I'm reminded of the scene in Cryptonomicon where Doug Shaftoe lectures the guys about bullshit landing on their heads. Translated into your current situation: "My goodness, this guy is attempting to screw you!" You seem to think that getti
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by mattchew 18y ago
The web is more fashionable than the desktop right now, but plenty of guys make a living writing desktop software. Another guy mentioned Joel on Software /?biz, which is more desktop oriented than HN, and with a different tone to the conver
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by mattchew 18y ago
A continued focus on political articles will attract people who enjoy endless and mostly pointless arguments about politics. It is a path to HN becoming another reddit. Political articles are like junk food. Tempting while they're right i
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by mattchew 18y ago
The Wikipedia article is outdated for the US. Public debt was spiking even before the new bailout package (.5 trillion?) and the costs of FNM/FRE liabilities. While entitlements are definitely a long run problem, I think we have a more im
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by mattchew 18y ago
I am excited to see how this works as social software. I hate "karma" systems in discussion forums. As soon as you introduce karma points, your forum is now dual purposed, part for the original intent (say, discussing Hacker News) and part
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by mattchew 18y ago
Is it not more efficent to allow an institution to babysit children rather than working parents? It's a matter of cost/benefits like anything else. Maybe. But if what we want is an institution for babysitting, we ought to call it "baby
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by mattchew 18y ago
The Onion article about the 6-year-old (currently sharing the front page) says it a little more succinctly. :) I agree that we are an overschooled society. Unfortunately, the word "education" has magical properties in right-thinking conve
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by mattchew 18y ago
It is EE's choice to play sleazy games where they represent one thing to search engines and deliver something else to the users who arrive at their site. They can stop deceiving people about their public content and go to a standard gated s
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by mattchew 18y ago
If your customers have to download a big new framework before trying out your app, that is one more hurdle you've got to get past in order to sell. Customers who are not computer sophisticated may be scared away and others will consider it
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by mattchew 18y ago
They're right to worry. It's a headache. Having a new version of the framework every year is also a headache (for desktop development anyway). I'm not sure what else they can do, though. .NET is their development platform. They've got t
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by mattchew 18y ago
I've hung out with Libertarian Party regulars in a few different cities. Take an evening sometime and try it yourself. You may reconsider the idea that libertarians are mostly part of a "high-status/high-reward niche".
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by mattchew 18y ago
At 17, you probably don't have a very realistic idea of your capabilities. Most 17 year olds are a lot better at dreaming than they are at accomplishing difficult things. (Some 37 year olds too, ahem.) If you have a track record of comple
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by mattchew 18y ago
Yes, that is essentially what GTO's email said. I was reading between the lines that subscriptions were also a lost cause. GTO did have crippled free memberships, and the limitations were annoying. However, you got a free trial that was u
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by mattchew 18y ago
I like it a lot. Nice game-geeky features, oddball games, don't have to load up a blob of Java to play. The bots could be better. I agree the initial presentation doesn't have a lot of punch. To me this is pleasing. Nice to not be peste

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