mbenjaminsmith

11 ms·

31.
by mbenjaminsmith 11y ago
Humorous intent aside, I think the fundamental error here is the author(s) conflating a trend with the counter culture of yore. The hipsters of today do not follow from the counter culture of the 60s nor the punk movement that followed. The
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by mbenjaminsmith 11y ago
I went through something similar with Apple not that long ago. I had a retina MBP that had a faulty keyboard. Half of the home row stopped working, starting with a single key in that row. It was some type of physical failure. I thought the
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by mbenjaminsmith 11y ago
I was hired to rebuild a project that was DOA. I've seen worse but not that frequently. After failing to find the initial developer's GitHub profile I found his toptal.com "CV". That was the first I had heard of it. Sinc
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Didn't really look at it but the spirit of it I love. Thanks for sharing.
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Yeah, that's how I did it. Grass is helpful until you can get the board to come up close to level and land on it. For some reason it took me much longer to learn how to drop in on a ramp. I built an 8-foot ramp in high school (no verti
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I'm wrapping up an iOS project using Parse and wrote a Core Data <-> Parse "offline mode" / sync engine for it. From a development perspective I'd say it's relatively painless. I did encounter a "bug
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Thanks. Yeah, I don't have anything really substantial to add. I was just connecting some dots and wondered if there was an underlying trend.
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
> all of whom have complained that it is ridiculously difficult to hire good engineers. Thanks. I guess I was mostly wondering if that trend is changing.
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Ask HN: Programmer Job Crunch in SF?
1 points by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago|4 comments
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
If anyone is interested in exploring ideas for SE Asia email me (in my profile). I'm based in Bangkok and have 15 years of experience living and doing business in this part of the world. I have a network and access to capital but would
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
> If not, automatics may go the way of film cameras. I think you're missing the fact that the mechanical watch industry is already post-apocalypse (i.e., the Quartz Crisis that started in the 70s). The current mechanical watch indus
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
As you seem familiar with the topic, can you give me a concrete example of when dependent types would be necessary or useful? If we look at Haskell's Maybe or Swift's option type we have a clear case: There is no ambiguity between
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Before I get to far into a topic I'm not an expert in, I'll refer you to these: http://matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/ http://tonyarcieri.com/whats-wrong-with-webcrypto I&
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Those are really good questions. > in terms of end-to-end encryption, what kind of client-encryption do you have in mind? I didn't have something in mind, but Stanford has a good, relatively hard to screw up (by configuration) JS cr
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I think this is neat. I can't imagine a use for it but I like the UI. The fundamental problem with this: There's no way to prove that the secret has been deleted and / or not copied. You have access to the plaintext and the p
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
FWIW, I have a high IQ and I didn't get very far either. Debugging code I've never seen before in less than 60 seconds isn't a skill I've needed to acquire.
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Oh man. My first computer was an Atari 400 and I had the BASIC cartridge as well as Star Raiders. I'm pretty sure that was and still is the best game ever made. My introduction to programming was this series: http://en.wikip
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
Somewhat related: While record shopping in Hong Kong I managed to get over to Kowloon to a tiny walk-up record store that had 1000s of used LPs stacked in boxes. The store was so crowded no more than 4 people could be in it at one time and
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I can do 8 or 9. I can do more than that but not for sustained periods. If I'm programming 10++ I'll usually burn out after a month or so. Burn out usually means that I don't have the focus or will to get in a solid 8, more l
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I think the real failure of FP has been demonstrating its advantages in practical terms. While deferring impurity is admittedly interesting (if you care about the theoretical underpinnings of programming at all) what do I gain as a programm
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I'm not sure how you read either of those (horrible!) things in my comment but since I wouldn't want to ruin the OP's day, let me try again. Instead of: > No, what would be interesting is everything that you said with the
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
No, what would be interesting is everything that you said with the addition of relativistic-speed travel. Take round trips near (or over, depending on your reference) the speed of light and watch how things evolve.
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I don't work in an office as all of my client work is 100% remote and usually short- to medium-term. I mostly program full time in Objective-C and work on a wide range of problems like image processing, audio, networked applications an
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I'm always surprised to see Thailand on a list of cheap places to live. I live in Bangkok in the CBD just behind the Four Seasons. While that's admittedly one of the pricier neighborhoods to live in, I've also lived in some o
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
มอไซค์มือสอง is, informally, second-hand motorcycles (or parts).
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
I do a lot of contract work these days and I recently found out about a service that promises to put high quality programmers together with high quality clients. The average fees are somewhat high (high for a global average but low-ish for
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
DIY speakers as a hobby is mostly about enclosures and crossover networks. It's quite rare that people would build their own speakers drivers (some planar speakers being an exception). Where it's rewarding is taking available driv
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
> You can get the correct vacuum tube-like amplification from a computer today, it's just that tubes are still cheaper. It is absolutely not the case that tube amplifiers are still sold because they're cheaper than solid state
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
1. The first part makes me think you're solving the problem of "long form" comments -- providing better tools for writing in depth responses to things. On more careful reading it sounds like you're not doing that. I le
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by mbenjaminsmith 12y ago
> Titan is the richest laboratory in the solar system for studying prebiotic chemistry Does that mean prebiotic environment + time != biotic environment? Is this NASA being conservative and managing expectations? I'm probably incorr

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