mej10

34 ms·

301.
by mej10 14y ago
The book was published in 2005. In the Introduction, Joel said there would be yearly volumes. I think that is a fantastic idea! ...but it doesn't look like that happened. Is there anything similar for the last several years?
302.
Links to essays in Best Software Writing I(brevity.org)
1 points by mej10 14y ago|1 comments
303.
by mej10 14y ago
I don't see this as a rant. I think this is a genuine problem/complaint with recent programming books. I am not sure what started the trend or why it continues. Exercises are where the learning happens for me. Perhaps well crafted exercises
304.
by mej10 14y ago
That makes sense, and now I am curious about trying it out. As an aside: I think that is an interesting analysis of the Panopticon (which I hadn't heard of before) but I think that writing is needlessly wordy.
305.
by mej10 14y ago
Is the productivity gain from the insight into how you spend your time? Or is there some other aspect I am missing.
306.
by mej10 14y ago
I think it would be straightforward to write a program that monitors/records whatever applications have focus. I am only familiar with OS X, though. Using the accessibility APIs you can get the focused window and register for focus change n
307.
by mej10 14y ago
Yes, existential risk around AI. Really. You can look at it that way, but I think it is currently far more likely than the "typical nerd wet dream about the Singularity". Your last sentence is a complete non sequitur to me. You are comparin
308.
by mej10 14y ago
I haven't seen any reasons around why an AI must be conscious to cause harm or existential risk. My opinion is that an x-risk causing AI would almost certainly not be conscious like humans. As for human stupidity, maybe you just have more f
309.
by mej10 14y ago
I am not sure I understand your point. More people, almost by definition, currently die from every other cause than x-risks. Google is in the best position of anyone/any company to cause an AI disaster. That they don't _seem_ to care is wha
310.
by mej10 14y ago
To my knowledge they haven't published anything around AI risk or released any statements/positions publicly. That doesn't mean that they aren't taking it seriously, but it is at least a strong signal to me.
311.
by mej10 14y ago
Google scares me more than other companies because of their handle on AI. I wish they at least appeared to take existential risk around AI seriously. Having Kurzweil near the top isn't exactly comforting, either.
312.
by mej10 14y ago
I have witnessed this in myself and others, and it is painful to both see and experience. Of course the question is: what can we do about it?
313.
by mej10 14y ago
> I've seen many, many people who are much better than their portfolio or past accomplishments indicated-especially people in their 20s who've just happened to work at crappy companies and end up on bad projects. This hits too close to
314.
by mej10 14y ago
Sigma is usually used to represent the standard deviation. +4 sigma would mean four standard deviations from the mean. So in this case he is saying his talent is higher than 99.9966% of people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviati
315.
by mej10 14y ago
I am a bit late to this thread, so you may not see my response. Regardless... I have wondered about this as well. I am considering two strategies: 1) Stop checking HN at all, and subscribe to Hacker Monthly ( http://hackermonthly.com/ ), wh
316.
by mej10 14y ago
Wow, I can't wait for Steven Pinker's book. That talk was excellent.
317.
by mej10 14y ago
Do these have Emacs key bindings? I primarily code in Ruby and Javascript, should I buy those individually or get IDEA and find plugins?
318.
by mej10 14y ago
Has this been pentested or audited by a security firm? I think this is awesome and I am glad you have it working. I'll be seriously considering Firebase for future projects.
319.
by mej10 14y ago
Can you link to some of this debate? I have always been curious about this drama I hear of. I've never been particularly involved in any programming communities and I am having a hard time imagining what it is like.
320.
by mej10 14y ago
It has always struck me as odd that people dismiss the singularity as a nerd fantasy. They latch on to one view of it and make up their minds about the idea itself. The people I know that take it seriously are much more afraid of it than an
321.
by mej10 14y ago
I am really curious: did you read the example abstracts in the post? If so, can you help me understand why things like that should be funded?
322.
by mej10 14y ago
There are many open problems in ethics and metaethics (i.e. what is right and wrong, is that even a thing, etc) that seem (to me) to have pretty clear practical consequences. I think many of the problems could be phrased in a way to convinc
323.
by mej10 14y ago
The example abstracts cited in the article are particularly worrying to me. I would be interested in seeing if someone can explain why those papers are problems that smart people should be working on. To a very pro-science layperson they se
324.
by mej10 14y ago
It sounds to me more like "Let's stop funding some parts of philosophy that aren't really tied to reality, when there are real philosophical problems with practical consequences that we need people working on". * Edit: Made my interpretatio
325.
by mej10 14y ago
Does this mean that Facebook is using Haskell more these days?
326.
by mej10 14y ago
By using the Accessibility APIs. I imagine the core is implemented pretty similarly to Slate as I think there are only a couple ways to implement window management features. It is pretty hacky in parts. For example, some windows have an abs
327.
by mej10 14y ago
My WM supports only native OSX apps. I have never tried it with any X11 applications. Also, I noticed below you said someone should do this in MacRuby. My WM is written in MacRuby. Maybe I should release it.
328.
by mej10 14y ago
I have a simple tiling window manager I wrote for OSX. Does this project support tiling? I am guessing no: "Slate is a keyboard-driven window management program for Mac OSX" Why use this instead of a tiling wm?
329.
by mej10 14y ago
So, I studied C in college and really enjoyed it. It really fit my style of thinking at the time (having a mental model of what the machine is doing is really valuable). I wrote a game in C/OpenGL, but really didn't learn much about "modern
330.
by mej10 14y ago
If you are going to eventually use RubyMotion, why not just start with that? I have been using it for about a week based on a recommendation from another HN'er and I have been extremely pleased. It is all new development, though. I am not e

More ›