msluyter

38 ms·

1. 331.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   This has been discussed on HN many many times, and I could probably just dredge up old posts and cut and paste them, but rather that re-iterate those, let me focus on the following: how would one falsify your thesis? What would it take befo
2. 332.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   There's a strange preoccupation with perfect pitch. It's not very useful today since there are inexpensive electronic and mechanical tools to give you absolute pitch. It wasn't even that useful previously. Classically train
3. 333.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   "How many programming languages are you able to use effortlessly to produce nontrivial programs?" To be totally honest with myself I had to answer "none," although the answer to "how many programming languages are
4. 334.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   I've been using nValt with synching via SimpleNote. nValt is pretty nice, actually - the UI is optimized for fast searching or adding notes.
5. 335.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   Indeed, and you find sugar in all sorts of places you might not expect. For example, Sriracha hot sauce: would you have guessed that the second ingredient is sugar?
6. 336.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   It's unclear to me that "moral progress" is well defined, as it seems to imply that there's some universal, generally accepted notion of an ideal morality which we can aspire to. And yet I seriously doubt that we could
7. 337.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   The article doesn't address what for me are the major sticking points: iTunes and iPhoto. I have years of music & photos stored in both, and to switch to linux I'd need an relatively painless migration strategy. Anyone have an
8. 338.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   I found this article interesting and enjoyable, but I had some questions about this: Let’s apply this to our software systems. Instead of building a monolithic 100 000 line codebase, build 100 small services, each 100 lines long. Fred Geor
9. 339.▲
   by msluyter 13y ago

   Thanks for compiling this faq, btw. The unstructured nature of HN tends to work against any sort of historical or accumulated knowledge. I have a vision of people stepping up and doing this for different CRTs (Commonly Recurring Topics) on
10. 340.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I'm not sure exactly what constitutes a viable "chess alternative," but if you're open to going beyond two player and investigating other styles of games, check out the top games on BGG (boardgamegeek.com). Many of these
11. 341.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    One trick I've recently adopted: I use this site: http://mynoise.net/noiseMachines.php In particular, the "babble" generator. The babble blends with actual conversations so you can no longer distinguish spoke
12. 342.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Not exactly sure what you're suggesting, but I'm not assuming the poor don't eat. On the contrary, I'm saying that the poor spend a greater percentage of their income on food and rent, and that overall price inelasticit
13. 343.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I'm going to elaborate on the parent's confusion a bit. Even if, as you suggest, net inflation doesn't increase, price distribution might. That is, yacht prices fall, while food/rent prices rise. Since the poor spend the
14. 344.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Tyler Cowen is one of my intellectual heroes. If you found that article interesting, you might enjoy his blog, Marginal Revolution: http://marginalrevolution.com/
15. 345.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Along those lines, I'm curious how flat design looks to those who are color blind (8% of men), as it seems to rely primarily on color for distinguishing various UI elements.
16. 346.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Python: one case where I believe explicit is not better than implicit is the explicit passing around of self. It just seems to add extra clutter to the code, as well as demanding a certain cognitive overhead in remembering that a function i
17. 347.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is
18. 348.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I used to use dvorak, but ironically, I switched to querty because I was having RSI issues and I reverted to two finger hunt and peck for a while (not a fun time). Now that things are better I've considered going back, but the sticking
19. 349.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I primarily use java in my day job, and although there's a lot not to like about it, some standard complaints are somewhat overblown. For example, nothing really forces you to use long variable/method names, but even if you do,
20. 350.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Great, now I have to keep another dozen Chrome tabs open... ;) Seriously, this is pretty nice. I currently have rain, fan, ocean, Indian Drone, Tibetan meditation, and Bamboo running concurrently. A way to combine sounds without opening a n
21. 351.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I think there's a lot of general recognition that the interview process is suboptimal, but it'll probably be slow to change at larger companies mostly out of inertia. Part of the problem is that developers tend to do most of the i
22. 352.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I've always found this article -- "Evidence Based Scheduling" -- by Joel Spolsky to be rather compelling: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html I'm curious if anyone else has
23. 353.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    I think the point may be that the fuzziness is already built into big-O notation. That is O(n) + C = O(n), where C is a constant.
24. 354.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    On the topic, there was a thought provoking article in the NY Times recently entitled "Can the Government Actually Do Anything About Inequality." The answer is unclear: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013&#x2
25. 355.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Well, there's a howto on running on tomcat: http://www.sparkjava.com/readme.html#title17 As for Heroku, I found this: https://gist.github.com/Fitzsimmons/2490382 Generally, for a lot of apps the e
26. 356.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Given the absence of real data (as in, studies that demonstrate conclusively that watching too much online porn has certain downsides), it's not surprising that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form: "
27. 357.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    You can't downvote submissions (or at least, I can't. If you can it must require a certain karma threshold). So perhaps some see flagging as the only option for expressing disapproval of a given story.
28. 358.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Actually, my gym (24 Hr Fitness) uses fingerprint scanners to sign people in. I hadn't really given it much thought before, but indeed, it would be possible for their system to be compromised and for my fingerprint data to be released
29. 359.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    This is one version of the ontological proof, which has a long history. For an overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument
30. 360.▲
    by msluyter 13y ago

    Pretty sure we read this in my senior english class in high school. (Under the general topic of persuasion/argument/rhetoric.)