pmjordan

82 ms·

721.
by pmjordan 16y ago
I can't help but wonder in what relation the resources invested into tracking all of this down are vs. reclaimed tax (or lost tax revenue if they just simplified/reduced the domestic tax rate - don't forget there's a currency exchange rate
722.
by pmjordan 16y ago
There's a simple solution to the tax problem: charge a flat tax rate on gains on "secret" assets, levied by the financial institutions to which they have been entrusted. Many countries do this (I'm fairly sure Switzerland is among them) [1]
723.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Really? He tested and measured a few different approaches. Do you think he's advocating just using his approaches without measurement? The problem, to me, is that he's not explained why the faster versions are faster (we don't know, bec
724.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Agreed, if there is a dedicated instruction available [1], and if the expression can't be reduced to multiplications/shifts/addition due to division by a constant . None of the 3 architectures mentioned in the article have a division inst
725.
by pmjordan 16y ago
If that's the case the whole thing becomes a game of figuring out what optimisations the compiler does make, and doing the rest yourself. Even in this light, there's not an awful lot to be learned from the article - no disassembly in sigh
726.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Many processors don't have an (integer) division instruction, however, particularly those in the embedded world. That said, I share DarkShikari's concerns.
727.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Depends on the person and the circumstances of leaving. In most cases of firing or redundancy (vs. because they quit) it's safer to just pay them for the notice period but not let them to come into work anymore (severance). If they weren't
728.
by pmjordan 16y ago
That looks seriously cool. Too bad it's Win32/.NET only. (the Visual Studio Team System price tag is probably hefty, too, but may well be worth it for this alone). It actually seems like there's something similar in valgrind: http://valg
729.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Yeah, I do that for simpler things (a bunch of mutexes, condition variables, etc.) but as soon as I look at anything lock-free, by brain just fails to take it all in.
730.
by pmjordan 16y ago
When I have the choice, I use Clojure's STM or multiprocessing or whatever other means possible for concurrency. Unfortunately, I often can't avoid "hard" multithreading, e.g. in kernel code or on game consoles. I've managed to get fairly g
731.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Nice analysis and demonstration that even relaxing concurrency requirements is not as easy as it looks. Interestingly, when trying to reason about and verify correct synchronisation of data structures, I immediately start drawing boxes with
732.
by pmjordan 16y ago
I'm curious about the wifi tethering. Ad-hoc wifi networks created on a Mac are only WEP-"protected"; I wonder if the iPhone's is a true WPA(2) access point. I wouldn't be comfortable walking around with an effectively wide-open WEP AP atta
733.
by pmjordan 16y ago
"not enough traction" = "ran out of {money|energy} before finding the right product/market fit"
734.
by pmjordan 16y ago
They could eliminate uncertainty by choosing a fixed number of winners from a given block of tickets, using true random numbers.
735.
by pmjordan 16y ago
That doesn't seem a terribly good reason to turn it down. A valid reason might be that the company is already profitable or has "enough" runway from a friends & family or non-YC seed round. In this case the convertible note's due date (
736.
by pmjordan 16y ago
I've observed that many people react badly when presented with instructions that come with a purchased product. ("I can't/don't read manuals," etc.) This bias tends to sabotage their attempts to follow them once they do concede that the ins
737.
by pmjordan 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2161427
738.
by pmjordan 16y ago
"This itself is a rather surprising result: Euler’s constant e comes out of nowhere!" Is it? There's an integral with a 1/x term[1]. How exactly is it surprising that logarithms start showing up? I realise integrating by hand is a pain, b
739.
by pmjordan 16y ago
In a way, he's outsourcing his due diligence, dealflow, etc. to YC by paying a premium for equity. By the sounds of it, he's not located in the Bay Area, so this may well be an absolute bargain for him. YC benefits indirectly by increasing
740.
by pmjordan 16y ago
This to me implies that both Skype and Flash are doing something wrong.
741.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Re b): Mac OS X 10.6 (and I think even later revisions of 10.5) support TRIM at the block device driver level [1]. As far as I know, it's the HFS+ file system code that doesn't support it, and neither do the SSDs in the current MacBook Ai
742.
by pmjordan 16y ago
While I agree that builtin 3G would be nice, I ended up buying a portable 3G wifi router. (the TrekStor one, which is a rebranded Huawei E5) This works well for me, though I don't rely on it daily. If I did, the ~4-5 hour battery life might
743.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Interestingly, FaceTime and iChat don't seem to have any trouble using the webcam while Skype is running. Since they're Apple apps, they may get priority, however.
744.
by pmjordan 16y ago
FWIW, Microsoft provides a Silverlight runtime for OSX[1]; for embedded streaming I assume they hand out crypto certificates on a case-by-case basis. So yeah, pretty sure it's a legal thing. [1] although being located outside the US, I can
745.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Adding Mac support didn't make DropBox any more complicated for the end user. I suspect that's not strictly true. Mac OS X and Windows file systems are subtly different in features (hard/soft links, aliases, .lnk files; files with multipl
746.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Yeah, having worked on a Wii game I know all too well what their policies on internet multiplayer are. In this context though, I guess I meant that they don't seem to be terribly interested in developing their consoles beyond mere game mach
747.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Personally, I don't think the TV makers will be smart enough for a while to open their platforms to software developers in a way that is attractive enough for developers to really embrace it. It'll be to the Android Market what the Android
748.
by pmjordan 16y ago
This seems pretty similar to the experiences of some of my colleagues at university who were doing a Physics with Philosophy cross-discipline course (I was studying computational physics). The philosophy professors seemed to have little to
749.
by pmjordan 16y ago
Having visited Mauritius a few years ago as a tourist, I'd say they're probably missing out on an opportunity in tourism and maybe immigration. Outside the generic, polished beachfront hotel complexes, they seem to treat their otherwise bea
750.
by pmjordan 16y ago
To elaborate on this: assume the sine waves of voltage difference and current are fully in phase when the house is net-consuming. Multiplying the voltage and current functions and integrating over time gives you the total energy consumption

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