rakejake

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211.
by rakejake 5y ago
If a junior dev writes truly head-scratching code, you could ping that person and ask why they wrote this line a certain way, as opposed to a more straight-forward way. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can't ask an ML model to do t
212.
by rakejake 5y ago
Metaplanetary was published in 2001? "Computational dust motes" features in "A Deepness in the sky" by Vernor Vinge which was published in 1999 so Tony Daniel didn't invent the concept. I wouldn't be surprised
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by rakejake 5y ago
Something like sports is tailor-made for casual conversation. Sports/movies/TV-shows are really valuable in providing mostly non-controversial gossip.
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by rakejake 5y ago
While there may not be a causal relationship between a dev career and social isolation, I feel they are orthogonal. Unlike a product manager or a sales person, there is not as much incentive to build a social circle, and to acquire the skil
215.
by rakejake 5y ago
We are made of molecules and our thoughts are simply chemical reactions. The biological basis for the mind and thoughts are not well understood today. Meditation is a time-tested way to influence our body's chemistry in ways that disco
216.
by rakejake 5y ago
My high-school chemistry teacher had this joke: "If you drink Ethanol you dance around people, if you drink Methanol, people end up dancing around you". For context, certain communities in India have people dancing around the fune
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by rakejake 5y ago
Egan's Diaspora also deals with this in some chapter. https://www.gregegan.net/DIASPORA/15/15.html I don't understand anything in that page but the pictures are great.
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by rakejake 5y ago
While I understand the heft of your argument, I don't think food production and electricity generation can be categorized as simple innovations. Everything starts off when a small number of people work on something, and later spreads a
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by rakejake 5y ago
It is funny to see comments like these in this thread. After the events of the last few years, I guess Americans are finding out what it is like to be Indian on the internet and having to defend every piece of crazy news about the country.
220.
by rakejake 5y ago
Speaking of chimeras, there is a Greg Egan short story from his book "Axiomatic" about a human leopard chimera which is bred by an eccentric billionaire specifically to pose for a painting. The actual story is even crazier.
221.
by rakejake 5y ago
+1 In India, at least some of the blame lies with the film industry. Having had a monopoly for so long, they were lax in saving prints of their movies and making them available on DVD (now streaming platforms). There is no Indian equivalent
222.
by rakejake 5y ago
Yep. My hobbies are very low energy and inexpensive, but I end up spending a decent amount of money and energy in traveling. I want to cut that down substantially starting starting next year.
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by rakejake 5y ago
Fantastic comment. People who cannot wrap their head around this can look at developing countries where generational change over the last few decades has been even more drastic. When you cannot figure out why certain practices came to be, i
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Ask HN: Blockchains to simplify contract language and open source data?
2 points by rakejake 5y ago|0 comments
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by rakejake 5y ago
Yeah, I guess it's like free throws or dribbling for basketball players. Not too easy, not too hard, keeps you "in rhythm" for when you want to ramp your attention back.
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by rakejake 5y ago
I play minesweeper as well, for the exact same reason as you. Doing something mechanical in between attention demanding tasks.
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by rakejake 5y ago
Upto Day 16 or so I would have agreed, but the difficulty really ramped up in the last week. Part 2 of Days 21, 21 were much harder than anything I did last year IIRC.
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by rakejake 5y ago
Some of Greg Egan's novels are based on very novel Physics I believe. His more "accessible" novel Permutation City is a HN favorite.
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by rakejake 5y ago
Haha, while relatively common, I wouldn't call it "short". That's like going from SoCal all the way to Norcal, or Atlanta to Miami. 10+ hours of driving.
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by rakejake 5y ago
Only if we are cloned and are pure software beings. In that case, it is possible to run at a faster "clock speed". Of course, this is all in the realm of sci-fi.
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by rakejake 5y ago
+1. Greg Egan's novels Permutation City and Diaspora actually explore this very well. I am not opposed to space exploration and generally support SpaceX but reading about doing 100,000 launches makes me slightly wary, especially with o
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by rakejake 5y ago
Yes, I found this very surprising. Calgary is as car centric as any average American city and yet they had amazing footpaths and shining public transit. To be fair, their infrastructure is much newer and they don't really have a crime&
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by rakejake 5y ago
I don't think so. I'm talking about the vibe of a city. Iirc pg wrote an article long back about the vibe of a city. Vibe is a bit amorphous but I tend to think of vibe as a condensed view of what the city is about, a function of
234.
by rakejake 5y ago
I interned at UCalgary during Summer of 2016 as part of an international students exchange program. After the initial euphoria of being in a foreign land, I felt pretty much the same way as many other posters here. The people are exceedingl
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by rakejake 5y ago
Amazing stuff
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by rakejake 5y ago
This x1000. I wouldn't qualify as an "addict" by clinical definitions, but I have a set of bad habits. Over the last year or so I have been making journal entries . The journal entries made me realize exactly what you said -
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by rakejake 5y ago
This was exactly my experience except Masters instead of Bachelors. I had this feeling that I mostly coasted during my bachelors, only putting any effort the week before Finals or Unit Tests. I did my Masters in EE from a university renowne
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by rakejake 6y ago
Drones: Interesting. But I think the very nature of drone warfare precludes any sort of big war. I think drone warfare, like nuclear warfare becomes an arms race and countries will quickly realize its futility. Adversaries will continue to
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by rakejake 6y ago
Drones: Haven't drones already been used in wars? Like I remember a huge furor about drone strikes during the Obama presidency? Self-driving: Can you elaborate on this a little more? You mean having self driving trucks on supply routes
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by rakejake 6y ago
Same here. I convince myself by saying, hey this is not reddit or some sportsforum or <insert-forum-here> but this is probably a worse form of procrastination. At least when I visit /r/nba or espncricinfo, I can relax a bit

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