trominos

26 ms·

61.
by trominos 18y ago
The ability to form two words containing Z/Q rather than one in a single play is a fairly big deal.
62.
by trominos 18y ago
I don't think it's even that anymore. Hacker News is now pretty much, "Interesting things, plus a lot of programmers use the site." Which is good for everybody who uses HN as something other than a place to get tips about programming, which
63.
by trominos 18y ago
Nah, I downmodded you because you used the "I'll probably get downmodded for this" line. Also, this is a fine article -- it's well-written and makes some points that are novel (to me, at least). The fact that it's espousing one of the stanc
64.
by trominos 18y ago
Please, please stop with the "cuil theory" meme. It's dumb.
65.
by trominos 18y ago
I agree, and I think that the solution is simple: limit people's ability to give out upvotes. Maybe restrict people's weekly upvotes to c * ln(karma) + d or something. (Make d small!) Or have upvotes actually cost you like a tenth of a karm
66.
by trominos 18y ago
"Something that is without content can't be taught because teaching something requires gleening the meaning from the writing and then repositioning it in dialogue." If it's literally contentless, okay. But something that merely has low leve
67.
by trominos 18y ago
This is a great article. One point (only tangentially related, at most, to the article's thrust) that always bothers me when it comes up is this: "On one level, the crisis has demonstrated what everyone has known for a long time: Americans
68.
Ask HN: Good books on machine learning?
13 points by trominos 18y ago|7 comments
69.
by trominos 18y ago
I've found that the best way to do this is to make "values the truth above everything else" be the core of your identity. Then you can let yourself peripherally identify with other things, and, when they're challenged, your core will step i
70.
by trominos 18y ago
Preface: I'm not particularly well schooled in either neuroscience or in the mechanics of microprocessors. However, I'm very close to certain that your post is basically a lot of hand-waving that is ultimately not only poorly reasoned but a
71.
by trominos 18y ago
I think that swombat's intended point was that the areas of genius correlate very highly with each other's presence -- to the point that treating their respective occurrences as independent events (possibly) damages our actual understandi
72.
by trominos 18y ago
I agree. I think the algorithm should take comment depth into account. Make it take thread age/traffic into account too. I don't want to worry about posting in dead or near-dead threads. Overall, though, if we can figure out how to implemen
73.
by trominos 18y ago
This isn't wisdom. It's just a weird (and in my opinion unfair) method of dividing contested assets. Regardless, it's annoying that you're trying to turn a mildly interesting solution to an old puzzle into a statement about how close-minded
74.
by trominos 18y ago
> "You can't respond with the cliché brainwash argument either. Culture is always brainwash." Your logic is bad. I more-or-less agree that "culture is always brainwash." The logical follow-up is not, "Let's therefore accept all cultures
75.
by trominos 18y ago
No. Incompleteness is only true for logical systems that are sufficiently like the one we've got in our universe. Regardless, your basic argument continues to be that "more general => more profound." Which is quite simply not a true pri
76.
by trominos 18y ago
Just because one thing's more abstract than another doesn't make it more profound.
77.
by trominos 18y ago
Because Lisp has about a million pounds of stigma attached to it.
78.
by trominos 18y ago
In retrospect using "#{my_first_child.gender}" was a pretty big mistake. I should have put "#{one_of_my_children.gender}". For some reason I thought the former would actually be less confusing than the latter.
79.
by trominos 18y ago
I can't. What is it?
80.
by trominos 18y ago
No, you're wrong. The thing is that there are two kinds of confusion that arise from Atwood's problem. The first kind of confusion comes from not understanding how probabilities work, which you discuss. The second kind -- which is what Paul
81.
by trominos 18y ago
No. You've gained no useful information. The person who announces the gender of one child can say one of two things: "this child is a girl" or "this child is a boy." However, these two statements are symmetric in their effect on P(one chi
82.
by trominos 18y ago
Every single piece of Philip Greenspun's writing I've ever read has seemed (to me) to be a massive collection of assertions with absolutely no logic backing up any of them. Some of those assertions turn out to be correct, of course. But in
83.
by trominos 18y ago
You might not call it that, but one anecdote is indeed data. A very small amount, to be sure -- but it's all we've got. Tiny amounts of data can almost never prove a particular theory correct (in sociology, at least), but you're quite simpl
84.
by trominos 18y ago
No. That's exactly the point: people don't give money to charities to help a cause, they give money to feel good. If they gave to help a cause, then they would support whatever (reasonably ethical) methods best helped that cause. The fact
85.
by trominos 18y ago
From answers.com: "Charity: An institution, organization, or fund established to help the needy."
86.
by trominos 18y ago
That happens to me occasionally when I work really hard on something. A couple of years ago I was doing math almost constantly for a few weeks, and by the end I was dreaming about problems every night. I felt like I was going insane, since
87.
by trominos 18y ago
29% of MIT's graduating class goes into finance. http://www.questbridge.org/cmp/partner_schools/mit/academics... I'm sure a large number of those graduates would still work in a non-engineering field if the finance industry didn't exist,
88.
by trominos 18y ago
On one hand, I don't like to let myself be flattered, especially when I have no idea how sincere the flattery is. On the other: you like us? All right, c'mon, group hug.
89.
by trominos 18y ago
"Because the ability to just suck it up & get things done even when you don't enjoy every minute of it is a very important trait to have." I think that this is true, but after four years of working hard at a demanding high school I was
90.
by trominos 18y ago
1) I think you've confused logic with an experimental science. 2) I am having serious trouble figuring out how this dismisses PG's essay. 3) So this is the only item in your list that actually addresses Graham's central point at all. I'm no

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