willchang

11 ms·

61.
by willchang 17y ago
Once I was interviewing someone with a Ph.D in some vaguely IT-related field. She seemed kind of flaky but I assumed it was because she was a lot smarter than I was. I pressed on, and an hour later discovered that she didn't know what a t
62.
by willchang 17y ago
Ingenious idea, excellent execution. Small suggestion: on the results page, I mistook the "Search by Ingredients" field for the "How to make ___" field. It would make more sense to have the "How to make ___" field up there, and the "Search
63.
by willchang 17y ago
These counterpoints to avant-garde farming sensibilities bear repeating: no-till requires herbicides, but is potentially better for the environment than organic; there is not enough animal waste in all the land to fertilize all the crops
64.
by willchang 17y ago
That's a weird bit of reckoning at the end. If you're short an hour of work, an hour of work is all you need to catch up.
65.
by willchang 17y ago
From the article: > Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust. This is off by 4 orders of magnitude: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth'...
66.
by willchang 18y ago
Rotimi is a Nigerian given name. Perhaps it reflects a large number of Nigerian scammers?
67.
by willchang 18y ago
I thought this post was information-dense to the point of being poetic. (1) I wasn't around in the early 80's so I appreciate insight into what hacking was like back then. (2) It's interesting how something as great as hacking really could
68.
by willchang 18y ago
Educated people make for a better society. If that weren't the case, there'd be no point in giving out scholarships either.
69.
by willchang 18y ago
One of the points of the article seemed to have missed you. If the singularity is possible, there is still the question of whether humanity will go extinct first. At some point, AI researchers are going to have trouble breathing Earth's a
70.
by willchang 18y ago
I think you mean -32768.
71.
by willchang 18y ago
Actually both area and radius are completely meaningless as a representation of intelligence. Perhaps some figure that represents percentile score would work better -- something like an empty glass for 0%, a glass half-full for 50%, etc; o
72.
by willchang 18y ago
On 11: Population Control. I'd argue that this is a specific instance in which market economics by themselves do not suffice to solve the problem -- unless you regard it as acceptable that miscalculations on the part of parents, such as ha
73.
by willchang 18y ago
How about: Oh that's just conspiracy talk? In any case, some of these questions are tedious and uninteresting, but some are not, and calling them dumb seems to be just a way of persuading others not to discuss them. For example, I think act
74.
by willchang 18y ago
What I took away from the article, which I found quite helpful, was that a VC is nothing but money in the form of a walking, talking, human body. If money had a personality, that would be what a VC is. So you must cajole them into your ar
75.
by willchang 18y ago
It's troubling that it is unlawful to publicize the results of running a regression algorithm on data that is public.
76.
Professional real estate appraisers to Zillow: cease and desist(techdirt.com)
2 points by willchang 18y ago|2 comments
77.
by willchang 19y ago
If I were a criminal defense lawyer, murder would cease to be a crime. After all, there are no causes of death; it is the rest state, that which happens when you do nothing ... In fact there are plenty of causes of poverty -- war, corrupti
78.
by willchang 19y ago
Not just a second tier executive team, but second tier legal counsel as well. It's telling that he felt sorry for his lawyer after he lost a case that he should have won handily. Like many people who focus on making something good, he's j
79.
by willchang 19y ago
Devices always work on Windows first, and then drivers are eventually made for UNIX. Software that make hackers productive are always first in UNIX, and then eventually ported to Windows. A hacker who had to use one system for everything
80.
by willchang 19y ago
I submitted this because it is an interesting thought experiment involving the popularity of a real (non-machine) language. How many things do real linguas franca have in common with dominant programming languages?
81.
English's Bleak Future as a Lingua Franca(forbes.com)
3 points by willchang 19y ago|1 comments
82.
by willchang 19y ago
This is lame. I'd rather HN be a resource for people who actually do things, and not a therapy session for people who can find no other reason to do something than that they should "fucking doing it". For anyone with a soul, anything is m
83.
by willchang 19y ago
I think what PG called "incompetence" is really just rampant emotionalism. "Incompetence" is inaccurate because it suggests that people of all levels of experience can't happily share a forum, which I think they can. But what happens at R
84.
by willchang 19y ago
I don't þink ðere's any reason we can't have ðem back -- þorn and eð, I mean.
85.
by willchang 19y ago
A high price tag on the product is the least worst downside you can have if the margins are high. You can always lower the price, but you can't improve the product in other ways if you lack the expertise.
86.
by willchang 19y ago
We're an educated bunch. Could we not talk about stock price changes in percentages? AAPL fell 17% today.
87.
by willchang 19y ago
I know that on one hand, I'm nitpicking. But on the other hand, it makes me queasy when some guy discusses the merits of IP-related policy without knowing the facts. How can he say that AT&T has lost its mind if he doesn't even realiz
88.
by willchang 19y ago
Illegal pictures of Britney Spears? I get the vague feeling that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Also, any amount of traffic filtering can be done on the side without slowing down the traffic. You can always kill the rest o
89.
by willchang 19y ago
Worry not. This article is probably a honeypot for people whose votes will never count again on Hacker News.
90.
by willchang 19y ago
[A real polynomial P is said to be stable if all its roots lie in the left half-plane.]( http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StablePolynomial.html ) What's your definition of stable?

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