Hacker News: BlahBoy3

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden"

BlahBoy3 — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 21:35:41 +0000

I was thinking about the case of the Navy SEAL who wrote about the UBL raid[0]. Same outcome- lots of surrendered money...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Easy_Day

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Q-Learning"

BlahBoy3 — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 16:57:05 +0000

From my understanding, SARSA could be more ideal when there is a greater cost associated with making a mistake whilst learning. SARSA is more conservative, as it takes into account possible large negative rewards during the exploratory phase. The classic example problem is "cliff walking."[0]

[0] https://github.com/cvhu/CliffWalking

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Open Source is Not About You"

BlahBoy3 — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:24:36 +0000

It's possible that they're referring to this crypto-currency backdoor that was slipped into the event-stream dependency?

https://github.com/dominictarr/event-stream/issues/116

Edit: it attempts to steal crypto-currency; it doesn't mine it.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "The Effectiveness of Publicly Shaming Bad Security"

BlahBoy3 — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 13:01:15 +0000

Just because it's not a "life or death" situation doesn't mean people shouldn't say something. What kind of attitude is that? I mean, is the rule for when we should speak up against negligent practices or stay silent really "if no one will die, it doesn't matter"?

There are other types of harm people can suffer other than just physical harm. And those other types of harm are no less significant or noteworthy, at least in my opinion.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Assumptions about how children learn to read have been disproven by research"

BlahBoy3 — Sat, 14 Apr 2018 18:06:28 +0000

> It’s quite disappointing, as the literature we read actually holds some cultural value.

For me, the biggest problem is that most instructors never really mentioned this. Instead, we ended up having 50 minute discussions about why the wallpaper was yellow, or how brave and sophisticated the protagonist was for drowning herself (I hated "The Awakening.") My experience is my own, but the majority of my classmates didn't care about the reading for this very reason (and this was also at a high-performing school). If high school English literature is still being taught anything like the way it was taught to me, it should be no surprise that American students avoid the subject like the plague.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)"

BlahBoy3 — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 23:32:33 +0000

It was actually a Houston airport; here's an article that talks more about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting...

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "A practitioner’s guide to reading programming languages papers"

BlahBoy3 — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 13:16:57 +0000

Jeremy was one of my professors last semester at IU! Really smart guy- nice to see his blog post getting some recognition here.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Why functional programming matters"

BlahBoy3 — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 13:10:21 +0000

I personally like this one:

http://learnyouahaskell.com/chapters

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "France bans unlimited sugary drink refills"

BlahBoy3 — Sat, 28 Jan 2017 16:27:34 +0000

Not trying to start a flame war, but to offer a counterpoint: I don't believe that taxes should be used as a means to control people's behavior. If you put huge taxes on products that you deem to be socially unacceptable, you are simply making it harder for lower income families to access them, while wealthier individuals can continue to access them with little to no consequence. Maybe I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but this sounds like a classic example of a regressive tax.

And why is it up to us to say that poor people should have limited access to sugary products? Shouldn't that be a personal decision? Feel free to disagree, but I personally believe that if we're going to subsidize the organic industry, we shouldn't simultaneously be punishing people that just want their soda.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "A School District That Was Never Desegregated (2015)"

BlahBoy3 — Wed, 18 May 2016 14:20:13 +0000

I go to what could be considered a fairly diverse high school, and in my experience, your comment is pretty much right on the money- especially the second part. Sure, there may not be legal barriers per say, but take one look at the cafeteria and you'll realize that there's a clear racial divide (Hispanics only hanging out with other Hispanics, etc.). Like you, I don't really know how to change this, short of just calling everyone out (which would probably only breed more tension).

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Hashtags Instagram Won’t Let You Search"

BlahBoy3 — Thu, 12 May 2016 14:13:23 +0000

It's censorship, but so what? It's a private company. They're allowed to display or hide whatever they please.

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "What is BuzzFeed, really?"

BlahBoy3 — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 17:28:55 +0000

Huh, didn't even know this. So this is why BuzzFeed comes across as ADD in website form...

New comment by BlahBoy3 in "Open Sourcers Race to Build Better Versions of Slack"

BlahBoy3 — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 02:22:28 +0000

So you have a problem with open source putting out alternatives, but you're perfectly fine with the free market, in which companies put out competing products all the time? I'm not trying to start a flame war here, I'm just curious as to why you think that a community of programmers working together to develop a competing product is any worse than a company like HipChat doing the same thing. I, for one, welcome this kind of collaboration.