Hacker News: TheSOB88

New comment by TheSOB88 in "SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High"

TheSOB88 — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:48:52 +0000

That would be quite convenient... A little too convenient?

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Stop working so hard"

TheSOB88 — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:22:23 +0000

Conversely, start working( harder ).

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Notch: "I'd rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along.""

TheSOB88 — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:35:31 +0000

Enhancing the rules is the real rub here. They could exert more and more control, and since it would be gradual, people would be less likely to bail than if it had happened all at once.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Stealth mode and other brilliant strategies"

TheSOB88 — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:01:15 +0000

Please don't make comments like this. You haven't made any points about the post itself; you're just trying for a laugh. HN is not meant for that sort of thing; it's a slippery slope that leads to less intellectual discussion on the site.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Lighter-than-air craft rise again"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 19:10:35 +0000

When I saw the title, I thought they'd figured out a way to make use of something other than helium, but I guess I was wrong. I was thinking maybe they built self-resizing vacuum chambers in order to reduce the weight/volume ratio. Like, there would be two membranes, and between them, supports that can extend or shorten to change the volume of the vacuum-space, and affect the overall density that way.

Does anyone know if this has been done, or if it's at all feasible?

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Newfound Planet a Top Contender to Host Life"

TheSOB88 — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:17:33 +0000

I find it strange how the writers assume only Earth-like life would evolve on another planet. They speak in terms of bacteria, plants, animals... It doesn't make any sense to me. Out of the 3.5 billion years that the planet has sustained life, animals (first sponges, then cnidaria, etc.) have only been around for 630 million. Evolution didn't happen according to some goal; organisms evolved to suit their habitats.

So saying that plants/animals wouldn't exist on a planet significantly hotter than ours is really strange to say - they'd have no -reason- to. Because the evolutionary tree on that planet would be completely different from ours, the organisms' forms and internal structures will be very different in many ways. The same things won't have happened in their evolutionary history.

And of course, life would be adapted to the planet itself. You might say, "Enzymes don't function at those temperatures." Well, the life on hotter planets will have evolved to use different enzymes that -do- work at those temperatures.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Evolution could explain the placebo effect"

TheSOB88 — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:00:50 +0000

According to the article, that drug is sugar in a gelcap...

New comment by TheSOB88 in "How a bedroom developer's 'ugly little game' became an App Store hit"

TheSOB88 — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 17:25:02 +0000

Bejeweled is a Tetris clone in some ways. They're all "puzzle" games, check out how similar Bejeweled is to Tetris Attack or Meteos.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Why you can't be anything you want to be"

TheSOB88 — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 19:05:15 +0000

The benefit is that people are not as desperate, so you don't have people stabbing each other over $20.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Google Handwrite"

TheSOB88 — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:29:37 +0000

Because touch-screen typing, and seeing the phone's wrong answers about what you meant EVERY time, isn't incredibly frustrating. ;)

New comment by TheSOB88 in "The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:06:26 +0000

Maybe we can idolize him and not seek to become him, but try to be somewhere in the middle.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Mom Hacks Into School Computer, Changes Her Kids' Grades"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:00:48 +0000

Yes. There have always been parents that are simply children who got older before they got wiser.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Destined To Fail"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:42:43 +0000

I'm pretty sure it's a useless question. You can use debit cards as credit cards and vice versa.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Normal Plasma Cholesterol in an 88-Year-Old Man Who Eats 25 Eggs a Day"

TheSOB88 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:50:54 +0000

Because it is defending the status quo. Everything that was said is true, but nothing was said that didn't defend the old perspective. It happens a lot - you defend an opinion you had, and when you come up with some good evidence in your favor, you pretty much stop there. But if you had tried to see it from the other side, you may not have been so defensive.

Cultural/memetic inertia is really hard to overcome, mostly because of this I think.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "15-Year-Old Maker Astronomically Improves Pancreatic Cancer Test"

TheSOB88 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:47:23 +0000

I think the media is portraying it this way because there are a lot of people who get into fields and do work they way they're "supposed to", i.e., told to by peers and bosses, rather than, as this kid did, actually going through and figuring things out. Every medical breakthrough is a puzzle that's been solved, but some people aren't as interested in solving the puzzle as listening to what their boss says. Which makes sense, nobody wants to get fired, it's just suboptimal for problem solving.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Normal Plasma Cholesterol in an 88-Year-Old Man Who Eats 25 Eggs a Day"

TheSOB88 — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:42:59 +0000

Well, sure, but you're coming at it with the perspective that there's some reason the old worldview should be right.

Couldn't it be possible that you're like those that were arguing there was NO WAY the Earth could revolve around the sun?

New comment by TheSOB88 in "Google’s Marissa Mayer Tapped as Yahoo’s Chief"

TheSOB88 — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 20:37:10 +0000

Wow, has HN been taken over by business types already?

Don't you think Mayer has enough capital, connections, reputation, experience, etc. that if she started a company to do what she wanted, how she wanted, it would be completely different from your average college-grad startup?

I mean, come on now. There's no comparing the two.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult"

TheSOB88 — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:54:27 +0000

I still think you can have professional disagreements and make a compromise without being uncourteous and unprofessional. Of course, it's harder when the other party isn't being professional, but it's still possible.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "The Challenge of Making Friends as an Adult"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:14:05 +0000

You can be interesting without forcing your perspective on others. You don't have to tell other people they're wrong in order to tell them how you feel, though it often happens with nerds like us.

New comment by TheSOB88 in "No, that's not why OO sucks"

TheSOB88 — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:09:25 +0000

Gun, management, it's all the same