Hacker News: alphamerik

New comment by alphamerik in "How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)"

alphamerik — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:23:44 +0000

Thanks for pointing this out, because between the multitude of posts in this forum and the posts which I responded to on the blog, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. What is the big deal here? Seems like so many of my peers have deep seated psychological problems (not like I don't, but damn).

New comment by alphamerik in "The FBI's files on Steve Jobs"

alphamerik — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:56:01 +0000

> Wow, back in 1991, he was being considered for a Presidential Appointment [...] That's what all of the documents seem to be from

On the first page it looks like in '07 two documents were destroyed, also from '85 there is a report from a bomb threat.

New comment by alphamerik in "Show HN: Interviewing devs made easy"

alphamerik — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:53:24 +0000

How does etherpad (acquired by google) compare to just using Google docs? Recently went through an interview with Google where we used a shared document, it was a horrible experience. I remember thinking that no sane person would code with a plain text editor and there should be a better way to do it. The ideal service to me would be something like a web based collaborative emacs.

New comment by alphamerik in "Bitcoin is not decentralized"

alphamerik — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:01:48 +0000

The problem is that if the cryptography is broken, in regards to #3, you have no idea if a token created with the 'old method' is real or counterfeit.

In a decentralised service you would need to convert all old tokens into new tokens before the old cryptography was compromised, which requires work - you would be generating new coins, and would have an exchange rate. Or you could setup a centralised validation service for coins as the article suggests, before the cryptography was broken, to ensure people aren't creating fake money.

I am not sure what you mean by accepting a bitcoin vs voting for a bitcoin, can you clarify? "Voting" doesn't look like a method they normally use for validation...

New comment by alphamerik in "On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning"

alphamerik — Sat, 28 May 2011 02:42:49 +0000

[cough] I hear Google has pretty good bandwidth and scaling. Ever try App Engine? [/cough]

New comment by alphamerik in "On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning"

alphamerik — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:11:01 +0000

This is a good example of why (how?) language is so weird. Maybe I am just satiated, but for an inquisitive mind, to me "Why is the moon in the sky?" and "How is the moon in the sky?" parse out to be semantically equivalent. Science (astronomy) does try explain how (why?) we exist and under what circumstance the universe came into existence (if it did).

New comment by alphamerik in "On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning"

alphamerik — Fri, 27 May 2011 13:42:49 +0000

I think the whole point of that part of the article is that the only answer that could satisfice O'Reilly and viewers is that of religion, and Norvig says Chomsky has a philosophy "(some would say religious belief)" i.e. some unscientific belief that "language should be simple and understandable", which is balderdash to claim that is a religious viewpoint, in my opinion.

There are several ways one could model language, from a top down purely statistical approach that Norvig likes, something in the middle which Chomsky proposes, to a bottom up neural model of chemical interactions. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method for many different reasons.

New comment by alphamerik in "Amazon Web Services are down"

alphamerik — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:14:31 +0000

A couple of years ago you had expressed interest in making a port to App Engine, any interest in doing that still? Want any help? ;)

New comment by alphamerik in "Google Tightening Control of Android"

alphamerik — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:15:12 +0000

Not exactly the same, iOS is not and will never be open source. Google is only delaying the source release of honeycomb until they are happy with the product.

New comment by alphamerik in "Google Tightening Control of Android"

alphamerik — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:10:10 +0000

Agreed, I don't understand what all of the anger is about like in this highly opinionated and skewed Ars Technica piece: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/03/android-open...

The source will be released when Google is happy with the product. For people to be up in arms that they aren't releasing the source to an unfinished product is ridiculous. Seems like they are damned if they do, damned it they don't.

New comment by alphamerik in "Programmer problem solving sequence: should it be like this?"

alphamerik — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 14:28:45 +0000

It amazes me that people would put coworkers second. Those people can be very annoying because I feel like their only purpose is to leech knowledge rather than do any real work. OP's list is the lazy programmer's list. Taking breaks to think about the problem is good, my order of operations is something like:

   1. Google
   2. RTFM
   3. Think
   4. StackOverflow
   5. Coworkers/IRC

Even going to IRC can be dangerous, was told to read the f-ing kernel source when trying to ask questions about the darwin kernel API documentation once.

New comment by alphamerik in "SwipeGood (YC W11) Gives Its Start Fund Cash To Charity"

alphamerik — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:38:52 +0000

So at an average of $1 per user/month, and a charity giveaway designed to generate at least 15,000 users, the $150k should be recovered in less than year. Good stuff :)

New comment by alphamerik in "Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments"

alphamerik — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:09:12 +0000

Have you considered charging for write access? Allow the site to be publicly readable but charge people a yearly fee to submit stories and posts. They would be much less likely to act abusive if they are paying and their access could be revoked. Several membership levels and tiers of forums could be provided, including private and invite only.

New comment by alphamerik in "I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?"

alphamerik — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:20:59 +0000

I do indent my code, but I prefer to auto-indent. Using indentation to determine if a line of code falls inside or outside some logic block requires a lot more effort for me. Would much rather just use curly braces. Curly braces also make copying and pasting code blocks much easier.

New comment by alphamerik in "Calling out Jason Fried for bad business advice"

alphamerik — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:36:47 +0000

They lost me at Stanford vs State school, I had to stop there.

Cover letters are an excellent way to judge the intent and character of an applicant. Sounds like Scott is the one with a chip on his shoulder there...

New comment by alphamerik in "Android developer on Slashdot detailing the Android "fragmentation""

alphamerik — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:11:16 +0000

So by compatibility break you mean that you are pissed that Android can run at any processor speed?

I have news for you, in iPhone-land the phones in a couple years will be faster too. :)

New comment by alphamerik in "Android developer on Slashdot detailing the Android "fragmentation""

alphamerik — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:45:26 +0000

I have been using JIT on my ADP1 with 2.1, and it hasn't broken anything. Performance is great, 3.5mflops in linpack vs 2.4mflops. But I am confused, why do you think there is a compatibility break?

New comment by alphamerik in "[dead]"

alphamerik — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:03:04 +0000

Dale Carnegie has been writing about this stuff since the 30s, minus the pithy blame. This guy sounds like he is going through a late stage realization wound up with an entitlement attitude.

New comment by alphamerik in "The Unemployment Rate for People Like You"

alphamerik — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:50:59 +0000

Maybe, or perhaps or is because they are white and college educated. After all, white male college graduates between 25 and 44 have the next lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.

New comment by alphamerik in "Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News"

alphamerik — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:19:13 +0000

Scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have done more for the public interest of science than any so called administrator, and oddly enough they tend not to impose their specific agendas in the process. If the "public" realized how much money goes into science vs how much money goes into the private military industrial complex they would be appalled. Or, perhaps the public is apathetic and "public interest" is merely a scape goat for the media. Someone, after all, must tell the public what they are interested in.