Hacker News: dsrguru

New comment by dsrguru in "Challenging Clojure in Common Lisp (2014)"

dsrguru — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 22:21:50 +0000

Clojure doesn't just "strongly prefer" immutable data but syntactically ensures that all data is immutable unless governed by one of four concurrency mechanisms. Persistent data structures aren't just a popular convention in Clojure--the language is literally built around them.

2016 Candidates on Drug Pricing

dsrguru — Sun, 22 May 2016 20:56:08 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/unraveling-healthcare/2016-candidates-could-medicare-price-negotiations-or-importing-drugs-from-canada-work-58665cbaf142

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750254

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Drug Pricing: The Pharma vs. Health Insurance Showdown

dsrguru — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 22:41:09 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@kelvin273/drug-pricing-part-2-the-pharma-vs-health-insurance-showdown-c71eb683eb13

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170834

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

From Shkreli to Sanders: Why are drugs so expensive?

dsrguru — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:05:31 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@kelvin273/from-shkreli-to-sanders-why-are-drugs-so-expensive-the-role-of-pharma-79d67c727b68

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11168778

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dsrguru in "Perl 6.0 released"

dsrguru — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 22:34:03 +0000

Oh, I'm not asserting that it is, just that it sounds like it might be, based on the description in the Github README. If you're actually familiar with Perl 6 and don't view that to be true, I'd trust your assessment over my hypothesis!

New comment by dsrguru in "Perl 6.0 released"

dsrguru — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 19:09:21 +0000

Except that Ruby's translation into English was literally the cause of Perl's decline.

Perl was intended to be a highly concise shell-like language that excelled at text processing. Partly in order to achieve such concision, the syntax overloaded various symbols to mean completely different things in different syntactic contexts, which made it very difficult for humans to parse quickly unless they worked in it very frequently (I recall the authors of either the llama or camel book estimating five times a week as the minimum). As Perl grew in popularity, objects were added on, and the whole language felt cobbled together. Perl users mainly used it as a shell replacement or for CGI scripts. Larger projects tended to be the domain of Python (or Java if concision was no longer a requirement).

And then came Ruby with syntax that was friendlier to Perl programmers than Perl itself, yet was semantically consistent, had built-in object support, and could rival Python for projects of any size, while surpassing it for the "quick and dirty scripts" that Perl excelled at. The conversation stopped being about Perl vs. Python and became Ruby vs. Python. People stopped using Perl 5.

So Perl 6 might very well be a lot more similar to Ruby (and even to Python if we exclude syntax) than it is to Perl 5.

New comment by dsrguru in "Perl 6.0 released"

dsrguru — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 07:18:33 +0000

The bulleted description sounds almost exactly like a description of Ruby, and I don't mean this sarcastically.

CNN Accused of Censoring Bernie Sanders Coverage for Parent Time Warner

dsrguru — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 16:28:34 +0000

Article URL: http://mediaequalizer.com/brian-maloney/2015/10/fuming-bernie-supporters-why-is-cnn-deleting-our-comments

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10400385

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dsrguru in "Stanford, Michael Bloomberg Now Back Every Y Combinator Startup"

dsrguru — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 05:28:53 +0000

Pretty sure it used to be <$20k for the same ~7%. The main value of YC has always been the training, network, and vote of confidence, not the funding. Not everyone finds it worth it for their particular situation, but many do.

New comment by dsrguru in "Humans can sense the polarization of light with the naked eye"

dsrguru — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 12:53:11 +0000

Nope it's very clear once you know what to look for, as long as you're looking at something highly polarized. I still have this superpower about five hours later.

New comment by dsrguru in "Humans can sense the polarization of light with the naked eye"

dsrguru — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:14:29 +0000

Took me an hour but I got it! Staring at a solid background on my Nexus 5 on full brightness in a pitch black room did the trick. Horizontal linear oscillation was more noticeable for me than vertical for some reason, which meant holding my phone in landscape mode. The brush pattern is significantly fainter on my laptop than my phone, and I seem to lose the effect every few minutes when using my laptop. I've been able to bring it back by glancing back at my phone in landscape. This is really, really cool by the way.

New comment by dsrguru in "Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?"

dsrguru — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 21:55:40 +0000

I'm not sure who the poet was, but here's an old Chinese poem that I love. My translation doesn't quite do it justice, but...

少小離家老大回鄉音無改鬢毛衰兒童相見不相識笑問客從何處來

I left my hometown as a young boy and returned as an old man.

The local speech hadn't changed, but the hair on my head had.

The children looked at me but recognized me not.

Laughing, they asked from where this visitor had come.

New comment by dsrguru in "How Betty, Who Is 89, Gets Her News"

dsrguru — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 22:59:16 +0000

It would seem they also have far better short-term visual memory than typical humans. Or maybe that's the result of practice. Time to find out...

New comment by dsrguru in "Vimb – Vim-Like Web Browser"

dsrguru — Sun, 08 Mar 2015 08:15:54 +0000

VimFx too - It's basically a clone of Vimium for Firefox, meaning it alters Firefox far less than Vimperator/Pentadactyl. There was previously a Firefox add-on that shared the name Vimium, but it doesn't seem to be maintained anymore.

What Jeff Wise has learned about MH370 since 2/23

dsrguru — Sun, 08 Mar 2015 04:00:51 +0000

Article URL: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/my-crazy-theory-about-mh370-went-viral-worldwide.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9164470

Points: 35

# Comments: 21

New comment by dsrguru in "I Am Releasing Ten Million Passwords"

dsrguru — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 05:39:26 +0000

Strange. Almost every article I'm finding echoes the EFF's statement about 48 months, but Judge Lindsay's own explanation of the sentencing is as Orin Kerr says. I wonder where that 48 figure came from.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp-cont...

New comment by dsrguru in "I Am Releasing Ten Million Passwords"

dsrguru — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 05:00:15 +0000

The threats actually accounted for 48 of the 63 months according to the EFF article that the OP linked to.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/eff-statement-barrett-...

New comment by dsrguru in "The Expert at the Card Table: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation"

dsrguru — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 22:25:31 +0000

Card College by Roberto Giobbi is pricey but provides excellent instruction. If you don't mind reading older, more formal language (though not as old as Erdnase!), The Royal Road to Card Magic by Hugard and Braue, and its sequel Expert Card Technique, cover more material than Giobbi at a fraction of the cost, albeit with slightly less attention to the subtleties of finger position.

New comment by dsrguru in "Why the snow forecast for New York City was so bad"

dsrguru — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 19:19:08 +0000

Agreed if you can only report one figure, but the point of the article is that forecasters did only report one figure when they should have made it clear that there were competing models with very different predictions.

New comment by dsrguru in "The Ronco Principle"

dsrguru — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 19:28:39 +0000

Conversely, one might not realize that "famous investor X" is actually a really awesome, caring human until getting to know them in person.