Hacker News: epaladin

New comment by epaladin in "When your child speaks a language you don’t"

epaladin — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 15:24:43 +0000

I tested myself to see if I fit the stereotype by trying to explain this joke to a Japanese friend, in Japanese. After a collective effort which determined that there isn't a concise noun phrase in Japanese that's equivalent to "bilingual"/"trilingual" etc (anyone else know if that's actually the case?), I think the point was communicated, which I hope implies graduation to at least some limbo between "American" and "bilingual".

New comment by epaladin in "Mike Ey, Microsoft HoloLens designer, killed in hit and run"

epaladin — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 22:51:50 +0000

Another RITer- one of my friends is quoted in the article- I don't think I ever knew Mike's name but we were definitely in the same place at the same time quite frequently. Definitely sad.

New comment by epaladin in "Testosterone is the drug of the future"

epaladin — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 14:04:11 +0000

I've wondered about the effect that environmental factors might have on Japan's current predicament- something in the water? did processing of soy products change at some point such that levels of the estrogen analogs ended up being higher? I guess I haven't been quite curious enough to see if there have been any rigorous studies that have compared T levels there over the last few decades.

New comment by epaladin in "Testosterone is the drug of the future"

epaladin — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 13:58:57 +0000

Same age... this thread is really making me feel old. Generally I still feel like I'm just getting out here and just getting started still in terms of career, life, etc. I really hope it's not all downhill from 30!

Related to the main subject, I don't think my levels have ever been low, but I've always been surprised at how quickly I lose muscle mass when I'm not working out. That might be more related to protein intake and other genetic factors though, since I've always been pretty lean.

New comment by epaladin in "Amazon Is in Talks to Buy RadioShack Stores, Report Says"

epaladin — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 21:33:00 +0000

Well, they're at AT&T stores, many of which are in mall, and it doesn't look like it's helped any.

New comment by epaladin in "Being a good networker pays off, but it requires skill as well as shamelessness"

epaladin — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 14:28:42 +0000

Much of the time it's the parents doing the pushing, and the kids in tow for the "do it for the children" factor. The kids probably don't really know what's going on, and don't have to take direct responsibility for any of it.

New comment by epaladin in "The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization (1995) [pdf]"

epaladin — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 14:27:06 +0000

It's also kind of vital for the balance of the planet's ecosystems, as we're slowly finding out. If we melt it to get materials under there, there's a sizable chance of long term regret.

Whereas Mars doesn't have an ecosystem at present and no species to endanger.

I want to make other planets livable so we can stop killing this one so much.

New comment by epaladin in "The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition, to be released April 2015"

epaladin — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 12:00:20 +0000

I was lucky enough to find a copy of the 2nd ed. in the closet of an apartment I moved into during college. I really need to actually read it sometime!

New comment by epaladin in "Being a good networker pays off, but it requires skill as well as shamelessness"

epaladin — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 12:07:04 +0000

I've been intrigued as to why Mormons have such an seemingly disproportionate "success" rate, and ended up doing a bit of research on the matter. It really seems like it comes down to facing failure repeatedly. And most of them get the experience when they're around college age as well. I've been trying to figure out how we could build something secular into normal primary education that would achieve the same result.

New comment by epaladin in "How Software in Half of NYC Cabs Generates $5.2M a Year in Extra Tips"

epaladin — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 11:55:03 +0000

Rude service in a taxi in Japan would be somewhat shocking, but they're also comparatively more expensive than most other places. One time I couldn't find a hotel in Tokyo, so I took a taxi- it turned out to be just around the block, but it still cost like $6. But hey, the cars are nice and the white glove thing is always an interesting contrast to NYC.

New comment by epaladin in "Tilde.Club: I had a couple drinks and woke up with 1,000 nerds"

epaladin — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 23:25:26 +0000

Maybe we can make a simple gateway page that lists all the pages that would actually render properly in Mosaic?

New comment by epaladin in "Poll: How long could you survive without income?"

epaladin — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 16:31:56 +0000

Probably about six months.

New comment by epaladin in "[dead]"

epaladin — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 00:34:58 +0000

I believe that's why car rental places exist. Unless you seriously need to have the same car at all of the locations you travel to, which is not rational.

New comment by epaladin in "Massive Moniker.com Breach, Valuable Domains Stolen"

epaladin — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 14:37:40 +0000

Guess I'll check mine later also...

New comment by epaladin in "Glut of postdoc researchers stirs quiet crisis in science"

epaladin — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 19:38:56 +0000

Lack of unions might have something to do with it. Was in Copenhagen recently and was surprised that even as a PhD student, your salary is negotiated based on your experience- and the negotiation is done by the union representative. When unions aren't abused it sounds like they can be quite useful. But yeah, in the US, PhDs and post docs are used as cheap but knowledgeable labor, and kept around as long as possible by constantly giving them other things to do that aren't directly related to their project.

New comment by epaladin in "Glut of postdoc researchers stirs quiet crisis in science"

epaladin — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 19:33:00 +0000

I only recently learned about the Post-Bac program, and I wish I had known about it when I was just out of school- I went to a university that wasn't research oriented, and such a program would have been fantastic for picking up the research mindset before going to graduate school I ended up in a lab staff instead, and learned about real research in sort of a trial by fire manner that's been much more stressful than the postbac probably would have been. So it's got it's possible advantages- let alone working for the NIH looks pretty good on a CV.

New comment by epaladin in "Artificial sweeteners linked to glucose intolerance"

epaladin — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 03:04:05 +0000

Which just made me wonder if it's possible to train a hidden markov model for detecting that. Trigger a flag that says "wowzers, now you're in unhealthy state territory". Otherwise it's real hard to tell if occasional engagements with unhealthy behaviors are having an impact on health overall. I imagine we'll get to the point of being able to do this sort of thing in about five years.

New comment by epaladin in "The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious"

epaladin — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 11:56:04 +0000

I've never understood why Red Delicious were so popular. Now that I've been living down the street from an orchard in upstate NY, I understand even less. Orchards really seem to push Fuji around here- they seem to grow more of them than anything else. I've always really like macs, and my wife got me into macouns which are pretty similar.

New comment by epaladin in "Revisiting the Moon"

epaladin — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 18:19:06 +0000

My interest in longevity is closely tied to my interest in space. From my perspective, significant extension of lifespan (& healthspan) helps solve some inefficiencies we currently have in propagation and persistence of knowledge, which I think could help with solving other really hard problems because experts can keep being experts for longer, with less of their time spent on having to train new experts before they fade away. Lifespan extension also turns many "not my problem" situations into "we better figure out a way to deal with that". Once we're in that mindset, combined with possible gains in research efficiencies, I think we'll be able to address long distance space travel more effectively and efficiently. I'm all for both figuring out how to not trash Earth and figuring out how to colonize other planets at the same time. Certainly research in the sort of climate engineering needed to terraform another world could be applied to saving our current one.

I'm going to try to help open that longevity door first; I expect there to be quite a bit of exciting possibilities behind it (and probably a great deal of social chaos, but we can deal with that when we get there...).

Longevity will be

New comment by epaladin in "Moto 360 review – Beautiful outside, ugly inside"

epaladin — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:59:05 +0000

Out of genuine curiosity, what do you use the watch for that you would associate with time savings? I've been curious about these things, but haven't been sure as to if they're a product in search of a problem for the current implementation and limitations.