Hacker News: heyitsnick

New comment by heyitsnick in "The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition? (2009)"

heyitsnick — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 06:33:39 +0000

"1% may not sound like a lot, but it's more than the typical casino edge in a game of blackjack or slots."

The house edge for slots games is anywhere from 2% to 15%+ and is one of the worst bets you can make in the casino.

Blackjack, video poker and some bets on craps are the only times in a casino where the house edge shrinks to below 1%.

New comment by heyitsnick in "The Tuesday boy problem, in under 300 words"

heyitsnick — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:09:08 +0000

"I met a man on the street, he said he had two children. I asked him, is at least one of them a boy? He said yes. What's the probability both of them are boys?"

This removes the whole ambiguity of why he would assert "at least one of them is a boy," but still makes the question a bit tricky/counter-intuitive, which is useful for teaching the quirks of probability.

New comment by heyitsnick in "Introducing Instagram Direct"

heyitsnick — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 20:04:26 +0000

I guess you're being purposefully obtuse?

Hipster: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster

Ism: highly active and well-understood suffix that means, among other things: "manner of action or behavior characteristic of a (specified) person or thing" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-ism

New comment by heyitsnick in "Sharking: High-Rollers in the Crosshairs"

heyitsnick — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 15:14:45 +0000

Having following this story since July, it was almost certainly an inside job and the perpetrator had access to the rooms (cleaner or other staff).

New comment by heyitsnick in "EFF has 2x matching donations until Dec 17th"

heyitsnick — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 13:37:59 +0000

Agree, but you're only criticising the submitter, not EFF. There's no mention of "2x matching" on the page; it only says "you receive a 2x powerup," which is accurate. There's no ambiguity and the page clearly says "donate x, with matching EFF will receive 2x" on the form.

"Forest Made" Blockie.io on IndieGogo

heyitsnick — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 16:45:35 +0000

Article URL: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blockie-io-visual-web-coding

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6870163

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by heyitsnick in "Gifpop.io – Print gifs with the magic of lenticular printing"

heyitsnick — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 13:19:18 +0000

Perhaps more accurately put, the "English language has no master."

Many--perhaps most--European languages, do have prescriptivist masters. Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and dozens more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators

New comment by heyitsnick in "Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion"

heyitsnick — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:20:19 +0000

Poker

New comment by heyitsnick in "FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market"

heyitsnick — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 10:11:28 +0000

Nope, I meant irony. The word has multiple definitions. In its most popular - "the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect" - sarcasm is given as a synonym.

New comment by heyitsnick in "FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner"

heyitsnick — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:38:20 +0000

It's funny, i so rarely browse reddit, but i somehow happened upon this story this week - i guess it came up in some kind of mega "what are you most ashamed of" thread or somesuch. Ultimately it was as GP described; a redditor researched one of 'gone wild' big 'stars', poured through her history ,ultimately found another reddit account of a selfie shot that had the same background as the 'gone wild' shot so concluded they were the same or friends, researched back that history and ultimately found her real identity.

New comment by heyitsnick in "FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market"

heyitsnick — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:17:11 +0000

If anything, the woosh would be for you. I'm sure conductor understood the irony of the statement.

New comment by heyitsnick in "FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner"

heyitsnick — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:44:00 +0000

"Based on my training and experience" seems like boilerplate for whenever a supposition is introduced.

New comment by heyitsnick in "Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation"

heyitsnick — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 12:27:30 +0000

Minor nitpick: Very often editors pick the click-baity titles, not those writing the articles.

New comment by heyitsnick in "[dead]"

heyitsnick — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:50:39 +0000

I'd love to know what the use-case is for a page with 6000 form items!

New comment by heyitsnick in "Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco"

heyitsnick — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:21:10 +0000

Thanks, that clarifies a lot. Different worlds.

New comment by heyitsnick in "Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco"

heyitsnick — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:20:37 +0000

Good point :) Grocery shopping is such a small part, maybe 5%; going out to eat once or twice a week would be part of recreation budget.

New comment by heyitsnick in "Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco"

heyitsnick — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 15:41:48 +0000

A 4x factor sure sounds very high, though maybe the costs in SF (or in the US in general) are different to my own;from my experience over the last 6 years, living in a variety of setups in different cities in Europe, I spend 50-60% of my monthly outgoing on rent (then about 10% on bills, 10% on transport, leaving ~20% on misc and recreation). A 2x factor seems much more reasonable.

New comment by heyitsnick in "JetBrains releases open-source Python IDE"

heyitsnick — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:59:42 +0000

If memory serves, this will install it side-by-side with existing install, whereas doing it in-app upgrades (windows). Could be wrong though.

New comment by heyitsnick in "The Gold iPhone isn't just for mindless sheep that want to show off"

heyitsnick — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:52:08 +0000

I see it as common marketing strategy. It's all about shifting the conversation from "do I really need an incremental smartphone upgrade?" to "are you getting the gold or sticking with white?" I realise its significantly more nuanced than that, but at the core, its subtly changing the decision process of the consumer.

The comments in this thread, the blog post itself, and all the other media coverage, is all playing the same game; it underpins most tech coverage - be it android/ios, xbox/sony, mac/pac - its about setting up either/ors and removing the decision of none.

New comment by heyitsnick in "JetBrains releases open-source Python IDE"

heyitsnick — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:31:03 +0000

I've tried a lot of IDE's for python development in the past and always went back to a basic text editor; the extra features never outweighed the bloat.

But then i found PyCharm and never looked back. I feel i develop at least 50% faster with any serious project; i still use Sublime for the one-off scripts, but everything else i find the introspection, code completion and refactoring just so good its now hard to go without.

Props to Jetbrains, and I look forward to v3 pro! (my 2.7 isn't yet telling me i have an upgrade... i'm hoping this is coming soon!)