Hacker News: randomhack

New comment by randomhack in "Ask HN : How do I delete my account? Is HN evil?"

randomhack — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:50:05 +0000

Please delete my account.

New comment by randomhack in "Ask HN : How do I delete my account? Is HN evil?"

randomhack — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:46:56 +0000

Does it matter?

Ask HN : How do I delete my account? Is HN evil?

randomhack — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:29:44 +0000

I dont see a "delete my account" button anywhere. If such an option does exist, shouldnt the link be more upfront? If it doesnt exist .. why not?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229454

Points: 10

# Comments: 12

New comment by randomhack in "Ask HN: How do you stay healthy?"

randomhack — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:09:09 +0000

1. Walk. A lot. 2. Balanced diet.

Ask YC : [Optionally] Statically typed languages on the JVM?

randomhack — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:43:31 +0000

I know of 2 statically typed languages on the JVM : Java and Scala. Any other interesting languages on the JVM which are more or less stable enough to use? I already know a lot of dynamic laguages run on the JVM like Jython and JRuby but not too many nice statically typed languages around.

Something with optional static typing like Common Lisp will also do. (I know about ABCL but its GPL and I am not sure how well CLOS maps to JVM for example).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=229291

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by randomhack in "Ask cperciva: Are great mathematicians born or made?"

randomhack — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:35:04 +0000

Precocity is overrated. To me, believing that genius is decided at age 0/5/10 whatever means that you are just rationalizing not working hard enough with "I am not a genius. I will not make it. Therefore no point in working hard".

The primary test really is : a) Are you having fun (with maths in this case)?

b) Are you willing to put time and effort into it? Note that the amount of time available may be one hurdle if you are starting at mid-age since its likely that you are pursuing it as a side hobby instead of a full time profession.

See Hamming's lecture on PG's site. Search particularly for "hard work is compounded" and "why is he so much smarter than me" or roughly along those lines.

New comment by randomhack in "Who Needs a Computer Science Degree When There’s Wikipedia?"

randomhack — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:35:37 +0000

If you are self-learning, then wikipedia is not a good way to do learn computer science. Its way better to actually read a good book, think a great deal and read/write code when appropriate. Computer science is not history where you learn just by reading. Thinking and problem solving are very critical too.

New comment by randomhack in "Parallel Python or Ruby?"

randomhack — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:48:16 +0000

I have read a bit about stackless. Neat implementation but it still suffers from GIL? You can launch thousands of microthreads but apparently they still run on single core?

New comment by randomhack in "Parallel Python or Ruby?"

randomhack — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 02:34:23 +0000

Hmm is poking around the AST necessary? What about looking at the bytecode instead?

Parallel Python or Ruby?

randomhack — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:15:22 +0000

If you were to add some parallel language constructs to Python or Ruby or , what would you add? Lets assume you are only allowed to add 1 or 2 constructs so you dont go changing the whole language upside-down. Also assume that you are not allowed to take something out of the language only add to it. Please describe in detail with actual examples if possible. Dont just say "I will add actors" at a very high level.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=223972

Points: 6

# Comments: 20

New comment by randomhack in "Vista Is Good"

randomhack — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:48:43 +0000

Well there are more problems than pointed out in the blog. Many of the "problems" cited are actually just effects of the real problems. Corporates not upgrading and OEMs offering XP are not causes themselves.

One problem is that the UI changed quite a bit from XP but without any added value. Why rename My Documents to Documents? Just for the heck of it? Why change the network connections dialog? For the first time in my life, I had to spend more time setting up a wireless connection in windows than Linux. Change in UI can be good but only if the changed UI offers something new. Just renaming things or moving options around without any reason is plainly annoying.

Second problem is bloat. Why is the OS eating up so much RAM. Isnt the OS meant to run applications on top? Or is the OS just meant to run(or in this case limp) itself somehow. Again I dont see what Vista is doing with all that RAM. Is it doing something useful which XP didnt do? Then go ahead and use the RAM. But if it isnt, then why is it eating RAM?

I havent faced much problem with hardware incompatibility thankfully and as pointed out thats an issue with any OS upgrade. UAC is annoying but can be useful.

edit : I feel the blog only raised strawmen and then beat them up but did not tackle with the real issues.

New comment by randomhack in "Cities and Ambition"

randomhack — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:55:12 +0000

Lately PG essays have become more literary/poetic than before. I do not somehow identify with these later essays anymore.

New comment by randomhack in "Are Human Experts Less Prone to Catastrophic Errors than Machine-Learned Models?"

randomhack — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:58:15 +0000

Is there any proof for the statements made about left/right brains? Was the prof learned in neuroscience? Or is it just some folk tale stuff?

New comment by randomhack in "Ask YC: What makes Twitter so special?"

randomhack — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:02:33 +0000

Mandatory penny arcade link : http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/

Mozilla phancies doing a Phorm

randomhack — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:28:10 +0000

Article URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/firefox_data_snoop/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=194528

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by randomhack in "Is Scala Really the Next C++?"

randomhack — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:35:13 +0000

Well can you give more info about these ports? Sounds like you want to do interprocess communication of some kind with the JVM?

1. How exactly would you setup the JVM? Will you need to wrap every Java class you want to use with some kind of communication mechanism? What about callbacks?

2. Can you subclass a Java class?

3. What is the overhead of calling Java methods from Erlang?

4. Has anyone demonstrated a bridge to a non-trivial Java library using a language not running on the JVM?

I feel interprocess communication might be ok for some apps but not all apps.

New comment by randomhack in "Is Scala Really the Next C++?"

randomhack — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:12:28 +0000

Erlang's fast? Compared to what? Scala is usually about as fast as Java. Not trolling. Genuinely curious.

New comment by randomhack in "Lies We Tell Kids"

randomhack — Wed, 14 May 2008 17:43:41 +0000

You forgot to mention Turing :) Turing doesnt get much space in school textbooks. And von Neumann too despite being one of the giants of mathematics in 20th century.

New comment by randomhack in "YC startup looking for rockstar designer"

randomhack — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:53:02 +0000

As it happens, he only knows drums and sucks pretty bad at guitar and singing.

New comment by randomhack in "YC startup looking for rockstar designer"

randomhack — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:11:57 +0000

I designed my own rockstar in rock-band. Do I qualify?