Hacker News: rsanchez1

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Area Journalist Partying Too Hard"

rsanchez1 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:21:06 +0000

The NYT writer must have visited one of those brogrammers startup. Either that or he just plain made it up. It really sounds like a description that came straight out of The Hangover.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "The Secret Lives of Zipcar Drivers"

rsanchez1 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 05:18:17 +0000

Honestly, their findings are what I would have assumed in the first place. It makes more sense to me that people would use Zipcar because it's more convenient than buying your own car and paying insurance on it. The social and environmental factors seem to me more like an "oh by the way", rather than primary motivators.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Jason Alexander on gun control"

rsanchez1 — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 04:47:22 +0000

Yes, George Costanza is the most authoritative voice on gun control laws.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Don't Vote"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:47:57 +0000

This is the wrong attitude as well. Civics does not end at the ballot box. The most visible example in the past year is all the online protests against SOPA and PIPA that resulted in both pieces of proposed legislation being shelved. If anything, that should give you hope that we can still effect change if we work hard to do it.

Our Constitution codifies how we will give consent to the system to rule over us and how that system will rule. The Bill of Rights gives us the right to complain about anything that anyone does.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Don't Vote"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:43:37 +0000

This is a crappy attitude. If anything, you should be motivating MORE people to vote.

Let's take Florida in 2008 as an example. In 2008, the voter turnout among the voting age population was just 58.5% of a voting population of 14.353 million people[1]. In the 2008 election, Obama received 51% of the vote, and McCain received 48%, with Obama beating McCain by roughly 240,000 votes[2]. That amounts to only 1.6% of the voter population. If turnout was higher by just 2%, and Republican voters formed most of that increase, then McCain would've won Florida. Granted, that wouldn't have given McCain the election, but it would've changed the results in Florida.

Of course, increasing voter turnout is something we're always trying to achieve, but the trend in the past decade is of increasing voter turnout each election. Who knows, maybe 200,000 extra votes will make Florida go Republican in 2012 instead of voting Obama again. But telling people not to vote because one vote won't make a difference is not going to help increase turnout.

[1] http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0398.p...

[2] http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=12=2002=0=...

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Sparrow for Windows was just a few weeks away"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 05:44:31 +0000

Source code, or it didn't happen.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Drop Out, Start Up"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 05:41:39 +0000

Wow, a kid who built a reactor at only 14 is the perfect candidate for Thiel's program. I wonder how he managed it.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Addict Pride?"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 05:32:17 +0000

Reading this, something occurred to me. If we are to champion "neurodiversity", should we not aim to accomplish neurodiversity in each individual, instead of neurodiversity in the population? By that, I mean diversity in neural activity, such that it doesn't reach extremes characterized by autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. In that sense, isn't embracing autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. actually the antithesis of "neurodiversity"?

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Obama scares the hell out of everybody with cybersecurity op-ed"

rsanchez1 — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 02:57:57 +0000

Interesting that this op-ed comes out after his executive order giving him control over telecommunication systems during a national emergency made the rounds around the blogosphere.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "The psychology of discounting: Something doesn't add up"

rsanchez1 — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 02:53:12 +0000

Yeah, I think they should have used "equivalent" instead of "the same". "The same" has a stronger connotation and won't click with some people.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "The psychology of discounting: Something doesn't add up"

rsanchez1 — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 02:49:47 +0000

Similarly, the concept of democracy does work, but the problem is that it's reliant on an educated citizenry, which is unfortunately fading fast in the US.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "The psychology of discounting: Something doesn't add up"

rsanchez1 — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 02:48:40 +0000

I would say I'm not bad with math, being a physics student, but I have to admit I had to stop and think about 50% more and 33% off being equivalent. 50% more gives you 3/2 of a product, giving you a price per unit of 2/3 the original price, or 33% off.

Something is wrong with how we teach fractions, and it can be used to deceive people.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "How about an Olympic games for enhanced athletes?"

rsanchez1 — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:14:24 +0000

This truth has been understood for thousands of years. It's only with the coddling that has been going on in recent generations that it feels like a revelation.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "How about an Olympic games for enhanced athletes?"

rsanchez1 — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:10:51 +0000

Here's your Augmented Olympics opening ceremonies, courtesy of Deus Ex.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Enyo 2.0 exits beta"

rsanchez1 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 06:21:52 +0000

I would guess probably not for current webOS, maybe for webOS 3.0 since the community edition has been released.

They are more likely to use Enyo 2.0 on stock apps for Open webOS.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "18 year guy found dead after playing Diablo III for 40 hours non-stop"

rsanchez1 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:26:06 +0000

I would be interested in the autopsy results to see if a blood clot really did him off, or if it was exhaustion from 40 hours of playing a video game.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "[dead]"

rsanchez1 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:22:56 +0000

It seems there's a linear relationship between how much Samsung increases its lead over Apple and how aggressively Apple targets Android, Samsung, and other Android OEMs with patents.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Enyo 2.0 exits beta"

rsanchez1 — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 00:01:05 +0000

This is great news. Enyo is a great framework for building apps on mobile and desktop. I created a Google Reader app using Enyo 2.0 and it is currently available on the Chrome Web Store. You can check it out here:

http://sanchezapps.com/touchfeeds

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Apple gives itself passing EPEAT grade for Retina MacBook Pro"

rsanchez1 — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:47:37 +0000

They could just give us removable batteries and keep the EPEAT grade.

New comment by rsanchez1 in "Ask HN: Still acceptable to use PHP for new projects?"

rsanchez1 — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:34:50 +0000

I really don't think this is the kind of question to ask on HN, which hinges on the latest fads, the latest of them being Ruby on Rails and possibly Node.js. Use PHP if it's most convenient for you. Heck, I would say you should even use Perl if it's most convenient for you.