Hacker News: tybris

New comment by tybris in "Why DRM is such a fucking stupid idea"

tybris — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:14:22 +0000

One bad idea leads to another. Selling information by the bit is a bad idea.

New comment by tybris in "“PCs are going to be like trucks”"

tybris — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:04:59 +0000

I don't think either the PC or tablets in their current forms will be the productivity tool of the future. The floor's open to new contenders that can help people deal with data and complexity.

New comment by tybris in "Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong?"

tybris — Thu, 31 May 2012 00:09:19 +0000

Well, that's how physics works. Physics is stupefyingly strict about its methods. Most sciences don't put quite as much value into models. The problem is that in a desire to strictly follow the method, physicists have become complacent with regards to extraordinary claims. Sure, the universe is full of dark matter, connected by tiny strings, in between folded up dimensions, but gravity is leaking away into parallel universes, since that's what the model predicts (rather than it just being a mathematical anomaly arising from botched assumptions). It's comparable to an economic model that describes inflation as the work of invisible leprechauns who increase prices during the night. Sure, it might make accurate predictions, hell, it might even be true, but you should not put any value into it unless there is evidence that the universe actually works in the extraordinary way the model claims it does.

Biology has followed a much better path over the past century, and biologists are rapidly building up an extremely thorough understanding of how biological systems work without relying heavily on algebraic models. Physics fails to provide explanations for even the most basic physical phenomena like motion. It's effectively just assumed to exist as a law because some authoritative physicist said so and all other models rely on it.

New comment by tybris in "Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong?"

tybris — Wed, 30 May 2012 23:52:17 +0000

In all other sciences, if you find a model that predicts something as self-contradictory as a black hole or dark matter, you shrug, figure your assumptions are wrong, and start over. In physics you announce the splendiferous wonders of the universe.

New comment by tybris in "Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight"

tybris — Sat, 26 May 2012 14:31:16 +0000

Yes you must. Everyone should want to be like Elon Musk.

New comment by tybris in "Facebook’s stock should trade for $13.80"

tybris — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:48:32 +0000

A quick collapse of the price would be best for everyone, except for the "muppets" who bought FB shares in the IPO. Especially for Facebook, who would otherwise see an exodus of employees who can make more in terms of vesting credit at companies whose share price does go up. I do think a market cap of >$50 billion is sustainable based on the size of the warchests at Microsoft and Apple. If they could only ever buy one company, it would be Facebook.

New comment by tybris in "FB down 8% at opening"

tybris — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:57:54 +0000

Not wrong. Facebook and the investors that sold stock in the IPO got $38*the number of shares. Whatever happens after the IPO is essentially irrelevant to them, except their remaining shares have gone down in market price. That probably doesn't hurt much if you realize that a day earlier there was no market price, and you got a great deal on the shares you did sell. Morgan Stanley is probably also not being harmed in this transaction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenshoe ). They do have reason to support the IPO price level. Otherwise, it will be much harder for them to find investors for the next Internet IPO, which means lower prices, which means lower underwriter fees.

The people on the wrong end of the deal are those that bought Facebook shares pre-IPO or in the hours after the IPO. The people on the right end are all early Facebook investors selling shares and the underwriters.

New comment by tybris in "HP Cloud now in Public Beta"

tybris — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:20:44 +0000

The catch is: that is not true.

New comment by tybris in "Microsoft Dumping Bing?"

tybris — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:02:34 +0000

touché

New comment by tybris in "Timeline of the far future"

tybris — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:44:03 +0000

I always wonder what obvious truth about the universe we fail to see because of just such an event in our past.

New comment by tybris in "Computer Science is Not Math"

tybris — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:26:36 +0000

Actually, I think information theory is the only branch of science that has something genuinely useful to say about computers. Unfortunately, it has few people working on it in the context of computer systems. The world is dying for useful models of (real) CPUs and complex networks based on information theory, but that's not really happening. Computer "scientists" rather spend their time building example systems that no one will ever use, or creating theoretical models that have no connection to reality. No idea what the purpose of either is.

New comment by tybris in "Microsoft Dumping Bing?"

tybris — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:58:36 +0000

I think the world record in questionable speculation was broken here.

New comment by tybris in "How I attacked myself using Google and I ramped up a $1000 bandwidth bill"

tybris — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:49:40 +0000

End of the article: "PS: Amazon was nice enough to refund the bandwidth charges, as they considered this activity accidental and not intentional. Thanks TK!"

New comment by tybris in "What if Facebook isn’t so special after all?"

tybris — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:09:58 +0000

What if Facebook is now being used by nearly all Internet users? Should you expect it to keep growing? No. Is it bad for business? Hell no.

New comment by tybris in "Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links"

tybris — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:05:42 +0000

Probably something like that. One problem with the Public folder is that people can easily guess URLs to files you might not want to share with them. I recall http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1/test.png used to show a wireframe for the Dropbox Desktop client.

New comment by tybris in "Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links"

tybris — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:01:26 +0000

This has been possible using the Dropbox API for quite a while now. Is the announcement that they added it to the context menu?

New comment by tybris in "Software Engineers Will Work One Day For English Majors"

tybris — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:04:56 +0000

Sure, many software engineers are over their creative prime by the time they hit 40 and move into management, training, recruiting, etc. With 15-20 years experience in the complexities of software engineering under the belt, they are probably pretty good at it. What does that have to do with English majors?

New comment by tybris in "$4,829-per-hour supercomputer built on Amazon cloud to fuel cancer research"

tybris — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:19:51 +0000

Stowe was just speaking at AWS summit, lots of AWS goodness there: http://aws.amazon.com/live/

New comment by tybris in "AWS Marketplace"

tybris — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:06:47 +0000

"80% of the funds collected are dispersed to the software vendor and AWS Marketplace charges a service fee of 20%."

https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/help/200904140/ref=help_l...

New comment by tybris in "AWS Marketplace"

tybris — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:29:36 +0000

Nginx 0.8 with support. Sure, 1.0.15 would be better, but enterprises generally care more about support than about having the latest version (see Red Hat).