LazerBear's comments

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Show HN: New cross-platform interaction between mobile devices

I think this is fantastic, but I couldn't find API docs / tutorial anywhere on your site. Demonstrating use cases is important, but I don't think it's enough to get developers to download / register.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Show HN: Lectio, contextualized comments for lectures

Design could use some more work, but I like the idea. Consider using social plugins for users. Also I love how you chose to show it off with YC's lecture. I guess you had to wait a while for the video to be online but it was probably worth it. That's thinking out of the box.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: How was your experience using parse.com?

I always think it's admirable when a CEO offers his help in forums.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: How was your experience using parse.com?

I tested it for a tiny project and was very surprised. It's very easy to use, though I wouldn't use it in production because of the price / lack of customizability.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Node.js Best Practices

If you accidentally forget to use 'new' when you're supposed to, the "constructor" method will change the global object instead of a new object, it can cause strange behavior that is very hard to trace.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Node.js Best Practices

Ah that's fantastic, i've been using them for a while and never noticed.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Node.js Best Practices

Douglas Crockford, is that you? Oh the lengths people will go to avoid using 'new'...

I wonder if any linters out there warn when they see something like:

  something = SomeCapitalizedFunction()

Because forgetting to use 'new' is really the only thing I could think of that makes this pattern dangerous.

LazerBear | 11 years ago | on: Node.js Best Practices

That's a cool trick, though 'instanceof' won't work in this case.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Show HN: Agora – A Chrome Extension To Enhance Your Online Shopping

Looks great. Does the name come from Hebrew? It means small coins, like pennies.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Pokémon Crystal disassembled source code

This made me wonder if it's possible to automatically reverse engineer a small binary file into human readable (and understandable) source code. Assuming you know the language and compiler used (and all of its quirks and optimizations), and considering that human written programs aren't so random and their patterns are most likely predictable, I think it should be possible though not at all trivial. Are there any projects attempting this?

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Hoodie – Fast web app development

Not really the same, but Passport offers easy account authentication.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: What 4chan thinks of HN

This is hilarious and spot on. Still love HN though.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Ants swarm like brains think

GEB is an amazing book, recommended to anyone into CS and logic.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the problem. If your users submit their proofs one line at a time, then validating each line is O(1) if they give you the assumptions they used and the steps they took.

Edit: In case I wasn't clear, I didn't mean anything like natural language processing (though that would be awesome). I meant very strict formal math where everything is explicit.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Idea Sunday

GitHub for mathematicians.

For every theory, define its axioms and valid logical steps. Let anyone build theorems based on these (validate them automatically), and allow people to fork others theorems to create their own.

It's probably possible to get a lot of proofs from projects like Mizar and Metamath to start with, then let the community build on top of it.

Maybe even a crowd sourced bounty program for unproven theorems, like P=NP. Let people pledge and automatically pay to whoever proves or disproves it.

I think this can really change how mathematical research is done.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Is this Twitter's new profile design?

I don't understand how they can make something as simple as Twitter so cluttered. Though this is an improvement.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: OpenWorm: A Digital Organism In Your Browser

Great reply, thank you for clarifying!

I sometimes like to think about the ethical consequences of having that type of data and computation power. For example it's very likely for it to be used to perform experiments in biology.

But who's to say that an organism simulated in that low level is any different from the real thing? If there even such a thing as "the real thing".

And it gets even weirder when simulating human beings. Is a simulated person any different from us? Is he really conscious or does he merely "behave" conscious? Is it ethical to use it for experiments? What about entertainment? And also, it raises the possibility that we ourselves might be simulated in one level or another.

I think that in some point humanity will have to face these questions. Though from what I understand from you, we still have a few centuries to get there... Man, that's something I'd love to see.

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Introduction to MIPS assembly language (2007)

Believe it or not they still teach MIPS architecture and assembly in some universities (Technion, Israel for example).

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: OpenWorm: A Digital Organism In Your Browser

It would be much more exciting if they could get a SINGLE cell (of whichever organism) simulated with virtual subatomic particles. Has anything like that been attempted? Do we even have the data?

LazerBear | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Ex-Intuit Engineer Building Free Income Tax Software. Join as cofounder?

Man, this is really weird. Just a few hours ago I came up with what I think is an awesome for a tax-related service. I was reading HN, as I do daily, before I decided to start Googling for possible competitors. Imagine my surprise when Google brought me back to HN, to a post from just a few hours ago that I somehow managed to miss.